From Mis-Alignment to Good Alignment – guided by Pain Signals

It’ll be seven years soon that I will have done my 26 postures – with more pain than pleasures, more anguish than Buddhahood, but not more tears than smiles!

For the constant observation of progress is soo reassuring! It is such a pleasure to know and feel how the left side of my body re-aligns such that, eventually, the hip won’t hurt and the knee will be functioning rather than crackle, topple and flop!

The most intriguing aspect is that the alignment reaches even the fingers and thumbs! And that the gradualness even means a certain ‘going back’ in particular postures.

Pain – the invisible disability – physical, emotional, mental or “psychological”…

Your pains are “psychological” – that’s what doctors used to say, instead of admitting that they were at their wits’ end… All they were interested in is the mobility of the hip, and I wished that I could make pain visible!

Hardly did I know that this wish should become true! But, the world can’t see yet that and how I can make pain visible by re-visualizing digital images. My prototype software would have to be tuned for particular images from particular imaging technologies to be used for that purpose. But that is one of the possible applications indeed!

Yet a CERN doctor had said “I would NOT suffer in old age”; that’s what saved CERN’s insurance company from having to pay a disability pension. Nobody should be allowed to say anything about ageing unless they are older than 65 themselves!

Six years later and still hurting & healing…

Isn’t it funny: when I started this blog, one year after lots of crying and sweating, I thought that my hip was 95% healed.

But the left hip and knee are STILL not like the right one!!!

It’s as if first the bones got adjusted, then the muscles and now the ligaments and tendons. Each with different kinds of pains in different places and ‘bothersomeness’…

And at the same time, the mind gets changed. For you cannot but change your thinking when you keep having to decide whether to push or not to push beyond your ability to endure stress and strain in ‘strange’ ways and places…

You got to go through it yourself to appreciate it. But it does take persistence, perseverance and a deep commitment to enjoying challenges. Go for it! It’s worth it!!!

 

Nobody knows the troubles I’ve felt…

Every Wednesday is my Yoga day in Berlin, but when I’m in London I try to go more frequently, as travel time is so much less.

Today I came out with my hip aching as if the accident was a few months ago. The miracles of re-aligning and “re-twisting” that joint into place, tendons, ligaments, muscles and all, will not cease to amaze me. It may not happen 100% by the time I die, but I sure will keep trying!!!

For neither doctors nor lawyers will EVER know how I feel and have been feeling. Nor will they “volunteer” to pay for damages or compensation. Their mindsets won’t allow it: male, mean, non-caring, non-healing, analytical rather than conceptual, restrictive rather than constructive, competitive rather than cooperative, and so it goes along the male / female divide.

Men need to connect their heads with their hearts, as they grow older, but who succeeds?

Women need to connect their hearts with their head, but how many men can stand smart women??? Either intelligent or pretty, but not both. That’s what I discovered at the time of advising physicists who became nobel prize winners later.

But I know what I know, and I trust that the Universe knows, too. Everything will come right, in its time and its logic:

• the Universe did NOT let me find CERN as an employer, only to forget about it, once I had made my fundamental discoveries and deep insights
• it does NOT want me to suffer for the sake of suffering; I am gaining insights and my self-knowledge is growing
• and I am gaining strength and flexibility, as well as purposefulness and pointedness as I practise the Standing Bow…

Watch this space… i.e. where I share my passion for Bikram Yoga as the best physiotherapy there is. I wish all orthopaedic doctors did it once a week!

Thoughts about physical, emotional and mental pains

I never know what thoughts and feelings come up during Bikram sessions. Initially, I used to cry for months, mainly because I was reminded of ‘ancient’ pains, of emotional, physical and financial types…

More recently, I seem to think about things that come to the surface from the ‘bottom of my mind’ thanks to the stressful ‘asanas’, i.e. body postures.

Today my grievances with CERN bubbled up. For I have to face that lawyer who claims that “it is now not possible to claim damages from either CERN or AUSTRIA”, the then health insurance company”.

