"Jeeeeeeeesuss...... Jeeeeeeeeeesusss.........."

It is important that when a new activity is being introduced, the practices that immediately precede it are will known to the student and the general movement pattern is similar to the new skill. The advantage of this strategy is that the student is confident in his own ability and has a starting point to work from. Having an existing frame of reference makes any demonstration or presentation of a new technique all the more effective for the student, because he can quickly relate it to his own existing range of skills. With similar movement patterns, the rate of learning is much faster than with different ones, because part of the skill is already known. Tony Gummerson, "Teaching Martial Arts"



Ugh- ice-pick-in-the-shoulder-blade still roaring this morning. Numb right arm as well. The headache, thank Gods, has eased off. I went back to the chiropractic neurologist this morning to be poked and prodded and cracked again. He agreed that I was VERY tight. He found two spots on the shoulder blade- north and southwest- that seemed to be the Great Wellsprings Of Pain. When he applied his little propeller toy to the northern Wellspring, the room reeled and I almost sobbed.

The bag of potato chips was smaller this time- when he crushed me up against the wall, there were far fewer cracks. Things were definitely not moving around as well today as they had been the last few visits. It was also much harder to try to make myself relax for the adjustments. I feel like one big fat knot.

I told him that I'm having abominable trouble sleeping because there is no position that doesn't send bolts of pain arrowing through my shoulder, and he suggested trying lying flat on my back on the floor with no pillow- for short periods at least.

Amusingly, I found that SK had used the same chiropractor for a time when he was in his teens. He told me that the guy is a fiercely evangelical Christian. I cracked up, because I had noticed that they were playing a Christian music station in the waiting room. It made me do a double-take when I heard the radio wailing, "Jeeeeeeeesuss...... Jeeeeeeeeeesusss.........." I have no problem with that, but I'm glad SK clued me in before I walked into the office holding a tarot book or something- to submit myself to a possibly-judgemental guy who's about to crack my spine. It was also kind of funny because his radiologist appears to be gay.


I reluctantly decided to skip Friday morning competition training at Gracie Seattle.... still being in quite a bit of pain, and I would have been late by the time I got out of the sawbones' office. Also, I want to make sure I make it to Cindy's tonight since it's been over a week since I've been there.


I have been ambivalent about whether or not to contact LD and prod her about resuming Tai Chi class. I don't want to be a pest, but she might actually *need* a little prodding. SK suggested that I just start by asking how she's doing- so I sent her a noncommittal check-in e-mail.





Later...........

Friday evening no-gi at Cindy's. Cindy's warmups were harder on my injury than Mina's warmups had been- I was able to do the "dead bugs" (yipee), but I couldn't do the bear crawls or army crawls. It was "side control" night, and we had an odd number of people, too.... so I did a few drills but sat out and just watched a good portion of the time. I did some positional sparring and a couple of live rolls, but asked people to go light.

The referred-pain aspect of this injury is confusing and frustrating. With my previous "rib out" injuries, which were all in the front middle or lower rib areas, it was fairly obvious- even with the very first instance- what was okay to do and what wasn't. Some things hurt really bad, ergo, do not do. By contrast with THIS injury, I have not as of yet been able to correlate the instances of ramped-up pain- not to mention the original injury itself- with a specific act. Most things don't seem to hurt too much at the time, but sometimes I hurt (a LOT) later. Heck, I didn't even locate the specific site of the original injury until a WEEK after it occurred- I thought I had something wrong with my shoulder blade. I feel like I don't have a good grasp on what's going on with my body right now, and I can't tell what is okay to do and what's going to aggravate my injury.

From Georgette's blog today:
"I immediately had fiery nervelove tracing the inside of my right arm. Now I have a sharp railroad spike right through the tip of my right shoulderblade."

Okay, so I called mine an "ice pick" instead of a "railroad spike", but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess we have the exact same injury. I'm hoping she'll talk about anything specific she finds that aggravates it, and I won't do any of that!