Tag: yoga

Absolved From Pain

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m a tall man. Not an abnormally tall man but tall enough to be completely at ease describing myself as such. I was about to suggest abnormal was such a strong and negative word but as it turns out, abnormally for myself, I checked online for something and didn’t just try to wing it. It turns out the prefix ab- simply means ‘away/from’ and as such looking at examples like abrasive, abdicate, ablution, absolve, they don’t seem to have a contrary and therefore aren’t able to be viewed in the binary positive and negative. To abdicate is to step away from power, to be abrasive is to take away the smooth, to absolve is to distance from guilt or punishment and ablution is to wash away the dirt. A cloth would absorb the water but the word sorb refers to “the fruit of the true service tree” which is Biblical and which means the two words aren’t related and cannot be compared to the negative prefix un- in nature.

I digress.

Being tall I hit my head a lot, I am also prone to hurting my back. I managed to hurt it badly about five or six years ago when I was trimming grapes in France. You spend eight hours Monday to Friday bent low trimming leaves off vines which are about one to two feet from the ground. That is a lot of moving while being bent over, and after four weeks strained my lower lumbar, slightly stretching the space between and pinching a nerve in the process. I tried over the time yoga and Pilates, went to a chiropractor, but never managed to quite shake the awareness of something not being quite right. In times of inactivity it would start hurting and I discovered over time the busier I was the less I felt it. Eventually I remembered a treatment I was given by a friend in Australia called Bowen Therapy, which is a very subtle process, don’t worry I’m not about to meander through the meaning of sub, which involves rolling the muscles and in a way activating them, allowing them to recover themselves. I could barely move before that first time in Australia and the next day I had returned to about 75% which felt at the time like a miracle. I don’t necessarily automatically believe in certain treatments, different people react differently and stronger to different things, I never got much from acupuncture for example while others swear by it. I would comfortably swear by Bowen, nearly on par with my exclamation over my height.

I discovered a woman in Scotland near me who practices it and had my first treatment with her prior to a lengthy period of active life on a sail boat. I felt my back had recovered. It felt good and strong for the first time in a few years. About six months ago though as my friend attempted to convince me to appreciate not just Crossfit but Crossfit done to create a rugby player style body, I over did myself on a sit up bench. My back ever so slightly clicked, not painfully at all but I knew I had done something. Right enough I had shifted and unbalanced my lumbar and hip. With my hips now negative and unaligned the old pain subtly returned until a few days ago when I twinged something moving a particularly heavy bread basket. Yesterday I strained it further and was in crippling pain. This is a very long winded back story for something that is supposed to only be around the five hundred word mark so I have little more space to talk about Bowen other than I went today again and while I can still feel it, usually the day after is when you really notice the change. I will return next week and have a second session soon after the first which I have never done before. I just want to be really sure. In the meantime yoga must return to habit status. Ultimately I simply attempted to create context and a backstory to a therapy which few know about but I fully believe many could benefit from. Why it’s not more commonly practised is beyond me.

5k Challenge

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I may have just done something stupid. This whole doing exercise outside while it’s sunny thing has taken a hold of me and I agreed to go on a 5k run. Five thousand metres. Not something to be scoffed at. I managed three thousand last week but my knee started hurting at the end so I’m fearing the same may happen today. This time I suspect my rather unsympathetic friend may not pander to my excuses and the abuse will flow. While this is nothing new I am exposing myself enough that something is making me feel wary at the prospect of what’s to come.

But this is all part of this new healthy and energised human being I’m attempting to create. I am in my mid-30s now which is the usual time people have breakdowns and decide it’s time to exercise. And I thought I was unique. I even had a dream last night about eating too many of these pizzas we’re making and getting fat. It wasn’t exactly deep in the subconscious but that’s a fear I can’t deny to myself any longer. My belly was so fat, I can’t possible think how many pizzas I had been eating.

How much of this then is me being vain? I won’t deny there was an aesthetic element involved in the horror I felt at the enormity of my gut but I’m sure I had convinced myself previously it was all health related. The subconscious never lies though. Saying that we do start to become more aware of the aches and pains that once either didn’t exist or only existed for a short period. Now they feel like they never go away. The desire for life must be so strong in people who reach serious old age. My god everything must just hurt endlessly.

I’m supposed to be running in about half and hour and I feel so full of sandwich and the cup of tea I’m currently drinking. I’m going to do a little yoga as a warm up of sorts and crack on. I’ll report back when it’s all over.

