Swimming in Bong Water

Much has happened.  Many adjustments, and I sometimes find myself shocked just how much parts shift.

But this is just a trivial post . . . 

I managed to get a bad ear infection coinciding with the Camp Fire.  I missed one swim day from the ear, though the air was so bad I may not have gone anyways, and then the pool closed from bad air quality in the Valley for a week.

This morning, the air was still pretty horrible, but rain was coming, and began falling an hour before I left to swim.  An hour into the swim, it was pretty clear the rain was cleaning the air, but also covering the pool with little drops of bong water, basically.  You could smell it.  Ugh.

I’ve lasted into much colder weather than years past.  No idea how much longer I will last, but I’m going push on as long as I can.

The Monkey King and Standing, Two Ways

Much and more has happened, too much to express, but what a ride...

The Monkey King

So, in the middle of one of those monster weekend swims just two days ago, I mentally pictured a monkey swimming.  If you have never seen it, do so.  It’s pretty damn cute.

At first, my focus was on the legs, and the manner they push/kick, but then I thought about the tail.  I began a meditation focus of giving myself a tail, the balance and usage in the water.  It caused changes, quickly.

It relaxed, maybe dragged, my lower back, as if letting the tail take some water drag.  This altered my hip angle, lessening drag and raising my hips / lower torso in the water, dramatically lessening overall drag.  In turn, muscles were able to adjust further up my back.  It even reached my armpits, finding a new kink point, one too hard to explain, but wow, oh wow.  It feels like a reversal point for the arms to connect to the torso properly (we’ll see).

Standing, Two ways

As the monkey tail practice continued, I soon found the ability to alter my breaststroke kick in a significant way, though this has been hard to repeat without much time and effort.  Imagine that when the legs come up, the monkey’s tail likewise does, only behind you, almost arching the lower back.  Then, when kicking, both converge in something similar to say a three armed octopus (tripus? 🙂).  Both sides converging was a totally new sensation, as if discovering Yin and Yang.

Now, even out of the water, I can sometimes find this convergence just standing.  It’s worth noting, just like the monkey swimming, it also sends focus/force up the torso!  

As far as changes go, it’s like I am in a crescendo.  Obviously, I have felt like I am nearing a breakthrough so many times before.  I am not letting myself get too excited, but damn if I am not a bit excited.

I can’t wait to get back in the pool.

Monster Weekends

Last weekend and today, I did 3.25-3.5 hour swims, trying to make up for the 3 weekday swims that are limited to 2 hours.  There is something about not paying attention at all to time that helps me find adjustments during the swim.  Today, I had great success.  I have never been more certain that I am doing something right with all this.  That said, I am also quite confident it’s going to get cold on me and stop/retard my progress too soon, before I get some stuff “reversed.”

Exhausted.  Time to waste away in front of college football.

Go Bears!

Setbacks Galore

The pool broke and I followed.

The circulation pump broke, the first weekday of non-summer.  Coincidence?  No, no, I won’t suspect anything without more, but ouch.

It’s day 5 of no pool now, they await a part for repairs, with no announcement of when they expect it fixed.

I hurt on Monday.  I hurt on Tuesday.  Then, things started cramping and contorting and I lost all memory of my center, well, the approximate one I had been striving for.  I am miserable.  I have tried some short 2 mile walks.  They did not go well.  It’s mentally difficult to remain focused on form so intently when the world bombards with stimuli, not to mention requires monitoring for safety purposes.  Add the solitude of a swim lane to the list of reasons rehab in the pool is so much easier.

I imagine I must keep walking, and maybe try it more come winter, but those are plans to dwell on later.

Pain has led to binging on food for distraction, and that pipe dream weight goal is probably well out of reach by now.  Damn.  Damn.  Damn.  I really was beginning to think I had a chance of getting under 200 before winter.

Maybe next year...

Presuming the pool is fixed by then...

Oh, but there will be rec swimmers and lessons again, so it will be a priority and be maintained, unlike now.  Sigh.

Quick Thoughts on Waves and Centers

For so long, I have focused on finding my balance, my center, and the importance, the abundance really, of waves and their effect on everything.  I am starting to grasp how they interact.

The center is the correct startpoint for the waves you use to move.

Wrong center, your waves create disbalance.  They promote incorrect muscle memory.  This, in turn, cascades throughout as the body tries to remain in tune with itself.

A Eureka Moment

The Short of It:

I realized how to swim and why I have been doing it wrong.


