the measure of devotion, and what to do about it

recently i watched a stroke patient with disabilities so severe he couldn't sit straight fight to rise from a wheelchair and walk unassisted through the front doors of the Basilique de Notre Dame de l'Immaculee Conception (english: Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception) at the Sanctuaire de Notre Dame de Lourdes (english: Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes).

it was an agonizingly slow, painful process, with the man hunched over his curled, atrophied right arm and dragging a twisted, limp right leg. each step was a shuffle of the left foot a few inches forward, a lurch of the body to pull the other forward, and then a pause to balance the total precariously on a single good limb, before repeating the process once again.

he had only the assistance of 1 person who appeared to be a relative. but she did little other than to hold open the door to the basilica and motion for others behind them to go ahead and pass. i thought at first to try and help, but then i noticed that he had refused the offer of aid from church monitors and had left his wheelchair behind, and realized that for him, this was something that he decided he had to do on his own. not so much as a display of determination, but more an act of personal devotion to what he--and so many others like him--believe to be a place of miracles from the divine.

i have not gotten him out of my mind.

i am not Catholic, and don't consider myself particularly religious, but i found the image of him deeply moving. shuffling out from the glare of summer heat into the cool shade of the church interior, silhouetted against the votive candles and urn of holy water by the entrance, he was in that moment an expression of a commitment made to transcend the limitations of an earthly body and become an embodiment of faith to realize the possibilities of something more.

this is something that i can and must respect.

because i know the desire to exceed the confines of this physical body, the yearning to go beyond, the need for something greater. i know it as the motivation that drove me to undertake this life and take it with both hands and wrest it from its complacency and push it from its indolence and kick and drag and hurl and crawl and throw and scrape and stagger and fall...and shuffle...and limp...as a display of determination. as an act of devotion. to transcend the body. to realize something more.

because i know the meaning, the feeling, the living of the moment when you go beyond what you think is possible and you enter a different place entirely beyond anything you've ever known.

and because i know that means that devotion is not just about belief and that sometimes, just sometimes, faith is instead itself made manifest.

as the mantra says: nothing is impossible.

so who am i to judge another? we are, ultimately, all pilgrims on our own ways.

so what am i to do to help another? we can, and must, respect the pilgrimages we take.

so how am i to recognize another? we see the nature of our paths as we proceed, and acknowledge each other as we pass by, and remember that we believe in more than what is possible.

dominus vobiscum

more dynamic warm-up exercises

it's not been fun dealing w these nagging injuries. it has, to say the least, put a serious crimp into my fitness level and disrupted my routine. the consequences have been physical (being a fat slob) and mental (being out of sorts for being a flat slob, and being out sorts from not being able to follow my routine).

what's been bothering me the most is that the injuries won't go away. whenever i seem to be getting back into a groove and making progress, the problems come right back again, forcing me into another shutdown for rest and recuperation.

i'm starting suspect that i may be focusing on the wrong thing: i've been obsessing on the post-injury recovery when maybe i should have been focusing on riding the rehabilitation and following pre-injury preventative practices.  and by that i mean i should have been doing more to make sure i was limiting my body's susceptibility to re-aggravating these injuries. specifically--and some of you have probably guessed it--i should have been doing more regarding warm-up/cooldown routines and dynamic range-of-motion work to promote flexibility and resilience.

i admit, i've slacked off on this over the past year...which is about the time these injuries started to linger. i got complacent, and figured that being fit i could forego the warm-up/cooldown and dynamic range-of-motion stuff. in reality, it may have been because of such stuff that i was able to maintain fitness. i'm going to have become a little more religious about that stuff once again.

to honor this recommitment, i'm providing some current Youtube videos that i found useful. maybe those of you experiencing the same issues i am will find them so as well. cheers.

i'll give you an update, hopefully sooner rather than later.
http://youtu.be/AW1RNkryf1k


http://youtu.be/4TIRWwiAflw


http://youtu.be/E7ghNKOH9To


http://youtu.be/23IAMXjzISg


http://youtu.be/KlRkA8ToONc


http://youtu.be/uqwBIItHHrA

we're not fat! (er, well, um, maybe?)

