Falling slowly

New year's resolutions seem to bubble up on me around this time of year.  Actually, the 'resolution' part of that statement isn't really accurate.  In December and January, I'll find myself doing something or other which is either brand new, or in some way an incremental change.  For instance, in '09/'10 it was playing the guitar on a daily basis.  So I called it a resolution, and have continued ever since.  A sort of 'leading (myself) from behind.'

This year - this fall and winter actually - I've notice a somewhat hastened slowing down; this may sound like an oxymoron, however I mean that my symptoms of MS seem to be getting heavier faster.  Is it my resolution to make it even faster?  Hardly.  Resolutions to the contrary or not, that's how things have felt, with their attendant emotional baggage.  Particularly over the past few weeks.

For a couple reasons perhaps, not least of which might be the less healthy diet that is so popular this Yuletide season. Another reason was my first colonoscopy the week before last (the result: clean as a whistle!)  Which means I haven't been to the gym for two weeks.  I've recently resumed, and behold, I feel better!  Causality of course is not clear - that is, maybe I'm getting back to it because I feel better, and not vice-versa - but it is good to be back at it regardless.  During this decade of 'MS-tery', the single best medicine I've found is regular exercise.

Which includes daily physical therapy, starting with balance movements, and moving on from there.  A bit of tai chi, a swing and lindy hop, and recently I'll attempt to include something 'baroque' each session.  By which I mean some improvised movement in the moment that is not necessarily fancy, ornate, or extravagant - the usual metaphoric meaning of the term.  But instead something odd.  Strange.  Unexpected.  The word baroque derives from the Italian word for an irregularly shaped pearl, and that is the meaning I employ for something surprising, or out of the ordinary.  Suddenly reaching up to the sky, or swiveling my head, perhaps slapping the floor.  Maybe all three in succession.  Or something that happens in the moment - maybe it has percolated up from below, some muscle group that is subconsciously asking for attention.  Or something quite pedestrian, which may or may not result in a feeling of release.

(A favorite song of mine is Baroque and Blue by Claude Bolling, in which this is given a voice, and can be seen/heard here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dVtLVSzESU  Click and you can listen as you read this post.  There is much more to the suggestive title, it seems:  the jazz, the classical, etc.  I think the song takes the classical music sense of the word Baroque - Bach for example - and after juxtaposing it, weaves it gradually together with jazz, and the blues.  And plays with the obvious double entendre, 'broke and blue'.  The sense of baroque meaning something unexpected or enigmatic, however, would put the jazz into both words, making something of a hidden triple entendre.  I love the resulting confluence of musical traditions.  End of parenthetic foray.)

Back to the physical therapy.  For a few days now, I have reincorporated 'the fall' into my routine.  The 'fall of man,' Paradise Lost?  Not exactly.  Ideally, a moment will come when my balance is teetering a bit from some action or other, and I will slowly follow that in a relatively careful roll or fall to the floor.  But more often, it will come at the end of the PT session, and not be preceded by a spontaneous balance loss.  What's the point?  No therapist has ever suggested it (liability concerns maybe?), but I have fallen and gotten bruised a couple of times since my diagnosis, and it seems that the more practice I get falling slowly and carefully, the less chance for injury.  At the very least, it adds to the PT session, working different muscle and nerve groups as I get back up to my feet.

Sometimes, but not often, I'll have music playing as I do the PT.  Glenn Miller's In The Mood is great with the swing/lindy hop steps, of course.  I should try doing it to Baroque and Blue, but I don't 'have' that song yet.  I think it's on my top 100 (plus) songs list that my dear wife has been burning by approximately 20 song chunks at a time to CD's for me, on my birthday, Christmas, etc.

Another thing that I've gradually been adopting, is to set a timer each hour to get up and move about, walk, stretch, do pushups, whatever.  Most of us are doing far too little of that these days - witness the obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes epidemics - but with MS it is particularly important.  Butts sat upon for several hours can result in rather congealed and unyielding legs.

Which means, do it, right now, the alarm has sounded!  Soldier, hit the ground, give me fifty!

Dancing boulders

Sisyphus is cursed to push that big heavy boulder up the hill, though it keeps rolling back...

Seems that my curse - when I choose to accept it - is to try to slow the boulder's seemingly inevitable roll down the hill. As I keep hoping that it reaches the valley floor. But just as the sisyphian story can help us each to see the myth of relentless struggle and stress in our lives - that is, to give us the opportunity to pause a moment and see that there is no boulder - so too my struggles to keep the boulder from rolling away from me: can I pause and notice there is no boulder?

How do I meet each moment, each sadness, joy, or challenge? Do I make it as solid and resistant to rolling as a huge heavy boulder? Or turn the joys and happinesses into something like hot air balloons that I struggle to keep from floating away in the wind?It is these struggles to make the bad go away, or keep the good, that get in the way of just being with them when they are present to me.

The past couple days when doing my physical therapy, a line from my new and improved nightly MS metta (Buddhist prayer) meditation comes to me. I say 'new and improved' since I've edited it a bit. There were too many 'all sentient beings' and other such stock phrases, when I actually meant 'everybody,' for instance. But I added a new line, it goes like this: 'May I engage in daily physical therapy and exercise with a heart open to the beauty and perfection of the universe – and of this ailing body.' I read the prayer (covered in an earlier blog entry titled 'Both Sides Now') each night before turning out the light. I first tried it after turning out the light, but that didn't seem to work so well... But seriously, though much of the words are pro forma and obvious, they seem to bear repeating, even as solipsistic as the exercise might sound. The subconscious seems to work on them, and when I go about my day, they visit me on occasion.

Such as when I'm doing the balance movements of my P.T. session. Feet together, I look first straight up at the ceiling, then back down at my feet; then over my left and right shoulders. Then shake my head from side to side three times, and nod up and down three more - and since traveling to Nepal, nod also three times in the fashion common in the former Himalayan kingdom. (Also quite common in India, this nod is sort of a tilting of the head from side to side - imagine your nose as a pivot - a smile on your face. And these motions can throw off my balance centers in the vestibular glands of the inner ear, which is the point - to try to right your balance in spite of the feeling of losing it.) The phrase 'perfection in the universe - right here in this ailing body' is somehow very powerful. The P.T. becomes mysteriously lighter, less like a boulder, and more like a dance with life. Or life dancing through me.

Speaking of which, toward the end of the P.T. I will dance four or seven swing steps in a circle, then two or three lindy hops. I haven't been to the nearby swing dances - it's been too hot - but the weather has changed rather suddenly. And my girlfriend recently suggested we go back, so we will!

May your boulders melt into lindy hops...or lolly pops!

p.s. Happy Birthday to my hero, Gandhi!