Structural Change

Structural change is uncomfortable. These past few weeks have presented the opportunity to address deep tensions and blocks within my body. Putting focused energy towards my shoulder with range of motion exercises, isometric training, icing, and rest helps me open up to dynamic flexibility that I wasn't even aware was missing from my shoulder!

I'm not going to lie, I'm in pain a lot. I'm literally resetting my posture, shoulder resting position, and building arm strength. When I wake up, I am stiff. To counter the stiffness, I start every day by stretching my back and arms in child's pose. This is before I get out of bed. I stretch. Then by the time I'm making coffee and oatmeal, I'm doing some gentle motions to wake up the rest of my muscles: arm circles, hip rounds, forward bend, etc. Movement gets blood flowing and warms up my muscles, thus reducing pain and stiffness.

As a student athlete, I did NONE of this daily morning maintenance. I always warmed my arm up for softball, that was something I could always tell made a difference. But the rest of my body rarely received the type of attention commensurate with the amount of activity I was demanding from it.

In eighth grade, I was recruited to the Mt Vernon High School varsity softball team. I dreamed of succeeding Don Mattingly as the next Yankees first base-person and when the softball coach asked me to consider being the catcher, I was more than conflicted. But alas for about 5 years, I used my left arm as a shield and protector from the constant barrage of softballs being thrown at me throughout my high school athletic career.

Imagine my surprise twenty years later I discover a baseball sized knot of fused whatever in my arm directly around the muscles I used to shield my face as a teenage catcher. This tells me a couple things:

1. I can feel it!!! yay for feeling it at all because it's been there this long waiting to be witnessed.
2. Now that I can feel it, I have to ice it. I love my shoulder icing brace (see picture)!
3. I need to reduce the inflammation in and around it.
4. I have to keep re-training my shoulder's range of motion even though it hurts after and sometimes during.
5. The more I breathe into the tension, the more I can create space to listen.
6. I'm moving towards a structural change in my body.
7. This is a slow process.

This is my process and for as long as I wasn't paying attention, I'm having to rehabilitate and compensate for that lost time. When the pain is intense, shoulder pain can be very uncomfortable, I am often able to ground into the knowledge that nothing goes on forever. My shoulder pain will end at some point and it typically does. Because deep change is occurring, I'm uncovering more and more pain to be with and heal.