you would hope the health and fitness movement is finally having an effect after seeing this:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/news/america-fattest-obese-un-144341236.html

the article references a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which you can read here:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3300e/i3300e.pdf

according to the FAO, the U.S. no longer has the highest percentage of obese people in the world. it's now Mexico.

um, so, i guess hooray?

it is a positive trend, going from #1 to #2. but #2 isn't exactly anything to be proud of, especially when you go behind the rankings to see what they're referring to: Mexico has 32.8% of its population being obese, while the United States has 31.8%, both of which are obscenely high numbers.

in addition, it's still disturbing when you realize that these obesity rates are rising. you can see the numbers for the United States:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/163205/snapshot-obesity-rate-ticking.aspx

so the point to draw from this is that while the relative rankings may have changed, the absolute scale of the problem remains the same: we're all getting fatter. and that's not good.

health and fitness folks, we've got a long way to go.

international surfing day 2013

today, Thursday, June 20, 2013 is International Surfing Day. happy International Surfing Day, kids!

i may be injured and out of commission, but i still love and respect the environment within which we all live our lives. so save the waves and share the waves!

to learn more, i suggest the following:

Surfrider Foundation: http://isd.surfrider.org/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Surfing_Day
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intsurfingday
Life Magazine: http://life.time.com/sports/international-surfing-day-classic-photos-of-surfers-from-hawaii-to-peru/#1
Surfing for Life: http://www.surfingforlife.com/history.html
History of Surfing: http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring04/britton/history.htm

International Surfing Day has grown to more than 200 different events spread across 30 different countries, and meant to be a celebration of surfing but also a way of raising awareness for the oceans. so take time to educate yourself and others--whether or not surfers, we are all still affected by the resources the ocean provides us.

a nagging injury bug

i'm having some knee issues, and try as i might otherwise, it seems to have become a nagging bug. it's at the point where the soreness persists almost continuously. i'm not quite sure how this happened.

i haven't been engaged in any activity levels any higher than normal. in fact, my activity levels this year have actually been lower compared to the usual ironman training cycle, and i've actually only recently been returning to some base levels of fitness to resume the ironman training load i typically follow during the summer.

what's happened, however, is that i'm having soreness in the inside and outside left parts of my knee, in what feels like ligaments or tendons. i feel it when i'm extending the joint (i.e., bending it), particularly when i'm putting my weight on the knee--such as when i'm going up steps, rising from a kneeling position, doing a lunge, etc. 

i've tried to rest it, but just when i think it's gone it comes right back. it wouldn't bother me so much, except that 1) i've never felt anything like this before, 2) it seems to becoming chronic, and 3) we all know the magnitude of the risk associated w knee injuries, particularly ligament ones.

i've checked around on-line, but i haven't found anything that really helps me understand what's going on. the best i've seen so far is this:

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/knee-ligament-injuries

and these videos:

outside knee pain: http://youtu.be/ULjca96n23o

and

inside knee pain: http://youtu.be/bO3_dJS5ywk

i know that at this point the solution is rest, but the question is how much? and is there anything i can do to prevent it in the future?

i notice that in the videos they mention a knee problem is usually indicative of issues above and below the knee, which is something consistent i've heard w all the physical therapists i've worked with in the past. particularly the point about weakness in the buttocks and lower back--this is something that my physical therapists have pointed out, and something i've been working on over the years. but i'm not sure if this is the source of what i'm experiencing now (like i said, i've not felt this type of soreness before).

i'm going to try these and see what happens:
injury prevention: http://youtu.be/znAZZJwYzcU

knee massage: http://youtu.be/qJQz3FlTUqg

still, i'm a little bummed, since i was just starting to ramp the training load. and i was just starting to get back to feeling like my usual self after several months of really bad and really inconsistent training. and it really sucks to see other people going hard while i feel like i'm limited to 50%. i'm hoping i don't have to go to the doctor, because that would really hurt the wallet right now.

let's hope this heals itself soon.

national donut day 2013

yeah, i know. my posts are a little slow. i've been navigating a bit of anomie, and charting things have been a little more challenging than usual. i also had some injuries and a double case of a cold/flu which put me out of commission for a few weeks.

but i'm back on the wagon now--or at least in the process of trying to get back. my workouts lately have been a tale of ebbs and flows, with alternating weeks of progress and setbacks. i think i'm starting to get back to a semblance of fitness, but i'm going to hold off on a definitive declaration until we get further into summer.

