Missing my class, but learning discipline

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I got off work at 5:40, walked briskly through the rain to the Metro sta­tion, and caught the first train to Rockville. I thought I had plenty of time to make it home in time for yoga class at 7:30. At the next sta­tion, we were ordered off the train (no expla­na­tion that I could hear). I had to wait as two packed trains passed before find­ing one that had enough room for me to slip in. I arrived in Rockville too late to make yoga class at 7:30. So that ends my streak at five classes in a row.

I’ve been try­ing to change my body clock: in the past, if I didn’t get work early, it was hard for me to leave the office at 5:30. I tended to linger longer fin­ish­ing off one more task, send­ing another e-​​mail. That made it really hard to arrive at 7:30 classes, espe­cially if there was trou­ble on the Metro. In order to hit my goals for the 40-​​day yoga chal­lenge, I have to give my work a full eight hours, but start­ing at 9:00 or ear­lier, so that I have no excuses for stalling.

In order to do the 9-to-5:30 cycle, there are other mod­i­fi­ca­tions that have to hap­pen. I need to wake up at 6:30 am, which in turn means that I have to start my bed time rou­tine early so that I can get my min­i­mum seven hours of sleep.The rou­tine includes some restora­tive yoga, stretch­ing rou­tines for my neu­ropa­thy and med­i­ta­tion. Hav­ing suf­fered through an extended period of insom­nia and sleep depri­va­tion, I have come to appre­ci­ate the value of a good night’s sleep.

Hatha yoga at a deliberate pace

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After a work day full of bad vibes and neg­a­tive loops, I was look­ing for­ward to yoga class as the stan­dard hatha yoga class that would allow me to chill in my com­fort zone.

But tonight, the sched­uled teacher (Mary­lou McNa­mara) was absent so Karen Barlove took over. Karen is an expe­ri­enced teacher who’s been at Thrive Yoga since the open­ing week. She led us through a habit-​​breaking hatha class and I was not chillin’. In fact, I was work­ing up a sweat as we went through some slow-​​motion sun salu­ta­tions. War­rior II was a deep step forward. Luckily, there was plenty of time at the end of class for restora­tive poses. I came out of the class hav­ing purged the emo­tional tox­ins accu­mu­lated dur­ing the day.

Fifth day in a row of yoga class and keep­ing on pace with my 40-​​day yoga challenge.

Picking up the pace

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The fol­low­ing con­clu­sion should not come as a sur­prise to any­one who has taken fit­ness, well-​​being and the mind-​​body con­nec­tion seri­ously: since step­ping up the fre­quency of tak­ing yoga classes and going to the gym after Christ­mas, I’ve noted a sharp improve­ment in my mood, atti­tude, energy and sta­mina. Vinyasa classes still tax my reserves of strength and breath, but I can now man­age to get through them with­out falling to my knees (I will occa­sion­ally come out of a chal­leng­ing pose early).

Since the start of the 40 days of yoga at Thrive Yoga on Fri­day, I’ve made it to four classes in a row. My mus­cles are still sore after­wards, but I recover quickly enough that I am not talk­ing myself out of going to class the next day (I may not take in the 30-​​60 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise at the gym as I’ve promised myself). There are about 14 par­tic­i­pants of all lev­els tak­ing part in the 40-​​day pro­gram, but we don’t nec­es­sar­ily all go to the same classes. Tonight, I was the only 40-​​dayer in the vinyasa flow class.

I look at the whole 40-​​day chal­lenge as a way of bring­ing clo­sure to all the mis­for­tunes and mile­stones of the past year, since my par­ents’ deaths, purg­ing the tox­ins, heal­ing myself and acquir­ing new phys­i­cal and emo­tional vigor. Through­out this period, I’ve never “given up my yoga prac­tice,” just cut back to a kind of main­te­nance plan, empha­siz­ing restora­tive yoga, pranayama and med­i­ta­tion, but there came a point when I was run­ning on fumes. Once I re-​​dedicated myself and stepped up my prac­tice in fre­quency and inten­sity, a dif­fer­ent set of ben­e­fits seemed to click on.

