Transparent Tuesdays

Issue 206

You guys,

I found myself for the first time at age 34 sitting on a table in a physical therapy office, my legs dangling off the edge.

My therapist, Ryan—who I immediately liked because he reminded me of Mafee from the HBO show Billions—stood behind me and pressed down on the top of my head. “How does that feel?” he asked. I shrugged. Fine. Then he put his hands around the base of my skull and pulled up.

My arms tingled and it felt like a hot wave of jello from my head to my fingertips. I breathed a long, shaky breath. “Oh God,” I said. “I’m really hot.”

Ryan came around to face me. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, sobbing. 

I’d been living with chronic neck pain for most of my adult life and assumed it was something I had to live with forever. Months earlier the pain had gotten worse and my burning-man-yogi-half-baked-spiritual-meditative LA friend recommended a book called Healing Back by Dr. John Sarno. “I rarely have pain, just from reading it,” she actually said. 

The book convinced me that the pain was in my head and there was nothing physically wrong with me, which was comforting, but I still didn’t know how to make the pain go away.

I told Ryan as much. After the second time I referred to my pain as not real he asked me to stop saying it. “If you’re having pain, then it’s real,” he said.

Ryan went on to explain that our bodies learn to protect themselves from pain. In order to do that, we produce pain to prevent further pain. So it’s not about our tissues, it’s about our nervous system. 

Then he drew on a white board. He showed me my nervous system at the bottom of the graph. At the top of the graph was where my body felt pain. In between was this huge gap called the buffer area, where you’re safe and there’s still not enough pain to hurt you. What happened with me—and many other people like me—was that my body had gotten so accustomed to protecting itself from pain that it thought pain was happening way more than it was, so the buffer area had gotten smaller and smaller over time.

What we hope to achieve in physical therapy, he said, was to very slowly start to “poke the bear.” In order to poke the bear we would do exercises that would push us right up to that line, so it would get our nervous system to say, “Okay, that’s fine, you’re fine, we’re okay.”

One day Ryan showed me a new exercise. He held the TRX straps in his hands and walked slowly away from the wall, lifting his arms with it. “I can’t do that,” I said. 

“Can’t?” Ryan said. 

Ever since a recurring high school basketball injury I was gun shy with any type of high arm movement. I couldn’t, for instance, do something as simple as lie on my back with my hands clasped behind my head. 

I grabbed the TRX bands and held my breath as I walked away from the wall. Everything in my head screamed at me to stop, but Mr. Calm And Collected here thought it was safe so I did it. I didn’t walk out as far as Ryan did but by the 15th one I could tell I had pushed myself further out. 

Then he showed me another one, this time lying on his back. He clasped his hands together and straightened them in front of him, then slowly brought them all the way behind his head. “I can’t do that,” I said. Ryan told me to do 15.

After that I was on a bit of a high with my newfound strength and control of my body until one evening I went to a pilates class. At the end of every class the teacher instructed us to roll our neck around. I never did it in the past but today I was invincible, so I rolled my neck. 

It was a mistake. I did not poke the bear. I got right in his face and spit in it. 

The next afternoon I saw Ryan, who, as per usual, kept talking, talking, talking about pain and how it worked in the body. I barely listened because I just wanted him to hurry up and fix me. I did hear him say something about how every 48 hours something happens in our body where the nerves reset. It sounded like a promise that this extreme pain would end soon. This must have been what he was saying, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so freaking calm about it.

After a way too long lesson in pain Ryan had me lay on my stomach. He pressed on different places around my spine, then told me I could sit up. 

I didn't move. 

“You okay?” he asked. 

“Yup,” I said. I exhaled long and slow and took my left hand and pressed down on the table next to my face, hoping to leverage myself up. I didn’t move.

“Okay, stay down,” Ryan said. He took my left hand and put it down by my side. “You’re going to breathe in for six counts, hold your breath for six counts, then breathe out for ten counts.” I couldn’t catch my breath but I followed along with Ryan and after three rounds was breathing normally. 

“Better?” he asked. 

Yes. I sat up without any problem and wiped the tears from my face. Ryan was talking again. He always made it seem like everything that was happening was perfectly normal. He had me do a very simple exercise that took us back to one of our first appointments. I felt like someone put the training wheels back on my bike after I’d already been cruising the neighborhood on a two-wheeler for months. 

Forty-eight hours later the immense pain was gone, just as Ryan said. 

Less than a year later I had minimal neck pain. Every once in a while when it creeps back in I do my exercises and am completely fine within forty-eight hours, and sometimes, I wake up in the morning, comfortably on my back, with my hands clasped behind my head.

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Bleecker Bombs

A new podcast episode is out! 

I read My Fair Junkie by Amy Dresner. Towards the end of the book she has a life changing moment when she sees a breathwork guy. Glennon Doyle had a similar experience towards the end of her book in Love Warrior. What is with these authors having pivotal, important moments just by breathing???

I Googled “breathwork near me” to find out. Listen to the episode to hear how it went. :)

Spotify, overcast.fm, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts.

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Until next week,

Charlie