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.