Exercise Pain

photograph courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/

Exercise pain is one of the most common complaints I hear from patients who come to me for Bowen therapy. I find it ironic that people are determined to incorporate an exercise routine in their lives to stay fit and healthy, but end up complaining about injuries as well as exercise pain.

Exercise pain is your body's way of telling you that you are pushing your body beyond its normal capacity and you need to adjust your exercise routine to a lesser degree than what you wish to achieve. I know that we all want to look fit, firm and slim for aesthetic reasons as well as for health reasons. It is common knowledge that exercise lowers bad cholesterol, improves blood circulation, gets rid of fat and flabby skin, removes toxins from the body, stabilizes blood pressure and improves resistance to disease by raising our immune system. But it is not suppose to injure the body or cause exercise pain.

Each one of us are built and made differently. Our bodies are unique in their own right and have their own advantages and disadvantages. I for example, come out of a yoga class or a Pilates session feeling light, flexible, taller (as if my spine has been stretched longer by 2 inches), straighter and re-energized. I feel tired at some degree; but it is only the right amount of tiredness and it compels me to sleep earlier than usual (since I am an insomniac) and gives me the deepest and most restful sleep at night. I never come out of a yoga or a Pilates class complaining of exercise pain.

Now others may not resonate with yoga or Pilates and may find it too "slow" for their taste or too difficult, especially if their bodies are not supple enough. Some people prefer high impact exercises like aerobics, tennis, badminton, golf, running, kickboxing, and others. Now I personally have nothing against sports or high impact exercises. If they work for you, then by all means, stick to what you enjoy and love doing. But be aware when your body starts feeling tired and tells you to stop. Often enough, when I ask people who complain of exercise pain if they pushed themselves to continue even when they were starting to feel weak or tired, the answer was always "Yes."

When the body has already reached its physical limit and starts sending you signals that it is tired, it is necessary that you begin warming down or wrapping up your game and calling it a day. If not, you run the risk of injuring yourself or finding yourself waking up the next day complaining about exercise pain. Once you begin to experience exercise pain regularly, it won't be long before it develops into chronic pain or worse, a more serious injury.

Also consider that some forms of exercise, especially sports, have a higher risk of causing injuries especially when you do not prepare your body properly beforehand with stretching exercises or correct warm-ups. Foregoing with these necessary preparations are another major cause of exercise pain. So always make it a habit and a discipline to warm up before you exercise as well as warm down at the end of each session. The muscles need to be gently stretched and allowed to loosen up after a rigorous activity to prevent it from causing you exercise pain brought on by muscle stiffness, tightening, adhesions or restrictions.

Exercise pain can certainly be avoided if you know how to listen to your body and respect its limitations. Harness your sense of competitiveness, especially if you engage in competitive sports as a means of exercise, by knowing when to stop. Don't brand yourself as a weakling or a failure because your body just does not feel in top form on certain days -- because that will happen. Your body is not always in the best condition every single day. So protect and care for your body in a practical and wise manner. After all, its the only one you've got and the quality of your life would be so much happier and more fulfilling if you are not limited by an injury or exercise pain.

Rescue Relationships

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Rescue Relationships in your life by healing yourself first. We all want to rescue relationships in our lives that we feel are not working out, are one-sided, are giving us stress, making us lose sleep and causing us emotional pain that we no longer can function normally in our everyday lives. But I have learned through experience, and through the truthful and practical teachings of wiser people, than it is only after we heal ourselves first that we will learn to rescue relationships.

Rescue relationships as you would like to heal your own problems. Look into your life first and analyze the kind of thoughts you normally deal with in your head or the kind of emotions you go through whenever you are faced with a dilemma. When you come across a problem at work, for example, what is your automatic reaction? Do you immediately tell yourself, "I can't handle this!" and feel defeated right away? Do you procrastinate or pretend the problem does not exist and refuse to work out the difficulties head-on so it can be solved?

Now look into your relationships. When a problem comes up between you and your partner, or you and a sibling, do you say the same thing -- "I can't handle this!" -- and also go into denial about the issue and pretend it does not exist? I bet you do exactly the same thing. And do you know why I say that? Because the most essential and most valuable relationship in your life is not with other people. The most important relationship in your life is with yourself. YOU with YOU. Not YOU with her or YOU with him. YOU with YOU. So to rescue relationships with others, you need to look into how you are with yourself first and foremost.

People will come and go in our lives. But you will be with You for an entire lifetime -- and maybe even longer than that. If you need to rescue relationships, then it is necessary that you rescue your personal relationship with yourself first. After all, what if you suddenly found yourself alone one day? Wouldn't it be so liberating and fulfilling to still feel happy and content even if you're alone because you have a healthy and loving relationship with yourself? If you can barely stand being with your own person, do you wonder why anybody else can't stand being with you?

Do you truly love yourself? Do you give yourself the credit that is due you? Or are you hard on yourself and are you your own worst critic? Are you honest with yourself or do you try to fool yourself most of the time? How you are with yourself is how you are with other people. Let me repeat that: How you are with yourself is how you are with other people.

I should know. The primary purpose of my life's work is to rescue relationships especially your relationship with YOU. However I still find myself struggling and learning to have a better relationship with my own self every now and then. I can actually handle criticism from anybody else with a gracious heart and with much gratitude, but the minute I get home and I'm all by myself, I will immediately start punishing myself for having disappointed another person. I will beat myself up, figuratively speaking of course, for whatever it was I did that brought about the criticism in the first place.

So to prove my point, you probably would like to ask me now if I am harsh and critical towards the people I am in relationship with. The answer is yes -- absolutely. People in my family know this about me. But because they love me unconditionally and are aware that I am even harder on myself, they tend to be more accepting of my personality and are even the ones who constantly remind me to be more forgiving towards myself. Plus they don't really have a choice in the matter because whether they like it or not, they are stuck with me forever.

But as for my primary relationships, I have failed in that department so many times because my partners could just not handle my overly critical and judgmental attitude towards their personalities. I was actually advised by one wise and beautiful person whom I was lucky to have in my life at one time, "Love yourself more Michelle. I think I love you more than you love yourself." I was furious the first time I heard it. I was so enraged that he had the nerve to tell me that! I thought it was just a sneaky excuse to try and get out of our relationship because I truly believed I loved myself. Of course I do! How can I not?

But did I really love myself? Years later and many failed relationships after, I realized he was right after all. When I learned to start looking deep inside my emotions and thoughts and studied how I treated myself, I was shocked to know that I was very judgmental, harsh and unforgiving towards myself and naturally towards everybody else. That's when I finally understood what my friend meant. And ever since that time, I began the long and difficult, but rewarding task of healing my personal relationship so I can effectively rescue relationships as well.

Rescue relationships with a open heart and an open mind. And most importantly, learn to laugh at your own mistakes and don't be too hard on yourself as I have been towards me. As you discover more about yourself; learn to embrace it, have a good laugh at your realizations and look at it as a learning process. Don't be too serious about it. No one is grading you and no one has the right to fail you in your process. The only person who can fail you is yourself. So take a deep breath and let it all go as you exhale. And make a commitment to yourself that YOU are your most important relationship in life and then, and only then, will you find it a whole lot easier to rescue relationships.