Chronic condition - seeking help

[selfdiscoverer]

Hi. New here.

 

Exchanged a few e-mails with Kit over the past few days and thought to share the same here to benefit others with similar issues. Will visit the forum regularly to update the progress. Anyone facing similar issues, please feel free to chime in and share your thoughts and any tips from your experience.

 

 Kit's Reply:

 

There is not much I can do via email than recommending that you commence stretching exercises as soon as you can. Please go to my YouTube channel and there you will find 100 clips, some quite long, that work most parts of the body.

 

Clearly you are tense: this is what needs addressing. Tension does not appear in any diagnostic test; yet is the #1 health complaint today. Find a local teacher and learn a practise called “yoga nidra”: learning and embodying this will have immense practical benefits for your life. It needs to be practised every day to become embodied.

 

Finally, we have a jaw and neck exercise sequence on the same YT channel that should be helpful too.

 

Good luck

 

Kit

 

Question:

 

Dear Kit

I wanted to seek advice on my medical history and problems being faced by me. I am having an episode of my tri-weekly headaches (mentioned below) as i write this so kindly excuse if i am using redundant and vague language and not able to elucidate properly. Maybe if this interests you we can find a better day to communicate.

During one of my strength training sessions almost a year back, i did some damage to the AC joint during some bench press exercise. It pained to even do pushups at that point. For a few weeks it was even sensitive to touch. it got better after taking a break from weight training. and doesn't bother too much, although i do feel weakness and lack of strength in certain rotational exercises.

I then moved on to calisthenics work and combining it with sports in a circuit type training and this helped keep fat off and improved some strength but i couldn't program it well enough for consistency and progressive results (Muscle and fat loss). Endurance also did not increase as expected. I had a baby girl about 2.5 mnths back so its been little difficult to make time for any workout. I have started climbing 7 flights of stairs to my office floor and stretching between breaks and sitting on the floor to eat was something i used to do even earlier.

I have a history of headaches occurring ever 2 days lasting for 8-10 hours. These start from the neck and shoulder region and slowly creep over to the head sometimes accompanied with nausea and vomiting. This spoils entire days and is a problem to my normal life. I also feel generally tired most of the time. This was undiagnosed for about 3 years after which one natureopathy specialist and massage therapist diagnosed it as cervical spondylosis.

Additionally, I suffer from bruxism that  is now threatening to disturb my teeth integrity.

I am at a loss of solutions here. I am 28 years old with a wife and a 2 month old daughter and my health has finally started to scare me. I would like to cure this problem and lead a normal active lifestyle with my family and do all the things i love to do.

If this case interests you, please contact me and I can share all details about my medical history, fitness history, nutrition philosophy, lifestyle, movement and career etc. I hope there is a cure or at least a diagnosis since all tests(blood etc.) and scans(X-ray, CAT) that have been recommended to me have turned out negative.

 

Karan

[Kit_L]

From now on, I will be recommending that all new members start here:

 

http://kitlaughlin.com/forums/index.php?/topic/884-getting-to-know-the-stretch-therapy-community/

 

And to engage with any personal problem posted on the Forums, I expect a new member to actually do what I recommend; this will take an hour or two of your time; this is necessary.

 

Now to the longer response: For a problem set like what Karan describes here, there is no simple cure or any diagnostic test that will reveal some hidden, simple to fix "diagnosis". This expectation is one of the major problems all practitioners face, and it is not realistic, on the part of the patient or the practitioner.

 

The connecting theme in all the problems Karan is experiencing is excessive physical and mental tension—this is the reason I recommended developing a Yoga Nidra practise, above. As well, it is very likely that even a problem stemming from the bench press (an exercise I never recommend to anyone, unless they are already a powerlifter) will find its genesis in patterns of tension and/or weakness in the body. I have mentioned in many places that the excessive tension is the equivalent to a lack of flexibility just as insufficient tension can be considered equivalent to a lack of strength. The short story here is that in order to diagnose a problem stemming from the bench press we would need to see Karan's entire range of movement in the entire shoulder girdle; clearly this is not a simple thing to do by email or on a forum. So, the shorthand, efficient, approach is to try to explore range of movement in all of the ranges of movement the shoulder is capable of as the first step, with reference to something like Master Shoulder Flexibility as a general reference. Generally speaking, in the attempt to play with all the different ranges of movement, a particularly tight part will reveal itself and that is where you begin.

 

Also, we cannot neglect the overall effect of the new daughter in the household; very likely the parents of the daughter will be a sleep deprived to a greater or lesser extent. Adding to this is the pursuit of various fitness goals as well as surviving in one chosen career: all create additional tension in the body.

 

Bruxism is the body's final attempt to discharge tension from the body while we sleep. The research suggests strongly that damage to the teeth is a long-term outcome; once again for this reason I recommend the pursuit of practices that reduce tension globally in the body. We have a number of lying medication practices are available as free downloads here on the forum (search and you will find many links to real, live recorded examples) and the general category of lying meditation that I recommended Karen and pursue is the term "yoga nidra", brought into the West by Swami Satyananda (Bihar School of Yoga), and the same lineage as the Mangrove Mountain Ashram in Australia). It is a fantastically effective practise.

 

In order to loosen your jaw muscles we have the neck and jaw sequence available on my channel on YouTube (use the search function there); to these must be added all the neck exercises found on the same platform. This is just the beginning though: one needs to systematically explore one body and find out where the major tension holding is occurring. Only Karen can do this. Karen lives in India, the home of yoga, and I recommend he find a teacher there.

 

My last suggestion, if fat loss and weight control is a priority, learn to read slightly less at all meals; far and away this is the easiest way to maintain body weight at the desired level. The fact is the body is extremely efficient—and it takes to getting an amount of exercise to use a few hundred calories. Far easier just just not to eat them in the first place.

[selfdiscoverer]

Very enlightening reply. So satisfying to someone having spent a lot of money and time to reach nowhere. Will try this and update on the progress.

Thanks for the time Kit.