Mobility, Pain & Injury

Life is a contact sport.  Day in, day out your body takes a beating. Your muscles, bones, ego; The whole shebang. Today we focus on joints, and on something called arthrokinetic dysfunction (Yes I looked up how to spell that). Arthrokinetic dysfunction, i.e. the arthrokinetic reflex, is a ten cent phrase that I throw out there when I’m wearing my glasses and want to sound smart. It is, above all, a way you can immediately increase strength and flexibility, impress your chiropractor, or Wow your friends at your next get together.

You’re injured. Firstly, Don’t panic. Secondly, here’s the simplest recovery plan: RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). It won’t fix you, but it will compliment long term recovery. It’s basic, costs you nothing, and above all it helps.

You run a few steps and you’re in agony.  You have pain on the outside of your knee. Not the hip, the side of the thigh or under the knee cap.  The side of the knee.  Lateral epicondyle for all you smart kids. Congratulations.  You’ve just been diagnosed with IT band syndrome and no one really knows what to tell you.  IT Band syndrome is, in the words of Winston Churchill: ‘A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.’

Cause and effect works pretty well on the whole. Until it doesn’t.  Until you’re left with a result (effect) for which you can’t determine the cause. Example? Pain. From time to time we experience pain, discomfort, illness, symptoms but quite determine the cause? Your back kills, shoulders hurt, can’t sleep, can’t shake a cold, gettin’ headaches; however, you never did anything to deserve that particular pain. Well, it just may be your threat bucket overflowing.

This is a blog about yoga. It is also about failure. Injury. Learning to enjoy things you’re bad at. And finally, this is about love:  A love story. Just not the kind you expect.

Where does it hurt? Rack up enough gym time and you’re gonna get injured.  Sure as the sun’ll come up. And when that injury happens someone (Doc, Trainer, Mom) is gonna ask, ‘where does it hurt?’. Surely the cure for what ails you lies right there beneath the pain. Like X marks the spot. If only our bodies were that direct.