Another good reason to be a yogi…

Tags

AcroYoga, claustrophobia, coffin-like, kirtan, kumbhaka, lasers, Lighthouse Family, magnetic forces, MRI, nanna nap, panic attack, pesky shoulder, physio, Yoga Balance, yogi

All that breath control’s gotta be good for something other than kumbhaka, right? And yes, it is!

It’s fantastic for when you find yourself lying half-naked on a table and wearing one of those flimsy paper gowns, all squished up into a coffin-like machine to get an MRI of one’s left shoulder. Yes indeed folks – that was my Friday night last week!

All on account of that pesky shoulder injury of mine. Hopefully, it’s met its match now and won’t defy diagnosis much longer. I’m grateful for that. But I’m not grateful for the non-rebate-able $280 bill! Apparently I can’t even claim it on my health insurance (and for the US folk, here in Australia we do actually have affordable health insurance that’s usually pretty good at rebating medical services).

So. The MRI is one heck of a weird experience. One of the first questions they ask you before getting started is whether or not you suffer claustrophobia. And hey, even if you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll dislike being inside an MRI machine while being strapped to the table/bed. It probably isn’t so bad if you’re getting the lower half of your body scanned. But when it’s your head or shoulders, you get ferried head-first into the roundish un-spacious innards of the machine.

And being a yogi helps because you’re instructed to breathe from the diaphragm (long and slow), to make sure the pictures don’t come out blurry. I can only imagine how tough it might be to manage this task if you’re finding the whole thing rather anxiety-inducing!

As for me – well, it’s not been too many months since my last panic attack, so I played it safe and mostly kept my eyes shut, focusing on breathing and repeating my mantra. I was given headphones to wear in a (failed) attempt to block out the really loud noises the machine makes – it sort of sounded like road works with lots of banging. More practically, the headphones allowed the technician to communicate with me while I was entombed (it definitely felt a little tomb-like when I did open my eyes for a few seconds). But I really could’ve done without the bland GOLD FM music streaming through them at the same time.

The interesting part about it was that I could feel the magnetic forces as the scans were in progress. All up I had about six scans and each one took around 6-8 minutes. The sensations were quite varied – everything from heat to prickly-ness, to feeling like lasers were radiating through me. The weirdest was feeling as though my body was being pushed around at a particle level and from the inside. Which was probably all of those big magnets in the MRI machine I guess…

Anyhow, I see my physio this Thursday. Fingers crossed I don’t need surgery. Though I guess if I do… argh! More $$ I don’t have but will have to find because while I can cope for a bit, I don’t really want my repertoire of asana to be limited on a permanent basis if I can help it. And it’d be nice if that pain thing could be taken care of, too. ;)

The rest of the weekend was much more fun! Kirtan and after-kirtan dinner on Saturday night followed by Yoga Balance (a form of AcroYoga) on Sunday…

I had no idea how much energy this kind of thing takes (prompting a late afternoon nanna nap)! I got to be both the base (person on the bottom) and the flier (person balancing on top of another person). No photos from my session though, but maybe next time. It was So Much Fun!!

Woke up yesterday still feeling sleepy and tired, so it was a very mellow start to the week. Perhaps that’s why I had a bit of a musical flashback to just over ten years ago, when I was working as the office manager of a chiropractic/natural health business in Sydney. We used to like playing beautiful and uplifting music and one of the chiropractors who worked there introduced us to the Lighthouse Family.

It’s not so much my musical taste now, but I did LOVE these guys back then. And listening to them yesterday made me feel really great. Enjoy!!

~Svasti

This, that and chicken pie

Tags

AC joint shoulder, Anxiety, chicken pie, Doctor dude, free pizza, Mark Whitwall, nausea, neighbourhood moggy, panic attack, Photoshop, Scanner dude, Shamwow, sound-glasses, torrential downpour, Twitter, ultrasound, wince, Yoga

Won a competition on Twitter last week that meant I was to receive delivery of not one but  five pizzas from Crust. And not over a bunch of different days. ALL IN THE SAME NIGHT!!

Managed to negotiate for a Sunday evening delivery instead of Friday and invited a few people ‘round to assist in the eating. Great competition! I entered on a lark but somehow won the dang thing. Never happens to me. Til now I guess.

Also, just finished making a poster for Nadine to promote Mark Whitwell’s visit to Melbourne in a few weeks. Now I look at it, I can see a few things I woulda done differently or refined… but it’s not too bad I guess. Teaching myself Photoshop is fun… ;)

Click to view larger image!

Finally had that ultrasound on my left shoulder (from my bike crash) couple of days back. Sure, I shoulda done it months ago perhaps… *cough*. See, I’m just not terribly good at taking care of myself although I’m working on it!