Another use for Yoga Tune Up Balls

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To pro­tect my knees in com­pro­mis­ing yoga posi­tions, such as half pigeon, I nor­mally stick a rolled-​​up hand towel behind my knee, pressed between my thigh and calf, to pre­vent my menis­cus from being pinched.

Today I took my Yoga Tune Up Balls to class and used them in half-​​pigeon in place of the towel. With its uni­form size and resilience, the ball fits snugly in the hal­low cre­ated by my knee lig­a­ments and seemed to gen­er­ate more space in my joint. I will inves­ti­gate what other poses which I can use the balls with.

I got the idea from doing one of Jill Miller’s lower body rou­tines, in which I sit in hero’s pose, with the balls between my thighs and calves, and grad­u­ally work the ball posi­tion from just behind the knee to mid-​​calf, giv­ing the mus­cles a mas­sage by mov­ing from side to side.

From vulnerability to authenticity through wholehearted living

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I’ve run into a per­son who has changed my out­look on life, but I’ve never met her per­son­ally. Her book has deeply influ­enced how I view life.

Brené Brown is a psychologist/​researcher who wrote the book The Gifts of Imper­fec­tion (Hazelden: 2010) and also has an sprawl­ing web­site and her blog Ordi­nary Courage. She first came to my atten­tion when I saw her TEDx­Hous­ton talk, which was recently picked by Huff­in­g­ton Post as one of the top 18 TED videos of 2011:

Her 20 minute talk hit some deep per­sonal scars and led me to her site and then the book. While read­ing the book, I was under­go­ing all the prob­lems with my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy, and there was an amaz­ing inter­play between my myofas­cial release ther­apy and the cen­tral con­cepts of Brown’s book. On the masseuse’s table, I had to strip down to my box­ers and bare myself to the ther­a­pist, com­mu­ni­cate my pain and numb­ness, con­vey how one type of stroke was mak­ing me feel, and trust that he would be able address some of the con­stric­tions of my tis­sues. I had to expose my phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­ity to be able to start healing.

Shame and numbness

On another level, I dis­cov­ered from my read­ing of Brown’s book that I felt deep cur­rents of shame and, indeed, shame may actu­ally have been one of the strongest moti­vat­ing forces in my life. Shame is a “fear of dis­con­nec­tion” that peo­ple might find out what I am really like. Shame is such a blunt instru­ment that I couldn’t use it all the time, but once it’s out, it’s hard to lock it away. One way of deal­ing with this sense of shame is to block it out by numb­ing it. Brown says you can­not numb just one emo­tion (in my case, shame), you end up block­ing the whole emo­tional spectrum.

Although doc­tors might argue oth­er­wise, my numb­ness was both emo­tional and phys­i­cal, and the deaths of my par­ents and the dis­rup­tion that those events brought to my life this year had wors­ened my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy to the point that it was threat­en­ing my well-​​being. I was grasp­ing so hard to to my per­sonal facade that I was chok­ing off parts of my body and soul. Tak­ing pain med­ica­tion was just another way of block­ing out parts of my body, when I needed to get back in touch with them.

Brown’s book, which has the sub­ti­tle of “Let Go of Who You Think You’re Sup­posed to Be and Embrace Who You Are,” does a great job of break­ing down her approach to deal­ing with life and accept­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of being imper­fect, and then lays out 10 guide­posts that can help any­one fol­low her map.

Brown has a man­i­festo that I keep posted near my desk and stashed in my shoul­der bag, and it’s avail­able as a col­or­ful post­card. I am going to cite it in full because it con­veys her mes­sage bet­ter than I can:

Authen­tic­ity is a daily practice.

Choos­ing authen­tic­ity means cul­ti­vat­ing the courage to be emo­tion­ally hon­est, to set bound­aries, and to allow our­selves to be vul­ner­a­ble; exer­cis­ing the com­pas­sion that comes from know­ing that we are all made of strength and strug­gle and con­nected to each other through a lov­ing and resilient human spirit; nurturing the con­nec­tion and sense of belong­ing that can only hap­pen when we let go of what we are sup­posed to be and embrace who we are.

