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.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Worldwide Readership and No Time to Post
I've been meaning and wanting to post for a while, but finishing (please, please let it be true) a Ph.D. sucks sometimes. My teaching (read: grading) load has been abnormally intense lately too, so it comes down, frequently enough, to get in 30-60 minutes of training or type on here for a few minutes. I think it's fairly obvious which I've been choosing and why. I wish I could include a sweet example of the kind of crap I spend my days doing, but it's apparently a bad idea to publicly display any of one's thesis before it's done. Besides, I'm not sure how to load up the sweet math text into this thing anyway without pulling some screen-shot business. I'm digressing.
My newest bit of research into the art has been going well and is very interesting, at least to me. The thing is, I don't know if it's a good idea to be doing or not, but as I seem to be deriving benefit from it and am keeping it in its proper context, I don't think it will do any harm. I've been studying the forms, actually just two of them in-depth, and running through them while turning for nearly my entire practice time (30-60 minutes, usually) other than a few minutes at the beginning when I do a little static posturing. I also, of course, have a background-noise level of studying the basic strikes, popping out a few and trying to use what little mind I have while I do them, maybe for a minute or two here or there while someone else needs to use this box, preventing me from typing for a bit. In any case, I'm digressing again, which is what makes my writing so much fun to read.
After I do the form, with power, a few times, I'm investigating the techniques in it, including many of the transition techniques, sometimes on more than one level (different stages in the transition) by freezing and holding them in isometric tension as a static posture. I force myself to connect with the ground in a stable manner and feel all of the places I'm supposed to be applying force along with trying to recreate the sensation of an opponent being there to receive and be affected by that force. I then hold the position for 3-5 breaths and move on, slowly. Each time something significant happens, I try to hold that position and feel it and increase my strength and awareness of my strength in those positions.
For example, in Lifting and Holding from the Sweeping Palm, the first technique is the opener, so I hold that with strength, trying to imagine clearly that particular use of what is, in essence, an opening sweeping/rising sweeping strike. The "second" technique doesn't occur, though, until a bunch of things happen in transition. First, the opening hand changes, pushing forward and threatening while lifting the opponent's arm. I pause there and try to feel all of that clearly. Then the foot opens and the other arm comes in, lifting with the elbow. I pause there too. Then I execute the remainder of the transition into the "second" technique, sometimes pausing yet again at the point where I could conceive of my leg making contact or my hand/forearm of the top arm reaching the opponent's face, neck, or shoulders. Wherever I pause, I spend time and effort to apply the appropriate strengths and to imagine feeling and visualizing the effects.
Remarkably, I think it's helping develop my usage and development of power in the forms, particularly in that it seems to be really enhancing my ability to find out what I'm not doing well enough or fully enough and refine it. Usually I'll repeat the slow business once or twice to each side before going back to practicing the form in its usual, much more mobile design, trying to keep attention on all that I had put attention on by being slow and deliberate.
So, now I feel better that I've said something on here again. Now I can go back, I guess, to typing up things I don't really like typing up so that eventually I don't have to type it up at all any more and can turn my nose back to training much more seriously!
My newest bit of research into the art has been going well and is very interesting, at least to me. The thing is, I don't know if it's a good idea to be doing or not, but as I seem to be deriving benefit from it and am keeping it in its proper context, I don't think it will do any harm. I've been studying the forms, actually just two of them in-depth, and running through them while turning for nearly my entire practice time (30-60 minutes, usually) other than a few minutes at the beginning when I do a little static posturing. I also, of course, have a background-noise level of studying the basic strikes, popping out a few and trying to use what little mind I have while I do them, maybe for a minute or two here or there while someone else needs to use this box, preventing me from typing for a bit. In any case, I'm digressing again, which is what makes my writing so much fun to read.
After I do the form, with power, a few times, I'm investigating the techniques in it, including many of the transition techniques, sometimes on more than one level (different stages in the transition) by freezing and holding them in isometric tension as a static posture. I force myself to connect with the ground in a stable manner and feel all of the places I'm supposed to be applying force along with trying to recreate the sensation of an opponent being there to receive and be affected by that force. I then hold the position for 3-5 breaths and move on, slowly. Each time something significant happens, I try to hold that position and feel it and increase my strength and awareness of my strength in those positions.
For example, in Lifting and Holding from the Sweeping Palm, the first technique is the opener, so I hold that with strength, trying to imagine clearly that particular use of what is, in essence, an opening sweeping/rising sweeping strike. The "second" technique doesn't occur, though, until a bunch of things happen in transition. First, the opening hand changes, pushing forward and threatening while lifting the opponent's arm. I pause there and try to feel all of that clearly. Then the foot opens and the other arm comes in, lifting with the elbow. I pause there too. Then I execute the remainder of the transition into the "second" technique, sometimes pausing yet again at the point where I could conceive of my leg making contact or my hand/forearm of the top arm reaching the opponent's face, neck, or shoulders. Wherever I pause, I spend time and effort to apply the appropriate strengths and to imagine feeling and visualizing the effects.
Remarkably, I think it's helping develop my usage and development of power in the forms, particularly in that it seems to be really enhancing my ability to find out what I'm not doing well enough or fully enough and refine it. Usually I'll repeat the slow business once or twice to each side before going back to practicing the form in its usual, much more mobile design, trying to keep attention on all that I had put attention on by being slow and deliberate.
So, now I feel better that I've said something on here again. Now I can go back, I guess, to typing up things I don't really like typing up so that eventually I don't have to type it up at all any more and can turn my nose back to training much more seriously!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
