Some thoughts on Pain

Note: This is draft, I'm still working on it. But I've added it cos today I've come across 2 people who might find it helpful. Pictures and spell check and tidying up for making sense will happen eventually
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Pain is something I never really thought about before I got ME/CFS. It was something that happened only at specific times, like bashing my elbow or falling off my bike or my pony as a child. It had an identifiable cause and effect (I bang my elbow is the cause, with an effect of pain where I banged it) and was real in that it was related to some specific visible damage to my body, and acute, in that it hurt, then it healed and decreased accordingly.  In short, basic over the counter pain killers worked.

Then from around 2005 onwards I was assailed by different forms of pain. The first being random pains that either had a specific origin say my leg or arm, but no apparent cause (rather like those mystery bruises we all get sometimes, they're there but we don't remember walking into anything.)

More breathing - abdominally

I have to say that it's come as something as a surprise to me that there's a wrong way and a right way to breathe.  It's not like it's something one was taught in school, it's something you pick up on pretty quickly at birth and, well, just keep doing if you want to not have death looming at you like an oncoming steam train!

I blogged a while ago (years?) about Fiona Agombar's relaxing before getting onto breathing exercises. Then never actually got any further.

Taken from the web cos it was pretty. I know nothing about the site it came from - but they do talk about breathing

 Recently I went a bit wonky spinewise (I may have mentioned this several times already) and inveigeled a very nice man called Paul who is an osteopath to come and see me in my house. He's also a naturopath. I'm not sure which bit of his practice the breathing comes from, but as he's somewhat holistic in approach, his practice probably doesn't have bits.

Anyway. It turns out that if you spent most of your time not moving, like me, your body doesn't work very well. Because the human body was designed to have things like gravity and movement help it to do the things it needs to do to function properly.

Yoga I - Not moving, but breathing (Fiona Agombar - For the Severely Affected)

There's a poem by Stevie Smith called 'Not waving but drowning' (it's a bit macabre so I've put it at the bottom of this post, don't read it if you're not feeling super happy and able to cope), the last couplet strikes a chord - "I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning'. Speaking as someone who doesn't really have the energy spare to wave, it's more 'not moving but breathing' on most days, hence the title.

Dear Reader (yes you, my sole reader. Thank you.) - you're thinking - So, Yoga. You're kidding right? You can barely move, struggle to get around your 4 metre by 7 metre ground floor most days - seriously?