Authen­tic­ity demands whole­hearted liv­ing and lov­ing — even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and espe­cially when the job is so intense that we’re afraid to let our­selves feel it.

Mind­fully prac­tic­ing authen­tic­ity dur­ing our most soul-​​searchng strug­gles is how we invite grace, joy and grat­i­tude into our lives.

Today I rested

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Some­times you just have to go with the flow.

I had planned to fit in more yoga and aer­o­bic exer­cise today before start­ing my 40-​​day pro­gram tomor­row. But get­ting lost in North­ern Vir­ginia while run­ning an errand in the morn­ing, tak­ing my wife to a lunch on the town and wel­com­ing a rare visit from my son came between me and over-​​reaching inten­tions. I needed the rest any­ways. Besides, I still fit in pranayama, med­i­ta­tion, and restora­tive yoga before the day was over.

Word­Press (or the theme or a plug-​​in) has the annoy­ing habit of insert­ing hyper­link for­mat­ting in a first para­graph if it con­tains a link, from the link to the start of the para­graph. But it does not func­tion as a hyper­link. This has forced me to avoid putting in links in the first para­graph or do a kind of dummy para­graph (as above) to pre­vent the bug from happening.

Back massage and other tales of balls

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I wanted to pro­vide some addi­tional infor­ma­tion about how I was using balls for ther­a­peu­tic massage.

The two Yoga Tune Up® Balls come in pairs for a rea­son: you apply them to each side of the spline, start­ing at the neck and grad­u­ally work­ing down the spin. They are usu­ally close enough to touch, but they still it into the two grooves along the spinal col­umn. At a seven loca­tions, you apply dif­fer­ent tech­niques to press into the tis­sues. The most com­mon move­ment is to raise up the hips and “chug” up and down or “shimmy” back and forth  on the balls. The balls have a lot of give in them so they never really cause pain — unless you hap­pen to hit a knot or trig­ger point in the mus­cles. You also incor­po­rate arm move­ments that extend and con­tract the rhom­boid and trapez­ius mus­cles, which in turn press against the balls in dif­fer­ent ways.

This self-​​massage is a valu­able learn­ing expe­ri­ence because I am guid­ing the appli­ca­tion of the balls accord­ing to the feed­back from my mus­cles and spinal col­umn. I don’t think I could really assess those mus­cles between my shoul­der blades until about 18 months ago. They were frozen in a sin­gle block from years of hunch­ing over a key­board. It’s where I still accu­mu­late ten­sion so reg­u­lar self mas­sage is both cura­tive and proactive.

Jill Miller has devel­oped a whole set of rou­tines with the Yoga Tune Up® Balls and types of appli­ca­tions, and that can make it fairly straight­for­ward in apply­ing them.

Other balls

I have also incor­po­rated other balls into my self-​​massage rou­tines, mainly because my feet were a pri­mary area of con­cern.  I carry a Foot Rubz Foot Mas­sage Ball around in my shoul­der bag so that I can use it while work­ing at my desk. I also acquired Rhino Ballsfor a more extreme kind of foot mas­sage because they are cov­ered with rub­ber spikes that bite into the flesh more deeply (some would con­sider it a form of tor­ture). The dif­fer­ence is the Foot Rubz has flat spikes while the Rhino Balls have spikes. I’ve also pur­chased Lacrosse Balls because I had heard that they were less flex­i­ble. I am still try­ing to fig­ure out when and how I can incor­po­rate them into my practice.

Four days in a row

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Since Sat­ur­day, I’ve been able to carve out time to go to a daily yoga class, and also put in time at the gym to build up my aer­o­bic capacity. It’s amaz­ing how a ded­i­cated exer­cise regime can improve my out­look on life.

