My Wrist, By Request: Trigger Points and Tendinitis

The dadao can really wreck your wrist if you're not careful, as can some of the other practices if you repetitively overdo them like I apparently did in London. My left wrist, which I've mentioned a couple of times already, has been unduly sore and less training-worthy ever since I got back. Since I got asked what I've done to help it, since I have helped it a lot, I decided to make a post about it.

The culprits that cause joint pain in the wrist are usually limited to three or four things: broken/dislocated bones, torn ligaments (sprains), tendinitis, and trigger points. I suppose you could do those first two with the saber or training, but I see those as being more likely by doing applications irresponsibly than by doing the training regimens. The last two, however, are more common, and luckily, one is easily treatable. In fact, if you have tendinitis, it's a virtual certainty that a fair proportion of your limitation in movement, discomfort, (abnormal) weakness, or pain is caused by trigger points in some nearby muscles as well. Treating those trigger points can relieve you of some of that trouble. Since all you can really do for tendinitis (if it really is just tendinitis) is ice it and rest it, eventually starting some stretching after time goes on, there's not much to say about that treatment. It is the case, however, that as often as not (probably more often, actually) trigger point issues create symptoms that are nearly identical to tendinitis that doesn't really exist.

I'm not going to detail tremendously here what trigger points are or how they arise, but knowing a little about them helps quite a bit. Essentially, if you overwork or misuse a muscle in any way, the potential to develop a trigger point is there. Even excessive resting can cause them, particularly if the muscles aren't taken through their natural ranges of motion (sitting is an example of this which causes many trigger points in the iliopsoas muscles --which cause stiffness and low-back pain-- just due to the fact that sitting in a chair naturally shortens those muscles and lets them stay that way). Trigger points are like tiny bands of contracted muscle fibers within your muscles, and they almost never resolve themselves on their own. They do, however, have two phases: active and latent. In their latent phase, they slightly restrict movement and have a high potential for becoming suddenly active, though they don't usually hurt much. In their active phase, they create tremendous discomfort. More often than not, the following truth should rule your thinking about trigger points: trigger points almost always refer pain to a place other than where they are, i.e. the problem isn't always where it hurts.

How can you get rid of trigger points? There are a few methods, none of which are fun: certain doctors can inject them with salene or procaine, they can be made very cold and then stretched (under the supervision of a trained professional), or they can be massaged (for free at home!). The massage is quite painful. In fact, you can identify where a trigger point is in your musculature because it's a spot that is inordinately painful ("exquisitely tender" is the term used by Davies, an expert in the field -- this book is almost a must-buy for anyone that does anything remotely athletic or abjectly unathletic). Once you find the spot and make it hurt with the massage, you have to hold onto it until it doesn't hurt. Basically, the process sucks, but you're looking at a few minutes of rather big discomfort to cure you of possibly months or years of increasingly degenerative discomfort and restriction in range of movement. The choice is pretty clear.

For the wrist, most of the time the problem isn't in the wrist, although it can be. It's usually reassuring to poke around the area that hurts and see if anything local is causing the problem. Depending on what hurts, it very well may be (the ligaments in the wrist can contain trigger points as well, notably the one between the thumb and the radius bone). More often than not, though, wrist pain arises further up in the forearm in the muscles that flex and extend the wrist and fingers (flexors, extensors). If your symptoms more strongly match "tennis elbow of the wrist," then your extensors are more of the problem. If your symptoms more strongly match "golfer's elbow of the wrist," then your flexors are more of the problem. In either case, rather aggressive, deep-tissue massage (typically using tools like balls or sticks) on the bellies of those muscles as well as (especially!) their attachments near the elbows will help. The massage is painful and slow, so you might need to set aside ten minutes to a half an hour to do it, and you should do it at least twice daily for a week to see really big improvement. After massaging, whenever possible, it is extremely helpful to ice the areas that you massaged for a few minutes.

My basic suggestions to anyone with wrist pain is that you search thoroughly in your forearms (extensors are on its back and flexors are on its front) for tender knots in the muscles and then press them hard, especially if they reproduce your wrist symptoms in any way (those are the main things you're looking for). That's not the whole ball of wax, unfortunately, for wrist pain.

