THE LEAST CONTROVERSIAL THING

I have a whole lot of (unpopular) thoughts running around in this noggin’ at the moment in regards to the Super Bowl. I love the enthusiasm this city has for their football team, but I have a hard time summoning up support for the NFL as a corporation, ethically speaking. So instead of ranting on about how the commercialization of sportsball has contributed to the systemic racism prevalent in this country and the perpetuation of glorifying violence, I’ll talk about something less controversial. Red Light Therapy.

Saturday, I posted a picture of myself in the red light therapy chamber at my chiropractor’s. Then, I had a number of people ask me what I thought about the therapy. I will tell you that I went in with the most skeptical, this is bullshit attitude. My chiropractor suggested it after my adjust last week because my arm and shoulder was still causing me problems. I looked at Dr. Fran and I said “Is this voodoo?” To which she replied with a chuckle that it was not voodoo, but then she said the thing that she should not have said to me. She said “it works on the molecular level.” Don’t say these words to someone with a background in molecular genetics. Just don’t. Their eyes will become strained from the severe eye roll they give you. Even though I knew that this was probably total nonsense, I agreed to signing up for six sessions. I felt results after the first session. I didn’t want to admit it, but I felt surprisingly better.

So I did the thing that I do and went back to work to do a deep science dive on Red Light Therapy and it turns out that it is not voodoo. There are a number of peer-reviewed journal articles involved in the use of red or near infra-red light to reduce pain and inflammation, stimulate new tissue growth and the various diseases that could benefit from this treatment. It is believed that the red light is absorbed by cytochrome C oxidase in mitochondria which leads to an increase in ATP production and inducing transcription factors involved in cell proliferation, repair and regeneration. Dr. Fran was not wrong. It works on the molecular level.

I have completed three sessions and I can’t deny that it is helping. I am no longer waking up in the middle of the night with arm/shoulder pain or toss and turn in an effort to get comfortable. I still have some mobility issues where I am not as flexible as I used to be, but I can finally reach behind my back and unhook my bra again. I consider this a win. This doesn’t mean that I do not feel like a ridiculous white walrus while laying naked in the red light therapy chamber. On my second session, I accidentally knocked the head rest out of the chamber while I was flipping over onto my back. I whacked the headrest so hard that it shot out the open end, hit the wall and landed almost completely under the whole chamber. Then I had to army crawl my naked body to the end of the chamber and reach around to fish out the head rest.

It was not my most graceful moment.

I also can’t seem to get Roxanne by the Police out of my head while I’m in there, except I change the lyrics to something about how I have to turn on the red light. Then the song turns from saving the sex worker to letting her just do her job and leaving her alone…Look, you’re in there for fifteen minutes. That’s plenty of rando thought time.

ICE CREAM STORIES

I wrote this post over a week ago. It has just been sitting in my drafts waiting for me to do something with it. I’m posting it now for a number of reasons. One reason is that it is something new to read while I finish compiling some thoughts from the weekend. Not too long ago, Atlas Obscura was offering a four part writing workshop on telling stories through ice cream. They have been advertising in the daily newsletter that I get in my email and the first add asked “Can you tell stories with ice cream?” I did not sign up for the workshop. I am sure I could have benefitted from it but I already knew without a doubt that of course you can tell stories with ice cream. My whole life is linked to that creamy sweet wonderful dessert. It is genetically encoded in my DNA to love ice cream. It is also genetically encoded into my DNA for my gut to not love it so much, but I don’t care. I will eat the ice cream and suffer the consequences later. I’m talking about ice cream. Not custard. Midwest is all about custard, which is good, but it is not ice cream. Look. It’s just better to not get me started, but I will say that Michael was almost forty years old before ever eating at a Braum’s and that is a goddamn travesty.

“You mean I can get any flavor ice cream as a shake instead of a drink with my hamburger meal?!?!”

Mom told me a story once about my Pepaw, her dad. She said that Pepaw would make ice cream every evening. It always contained whatever fruit was in season and growing around them, but his favorite was peach. She told me about how they would all eat a bowl of ice cream after dinner. Then they might go to the movies or church or some family activity. When they got back, Pepaw would eat another bowl of ice cream. She said “Your Pepaw loved his ice cream.” Pepaw rarely made the drive from Mississippi to Oklahoma to visit. We most always went there, but I vividly remember the times that he did come and stay. One visit in particular was right around my high school graduation. I still had school activities every day, but when I would get home, my Pepaw would say “Let’s go get ice cream.” I would then drive us in my 1980 Chevy Cavalier into Owasso for ice cream. That car was the car that replaced my first hunk of junk and it was so nice, except the air conditioning didn’t work. Still it seemed like quite the upgrade from what I had been driving. At least this car had whole, working seatbelts. Pepaw was the only person I would allow to smoke in my car. The truth is, I would never have denied him anything. I got so little time with my Pepaw and of that little time I did get, only a bit of that was alone time. During that visit, it was just the two of us driving into town, sitting at a plastic table outside Braum’s and eating ice cream. Our conversations varied, but he told me his regrets. He told me that he loved me and that he was very proud of me. This meant more to me than the ice cream because I didn’t think Pepaw really knew me. We only ever saw each other once or twice a year.