what won't help, however, is that today is National Donut Day in the U.S.

yes. yes, indeed.

and apparently, it's not just a made-up holiday, but one with an official declaration, a historical basis in American history, and a charitable cause to raise money for the Salvation Army. good vibes all around to match the fat tire it adds to your waistline. who doesn't want to celebrate that?

you can check it out for yourself:

http://donutdayusa.com/
http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/donut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Doughnut_Day

and there's even a video:
http://youtu.be/4PoVMwjI2jY


rumors also have it that some donut chains are offering free donuts today.

if you're like me, you probably won't resist, and you may take more than 1. or 2. or 3. or 4. maybe more. in which case, we'll all be regretting it at our next workout.

but let's stay positive and take them as little pockets of fat-adding, body-bloating, insulin-skyrocketing, obesity-inducing globules of sugary blubbery gooey doughy goodness that will incite you to get your big jiggly ass out for a workout to work off all that cellulite.

boo-yah! get some.

playlist: all my days

note: it's been awhile. either for posts or playlists. i've been doing a lot of thinking. and so while less frequent, my thoughts have been a little more deep. there's not much to be said, just experienced. so these words are a meager attempt to import some of what i've been pondering. and the playlist this time is short. but i think it's on something that runs that deep. and it's something we all know...

we live our journeys in accordance with certain milestones. milestones that, while we certainly don't know them and thus by no means have by any right to expect them, we seem to assume as given and as certain as the coming of the sun in the morning and the arrival of the stars at night. milestones that we take for granted with as little thought to their existence as we give to our own. like the miracle of our breathing through the passage between our birth and death.

school. a job. a car. a house. things. and things, as we're often told and sometimes learn and rarely understand, are just things. devoid of meaning other than what we place in them and empty of life outside of what we imagine for them. and so we are able to accept the realization that they are impermanent and follow the dictum to let them go.  

family. friends. souls. souls are harder to let go. because we distinguish life from the lifeless and hence define life as something more than lifeless, making souls more than things, with meaning beyond what we can comprehend and existence in excess of what we can dream. even though the truth--even as we deny it but invariably discover it, however as much as we want to or not--is that they are all the same: impermanent. transient. as the moments we live in keeping with our each breath.

love. a love. the life of all life. the truth of all truth. the mystery in the riddle in the enigma in the unknown in the eternity that lies at the core of every creation conceived by a creator of the cosmos that lies beyond every universe. this we cling to. that which can only be known with more than one but yet it is the only one that continues. because it has always been and will always be, even in the void in the face of the abyss, and so comforts us before the visage we are never allowed to know and from whose gaze we are not ever allowed to return.

but this, too
even this
is
not
meant. to. be.
as it can only be known with more than one
a very specific, a very special one 
and so requires more than the simple arithmetic addition of numbers
but calls instead for the improbably occurrence of probability
as chance
as uncertain
as incredible
as incomprehensible
as our birth in the face of death
as an awakening with creation in the eternity of silence
as the stars situated in the midst of night
so
even this
is not assured
even this
is not a milestone
even this
if some perchance encounter another and find
it
then they are blessed
but
for the rest of us

our journeys are as they were before. and as they have always have been and will always be. even in the void in the face of the abyss.

before the visage we are never allowed to know and from whose gaze we are not ever allowed to return.

"well i have been searching all of my days
many a road, you know
i’ve been walking on
all of my days
and i’ve been trying to find
what’s been in my mind
as the days keep turning into night 

well i have been quietly standing in the shade
all of my days
watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
all of this rain
and i’ve been trying to find what’s been in my mind
as the days keep turning into night

well many a night i found myself with no friends standing near
all of my days
i cried aloud
i shook my hands
what am i doing here?
all of these days
for i look around me
and my eyes confound me
and it’s just too bright
as the days keep turning into night

now i see clearly
it’s you i’m looking for
all of my days
so i’ll smile
i know i’ll feel this loneliness no more
all of my days
for i look around me
and it seems you found me
and it’s coming into sight
as the days keep turning into night
as the days keep turning into night
and even breathing feels all right
yes, even breathing feels all right
now even breathing feels all right
yes even breathing feels all right"
--alexi murdoch, all my days