You might find trigger points further up that cause pain in the wrist as well. Some examples of places to look might surprise you. This list isn't exhaustive, but here are some suggestions: brachialis, brachioradialis, pectoralis minor, subclavius, and the scalenes. You might also check the musculature of the thumb and, again, the local tissue in the wrist. The best massage technique I've experienced is to press hard enough so that the pain index (scale of 1-10, 1 being essentially no pain, 10 being unbearably excruciating) hits between 6 and 8 and then hold it long enough so that the pain diminishes to the 3-5 range. It seems like that will probably never happen, but it will... just keep breathing and trying to relax, and eventually your muscle relaxes and the trigger points let go. After treating and before icing, stretching those muscles is also advisable, though stretching trigger-point-afflicted muscles without massage first tends to make the problems worse, not better. You may find many, even dozens of such spots in your forearms if your wrists hurt. Sorry, but that's just how that works.

A last note: you will probably try to guard against the invasion of the massage tool (tennis balls and golf balls are particularly good, placed in a sock and then leaned upon against a wall). That's natural, but you want to try to breathe, focus, and let those muscles relax. Guarding will not help you as much and can create other problems (trigger points in other muscles). Also, you may bruise from the treatment, and if you do, then you should not continue pushing on that spot until the bruise goes away. Finally, don't interrupt the blood flow in main arteries or push hard on nerves. The first is identifiable by feeling a very strong pulse and then when you let go a flood of warm liquid inside your skin. The second is identifiable because it causes a lot of local pain (usually) and distal numbness. If leaning on a ball is making your fingers go dead-numb, that's bad.

Good luck and happy hunting!

My Saber, My Wrist, and My Remedy

Every person that does something physical needs this book: The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Section Edition by Davies and Davies. Seriously. Get it. Use it. Love it.

I'm not here to be a commercial; I'm here to talk about training. Well, as many of you have read, my wrist is still pretty well wrecked from maybe overdoing it a little bit in London (or being weak, however you read that). Well... I went out to work with my saber today and did a drill about forty times in my right hand (described below) and felt pretty damn good about that. Then I went to do it in my left (the wrecked-wrist side) and nearly dropped the saber in extreme pain on the first attempt, which was obviously piss-poor. That's not acceptable, and it's holding my training back. Then I tried tracing the saber back and forth. I did a bunch in my right and a whopping two in my left before I couldn't really hold the saber up any more. I'm secretly to the point with my wrist "right now" where I can't unscrew a jar (not a new, sealed jar, but one that's been opened many times) in the morning without some real difficulty and pain. That's screwed up. I can't do cutting strikes worth a crap, my standing and turning postures in Lion are a partial failure due to the external rotation of the bottom hand that I can't really do, and a number of the qinna strikes are also wrecking me or largely inaccessible. That is unsatisfactory.

I came directly inside after tracing and put the saber down earlier and picked up the book mentioned above. I re-read every page that related to wrist pain of the kind I was primarily experiencing and within about ten minutes had identified the most likely areas that are causing me trouble. I spent half an hour working hard on them (painful) after that, and function is improved probably by 60% in one session. I'm still not going to man-up the saber in my left hand until I'm more near 90-95% improved, but the jar is no problem, seizing and grasping seem to be much better, and cutting only hurts a little. External rotation: check. I did some standing strengthening in the Lion posture to celebrate. Nice.

We all get sore from training, and if we're training correctly, we're probably sometimes getting some repetitive-use injuries. Many of those can be treated by following the instructions in this book and enduring a little pain. That means we can train more, harder, longer, more frequently, and sooner if we end up injured. Awesome.

The drill: the first series of movements from the Monkey-King section of the Nine Dragon Saber form, up through TaiGong Goes Fishing, snapping the saber back into the Monkey-King posture after going fishing. Since I can't do that whole series forty times, I interlaced it with repetitions of turning around the circle once in Monkey King and doing the first movement (Fair Maiden ... Buddha), then stepping back onto the circle for another go around. I probably did the full-to-fishing sequence every fifth time, once facing forward, once facing backwards.

It Works....

Oh the excitement! Oh the joy! Oh the enthusiasm! Oh the training that is to come!

