Admitting

As I've posted several times in the past, my lower back has been something of an issue in my training and life for as long as I've been practicing YSB, and actually even for longer. For all of this time, I had hoped that baguazhang would heal my lower back issue, finally freeing me from the grip it had on me. Partly from doing many of the basic exercises incorrectly, which I attributed the continuance of my discomfort to for a long time, my back pain neither abated nor got significantly worse over the almost two and a half years I've been training. Finally, I think I'm ready to admit that the practice of baguazhang directly will probably not heal my back, although once it is healed (through other means), it will almost definitely strengthen, protect, preserve, and improve it. Admitting it means that I can choose a sensible course of action and follow it, and, unfortunately enough, it will require that I set aside a fair amount of my preciously sparse training time (during the more intense end of the semester and my quest for doctorate) to do so.

There are exercises in bagua that I believe would (help) heal me, and those are definitely going to be included, but they are basic, basic exercises. For instance, I've seen an exercise from the Lion System (holding/rolling the ball), another from the Bear, one from the Snake, and one from the Phoenix System that all help, but doing basic strikes and forms, and even the standing postures, are of limited benefit and potential detriment if I overdo them. What this has meant, after hearing the description of what those exercises are traditionally used for (preparing unprepared bodies for practicing bagua properly), is admitting to myself that physiologically, I have not been prepared to properly study bagua all along, and most of bagua's practices are too physically demanding for my injured, weakened frame.

A fact that set this notion more firmly into my thinking was reading recently that many times in baguazhang or xingyi, a practitioner with a chronic health complaint, particularly hips, knees, back, or shoulder problems, would frequently be given the prescription of studying taijiquan or receiving massage and qigong therapy for a while before being permitted to work on anything but the most basic exercises of the art. This information served me by showing me that it was typical to need to prepare the body correctly before taking on something as demanding as one of these arts, and therefore that the basic exercises in the art might be too tough on the body to create healing in and of themselves in certain situations. That rang true with the fact that frequently, I feel about the same before and after practice in my low back and hips and feel exceptionally better everywhere else. It also left me with wondering what to do next.

Luckily, it seems, I watched my wife heal herself tremendously of a chronic sciatica issue using a version of yoga that actually has Taoist roots, like bagua. Combining that with yoga and sensible stretching practices, approaching them from an experiential, need-based perspective, gave me a practice that I really believed could help fix the root of the problem I suffer. I started it about a week ago, putting serious effort into this yoga/stretching regimen combined with some basic massage therapy on trouble spots (see an earlier post about trigger points), some basic standing, sitting, and prone qigong, and the small number of very basic bagua healing/developing practices (mentioned above), practicing them for 30-60 minutes a day when I usually have very little more time for practice or training available to me (I'll pay tonight for taking out this time to type this up, for instance). In six days, which is tiny compared with the almost eight years I've been suffering this way, I've seen more progress than I expected, though I am not, of course, healed. I hit the point recently that really told me I had to do something, and it's one of the measuring sticks I've been using: I can't jump. Jumping or even bouncing causes severe spasming or failing (it feels like mistrust) in my lower back -- immediately. I also cannot run or jog. That's disturbing because I'm still in my 20's, in good shape otherwise, and should definitely be able to participate in these kinds of activities as ones that build me, not break me. In six days, I've changed enough to where I can do some bouncing around (jumping jacks, for instance) again, I move and stand more freely, and I'm only about half as stiff when I get out of bed in the morning, though it's apparent that the problem still exists. I'm getting measurably better. As the problem has lasted for 8 years or more, I figure that in roughly 8 weeks or so, I will have seen a tremendous change, if I stick with it. If I stay with it to whatever degree is needed for 8 months, I'd be surprised to see anything other than a full recovery.

It's made me immediately aware, for instance, of the tension stored primarily in my lower abdominal muscles, hips, spinal erectors, and quadriceps muscles, tension that prevents me from developing properly in bagua and that keeps me in the prison of constant physical pain and limitation. It's also taught me the exceptionally useful lesson that the body and training must be practiced intelligently with inner sensitivity and that emotional and physical habits create powerful chains that bind us needlessly. It's also made me take responsibility for my condition, no longer wanting to rely on some chiropractor, osteopath, magician, or mysterious energetic miracle to heal me. Ignoring my tissues and mistreating them, be that via an injury or two that I sustained and never healed properly or via training on structure that wasn't ready to train on, have created and maintained this problem entirely at my own fault and decision.

Treating it before, at least for a year now, has centered on the idea that I needed to stretch, going into the tissues mentally and experientially as I did so to release the problems, and I even knew many of the stretches that would be required. Still, I refused to set aside time from my work or training to do it, and things have only gotten worse. Now, I'm ready to admit that this is part of my training, part of what I must do at my level, or else I'll never get to a very high level overall being always limited by this ceiling that I've put over myself. That gives me spirit enough to concentrate on these efforts without the guilt that might normally come from laying in some stretch on the floor instead of walking those extra few minutes around in a circle in my yard, particularly knowing that if I'm as right as I'm almost sure I am about this, I'll be able to more than make up for lost time once I'm whole again.