How to Swim:

Like everything else, it’s all about waves.  First simplify it.  There are 5 waves (disregarding the neck and head as a 6th), torso, 2 legs, and 2 arms.  These waves should be in tune with each other [though that is a more complicated aspect given they are 3d waves arching toward endpoints of each’s Period].

Apply the same theory I used to figure out how to walk properly [aka How to Walk on Water].  So, ideally, the waves just oscillate.  Granted, friction from the water is much more substantial than air, which means a larger amount of acceleration is required to counter it.

However, I do think the friction is not nearly as large as one would presume.  Think about a Sea Lion.    Most of the friction will be focused at the nose and sides of the head at the starting point of it’s oscillating Periods.


What I Have Been Doing Wrong:

 My Periods have been shifted, wrong starting points, wrong end points, well, at the joints.  I am a Sine wave when I need to be a Cosine, lol.  This is to say (and maybe I have those reversed, lol), if the joint “centers’ are endpoints of Periods, they need to be on their X-axis, not at 1.  Mine are at 1, or near it.  I have some shifting to do.


Other stuff was realized today.  Other things, good things, happened, too, but I am spent, and I have written the most important aspects down.  Yay, me.

Hip Hip, Hoo... Yeah, I Got No Idea

This will be short.

I MAY have accessed my hips.  By this, I mean I know my waist has been tangled with my hips such that I never really bend a leg only at the hip, and I may have finally reached it.  It will undoubtedly need work, but what I manage to do once...

This was another product of the relentless, ridiculous, stupifying, insane, and generally hard to believe 30 minute+ sessions of kicking dolphin kick, which has done much with my core.

On that, I have near abandoned accessing my pectorals from my arms, realizing I can do it now from my abs.  It has been HUGE and was first done yesterday.  Rib cage needs to rise and let shoulder go slightly back, only without inhaling.  No expansion or it fails.

Okay.  Tired.  Only two weeks left of full summer hours, sadly.

So ... Much ... Happened ...

I’ll try some headers first, then go back to fill in if I can, just because I know I am already losing memories because so much happened.

I am the dragon

Prep for the ride to the pool lead to a new meditation technique.  I played with a new found feeling/muscle control in my back/shoulder blades allows my arms to feel like dragon wings. Imagine your shoulders as those high first joints you see (usually pointy) after the first segment of wing extending from the body, making the real point of control leaving the body somewhere under your shoulder blades. I’ve had a few releases because of the focus change alone, just while trying to get ready to leave, lol.

Sometimes, the focus sets in each joint and it really feels “wing-like.”  Then, with angles set between segments of hand/arm/shoulder/back, things can adjust.  Hard to explain, but it seems related to reverse riding a wave, only around joints, done the opposite of muscle memory.

Wings led to shoulder and back adjustments

Felt like a crank twisting in reverse, or something similar.  It really was altering a ton, Deep in the armpit or each arm sometimes.  It also changed the angle of my rib cage, or allowed it, swallowing the front top with breasts, maybe, lol.  Can’t remember anymore how it exactly happened.

But it led to ...

Waisting my butt?

Hard to remember how I got there, but I basically tried to move the physical sensation of motion my butt does when kicking (breaststroke kick and flutter, 2 separate sensations) up my back a bit, I’d say about at waist level.  It was really just a meditation similar to the dragon wings, as if adding another joint to “leg wings” the way I did with my shoulder blades.

It was difficult to maintain.  A lot of muscle memory to overcome.  I felt some changes, no doubt, but they were most likely just precursors to the big shift adjustment that happened when I got home.

Home, huge change in right abdomen

In my waist and right leg, it seemed to extend by unwrapping, what I thought I had been doing on the left hip (which I now suspect was more subluxation than adjustment).  The right leg seemed to extend, and allowed a section of lower back on the right side to lengthen a bit, possibly closer to matching the left leg I hope I wrote about earlier (which was giving trouble and leading to those groin pull problems).

Okay.  So, when this happened, I bent over and tried to “even out” while slowly rising at the legs/hips, not using the waist.  As I got to my back, a whole lot happened that I can’t come close to explaining right, but the chest adjusted in relation to a section of spine behind the chest which had been a pivot point lately when arching backwards, AND I HAD AN ENERGY BURST SIMILAR TO, BUT NOT AS INTENSE, AS PREVIOUS ONES, WHICH I HAVE NOT HAD IN YEARS.

[Reminder - the energy rush feels tremendously similar when a kinked garden hose is unkinked, and the extra water pressure causes a stream with considerably more force than the normal water flow.]

It was centered around the upset torso and flowed through my head.  It was quite a rush, pretty overwhelming, in truth.  I’m betting this means I am doing something right.  At least, I sure hope so, lol.