I did some striking practice today and found out that finally, seemingly at long last, my body works again. I've trained lightly almost every day since I got back from London, but it seemed that while my head and heart were in it, my body just wasn't. In fact, it intended to have no part in the entire affair. That was a bit discouraging, to say the least, because it made me feel like I was half-assing when what I really wanted to do was get in a rock-solid workout that allowed me to expand upon and review what we covered in the London intensive. Wants aside, my attempts at striking and forms practice up until now have consistently resulted in feeling fairly week, somewhat uncoordinated, and too stiff or sore to accomplish much.

Standing and turning haven't been much better, though they have been better. The problem there is primarily that my left wrist is still too angry to turn properly, which is particularly irksome while turning. I have to say that it's much better today than it has been, but it's been a long road to what I'd call 60%. The best that I can self-diagnose is "repetitive use injury," i.e. tendinits as I claimed. With a hard, consistent effort in self-massage (and a little help from my therapist wife) and a relative avoidance of twisting it too far even when I was training (another source of feeling like I wasn't putting in my all), I've finally made some real progress on it. Furthermore, my toes are considerably less numb than they were, so I think being on the mend is definitely in my future. My calves still don't feel right, but they're another story all together....

In about an hour, I'll have a chance to really go get a good test-run in on striking and forms practices. I'm really looking forward to it and carbing up (on some beautiful multigrain porridge) right now. Honestly, I'm so excited that I can barely stay in this chair. Woot!

Buffening Up

Word on the streets is that my peeps are worried about if I'm getting stronger yet. Those peeps should rest assured that I'm working on it, day by day, and hopefully will have something to show for it despite the hee-hawing I could do about having a dissertation to write, correct, rewrite, correct, and rewrite a few more times in the intervening months and some kind of apparently serious lower-back injury that I'm only now getting somewhat out-of-the-woods on... being very tight and stiff on one side but not the other now with far less of the overwhelmingly painful and frustrating "stuck" feeling I've lived with since last summer. Today was no exception for buffening up.

This morning, after only a super-mini breakfastish snack, I hit about an hour and twenty of calisthenics and basic saber drills, followed by what sections of the form I know, along with my new favorite way to burn myself up that isn't the saber. This afternoon, I'm planning more saber drills, more saber form, some saber turning, and some zig-zag step strikes, probably with some more of my awesome strengthening drills and standing. If I can still stand after all of that, then I'll turn. If not, I'll probably get some of that in this evening. My puny weights were yesterday, so I don't expect they'll make it into today's routine.

So... this new exercise thing was kind of motivated by a few factors: 1) daoyin exercises; 2) weightlifting; 3) the overwhelming feeling of pointlessness that consumes me while I'm weightlifting, causing me to hate it not because it's hard but because it's lame; 4) little-to-no weight equipment here and a general disdain for the gym, and 5) standing postures. I'm doing weightlifting-like exercises with "extreme isometric tension" instead of actual weights. I haven't yet found a weightlifting maneuver that I can't do this way, though I'm not sure it's quite as hard as lifting a massive piece of steel, but I've also found about 100,000 exercises that I can't figure out how to do with weights that I can do this way. Isometric, by the way, isn't the correct term because there is moving in the joints. It's more like performing the exercises in super-slow motion with overwhelming internal resistance to them. Notably, I can do static strikes this way, which I'm nicknaming "mud striking" because it feels like dragging my arms through mud when I do them. Doing even ten to each side is really tough, and if at any point during the movement, there's a loss of "connection" within the body, it's immediately apparent because the strike starts to feel empty (like the mud suddenly disappeared). Mixing sets of that in with sets of strikes done normally seems to work both aspects of powerful, effective striking: strength and proper mechanics, and doing them so slowly and mindfully allows me to experiment nicely with putting my thought on various aspects of the strike or its goals.

Wicked. I'm about to go get at it again now, so for those about to rock... I salute you (with a badass workout).

Plantar Fascia

The bottoms of my feet are rejoicing, after much swallowing of the bitter. I hope it translates into improved training. Time (and having time) will tell.

Due to my persistent low-back pain/problem, I've sought a variety of treatment options and modalities and have found the largest degree of success so far with trigger-point release and patient yoga type stretches. Combining the two did more, it seems, in two or three weeks than anything I've tried in years. Since starting this trigger point adventure and getting more keenly aware of what one is and feels like, particularly when it releases, I decided to re-re-re-restart my quest to release my plantar fascia (connective tissue in the bottoms of my feet). For the endeavor, I enlisted a trusty sidekick, and I've used it as one of my excuses to get out of my chair (my prison: see any post where I talk about my dissertation) and get the blood flowing properly through my body. My sidekick is a golf ball. I stand on it. It hurts.. a lot.