Tough, eh: first the doctor(s), then the lawyer(s) who are giving me a hard time – as if they were responsible for the money that should have been paid to me…

My current doctor said it was a “swindle” when the then doctor said I would not suffer in old age from the accident. At the time, he was speculating. He could be neither right or wrong.

Now, I am PROVING that he was wrong. Americans have invented “Legal Abuse Syndrome” as a special kind of “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder“, which counts as a kind of disability!

But for now I can only think about some headlines:

• CERN refuses basic human rights to former employee…
• CERN doctors and lawyers make their own rules and laws…
• CERN where the web was born has to suffer from bad web publicity…

Learning from Defending Victims: Email to CERN’s Legal Service with a view to Compensation

To get compensation for emotional, physical or mental harm done, doesn’t seem to fit into our capitalist culture. Backed by lawyers, ask for the maximum and pay out a minimum. That’s the game of institutions, whether employers or their health insurance companies.

I have two grievances and have sent them to the European Committee for Petitions:

1. doctors claimed to know that I would NOT suffer from my injuries in ‘old age’
2. lawyers claimed I should have complained within 10 years of leaving CERN, my then employer who had sent me to Lawrence Radiation Lab in Berkeley on an exchange visit of two months.

Five years and still re-aligning…

It is really good to work with different teachers, while the exercises remain the same. At the Berlin centre, Frank challenged me to leave my habitual comfort zone with the leg stretching exercise, but I’m still too wobbly on the left side!

The hip is still realigning in the joint and the knee feels brittle and cracky. I also feel as if the outside layers of my hands, arms and shoulders are now being transformed.

And thus I keep trying! In London I even did a double session the other day – only because the first one wasn’t very hot, I guess. Still, another nice little challenge mastered.

I know that the day I won’t be able to do Bikram is the first day of giving up living and beginning to die instead…

Bikram without Words

For the first time in nearly five years I had the pleasure of experiencing a SILENT class. Instead of having to listen to the constant directions of a trainer, you just follow a few instructions and, above all, CHANGE, to signal the end of a posture.

For to get the timing right, is the real difficulty. Saba has been teaching most of the Wednesday classes that I attend in Berlin and it has been a pleasure of a special kind to have more time for watching my thoughts and associations during Bikram postures.

I wish all her classes were silent on Wednesdays at lunch time! I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, while sighing over the new kinds of pain that my kind of progress is produing: left foot, left knee, between the shoulder blades…

But much of your pain is self-chosen, wrote Kahlil Gibran ages ago…

Bikram Yoga in Berlin

Thank god, I have been able to organise myself such that I can do Yoga once a week again. Even though it takes a lot of travel time, I simply need it – not just to stop my joints from deteriorating, but to continue improving the state of my body.

The studio is very nice due to its parquet floor, and it is not as hot as the one in London North. So I don’t have to rest as often which is a good feeling.

Other little German differences are notable, but all in all, I’m sooo glad that the Bikram word has crossed the language barrier and that there are enough students for the class that fits my train timetable.

Onward and upward – in knee, hip and shoulders above all, these days.

Four Years later

No, my left knee and hip are still not ‘ok’. And Kerry, who’s also a real regular, said the other day: it’ll probably be for life…

Well, I did have that fantasy of getting my body back into the shape of the 29-year-old who used to ski, play tennis, do acrobatics on horses and climb the Saleve mountain near Geneva.

But what is my progress? Let me count:

1. I am stronger, fitter and distinctly more connected with the various limbs of my body
2. Pain is effectively gone. Back pain completely. Every back bend is a miracle! However, as the hip joint keeps re-setting itself, I do experience the odd moments of discomfort reminding me of the agonies I’ve experienced.
3. My shoulders are freeer than ever, while my legs are stronger than ever. Thus I walk so much better, and I can even run again! I’ve only tried up to the traffic lights, but still!
4. Going down stairs is an ongoing test for progress, but all in all, I feel terrific when I’m out of that studio.
5. Inside, I notice the shortcomings of knee and hip differently, depending on the posture. But progress keeps happening, which is why I continue: with love, zest, joy, commitment, perseverance and utter amazement and gratitude.