When­ever I can string together three or four classes in a row, the cumu­la­tive effect is extra­or­di­nary, mak­ing the next class feel a lit­tle bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous one. Today, it was a Hatha Yoga class with Mary­lou McNa­mara at Thrive Yoga: it was less intense than the first three vinyasa classes and allowed me to set­tle into the poses and work on align­ment. It also helped that my daugh­ter, Stephanie, was on the mat next to me, just like in the old days.

Book cover art: Baron Baptiste seat in a yoga pose

Set­ting aside 40 days to dive deep into your practice

I’ve signed up for the 40 days of yoga and well­ness at Thrive, start­ing on Jan­u­ary 6, the first time that I’ve under­take the chal­lenge of sus­tain­ing a rig­or­ous pro­gram of six yoga ses­sions a week (a min­i­mum of three for­mal classes, the rest can be at home), plus med­i­ta­tion and other activ­i­ties. It’s based on Baron Baptiste’s 40 Days to Per­sonal Rev­o­lu­tion: A Break­through Pro­gram to Rad­i­cally Change Your Body and Awaken the Sacred Within Your Soulso I will have one and a half months to con­cen­trate on my yoga prac­tice. Thrive Yoga has offered this pro­gram once a year for the past four or five years, so it has become a kind of rite of pas­sage at the studio.

Tools and techniques for dealing with pain

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For the past three months, I’ve incor­po­rated a set of tools and tech­niques into main­tain­ing the sub­tle bal­ance of my body, and it all started with an unex­pected message.

Photo: two yellow balls for yoga therapy

A decep­tively use­ful instru­ment for deal­ing with tension

When, I first pub­lished the news about my con­di­tion of periph­eral neu­ropa­thy, Jill Miller reached out to me to tell me about her own ther­apy work with some­one who was suf­fer­ing from a severe case of periph­eral neu­ropa­thy. I had actu­ally read her two-​​ part inter­view in The Mag­a­zine of Yoga when she was declared “Teacher of 2011″, but it was before I knew that neu­ropa­thy would take such a pre­dom­i­nate place in my own exis­tence. Actu­ally, there were so many inter­est­ing seg­ments in the inter­view, it was easy to over­look the part in which she dis­cussed the case of Eric who has Char­cot Marie Tooth dis­ease, the most com­mon genetic neu­ropa­thy. He was severely hand­i­capped, even crip­pled by the dis­ease. Miller set up a ther­apy pro­gram to reawaken his ner­vous sys­tem. Miller also pointed me to a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion that she made at the Sym­po­sium on Yoga Ther­apy and Research in Sep­tem­ber 2011, spon­sored by the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Yoga Ther­a­pist (IAYT). My con­di­tion was far less severe than Eric’s; he was using high doses of mul­ti­ple pain med­ica­tions (includ­ing can­nibis). After treat­ment, he reduced his use of pain meds by 70%.

I was intrigued. I was look­ing for some­thing that would allow me to get from ses­sion to ses­sion of my mas­sage ther­apy. I imme­di­ately incor­po­rated a cou­ple of rou­tines of yoga poses into my evening restora­tive rou­tine: bridge pose, dol­phin pose (actu­ally I skip them in the evening if I did a class that included them) and leg stretches. Miller’s reclined rou­tines required me to prop up my hips on a yoga block and anchor my feet on a wall. As I’ve employed these rou­tines, I’ve come to appre­ci­ate how they opened up my hips, widen­ing and stretch­ing the area between my sit bones.

I then placed an order for self-​​massage ther­apy audio CDs for full body and Yoga Tune Up® Balls, which had also been used in Eric’s treat­ment pro­gram. I’ve mainly stuck with the upper body rou­tines and the exer­cises for the feet and calves. It takes a good slice of time (20-​​30 min­utes) to work through the upper body series and I also needed to do other rou­tines to pre­pare me for sleep.

Putting the balls to good use

I took the balls and audio record­ings with me on my Christ­mas trip to Florida. I found that they really helped relieve the stress of dri­ving around the Tampa Bay area between fam­ily gath­er­ings, beaches and our liv­ing quar­ters. I got home late and was unable to turn off my hyper-​​alert mind and release the ten­sion that built up between my shoul­der blades. I did my Yoga Tune Up® rou­tines and was able to rest.