I've done this every day in a row now for seven, save one day of rest because I went too deep (in the wrong place) and awoke a demon (like Tolkien's Dwarves, though the Balrog here is a mildly bruised heel). Otherwise, it's been a delightful (read: very awful but worthwhile) experience. My feet feel amazing, and I feel generally lighter and freer of movement. Whether due to the stretching, the other trigger point therapy, the greater mindfulness of the amount of time I spend in this chair, or just the feet (most likely some combination of all of those things), my back is slowly starting to give up on its seemingly unrelenting quest to ruin my life. It's by no means fixed, but it's much less broken. Most noticeably, I can almost stand on one foot on a golf ball on one of my feet (the other is tighter and has more work to be done still) without it being unbearable. That would have been unthinkable a week ago. The pain was in-tense.

There's a really neat secondary effect with the method I'm employing: heat. My feet get hot and give off heat like little radiators while doing the treatment and for some time afterwards. It's a very potent sensation that I'm sure is caused by "enhanced circulation" but I'm chalking straight up to qi. It's most pleasant, and my feet have this well-massaged feel for quite a while after the treatment. So here's what I do. Be warned, it takes 10-20 minutes to do the whole thing, but it's SOOOO worth it.

Step 1) Get a golf ball (or tennis ball if you want to start out lightly) and get ready to swallow bitter, probably a substantial amount. Put the ball on something relatively soft (a rug or carpet is ideal, a spongy mat like a yoga mat works too but makes the experience a bit more intense).
Step 2) Start just behind the ball of your foot in line with the split between your big toe and second toe and sink your weight slowly down onto the ball (it's nice to have a chair to lean on). Feel what there is to feel. Put enough weight down to make it quite uncomfortable but not completely awful. Stay still and wait until that spot isn't so awful (20 seconds to 2 minutes, probably). It will probably still be bad, but that's okay.
Step 3) Roll the ball a little bit toward your heel with some pressure on it, trying to follow the tendons of the feet (looking these up in an anatomy book or online is helpful). Stop and repeat the pressure above about every half inch or any time you feel any particularly bad sensation like more intense pain, a resisting knot in the tissue, little electrical crackling feelings (that kind of hurt and feel hot). Proceed until you get close to the beginning of your heel. Spend more time there like at the ball because it's an attachment area.
Step 4) Go back to the ball of your foot, this time nearer the middle (near Kd-1, for you acu-buffs). Repeat, spending time on purpose at Kd-1 (you should know it when you feel it, in the hollow just behind the ball of your foot near the middle). Go all the way down toward your heel, pausing just like before as needed and near the attachment area.
Step 5) Go back to the ball of your foot, this time nearer the outer edge but not all the way out. Repeat all the way down toward your heel, coming in a bit toward the center as you go. Just like before. Good times. Your foot will probably be quite hot by this time. I find focusing on enjoying the heat takes my mind off the pain/discomfort.
Step 6) I know there's another band of fascia in the bottom of the foot; skip it for now. Repeat the WHOLE process on the other foot and let the one you just worked rest a bit.
Step 7) Go back to the first foot and work the shorter band of fascia on the midfoot (more toward the back) on the outside edge. Give it the same attention as the main part of the foot.
Step 8) Do the same to the other foot.
Step 9) Go back to the first foot and slowly roll the ball the other way, starting near the heel and going toward the toes, stopping at knots. You'll find knots that you didn't find the first time because of the change in direction. Enjoy them. Do the outer tendon too, if you like.
Step 10) Do the same to the other foot.
Step 11) Pause and analyze: which direction seemed to benefit me more? Focus on that direction in the future (do it first and spend longer on it).
Step 12) Sit on your knees with your toes dorsiflexed (bent up toward your head, so they're on the floor and the balls of your feet are trying to get there). Sit back on your heels with as much pressure as is comfortable and deep-stretch your feet. This is important and valuable to do, though it's not fun. It's more important, I'd say, than going both ways on the tendons with the ball. Hold this stretch for as long as you can (it can be BAD, esp. at first), aiming within a few sessions for a minimum of 1 minute but preferably closer to 2 or 3.
Step 13) [I haven't tried this but it's apparently awesome. I'll try it soon and report.] Plunge your feet into cold water (icy, if you can take it) for 30 seconds or a minute. Towel off.
Step 14) Do it again tomorrow, every day until it's not awful to do it in any particular spot. As you get better and better, with time, you can do it more quickly and focus only on the tighter spots. Chances are, unless you do this kind of thing anyway, your feet are probably almost 100% trouble spots. If they're WAY sore, take a day off of everything but the stretch, maybe rubbing them firmly with your hands instead of the ball of terror. Be careful not to bruise yourself by going too deep too soon (use your chair!).
Step 15) Get to where doing this once a week, then once a month/as needed, is more than enough to manage your good foot health. Awesome. I'm not there yet.