EDIT - I forgot the most important aspect, though, maybe not, if I forgot others, too, lol.

The change in the right waist, let’s label it, preceded a natural uncoiling in the left hip as well, which I am 97% certain was a reversal of the painful puberty/growth adjustment that I have written of in the past that happened once in a while when I entered the driver side (left) front seat of a car.  Somehow, likely from the torque in the right side of my body, crouching and pushing into the seat of the car caused extreme torque on that left leg.  This is one of the most promising aspects I had had in many years if I am correct.

Back to Back Talk (a slight reprise)

Just home from the pool.  Tired, mentally more than physically, though I did manage 2 hours+.

Okay.  Stuff happened today, and I want to try to document as much as I can, even though I am certain I won’t be able to describe things well.

Getting out of bed this morning, some muscle set (I suspect right shoulder) went forward too soon and set off a cascade that seized my back, from about halfway up to underneath armpit level.  Not a good start to the morning, I figured it a bad sign.

[Two days ago, when the swim from hell left me with all that pain, the wind had blown my hat into the pool before I had been ready to start.  My goggles and underwater iPod where in the hat, then in the water.  It was not warm because of the wind, and I really was not ready to start, but I had to dive down and get my stuff, then put it on, then swim.  Of course, the iPod ear buds had water in them the rest of the day on top of never loosening up before all went to shit.  Afterwards, I concluded I should have seen the sign, the bad omen, when my hat blew into the pool, and just turned around and gone home.  Just saying , this is why I am suddenly seeing signs everywhere.  A boatload of pain after a “If I was superstitious, I would have known that was a bad sign” moment and you get a little superstitious for a bit afterwards.]

Movement was terribly difficult.  I soaked in the hot tub for 20-30 minutes or so, but it did not help at all, making me presume the issue in the back was kink based, something crunching a a bunch of sets of muscles together, rather than a tweak that could be relaxed.

I suspected it may have been sleep related.  I can never sleep on my back for more than a few minutes.  I am always flopping from side to side, usually waking with both arms very out of position and very much in pain.

Anyways, I decided the pool would be the best chance to work things out.  I took a double dose of my Adderall (the full day dosage, instead of once, twice a day, a grand total of 20mg, not exactly a lot), and I set out.  The bike ride to the pool was very slow, but my posture sitting on the cruiser relieved more pain than any position I had managed before that point in the day.  I took it as a good sign.

I was nervous about my opening hour of breaststroke, given the groin pain of previous days adding to the back, but I figured I’d go really slow.  I warned the lifeguard that I’d be a bigger freak than usual, and that any stops mid-lap were just dislocations and back adjustments and not to worry about me unless I was on the bottom of the pool motionless for a few minutes (I’ll add that I was definitely in a ton of pain, because normally, I’ll say I am not lucky enough to drown.  I could only think it to myself).

What happened may be important.  I changed (play, started to change) my breaststroke.  Now that I am home and have bothered to look at Wikipedia, I see that I got closer to correct.  The timing of my legs had been early.  Yes, let’s call it early.

Old Stroke - when pulling with my arms, which has always been incorrect and hard to describe (also been adjusting lately, not sure if I wrote about it or not), I bring up my legs such that when I am pushing my arms forward, I am kicking.  It’s a bit like an inchworm.  I used the force of the arms to counter bringing forward my knees, and then launching with the kick.

New Stroke - I don’t begin pulling the knees forward until after the arm pull.  It is almost as if my hands come together on a string connected to my knees, and I pull them forward with my hands starting to go in front.  The kick happens before arms are extended, and both finish around the same time.

Okay, why is this a big deal.  Well, my torso completely changed how it works during the stroke.  The left waist did not take over very often, leaving the left hip/leg to kick, which stopped all the groin issues.  I believe the abdomen work may have inverted.  I also did not have to aim down unnaturally, at least not as much as I had been so far this year.

Next, a “crease” of sorts got work.  My rib cage and chest needs to drop more down my torso, and the “crease” under the rib cage was able to be felt during the stroke, instead of more feeling up under the ribs.  This may have help being able to keep my waist unused, this change of a pivot point, of sorts.

The biggest issue was in both shoulders, where I could feel corkscrew-type connections and how they were both out of place in relation to the chest.  I did not get close to figuring this puzzle out, but I know that both shoulders need to be raised up the torso, likely moving a bit forward, overall.  However, the right shoulder needs to move forward AFTER unwinding from a kink based in the back (maybe under the shoulder blade?).  This may have been what caused the seized back this morning, the shoulder just lurching forward with tremendous torque on the rest of the back because of how tweaked it has become.