Even more impor­tantly, the rou­tines have con­tributed to less­en­ing the low-​​grade pain and numb­ness in my feet. On the down­side, it’s obvi­ous that Jill M mainly works with women because the balls (made out of a resilient rub­ber mate­r­ial) are show­ing signs of wear from bear­ing my heav­ier weight. I will have to order a new set of balls soon. I think she should con­sider mak­ing sev­eral sets of balls that take into account the user’s weight.

Going back to the extended inter­view, it helped me appre­ci­ate that Jill Miller is firmly grounded in yoga tra­di­tion and the new fron­tiers that are being opened up by prac­ti­tion­ers who are not afraid to lis­ten to their bod­ies. She’s not sell­ing a gim­mick or an angle that’s meant to dif­fer­en­ti­ate her prod­ucts and ser­vices in the mar­ket place.

2011 — the year of losing my grip

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This past year has had some huge changes for me: the deaths of my father and mother in a four month lapse, my own attempt to play out my role as the “good son,” and the pro­gres­sive dete­ri­o­ra­tion of my well-​​being as I no longer could keep up with the “pro­to­cols” that main­tained my per­sona (exer­cise, yoga, med­i­ta­tion, self-​​development, etc.). I was only par­tially aware of how these changes were affect­ing me, but they became con­cen­trated in one symp­tom: my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy and its man­i­fes­ta­tion of numb­ness, phan­tom pain (pin pricks in my feet that kept me at night) and sleep depri­va­tion. This symp­tom dis­tracted me from see­ing the deeper “dis-ease” — I feared los­ing my hold on life’s moor­ings (as seen in my par­ents’  deaths), on my capac­ity to deal with life’s daily tasks and uncer­tainty, and on my con­di­tion as an adult who has to take full respon­si­bil­ity for his life.

This fear of los­ing my grip trans­lated into a sys­temic phys­i­cal trait — I held on ever more tightly through my myofas­cial tis­sues. I was the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of being “uptight” —  stiff, con­strained, and suf­fo­cat­ing. My lig­a­ments, fas­cia, ten­dons, mus­cles and other tis­sues were engaged to the max­i­mum until I was stran­gling myself, to the point that large parts of my body was numb, unfeel­ing. There was a hid­den lever in my head that was con­stantly wind­ing me up, with minute twists to the gears, con­stantly engaged should some exter­nal force or inter­nal flaw make the whole machine blow up under the pressure.

For years, I par­tially sensed this prob­lem. That’s why I sought out yoga seven years ago. But this prob­lem is so much big­ger than start­ing an exer­cise regime, devel­op­ing good work skills or chang­ing eat­ing habits because of a food allergy. That’s why I have put off writ­ing about it here; just one entry is not going to cover it adequately.

A lighter touch

Since my diag­no­sis of periph­eral neu­ropa­thy and the start of treat­ment with myofas­cial release ther­apy with Howard Rontal in August, I have begun a grad­ual process of releas­ing the ten­sion, of let­ting go. My weekly ther­apy ses­sions were oppor­tu­ni­ties to explore the psycho-​​somatic nature of my con­di­tion and the mind-​​body con­nec­tion. There was no promise of “cur­ing the dis­ease” but increas­ingly I saw the pos­si­bil­ity of con­trol­ling my worst symp­toms and even find­ing and devel­op­ing a more relaxed state.

As of mid-​​December, my treat­ment with Howard has been sus­pended because of the Hol­i­days and travel, so I’ve exper­i­mented with tech­niques that can help me self-​​soothe and self-​​heal (more on that in another blog entry). I’ve also made it back to yoga classes, put some time in at the gym and even done some jogging.

Mark Epstein has an insight­ful book, Going to Pieces with­out Falling Apart: A Bud­dhist Per­spec­tive on Whole­ness, and that title cap­tures my predica­ment. I read it four years ago, and only now real­ize its mean­ing. There comes a point when you have to let go and reside in the present moment, no mat­ter what hap­pens, no mat­ter the consequences.