The plantar fascia connects, one tissue to another, through the heels to the Achilles tendon, up the calves, behind the knees, up the hamstrings, through the butt and the back side of the pelvis, across the tissues that stabilize the sacrum and lumbar spine, up the spine, across the occipital, over the crown, and to the muscles that lift your nose when you crinkle it up. That's a lot of connection, and all of it benefits from treating problems in the root (which affect bit by bit everything above with every step you take). I understand that this process can help tremendously with chronic headaches, but I don't have them, so I don't know.

I also like to add hamstring stretches when I get done with my feet, seeing as that's close-kin kind of tissue. It's an interesting experiment, by the bye, to "release" one foot and then stretch before releasing the other. There's a definite difference. Oh that reminds me: this is deep, hard therapy, so it's critical that whatever you decide to do to one foot, you should do to the other to prevent imbalances from coming up (in flexibility and usage) that could make for some nasty problems if you're lazy. Drinking a lot of water afterwards seems to help too. Some people say it releases toxins trapped in that tissue, and the extra water helps flush it.

Happy standing on a ball to you!

PS: In other health-related news, I'm going to be starting my kombucha-brewing adventure within days. I've been wanting to for a few years, and now it's go-time. I really recommend the stuff.

Stuck

Well... I'm stuck. Before I talk about being stuck, I want to talk about my circle again a little.

I haven't walked on it since the truck hit it. In fact, I haven't walked on it in months, turning either on something paved or indoors (usually in the small, unheated room we have with the windows open to get the pseudo-outside experience). It was and is a mud hole. Currently, it's a very bumpy mud hole. I did plod around it a few times to get the new feel of it. It's going to need some work before it's workable again, but it's not as trashed as I thought it was on first examination.

So... stuck. My training is only kind of stuck in that I usually have less than an hour a day that I can give to it (often enough much less). Still, there is training every day. My dissertation is my training, mostly, and it's not training me in bagua. Still, significant progress is being made on that, so that seems well enough.

What's stuck is my frigging back, or more accurately, my sacrum. It feels stuck, all the time, and has for months. This has the direct result of limiting mobility, limiting training intensity, and causing pain (sometimes severe and surprising), all of which cut into my training terribly. I've been working trigger points, and many of the symptoms of the back pain seem to abate but I'm still stuck. Chiropractic essentially hasn't helped, but it doesn't mean I haven't found the right doctor. Incidentally, that's a component of the "stuckness:" even a fair chiro used to be able to make my low back pop, but now it just stubbornly resists (and twinges with pain at the forced effort to get it to release something). Stretching seems to help some symptoms but not others. Meditating and releasing is the same way. The prevailing "stuck" feeling and subsequent shooting pains (particularly any time I lean back and to the left) persist. I wake up in a fair amount of discomfort every morning, and silly things like rolling over in bed hurt tremendously (compare that with doing squats, which doesn't hurt at all). It's most frustrating, to be sure.

I hate to be negative on here or anywhere, but honestly, it's starting to bug me that nothing seems to help this issue. In fact, I would rate myself as worse than I was six months ago despite a variety of expertly recommended and diligently applied tools that should help the matter. I desperately want to kick my training up, using what spare time I have around my thesis, but this problem has been and continues to hold me up severely. I've had enough, and I'm ready for it to be over!

