pain

I've been developing a new morning routine. It's great!

Part of it is I'm getting back into tai chi. I've been doing tai chi for years, but I'm prone to lapsing - I do it for a few days - a profound experience - and then I don't do for months. The reason I lapse like that is kind of interesting, but that's for another time.

Maybe it was Monday I started again, and then I practiced again Tuesday. Wednesday I lapsed, but the real story is, I had pain in my shoulder - bad pain. (That's not why I didn't practice.) Basically, it was a heart attack, or angina. Not surprising. Tai chi works your core intensely, and, if you don't practice regularly, and then you start up again, it's problematic. They say you should practice every day. It sounds like they're saying you won't benefit if you don't do it every day, but I don't think that's actually why. The thing is, if you know the moves, then when you start again, unlike when you're a beginner and learn a few moves, you do a bunch of moves and get an intense workout. Since, if you're not practicing, you get out of shape, when you then do an intense workout like that, you can pay.

Well, I got about 2/3 of the way through my workout this morning, and then I felt it: the muscles in my chest were suddenly stressed. Oh, boy, I thought, I'm going to pay for that. I relax more as I finished the routine ... but it was too late. After I got done, the pain started, and built, and built. I started working my pain management meditation - a very important part of my health theory - where you investigate the size, shape, and color of the pain with your mind. It was like an iron bar, steel, actually, lodged in my chest. There was a knot in my back, too, and a smaller bar of pain across my brow. It helped to know that, a little, but then it started building again, until, actually, it doubled me over. I didn't think I was going to die, quite, or collapse, but I couldn't sit still, and doubling over ... well, that helped. And, after a bit, I did start feeling better. I had survived.

So, what was going on? In an earlier post I described how pain is impeded circulation in the spongy matter of tissues. Here's my theory: Because of the intense exercise, my heart had pumped blood away from itself, into kind of a muscle shield around my ribs. That's good, because intense circulation like that loosens blockages, gunk, in the tissues, but there's a problem: that blood has to circulate back to the heart. Since I'm out of shape, the blood wasn't moving through those muscles too effectively. It wasn't circulating back to my heart as fast and as freely as it needed too. Ergo, heart attack.

But, as I say, I survived. As I write, now, a few hours later, I still have a small amount of lingering pain, but nothing serious. Well, follow along, and I'll tell you how I'm doing in the days ahead.