11/15/2020
Sorry people, I have been neglecting you. I have been more on my personal page in the last number of months because I have been getting some interest on there of my yoga work.
Wht I must share with you today is about healing from arthritis. It is a 120 billion dollar business so. of course they aren't going to tell you how to cure yourself. I am very interested now in this topic. At the age of 65 and a beefeater and lover of sugar, and someone who has been sedentary because of my work I have developed arthritis in my joints. This is unacceptable because I love to dance and am good at it and have much to share about it.
I have dug myself out of stiffness a number of times in my life not needing anything to be as good as new afterward for years without reworking. This period in my life is a big experiment to see if I am right. Last spring I was in big trouble with my lower back. I bet it. While I was beating that, I also had developed a very troubling issue with the muscles around my knees. That had been coming on for a couple of years. I beat it.
Then I tackled my IT bands because they were starting to give that arthritic ache. They have always been very tight on me. I never thought that I would be able to dig a tennis ball along the length of them with all my weight but I do now. They feel great.
As i worked on my legs though, I noticed other areas on my legs that weren't anywhere as bad except for behind the knee. So I ground that problem out with the tennis ball and then I noticed other areas. I don't actually remember the process of discovery but I found that I had stinging pains like knives going through me whn I pressed on the bones of my knees. I realized that was the cartilage, the part where the muscle connects to the bone. That is where arthritis typically occurs. So, with my background in turning things back to health, I dug in. It was excruciating. If I didn't know better I would have just stopped, thinking that I was doing something wrong. And of course the pain diminished more and more as I worked on it until there was no pain.
I had been having problems with knee bends like utkatasana. I thought the problem was an imbalance in the muscle because I have hip dysplasia even though it was only 6 years ago that I could do 50 of them in a row with absolutely no problem and holding them as well.
When I was in Guatemala I climbed up the mountain at the back of the lovely B and B that I stayed at. The owner wanted to check out his banana and coffee crop. I found it very hard to do and yet nothing stopped me before...keeping up with people in their 20's or even my grandchildren on the park play set.
I never thought that it could be arthritis setting in. That just couldn't be however I finally went for an MRI and the foreign doctor said with a mean smile that I had arthritis all around my knee. I was in shock. But truth is empowering. Now however, I have no problem doing knee bends.
Then my upper arms started crippling up. It might have been because of the way I was lifting the weights. So I worked on them. It takes awhile to dig it all out. You think, oh it is done now and then the disability of it creeps back in. I used the tennis ball again. I will be working on that for a while but hey I worked on my knees for probably a couple of months.
I went to two massage therapists for my arms and I prefer the tennis ball. It works much better. Unless a massage therapist listens to you. Unless they tackle the problem you come in for. Unless they can target the main issue. As long as they don't spend time beating you up because you offended their ego because they aren't doing their work properly.
My upper arms are still my present focus. This morning as I am typing my arms are much better. I can move my arms around every which way without any largely noticeable mobility issues or pain. However, when looking alittle deeper at what is going on, there is still work to be done to clean them right up. There is so much lovely work to do that I have done over the years with myself. For one, I remember when I was hitting it hard at the gym , I would do yoga there as well. I started to flex my hand backwards toward my arm the way you are supposed to do when lifting the arms at the side. At first it was really hard to stretch the wrist area and up. It took some work but years later I am still able to do it without a problem.
It is all these wonderful little details that yoga does for us to keep us functioning at our best. If you look on the internet, you might not find out what can be done to fix yourself so that is why you have to be a freethinker or luck out finding someone like me.
While I have been working on my upper arms, I thought it was about time I noticed the damage I had done to my elbow joint with all the killer massages I have done over the years. No wonder some massage therapists protect their hands and arms over helping the people that come to them; they don't know how they can heal themselves. Last massage therapist I went to had all kinds of bogus tricks to waste time. She had a very confident aire and talked her way through the massage about all the knowledge she had to make up for not being able to do a good job. That kind of thing doesn't impress me. Sure I have not always been at the top of my game because of life stress but I didn't try to hide that and was duly sorry because my aim was always to be there for the people that came to me.
Anyhow, getting back to the elbow area. Yup, it was a mess. I hurt so bad to touch for years that I didn't even want to go near it...but...working on the other areas made me brave. So I took the plunge with my thumbs and the tennis ball. Boy did that ever hurt. The muscle felt like shards of glass tht I was breaking down. My elbows are a bit swollen but they feel refreshed. I expect that they will take some time as usual.
At the same time. I have been working on my neck because alot of times problems in the arms is from problems with the neck and I haven't given my neck a good workover in a long time. Totally due. It is already feeling quite a bit better.
I forgot to mention that when I was hard at work on my knees last spring and summer, I also cleaned-up on the stiffness in my feet. They feel perfectly good now and I have no problem dancing.
The only problem I have now is that because I am doing all this little detail and because I cannot stand cold, I am not going for my walks and therefore am having trouble getting winded. I will just have to do more dancing.
So, I hope that this has been encouraging for you. The first on-liine course that I will be teaching will. be on how to deal with arthritis.