Huh huh…huh huh…huh huh…collapse…

I was actually leading the way until about the three kilometre mark at which point I saw a waypoint in the distance and my body started to assume it was time to walk. I thought I felt a little wretch at four kilometres and by then my friend had caught up with me although saying that he had only been about five metres behind the whole time and I know that because I could hear him suffering too. We parted at the four kilometre mark and I struggled my way back and dragged myself over the finish line. It really was a battle of the mind. Having completed a few Vipassana courses in my time I can confirm the relation to meditation is an accurate one. My knees held strong though which was reassuring too. In short though; can taste blood. Tight muscles. Light head. Fucked.

Stress

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I think I’m suffering from a little stress. I won’t say what but I’ve been working on a little project recently and it should have it’s first day on Friday. There’s stuff still to arrange and what I have so far I don’t think is good enough. Humour me because I’m clearly not giving away any information. Anyway today I have been in the most ridiculous mood. I nearly lost my shit in the bank because I was trying to set something up and despite this thing being through the bank the two women had never heard of it. I wasn’t rude to them because what’s the point and also I must admit I forgot some of the information I was supposed to bring, internally though I was smashing the place up. I let it all out once back in the car. Genuinely I was quite surprised at how pissed off I was. What is obvious is that I was just angry with myself for being stupid and not bringing the necessary paperwork but even then I was surprised at the level of anger I felt even when I was fully aware it was against myself.

I’ll be the first to admit that in the last ten plus years I’ve only had a handful of stressful situations. I never found travelling difficult because there was always a solution. It’s situations in which I would be on show and could mess up that would be the worst. Exams for example. This thing starting on Friday though is important but not especially. I’m not even sure what I’m stressing about really or why I’m getting myself in such a state if it’s not stress. I just don’t know how people manage to deal with stressful situations. You hear about ways people manage it but I don’t really know my way. Maybe thats the problem, I lack a way. I once thought meditation would be good but I never stuck at it. People drink or smoke but probably best if I avoid that route. Maybe I just need to get a boxing bag and sweat it out, that could work, it’ll have a duel function too.

The strange thing is I can’t really describe what it is I really mean by my reaction or whether it’s stress. I don’t really get flustered and usually I manage to do what I need to do relatively straightforwardly but I’ve been on an rampage mode today all the same. It also hasn’t allowed me to actually focus and carry out the necessary tasks I needed to do even though I feel in my mind if I just sat down and focused on them I could bash it out. As I say this I wonder then if it is a case of using the energy, learning to harness it. This out of control monster is simply the result of out of control energy. I have the energy and the desire for the project but the mind lacks focus, the mind is not in control. Perhaps then my way will involve me learning how to manage the wild energy, is that the way though or is that finding a way to find a way. Circles again. I just need to find a harness for that dragon. Easy.

Own It!!

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I’m having one of those ‘Own it!!‘ days. It began when I was feeling a little lazy earlier while ‘working’ and decided to put a podcast on in the background. I wasn’t in the mood to learn anything so dismissed the more intellectual ones I like to impress people with and listened to Joe Rogan instead. His guest was comedian Bert Kreischer who I discovered recently on another podcast and who seems like the kind of guy who would deeply offend certain people. In that case as far as I’m concerned he is doing the job a stand-up comedian should be doing; using humour to highlight our worst tendencies and hypocrisies. Joe Rogan’s podcast is generally a hit although he gets it wrong sometimes, but there are some like this one in which you feel as if you’re just hanging out with two mates smoking, drinking and talking shit. While some may dismiss that kind of behaviour I feel they miss the point that people need that. They need to talk shit and not care. Sometimes Joe Rogan can start talking about exercise and health and you know the man lives what he’s saying, there’s an intensity to it that dare I say is inspiring.

For anyone who has read any of these on a regular basis they will be aware of how a couple of months ago I had an own it!! moment after an energising salt water cleanse. It’s a powerful one and it makes you realise how much a healthy gut can have an effect upon your mood and your energy levels. I slowly slipped back into my old unhealthy ways and am now back relying on coffee for energy and pastries for a easy lunch. Needless to say I’m groggy and lethargic most of the time but importantly having not always been groggy and lethargic I am aware of there being other states of existence. Much of this is mental, the drive to achieve and the energy to make it happen comes from the mind in many ways but if the gut is a second brain then we can’t overlook it’s contribution too. I’ve just started reading the book Gut by Giulia Enders again and seeing as I’ve just got over my readers block I’m pretty confident I’ll make it beyond page twenty this time.

Nobody should go through life lethargic and groggy, and if one thing is clear as the world falls apart around us is that life is finite, why waste it killing time. I’m going to finish this bag of coffee I’ve got, transition back to green tea and cut out the bloody sugar which I’m surrounded by from working in a bakery and being weak. How long this will last is anyones guess but considering this daily blog has lasted about four months now I’m clearly capable of the previously impossible with a little effort. I’m probably going to do some yoga, some calisthenics and go for a run after this. I’ve got to do something with my time, might as well own what I say.