Monthly Archives: March 2014

Impromptu Hiatus

MEta

That would be a decent band name. Not a great one, because it’s kind of obnoxious, but it would look good on a t-shirt.

Anyway, I seem to be on break. I’ll be back in business as of May 1st, 2014. Anything that I write in the meantime will go into the publishing queue, so hopefully I’ll have regular content by the time that I start back up. I hope to have updates every Monday and Friday.

I got a second job, you see. Teach all week, massage all weekend, and rest never. Takes some getting used to, but I really do miss this. My thanks to those of you who plan to stick with me as I get my shit sorted out!

Love,
Ian

Got Chronic Pain? It’s Time to Move Differently

Massage, Pain

If you’re in chronic pain, it’s easy to get frustrated with your own body. There are a lot of unanswered “whys,” like “why is this flaring up now? Why is this painful if there’s no new damage? Why is this ruining my life?” As weird as it may sound, the answer to most of these questions is that your body means well.

Imagine being a low back. Your purpose in life is to basically exist so that other, more important body parts can do their thing. You accept heavy loads for hours a day, you flex and extend for 30 minutes straight when your boss decides it wants to do “the thousand crunch challenge” (please tell me this doesn’t actually exist), and you generally just do your best.

The low back doesn’t have eyes or ears, and it doesn’t know much about the purpose behind your activities. It does, however, have a huge amount of nervous tissue (nerve endings and spinal cord sections devoted just to it). What does it do with all of that processing power? It listens. ... continue reading.