Sigh.

Changes

Finally, after what has seemed like almost three months of stagnation, I feel like I'm moving forward. First, my advisor set a fire under my ass, and so my dissertation is coming along better. That's well and good for my life but bad for my training. Second, I'm most definitely getting stronger. My proxy saber and I are getting along at least 3-4 times a week, and particularly with my right hand, I'm noticing rather dramatic increases in my ability with the tool, although I'm still nothing to Carl "Hungus." Third, my back seems to be letting up somewhat. The "stuck" feeling has remitted tremendously in the past week and a half thanks to an odd combination of serendipity, yoga, and highly salubrious bagua exercises courtesy of my friend from across the Pond. I've been stretching on my own quite well, my wife wrangled the living crap out of me in a rather uncomfortable position that I thought was going to kill me or maybe break me but seemed to "turn the key in the lock," and then I suffered unbelievably at the edge of my abilities through a couple of the health-building exercises of Yin Style, which led directly to my back crunching around and eventually letting go! The "stuck" feeling has, for the moment, left me, although the musculature on my left side (primarily my iliacus, psoas, gluteus medius, multifidous, and serratus posterior inferior -- looking these up helped release some of their anger) is very knotted and fly-by-wire. Still... my training can now, finally, resume at the level that I had this summer, at least as long as I pretend that my advisor will still be happy if I choose that road. In theory, though, a quarter of a year later, I feel stronger, not weaker, and moving forward, not stuck.

The moral: do your exercises regularly and within your capacity, not pushing yourself too hard too fast, and anything is possible. Also, sometimes you have to burn through your injuries, not overprotect them. That balance is difficult to find.

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.

Don't Know Chinese

I keep getting all excited about the fact that I knew the Holding and Lifting forms are called "ping tua," as well as I could tell. My ability to hear Pinyin, though is about a 6/100. It's ping tuo, apparently. Ping means "to make level or even" and tuo means "to support with the palm or hand." Even if my Chinese isn't rocking, I am, at least getting better with the forms, I think. Fortunately or unfortunately (for who can say which), I think the English name is more clear in giving a methodological approach to the theory of the forms than the Chinese, but that may be because I don't really know clearly all the levels of meaning of the words. Hopefully the English name isn't misleading me, getting me to add to the form things that aren't there.

Since my back has been hurting, 90% or more of my training for the last week and a half has been done laying on my back in visualization. That's given me a lot of time to imagine going through the ping tuo forms on someone, and I'm really glad I took the time to do that instead of adopting an "I'm hurt" defeatist attitude. While I didn't get better at actually doing the form, I did get a pretty firm appreciation for how some of the techniques work and how some of the subtleties play an important role in making them work, and I was excited to play with those a little tonight at our (very small) get together, one in which I was mobile enough to do more than act the consultant. It was pretty interesting, to say the least, and I was sort of surprised by how clearly and quickly the techniques came to life for me after repeatedly doing them mentally for over a week. I particularly feel more confident in the "give them something to think about" technology.

One of the more interesting changes I've experienced since coming from Vermont really came to a point during this time too. I'm much better, I feel, at picking out subtle details and nuances of movement and usage from the videos than I was before this trip. It's absolutely amazing what a good teacher can bring out and change for a person in even a short period of time with just a little of hardly deserved attention. It underscored a lesson I've heard and even started to notice more clearly in my classroom teaching (math) job: if you attempt teach something to someone before they're ready to learn it, then they won't learn it (well?). So many things that I heard a year ago or more are suddenly more reasonable and accessible, in fact almost obvious in some cases, after seeing these things again with a new set of goggles on, so to speak. They were, of course, completely obscured to me before the change. It gets me very excited about what further changing and developing is available.

The update on my back is that it's *mostly* better. I spent a long day in a chair on Saturday and some time since then as well, and that's keeping it from being back to normal, which still isn't awesome. In any case, I've gotten to this point without the aid of a chiropractor or other manipulator. That is somewhat encouraging. Since I have an appointment for adjustment on Wednesday of this week, I'm optimistic about the outcome, and I'm furthermore absolutely enthusiastic about doing what it takes to reclaim my back from the degeneration it's suffered at years of what I've determined is goofed-up posture, probably since the accident that broke me as a teenager.

