Acupuncture Begins

On 5/28 I went to my first acupuncture appointment. The diagnosis was foreign. I had too much heat. I was damp. My triple heater pulse was weak. The solution - boost my immune system.

Needles went in my legs, feet, arms, and hands. I felt anxious, then like I was drugged. Close to two hours passed. The needles came out. I rolled over onto my stomach. Needles went in my neck, down my back, and in my feet. Again, I felt drugged. Another hour passed. The needles came out.

I was warned that I might be sick. I was. I was tired, nauseated, groggy, light-headed, thirsty. My digestive system crashed. It lasted for the entire week.

The Depths of Illness - Irritability

2005 - Present:

Ingrid is living in Boston. I am visiting. She comes home after work. I'm sitting on the couch. She leans over to kiss me. I pull away. My face is sensitive. I'm hot. I'm annoyed. I have no idea why. Nothing bad happened. I felt good relative to how I normally feel. Ingrid tries to talk to me. I am annoyed by the questions about my day. It is difficult for me to answer. I want to tell her to leave me alone. I know I am being irrational, but I can't break my mood. It lasts for days on end.

My mood spills over into work. I grumble under my breath when asked to do anything. My boss, who is friends Ingrid, notices and asks how I'm doing. I can't stand the questions. One morning I show up to work at the time my boss asked. He shows up a few minutes later. I am irate that he was the slightest bit late. I struggle to keep my anger under control.

Ingrid and I move to San Diego. I look for a job without success. Ingrid tries to make suggestions. I can't believe her audacity. We argue. We start to cook in our small kitchen. I do not feel well. My abdomen hurts. I cannot think straight. At some point, I want to move from here to there but Ingrid is in my way. I ask her to move but am too impatient to wait for her to respond. I shove her aside. She runs off crying.

Ingrid and I fly to New Zealand. I get ill. Ingrid takes care of me. I resent the care. She asks me how I am. I resent the questions. She brings me dinner. I resent the food. We go to the hospital. I am irritated with the doctors. I can't make decisions. I feel helpless.

I cannot control the irritability. It comes. It goes. I feel guilty for being annoyed and acting childish. I feel like I'm pushing people away. I don't know how to stop.

Yoga Bliss

Shortly after a doctor confirmed that I had a neck injury, my wife and I debated paying for yoga classes. We looked at yoga studios and gyms. They were expensive, and I doubted that I would have the energy and motivation to go. In-house yoga, that I could do whenever I wanted with minimal energy, was preferred. We tried videos. We stopped trying videos. We tried the Nintendo Wii Fit Plus yoga program. Jackpot.

My goal was to do all 18 yoga exercises (for a total of 36 minutes) every day for two months.

The first week was amazing. My back loosened up and my energy level skyrocketed. I felt better, looser, and freer, even though I didn't have enough flexibility to do some of the poses properly. My hamstrings, back, and IT band - extraordinarily tight. Poses like the Triangle, Downward Dog, Sun Salutation - difficult. But they felt good. The tree pose stretched my spine in a way I had never felt. My outlook - very optimistic.

Weeks two through four continued with much of the same optimism. My neck felt much stronger than it did before I started. The pain in the right side of my pelvis lessened. My flexibility noticeably increased. I could focus at work. In the first three weeks, I gained four inches of flexibility in my back and legs(when trying to touch my toes). In week four, I actually touched my toes, something I had not been able to do in over a decade. My optimism skyrocketed until the beginning of week five...

The Road to Stretching

When I was younger, I rarely stretched. When I was 22, my lower back began to hurt (strained back) from mountain biking. I went to physical therapy. The treatment - strengthening and stretching. When I was 24 my knee began to hurt (IT Band Syndrome) from training for a marathon. I went to physical therapy. The treatment - strengthening and stretching. When I was 25 my feet and knees began to hurt (IT Band Syndrome) from hiking the Appalachian Trail. I went to physical therapy. The treatment - strengthening and stretching. When I was 29 my back, hips, and knees (locked sacrum, misaligned spine) began to hurt from playing beach volleyball. I went to physical therapy. The treatment - strengthening and stretching. The causes and locations of pain were different. The treatments were the same. But the treatments were temporary and not cures.

My last physical therapy began in August of 2009, after suffering for over a month with back, hip, and knee pain (from beach volleyball). I knew that tight muscles were one of the main contributors. I told my physical therapist that I wanted to focus on stretching. After his evaluation he prescribed a treatment of 10 minutes of stretching followed by 50 of strengthening. It was the roughly the same treatment I had received for nearly every other injury. It no longer made sense to me. I thought that I should have been stretching for 50 minutes and strengthening for 10. I went to physical therapy for three months without relief. I stopped going.

I now believe I was stuck in a cycle of injury throughout my entire active life. I exercised until tight muscles promoted injury. Once injured, I went to physical therapy. Inside and outside of physical therapy, I mostly strengthened (which tightens muscles further) and minimally stretched. My flexibility did not change. Zero increased flexibility led to frustration. Frustration led to a stop in stretching. A stop in stretching led to more injuries. More injuries led to more physical therapy. More physical therapy led to more emphasis on strengthening (tightening of muscles), thus ensuring the completed cycle.

I suspected stretching as a missing link in my continued health after my second IT band injury. At the time, I asked my physical therapist how to properly stretch my IT band. His response - "there aren't any good stretches". I took him at his word. He was the professional, after all. But the more I experienced, the more I learned that most people (especially professionals) are limited by their own experience.

To test my theories, I have taken matters into my own hands. In January, I began doing yoga...

Strengthening, Stretching, and Cardio

The three core components of exercise - strengthening, stretching, and cardio.