Okay.  I am spent.  Nearing brain dead status, lol.  If I manage to repeat this tomorrow or the next day, I will add an update to this entry instead of a new one.

Back talk

I don’t think I can explain what’s going on in my back very well, but it’s causing big changes, everywhere.  My limbs are all rewrapping / unfolding and re-aligning a lot.  Stability anywhere is near non-existent.

Basically, I’m having movement around the spine, back, chest and/or sides.  Potentially, I am making incredible progress.  I just don’t know what extent adjustments are permanent versus temporary slides that revert the moment I lose attention.  Yet, my Breaststroke is improving and changing form, so it would follow that some structural changes may be happening.

 I’m too tired to try in depth analysis of any type.  I have gotten up to 2.25 hours for the average swim.  Open with an hour of “open water” breaststroke (no touching sides of pool, it’s kinda like being a goldfish going back and forth), kickboard for half an hour, then 500m with the kickboard on my back in a pattern to hit various muscles (having good success during this portion often), then 500m of sidestroke (250m per side, alternating 100 each, 50 each, 100 each - and this tends to really hurt on my left side, which is just so difficult to maintain, but I may be getting a handle on it, hope to write about later), then some more breaststroke and several 25m dolphin kicks while on my back.  Last, a cooldown or whatever hurts least by that time for just a few minutes.

I’ve been pushing it harder than last year.  Weight down to 227 today (woohoo, but had hoped for more by now).  Of course, today was the first day over 100 degrees.  I swam too late and got a little too much sun, but the weight loss should pick up now with long swims and hot bike rides.

All I can manage to update as of now.  At least I have a little optimism after today.  It’s been a while.

Happy Birthday Left Breast!

Summer kinda started!  We’ve had some days in the 90s mixed (mixed with 70s unfortunately), and the pool is finally open 7 day’s a week for lap swim.  Well, unless a swim meet is using the pool, like tomorrow.

Anyways, with more frequent swimming come “adjustments,” and I’ve been adjusting.

Yesterday was pain, pain, and more pain.

My left side had some serious success two days before, both the shoulder and hip freeing some, well, something.  The result, though, was that the left side was totally slacked, a truly difficult thing to express.  A usual strength, sidestroke, was near undoable on my left side, which is usually my strongest.  Couldn’t pull with the arm, and trying to kick was agony.  I managed to finish the lap only by switching the scissor kick, bottom leg forward.

Today, I was nervous.  I told myself that I would go slow, and I did.  Yet, early on, I started focusing on my left hand and foot, as if I were left handed.  Then, inoveremphasized it.  Like this, I started my swim with an hour of breaststroke, no touching the pool’s edge.

After about 15 minutes, my left arm adjusted multiple times, and my “pull” became a quick twist up near the arm pit.  Low and behold, I could feel my left breast being used, maybe for the first time ever.  I realized that my left breast was leading the stroke!  Go figure, right?  Who would have thought your pectoral would lead the breaststroke?

Embarrassed, I still told this to the lifeguard, given the ridiculous aspect that he has watched me do my almost-but-not-quite breaststroke for several years now.  Jonathan responded, “Happy Birthday, Breast!”

Yes, happy birthday to my left breast.  Let’s hope this is the start of something good that I can keep building on, it being so early in the summer.

A Predicted Pain?

Long anticipated, not in a good way, but part of progress, I may be entering a difficult aspect of my metamorphosis.  Let me back up.

Part of my twisted, perverted, structural posture that evolved as I grew, included the an issue with my hips.  I have pointed out before the sharp pain I would sometimes experience as a teen when I entered a car, which I believe would result in a bad adjustment, a twisting or folding of muscle and/or ligament out of proper position.

An odd result of this which I never questioned was that I could pick up heavy things without pain when observers thought it should hurt.  By this, I understand now that I picked up things not using my legs, but my back, only, because muscles around my hips were out of place, too wrapped further up my abdomen on one side, back on the other, my muscles had incorrect leverage from a position/posture that an observer would assume was all back muscles and should hurt.

Well, I have long wondered if I would get those muscles in the right place, and what would happen as a result.  Would I be vulnerable to back injuries?  Strain and/or hernia?  Would my muscle memory have me picking things up with my back still, without that leverage?

It may be starting.  I’ve had substantial rotational shifts in both thighs at the hip and internal shifting in my abdomen (sometimes leaving me in gastro-intestinal distress afterwards, just to add, as I presume things work their way into positions, hopefully improvements).  My lower back is hurting and tender towards bending, even lowering my head sometimes causes strain pain.

