Know Your Own Body

When you have an unpleasant feeling in a part of your body which feels really tight, try unscrewing it. Put your hand over the spot where you have pain. The hand doesn’t have to be directly over the spot – maybe four or five inches above it in the air. Circle your hand in an opposite direction (i.e., against the feel of pressure that you are feeling).  Then, keep repeating the motion.  The repetition of this action should do the following:

(1) Reduce the stress in the area where you feel an issue.
(2) increase the circulation in that area.
(3) Give you a better feeling of calm.
(4) Make you feel that you want to continue this practice every day.

Please try this out and let me know how this works.

I fractured the humerus bone (the big bone in my arm – between the elbow and the shoulder — four months ago at the point where it meets the upper extremity (rotator cuff) .  This happened on April 19th after I fell from a standing position.  It’s been a hard road coming  back. I haven’t returned yet, by any stretch – literally!  But the inkling that I got as I started the endless stream of exercises required to remove the ‘frozen shoulder’ condition from wearing a sling for several weeks is that — if you make it personal — it helps.

My brother Frank was a great basketball player.  He didn’t think he was any good, but Joe Lapchick at St. John’s University sure did. He put him on the team.   My brother died in 1995, but the memory that always sticks is how he played basketball for hours and hours in the patio of our house on Long Island after school. I used to listen to him from my bedroom, and all I heard was the constant bounce of him dribbling the ball against the concrete.  There was a comfort in listening to it – like he was just preparing for the next shot, and it was going to be good!

I still hear him dribbling that ball.  And now I’m applying his practice to my arm exercises.  Now I just think of Frank out there dribbling that ball and I’m dribbling an invisible ball with my injured arm. It helps quite a bit because I’m no longer thinking that I have to do this 20 times to fulfill a physical therapist’s mandate; I’m following the rhythm that has been living in my mind for years. It’s an even, stable rhythm, and it’s just what I need right now.

I’m not demeaning the excellent exercises offered by physical therapists – I do them constantly. I’m just suggesting that it’s also possible to open the mind to memories of how you and your loved ones have successfully nourished their own bodies, and continue to gain that nourishment, even if those loved ones are only alive in spirit.  The spirit truly lives on!

Thanks to Frank for this basketball mantra!

Before I start with the new year, I need to explain what happened on the last day of 2010. On December 31st, I wasn’t really in the mood to exercise. I’d been home all week and had done some workouts, but not really enough to really feel my body working in top form. To take a break from my daily morning TV routine, I had been turning to the Fitness Channel every morning of the past week to participate in Gilad’s workout called “Gilad’s Bodies in Motion” which occurs in midmorning in my time zone. I ambivalently turned it on again on the final day of 2010.

Within a few minutes, Gilad said these words, and they have stuck through the new year. “Don’t wait for inspiration. Take action and inspiration will come.”

He said it as an offhand remark. But it’s been sticking with me because I had been feeling a lot of negativity that I wasn’t getting anything accomplished. Here it was the final day of the year and I hadn’t even planned anything special to mark this as an end date.

But I put a little more energy into the workout after that remark because it made sense that action replace inaction. That energy worked with me throughout the day to keep my momentum up and my anger at myself down. And yes… inspiration did come and it’s hanging with me today, on this new year’s day! So, happy new year to all of us who want to get to know our own bodies! Let’s keep the action ringing and our spirits singing!

Gilad – Motivation

I believe that the palm of the hand has tremendous healing powers. Why do I feel this way? No, I’m not a fortune teller.

I’m just an average human being who has been living in this body for a lifetime. My palms have always felt warm, sensitive and slightly vulnerable. I’ve got the feeling that trading my palm with someone else’s (God forbid) would be a really awful experience because the new palm just wouldn’t be mine.

Concentrate on one of your palms for a moment. Preferably, take the one which has the most feeling in it – in most cases the one for your writing hand. Just feel that there is blood circulating in it, and that it is OPEN. It has an OPEN quality that is honest and very comforting. Feel the honesty and comfort of your palm for about two minutes.

Now, put your palm over your heart area. Feel the warmth of your palm go deep into your chest. Feel the comfort that brings you.

Don’t think that only that one palm is the be all and end all. BOTH are wonderful. It’s just good to start with one, and move to both.

Every day, when you’re feeling scared or uncomfortable, or even unloving, try concentrating on your palms. Move them to parts of your body that feel bad (like your hamstrings, for example) and just breathe into that area. Feel like your breath is coming from your palm.

You’re bound to feel the power of your palms.

I’ve finally found a solution to the “pull your stomach in” routine. I’ve always hated to pull in my stomach, thinking that it removed every instance of relaxation. I mean, it wasn’t possible to just “be;” I had to keep pumping in that tummy! It was always a conscious effort; something I had to think about. I’d try it for about twenty minutes and then whammo – the idea just fell apart.

Well, I’ve finally figured this out, and “pulling in the tummy” isn’t such an awful thing anymore. It’s part of my daily life.

Here’s a little background. I put on some weight, and the stomach started feeling more like an addendum than part of my body. The idea of breathing into my abdomen, or pulling muscles in, really felt weird. And that frightened me a little bit because the body is supposed to be all connected; you’re not supposed to be feeling like something is an “add on.”

So I decided to just start holding those ridiculous stomach muscles in anyway. And along with that, I kept my attention on that “ever growing” area by getting on my back and doing crunches. 

When I’d be walking or leaning over or watching TV or just hanging out, I started taking regular checks on my stomach. When did it feel like I was seeing the stomach as an “add on?” Whenever it felt like that (with the exception of eating a big plate of pasta), I decided that I didn’t have any breath going into my stomach, and that wasn’t helping matters. So I’d consciously breathe down there (big inhale in, and big inhale out), and sometimes I even punch my tummy to bring the energy back! Now I’ve got an active relationship going with my tummy, and it feels better every day.

There are two amazing results of all this. The first is that, once I’ve made the routine of using my stomach muscles part of my daily event, it starts becoming second nature (give yourself some time with that sentence!). The second fun part is that, as I get control of my tummy, there’s not as much to hold anymore! (Expect the second part to happen after awhile.)

So now, instead of seeing my tummy as my enemy, I’m beginning to see it as a good friend who needs some love, attention and maybe a little punch once in awhile.

And all you people with big tummies, remember that you can get control of that little city down there. Your stomach muscles are your friends that can take you into the city and show you around. Your breath can follow all the circuitous routes of the abdomen, and abdominal exercises increase the strength, circulation and appearance of your entire abdominal area.