I have received many questions. My goal is to respond to one question/comment/concept on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next couple of weeks. Please check back for these updates.
Here is a recurring issue — many people have written me that they are doing the Qigong/chanting/standing, and they feel pain or discomfort…sometimes while doing the Qigong and sometimes hours later. They feel that they might be going backwards in recovery rather than forward.
On May 2, 2010, I posted an entry entitled, “Fighting Parkinson’s, It fights me back.” Here is what I wrote as it covers the issue identified in the paragraph above:
“I got out of bed yesterday morning and had to sit down on the floor for a while because my hips and lower back hurt. The pain was greater than the usual achiness I experience when first getting out of bed. I went to the living room and sat in a chair so I could close my eyes and focus on the pain.
Odd as this might sound, I find pain to be good for me. The first reason is that in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), pain often is related to releasing of toxins…that is what I meant in my title…I am fighting Parkinson’s and it is fighting me back. The second reason I find pain to be good for me is that most of the time I feel nothing. At my skin’s surface level, I do not feel if I scratch or cut myself, mosquito bites do not itch, and I cannot differentiate hot and cold until the sensation penetrates below the surface level. Pain lets me know my nerve endings are working, so I welcome pain even though it is a double-edged sword.
As I focused on the pain and noticed three other places where I felt pain: 1. The right edge of the nail of my big toe on my right foot; 2. The outer part of the knee area of my right leg; and 3. The base of my left thumb toward the webbing between the thumb and forefinger. Sally and I looked in the Integrative Acupressure book and the pain related to exact acupressure points on the liver, gall bladder and large intestine meridians.
Those are the three organs on which I have been focused with my dietary considerations and Qi Gong exercises. So, I am going to view the pain as a result of progress in those areas and continue doing what I am doing. I woke up with the same hips and lower back pain this morning, but not the other three. Fighting Parkinson’s comes in small steps, sometimes one step forward and half-a-step backwards. ”
Have a nice weekend. See you Monday.
All my best,
Howard
