I decided I was going to run a quarter mile of my hill speedwalk this weekend, which was a mistake, although I have an excuse because I was taking a detour to avoid getting shot at which is another story (no, seriously) and now I am down and dirty becoming reacquainted with my rug.
This is the matter that the healing arts and all discussions about them tend to skirt. Because, in the end, when you hurt, whatever other help you have, you have got to take care of yourself. You cannot be prissy about this. You have to do what works. And if you have muscular trigger points, you end up having to roll around the floor on a massage ball 
until you get the pressure in at just the right angle to make the recalcitrant little cocksucker (the trigger point, not the ball) give it up and let go. If you are too Nice to look dust bunnies in the face you can limp around for the next week or so, the God Of Niceness doesn’t care.
When the Republicans yell Take Personal Responsibility For Your Health Care they seem to be talking about paying premiums. Probably no one on the Hill knows where his iliocostalis even is.
I was really hoping I had licked this one. But just a little of the running gait thing woke up the remains of what I once referred to as a “life-threatening ass injury.” The really evil hot spot seems to be in the external obliques, but the fixation between one angry rib and the spinal column seems to be driven by spastic multifidi, and there are incandescent little knots in every overlapping layer of the spinal erectors (I know, that sounds rude). I can pick these all out with my fangy little massage ball. Your average suffering SOB goes into his doctor’s office and says “My back hurts.”
None of what I am doing is rocket science, in fact I front my clients a nice little book which will sort it all out for you for about twenty bucks, but I still work on people every day, educated people, who are gobsmacked to realize that they are not more or less solid like a potato, or at best full of arcane structures which only someone with an eight-year medical education can decipher. A small number of these people will end up down on the rug with me. You can feel your way to knots even if you don’t know their names. It just comes in handy sometimes.
Modern life seems to prescribe three acceptable positions for people: standing/walking, sitting, lying down. If you take an exercise class you get a dispensation to cavort a bit on a mat.
Screw it! I want to see you hanging off your furniture like Dali’s watches! Suspended from the doorjamb! Spraddle-legged with your arms locked behind you in the middle of the kitchen! And supine on your rug with a tennis ball under your seized-up shoulderblades! Life is too short!
Come to think of it, this was the kind of thing that got me chewed out in first grade. Can’t take me anywhere.
Love your rug. Screw decorum. Pain hurts too much.
AMEN!
And while you are at it, don’t forget to STRETCH, Damnit! (I know you stretch, this is what I preach to my clients) Not only self care for pain, but preventive care in the first damn place will prevent a lot of it. And while you are at it, try losing that extra 100 pounds you are toting around with you on a daily basis, it’s no wonder you are so damned tired all the time, if I was hauling around two sacks of feed 24 hours a day I’d be tired too.
And don’t tell me you don’t have time to stretch. You complain about how hard it is for you to get to sleep, so you aren’t sleeping while you are lying there in bed, you might as well get up and stretch, and instead of going to bed all tight and in pain, try stretching on a regular basis right before you get into it, maybe you would be able to fall asleep faster.
Thanks for the opportunity to rant.
Wait a minute. A detour to avoid getting shot at? I thought the Ozarks were rough.
Sometimes when a crazy person is mad at you, discretion is the better part of valor…
I’m glad you took the detour. You are still with us to blog. I’d have missed you.
Well, we do run the risk of pitching this a bit high.
Now I have to go see if I can do something about my serratus posterior.
I love Princess’s rug, is that enough?
I suppose if you like to roll your ball against it, that counts…
I need one of them rolling tubes. I am bad about stretching my calves, hamstrings, and hip flexors.
My cavorting on a mat involves either trying to lock in a submission hold or trying to avoid one (and sometimes I punch people in the groin while I’m there too). I say I get a huge dispensation for that.
Got Matt Furey? 🙂
For massage toys, http://momentum98.com/ plus the website is a trip.
I don’t have a rug. 😦
Holy Moley, you had to detour to avoid GETTING SHOT? By a neighbor?
Careful out there!
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Ah! I love me some tennis ball under the shoulder blade action! Better than sex! (And these days, more available than it, too!)
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Much better than using a can of stewed tomatoes as I used to do. It worked but it is kind the wrong shape. Any port in a storm, though.