If only my gut were not so big and I could ascertain how my flexibility has changed.  Still go just as far, but clearly more bending at hip, not back, at least until the gut gets in the way, lol.  Anyways...

An issue at present is that my lower back need to strengthen and maintain an arch leaning backwards that it is not used to, while at the same time, my lower abdomen needs to crunch and cause tension as if an arch forward.  Predictably, when I think “arch backwards,” the arch happens at my lower abdomen, not the lower back, and when I sit, my lower back is like the opposite of a lumbar support arch.  To revisit a lyric from Oingo Boingo’s Not the Same Man I Was Before, “Everything you do is wrong!”

This is going to take some serious mindfulness.  At least for now, I get quick and sharp pain reminders when I am doing things wrong.  As I get a little better, a little stronger, I will have to start worrying about really hurting myself with a “traditional” injury, I believe.

The Summer cannot get here soon enough.  I’ve gotten to the pool twice, but weather is still too cold, really.  Hopefully, I’ll get good pool time before May rolls around.

What the . . . ?

It’s been a very difficult winter.

Last Tuesday, I had a most unfortunate trip to the DMV where nearly everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  Their computers went down, voiding appointments, making the start of the experience waiting in line outside the building in the rain.  It could have gone much worse, but the hour+ I spent in line has left me a complete mess since.

My hips have been a nightmare.

Until 45 minutes ago.

I stood up to go to the kitchen, and found I could not put any pressure on my right ankle.  It feels like a horrible sprain.  It sometimes gets similar to this pain, but a quick crack of the ankle looping the toes usually takes care of it.  I find myself unable to crack it at all, which, if you think about it, is probably some kind of improvement.

Yet, the pain of pushing off at all is nearly unbearable.

Then, I noticed I no longer had the hip pains that plagued me all week.

Did I send the “excess” bunched up in the hip down the leg to the ankle?  Without realizing it?

Possibly, I think.  It would not surprise me.  I have been stretching and contorting around the hip so much it is becoming unconscious, save efforts to alter the direction of movements.

Sigh.  What’s next?  Guess I need to figure out how to walk again.

New Moves, Same Story?

Toungue-tied and twisted
Just an earthbound misfit, I
                         - Pink Floyd

I swam near two weeks ago.  The swim went okay, 45 minutes or so, very good for a first swim, but it worked me over something fierce.

-  -  -  -  -  -

I’ve been playing with meditative focus on Chalkra points (the 7 common ones used all over the web), and had some interesting changes in my neck, though it was in combination with the shoulder changes of late.

It, too, had changes to my neck and throat, making swallowing difficult again for some time.  That was until it got really bad, and I found myself pulling my arm out of socket to stretch some perceived knot in my throat.  Then, that food swallowed, the neck felt much better, and has felt better since.  Some changes still progressing from this up into my jaw and face.

-  -  -  -  -  -

The other new move, just today, was around the shoulders.  Instead of focus on the joint, or a point on a 360 around the joint, I broadened.  I went on the chest and back, maybe 5-7 inches from the shoulder.  The results were immediate, new “adjustments” to the shoulder.

The first time, it changed something in the right shoulder that cascaded down my right arm, quite involuntarily.  Similar to how some old “adjustments” made me punch myself in the head accidentally, this one sent the arm in an awkward swing.  Of course, I was not lucky enough to only hit air.  The back of my hand slammed into a counter top edge, a rounded one, but hard enough to break skin.  Should leave one hell of a bruise.

I did some more playing with it in the hot tub (mainly because I had just added chlorine and thought it the easiest way to disinfect the hand, lol), and after some moderate work, the body feels quite different, hopefully for the better.

Predictably, putting the comfy shirt on afterwards, the shirt was not so comfy anymore.  I changed some form again, though not much, I believe.  It’s just suddenly tighter in some spots, looser in others.

I am really not sure how much longer I can do this.  I am mentally spent, just trying to hang on until it warms up outside.

A Useless, Unimportant, Boring, Not Interesting At All, Update

I hate cold.  This remains true.  It has been very rough since I stopped swimming.  I’ve already gained 12 pounds, too.

That said, I got one of those, under the desk, pedal exercise thingies, with my Christmas Amazon gift card winnings, and just started using it, although in a ergonomic gamer chair.  The result is that I can do a little work on my back, somehow, by pedaling in a crunched-like position, and focusing on my back.

Doing it, I found myself working a muscle group I would often target while kicking in the pool.

Best case scenario, it helps me continue to work muscle up my back and to the shoulders.

Time will tell.

See.  I told you this was boring.