I'm going to try my hand at turning again tomorrow. I would have tonight, but such was the nature of my work day and our meeting together that it wasn't on the agenda. It seems weird to have gone this long without turning, and it hasn't been this long since the last time my back hosed me. I think I'll have to be careful not to overdo it, though. We'll see how I feel, I guess. Before that, I'm going to stand. Tonight. For the first time in what seems like ages!

Spinadees

The direction I've chosen seems to be a pretty good one, and after reviewing the ping tua forms in the sweeping, cutting, chopping, and hooking palms, I'm starting to see much more clearly some of the ideas in the sweeping form that Matt was attempting to elucidate for us. My sweeping strikes seem to be getting better too, though that general feeling of "heaviness" still is kind of weak. I'm not sure why I have such a hard time with it. I'm probably trying too hard. In any case, it's really strange how looking at those other palms on my own, which I cannot be 100% sure on whether I'm doing them entirely correctly or not, particularly with the stepping, gives better insight into the things that Matt was spelling out perfectly plainly for us a few weeks ago in Vermont. Weird... but good. Certain movements in each of the other forms have made it a lot more clear how valuable it can be to pay attention to these subtle details, and I'm glad I've undertaken the study and seen that.

Unfortunately for me, or fortunately as it may truly be the case, my ability in VT to participate was somewhat limited by the fact that I had hurt my back about a week earlier carrying some boxes. That put a slight limit on what I was and wasn't able to do, which sucked from where I stood because I would have been gladder to give a better showing. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, but I could tell within a few hours on the first day that it wasn't going to not be a big deal. I just wish I hadn't put off the chiropractic I went to until the day before we left. Perhaps things would have been different. I still would have had to swallow a lot of bitter, but probably not so much as I did.

The title of this post is "spinadees," which is the silly and immature name my brother and I have given back pain after seeing a silly and immature internet cartoon talking about spikes coming out of a back as being "spinadees," spelling here is questionable but the one I've chosen to use for the purpose. Well, for whatever reason (probably desk-jockeying), this week my back went almost completely out after feeling almost completely recovered (as in my hips visibly weren't on straight: cocked to one side, twisted slightly, and tilted forward, with powerful muscle spasms to boot). Since this has happened quite a few times (it's come and gone since a jiu-jitsu incident about 7 years ago, though the actual triggering injury was almost definitely when I was in 9th or 10th grade (about 13 years ago)), and I was in a position to drop everything when it did, most of the damage was prevented, which is to say I was only mostly floor-bound (as opposed to totally) for 6-8 hours one evening until bed (instead of for 3-5 days) and painfully semi-mobile the next day. Today is the next day after that, and I'm about 70% mobile now and in relatively minimal, though constant pain, although "serious discomfort" is closer to the real sensation than "pain." It sucks for me, so far as I can tell, because I had just hit a real stride with my training, both in terms of what felt like positive gains and in terms of strong desire to put in extra time. Don't be misled, though: I'm almost positive what caused the back pain had nothing to do with the training (which I've never been sure of before) and a lot to do with 1) sudden progress at workin my research (which meant obscene amounts of time in desk chairs -- 13+ hours on Thursday alone), and 2) emotional factors (stress, frustration, irritation -- some from the sudden progress and much from the other aspects of my job, i.e. teaching, and quite a bit from my dealing with kids), which I think have more to do with pain than we like to admit here in the West.

In any case, I caught up a lot on my reading in the "down time" and realized a few elements that apply to general qigong training that should apply neatly as nuances to be used in standing practice. I look forward to feeling well enough to test that via hard training. I also spent a lot more time getting into my body through stretching and deep breathing, trying to get into touch with those emotions and tensions that were causing me the pain. I definitely need to put more attention into those two aspects of my training: breathing and stretching, as well as paying attention to subtle forces and changes within my body, even though those don't manifest plainly as being part of the martial art. I was also free to do a lot of contemplation, which was nice for trying to understand the forms. I spent a lot of time envisioning myself using the movements from the ping tua forms on people, much to my amusement and surprise, surprise at how clearly in some cases I could "feel" what would make the move succeed.

I'm really hoping that tomorrow will prove a better day than even today for my back and hips, and if it is, then I'm completely stoked about meeting up with the group and playing with some of these ideas.