Pepaw could be the first chapter of my ice cream stories, with several chapters to follow that. Ice cream is a link to every man in my life. That boy I had a I huge crush on my freshman year of college and how the two of us would always make the ice cream run for whoever was hanging out in the dorm lobby . Chris and how he always used “let’s go get ice cream” to trick me into going to Best Buy. Michael seeing me mad, cranky or sad saying “Do we need ice cream?” and then driving me to my favorite ice cream place. Dad and vanilla ice cream. I could go on and on because there are many ice scream stories to be told.

While I was wrapped up in a yoga silk the other night, I started thinking about physical pain and how that pain gets stored in our bodies. The facia is that membrane that surrounds the muscles. Think of it as cellophane. Each moment of pain twists, wrinkles and knots that facia. Some knots are bigger than others and those are the ones we tend to remember most clearly. I can still vividly recall the pain of getting my tonsils removed at age seven and the pain from doctors attempting to reset my broken right arm when I was ten or eleven. Strangely enough I do not remember the pain of breaking my other arm two years earlier. I guess breaking both bones in two doesn’t hurt as much as cracking a bone? Once, while riding Katrina’s bicycle, I turned a corner while going too fast and I laid the bicycle down, sliding the right side of my body down the road. The memory of that moment is more vivid due to my calm reaction as I stood up. The neighbor had watched the whole thing and asked me if I was okay. I leaned over, picked the bike up and shrugged while saying “I’m fine.” It wasn’t until I had the bike parked safely and was inside the house that I allowed that pain to flood over me and cry. All of those moments are stored in giant knots of facia in my body. It only takes a nudge to bring the memory of that pain to the surface.

I have zero memories of the pain of brain freeze from eating ice cream. Oh, I know I have had it happen to me as a child and even as an adult, but the memory of that pain is not held someplace in my body for later recall. I suppose that is why I repeat the action that causes this pain over and over again. It’s why we all do. The reason that brain freeze pain doesn’t stick itself into the fascia is because the action comes with sweetness and joy. There is usually some giggling involved. Brain freeze is a physical pain of joy and that joy tends to overrun the pain. It’s like love. We love even though we know at some point we are going to end up broken hearted because the sweetness and joy outweighs the pain aspect of loving.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Sirsasana

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Freezing mist and drizzle set in around here on Wednesday. Schools closed early and stayed closed through Thursday. The Y has a no close policy. They stay open for people who need to be someplace warm. This meant that the yoga class I teach on Wednesday evenings would not be cancelled unless I called it in. I cancelled my class the week before because of work and weather. I did not feel like I could get away with this two Wednesdays in a row. So, I bundled up and with warnings from Michael to drive very very safely, I went to teach my Wednesday night yoga class.

I arrived early and when I went to lay out my mat and set up my things, one of the Y trainers was set up in that space with one of his clients. I chatted with the trainer about yoga. I did a few rounds of surya namaskar. I reviewed my notes for the class I had prepared for the evening and I eyed the clock. I was starting to think that no one was going to show up for class. A minute before my class was supposed to start, a woman came rushing in and said “Oh My GOD! I’m so glad you’re here.” She turned out to be my only student for the evening and it was probably the best class I’ve taught in a while. I was able to take the class I had planned and tweak it specifically for her needs. We flowed through a series of poses and then did a few exercises to prepare for headstand. She mentioned having problems with tightness in her shoulders and I showed her a few exercises she could do at home relieve some of that tension. When the class ended, the woman expressed her gratitude to me several times. She thanked me for staying and teaching the class even though she was my only student. She thanked me for class and the work we had done together in this practice. She thanked me for how good her body felt after the practice. She was so grateful.

This gratitude, of course, made me feel good but what I did not express to her was how grateful I was for her being present in our class that evening. For one thing, I was grateful to be able to share my practice and knowledge to this woman in a way that will help her beyond the yoga mat. At the same time, being able to give the gift of easing one’s physical pain is a soothing balm for my soul. Wednesday would have been Chris’s 48th birthday and I spent the day with this knowledge ping ponging it’s way around my brain. I remember that he was in good spirits for that last one. We’d had friends visiting and there had been laughter. Always laughter. Then Chris immediately started to decline. He went from being able to communicate effectively to making absolutely no sense in one day. The worst of it though, was the pain. Chris was in so much pain and there was nothing I could do to ease it. I could give him pills that would barely manage his pain, but managing pain is not the same as being pain free.

It was horrifying to have to watch him suffer and debilitating to not have any control over the amount of his suffering.

I did not do anything monumental for this woman. I simply helped her to ease tension in her shoulders so she would sleep better that night. There are things within my control and abilities and there are things that are not. Controlling Chris’s pain was not in my control or abilities. At one point while working on headstand, the women said “this is hard! and it shows me that I lack strength.” I said to her “You have the strength to do the things you need to do. No where in our daily lives do we need to do headstands. Sure, it’s fun and feels empowering to be able to do these kinds of poses, but don’t forget that you are strong in other ways.” I did not realize at the time that I was saying those words to myself.

I have the strength to do the things I need to do. I am strong in other ways.