More on Exercise & Meditation

Starting into my second week of exercise and meditation.  I am happy to report that I never missed a day of exercising or meditation although my meditation was cut short by about ten minutes yesterday evening when my nurse arrived early.  Not a problem as I'd already told myself that 10'/day meditating was my minimum goal.  Did the full 20' today though.

I told my PT yesterday that I'd been doing well so we agreed that I should add some more exercises.  I don't believe I mentioned that the first set were all done form a sitting position.  Consequently, the new set from yesterday are all standing.  I tried them out today and found that three repetitions was a bit much so started doing two.  Will stick with that untilI I feel ready to do three.  Oh, and I was doing a couple of neck stretches but felt that they were irritating my neck so my PT suggested I simply stop doing them.  Done.

It is a fact that exercising actually decreases pain and, with the exception of my neck, I am finding that general body/joint pain, has in fact decreased over the last several days.  I'm well on my way to becoming the new me, and it's only been a week! Life is good.

Exercise & Meditation

Now  that I am getting my diet under control (it's still a work in progress but coming along nicely) it's time to turn my attention to exercise. After all, it's no secret that diet on its own can only do so much and the same can be said for exercise.

So, before Christmas, I asked my physiotherapist for a new set of stretching exercises and suggested that, being the music lover that I am, perhaps it would help me get motivated  if we set the exercises to music of a suitable tempo.  I had already done some experimenting with this idea and decided that a waltz beat would work best, something with a tempo of around forty beats/minute or thereabouts.  Since I had recently purchased Diana Krall's latest release, 'Glad Rag Doll', I looked there first and found a couple of waltzes, 'Prairie Lullaby' and 'Wide River to Cross'  that seemed to work.  Also found a couple of Holly Cole tunes later on and added them to the list.

This past Thursday, my PT gave me the list of exercises and I started doing them along with the music on Friday.  Have done them every day and am finding the experience quite enjoyable and satisfying. Will be looking for some more waltz tempo songs for the future in case I get tired of these ones.

I simply do a stretch for two three counts which means holding it for between 2 and 3 seconds, rest for the same amount of time, and repeat two more times before moving on to either the other side or a new stretch.

Following the exercises, I thought it would be a good idea to meditate which I have done on all four days.  Even though I have been meditating off and on for close to 20 years, I decided to use an app on my iphone to get me going.  The first part is loving kindness or 'meta' meditation followed by mindfulness of breath meditation, the entire session lasting 20 minutes.  Once I get into a routine I will probably switch to a less structured technique but for now this s working well. It really feels good to be meditating on a regular basis again.

I must confess that, even though I am aware of the benefits of exercise, I have been negligent in doing any since I was diagnosed 9 years ago.  The reason, laziness is the best I can do.  But when it has taken my neck three months to heal from a simple sprain I realized just how poor my muscle tone was and it was this realization as much as anything which prompted me to ask my PT for a new set of exercises.

New diet for daily exercise for the body and meditation for the soul, things can only get better, right?  Wish me luck.

My Other Hobby

In the very early stages of Scleroderma, my hands were one of the first things to be affected. In fact it was my hands which, when viewed by a rheumatologist on my first visit, determined my diagnosis within 30 seconds of my arrival. And within six months or so they had reached the stage in which they remain to this day. I would estimate that I have lost about 90 % of the movement in my finger joints and my hands are locked in a half fist position. This is all fairly typical of the disease so I'll say no more.

One result of all this was that very early on I got rid of my two guitars and the one amplifier I owned because I was convinced that I would never play again. I was never really very good at it anyway but did find it a good way to relax.

Last May (2008) I started thinking about how much I missed playing the guitar and wondered if there wasn't some way that I could take it up again with the result that I started doing some research on the internet. Without going into the entire proecess let me just say that by mid June I took delivery of a 1960 something

Japanese made lap steel I'd bought on ebay. My son-in-law brought

over a small practice amp, restrung the guitar for me, plugged it in and I haven't looked back since. The beauty of this setup is that by using an open tuning, placing a slide on my left thumb and a pick on my right I can make this thing wail and it doesn't sound half bad. In fact I can now play by ear and improvise, something which I could never do before.

In July I bought my own amp, a Fender G-DEC Jr and last month I bought a second guitar, this one a 1950's something National lap steel, the ones with the killer pickups. This one needs a minor repair before it is playable but I hope to get that taken care of in the new year, as soon as we get a reasonably warm day with clear sidewalks so I can make the three block trip to the guitar shop. And why, you may ask, do I need two guitars? Well, the plan is to leave one in my son-in-law's music room so I can jam with my daughter on her mandolin and also my son-in-law and his musician friends. The other guitar will remain in my apartment for practicing. Now if I just had one of those old vintage tube amps I could really get that killer blues tone going. Been watching them on ebay but no deals to date.

And what's to be learned from all this? Well, simply that one doesn't necessarily have to give up the things they love if they keep an open mind and are willing to adapt to new ways of doing things. And this is true of so much of my life now. It's all about maintaining a positive attitude and finding new ways of doing things.

Update

I now have a third guitar, a post war Rickenbacher T-Logo, and a 1948 Oahu amp. The only problem is my neighbours complained about the noise to the building superintendent so now I have to turn down the volume. Not near as much fun but hey I'm still having a blast. Oh yeah, I'm also looking for an acoustic lap steel so I won't be limited to playing where there's an electrical outlet.