After almost being drowned in the incredibly sudden torrential downpour, I wait almosted half an hour to see the Scanner dude. In the waiting room I was subjected to daytime TV (which I rarely watched even when I was unemployed) and learned of something called a Shamwow, which apparently people like. Even 13 year old boys.

Just as I was getting impatient enough to interrogate the receptionists, my name was called. And it went a little like this:

Scanner dude: Okay, take off your top and put this gown on… are you done? Great, sit over here… *prod poke scan* *repeat* *repeat* So that tattoo you’ve got on your back, does it mean anything?

Me: Yeah… [wincing at prod/poke/scan] I got it in Thailand…

Scanner dude: Does it have any significance?

Me: Yeah… but it’s a little complicated to explain [especially to you right now while I’m half naked and you’re prodding and poking my sore shoulder and there’s a very strong possibility that you’re Jewish and therefore might be offended by my heathenness anyways…]

Scanner dude: Okay… *prod poke scan* *repeat* *repeat*

Me: [sharp intake of breath] *WINCE*

Scanner dude: Ah, you didn’t like that one did you?

Me: *head goes all smooshy* *stomach churns*

Scanner dude: *swiftly leaves room & returns with Doctor dude*

Doctor dude: Hi, I’m the Doctor dude.

Me: Hi…

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: So what’s going on?

Me: I’m not sure, but I feel really nauseous…

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: Why do you feel nauseous? Are you in pain? Does your shoulder injury normally cause nausea?

Me: *breathes deeply* *head between knees*

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: Where is the pain? Do you have the pain all the time? What happened to you? Why is your shoulder injured?

Me: I fell off my bike last year and it flared up again at the end of the year. I’ve never felt sick like this before though. It just came on when Scanner dude pressed down on my shoulder…

Doctor dude: *Asks more questions in rapid fire that I can’t answer* Well, it’s very difficult to diagnose when you can’t give us more information.

Me: *head swirls* *body temperature rises*

Doctor dude: Okay well I don’t think its rotator cuff damage. It might be your AC joint…

Me: Okay…

Yeah, whatever. All I know is that I have a doctor’s appointment Thursday night and my shoulder hasn’t stopped hurting since that little episode. I briefly Googled ‘AC joint shoulder’ but I didn’t like what I read. So very cowardly-ish, I’ve stopped researching for now.

And today for no reason I can tell (although perhaps the abovementioned trauma had something to do with it?), I’m in Panic Attack World. Not too serious. I don’t feel like I’m going to die. But still, it’s far from comfortable. My heart and lungs are heavily congested and my heart rate is up, of course.

I’m safely ensconced in the office and there’s no stress in my job (unless you count having to revise budgets for my projects). And yet I’m in the grip of a very physical reaction I can’t control.

But I’m sans Emergency Essence (note to self: fix that), and it’s all about making it to the end of the day. And the tram ride home.

Everything looks weirder when you’re in a heightened state of anxiety. The person I sat next to on the tram that I thought was a girl? Turns out to be a boy with VERY emo and feminine hair. And how was I supposed to know? I mean, she/he had the kind of thunder thighs you normally only see on a girl (speaking from experience)… Everything is too loud. I want my sound-glasses (a little invention I thought of where putting them on creates an ambient noise filter, no iPod or headphones required). I’m too strung up to read.

So I just breathe.

Normally in these states, I go to ground. Burrow deeply into the couch and try to remain vewy vewy still… not that it helps. But comatose is usually better than anything else. Or so I’d thought.

I’ve had this idea in my head since last weekend that I wanted to make a chicken pie. Never made one before, but seemed like tonight was the night. Had to go get an ingredient at my corner store – another thing I never could’ve done before while in Panic Attack mode. And yet I did. And I liked it, the little walk down the street.

Even spoke to the neighbourhood black and white moggy who always looks seriously freaked out. But he/she is actually very friendly. So we spoke for a bit and puss listened to my ramblings. Even took a couple of steps towards me from its position on the brick wall. I giggled.

A photo of kitty from another day

Maybe it was the air. Or the cat. Or the fact that it’d stopped raining. Or observing my breath. Or all of the above. Or perhaps I’m just getting better at handling the panic attacks when they come. Maybe it’s that, and so I don’t freak out as much (adding to the fun). Dunno.

But it turns out that being active, running around and making food works just as well (if not better) than being comatose for the episode’s duration. Or maybe that’s just how it is now, given I’m less comatose-like in general? Can I mark that one down to progress perhaps?

Almost back to normal after about six hours of stress from no known source… and the pie was good, too.

My chicken & vegie pie!

~Svasti