breathe with me

there are many activities that leave the body sore. i know of a few. but that first week of training in taekwondo—when you’re more used to sitting and typing or sitting and watching movies—is one you won’t forget. it’s this pained prideful condition. where every move hurts, and if you have a cough that is trying to clear your lungs, well. that’s a rough combination to have with sore rib muscles. but so sore. so very sore. so sore your toes feel broken. so sore, each damn toe feels independently sore and you ask yourself how on earth did i strain each toe muscle???

at the same time, you feel so good. your body is rebuilding itself stronger so that you can do more tomorrow than you could yesterday. you feel your flesh reinvigorated, responsive, full of random bursts of energy. and sore. but strong. so oddly strong that your own body feels alien. as if you woke up with ten times the amount of muscles in your frame you ever had, each one communicating with your brain, saying HEY i’m HERE! hey! HEY! HEY! and while it hurts…you marvel at this new condition. walking around the house—hobbling around the house—you may stop and suddenly strip your shorts at random moments to run your fingers over the newly-stone-strong rivet of muscle in strong relief along your hip. you are almost scared of the strong feeling in your torso. this thick, wiry weave of muscles suddenly at attention and taut.

it’s addictive. because that pain fades. and so does the supernatural feeling of strength, settling eventually into simply being “in shape.” but all the while you feel that pain, you know you have called upon your body to rise higher. and it is. it hurts, but you will be stronger, faster, and imbued with just a bit more stamina and endurance, all conditions being equal. there are of course, other physical factors that can possibly interfere with that improved performance and wellness. limited oxygen supply, or poor health in one area or another. conditions that won’t go away in some cases…like lungs that don’t work right.

soon, the pain fades and while you feel bouncier and stronger, there is this surge of energy. rushing through your body. and an impatience….or, no. an angst. an ache…a potential. a store of potential that now awaits use. you have called upon your physical self for more resources. it has responded. now it demands validation for that response.

so you get out there and push more. gently, but firmly, forward. beyond. and there will be more pain. and more feeling of health. and pride. and then, more demand for more activity.

the human body is so beautiful in action. and by action, i mean even even sitting still, with these rivers and tides of blood that move through us, feeding our flesh; with the thoughts and electricity that navigate our gray matter and make sense of our material and everchanging world; with the life-giving air the feeds our brain through our lungs and keeps that ocean of life moving in and out and in and out of our body. just living, the body is amazing. and at times, alien to  itself. at times it does strange things. sends the wrong signals. does self-harming things.

i threw out a few paragraphs the other day from an article i found thought provoking. it spoke of (psychiatric) diagnoses as dangerous; as limiting our view and experience of a person, or of life. i let these ideas turn in my self for a while, sometimes. tasting all the layers of my reception of a thought. make some kind of sense of it. i think i agree with that idea. That is, when you begin thinking of yourself as a diagnosis, you begin shrinking. When your identity becomes In What Way I Cannot Do, a path is carved out and that’s where your feet will fall. At the same time, a diagnosis can be very important. for different reasons. to treat something that would get worse without attention. to have in idea why you cannot do what others around you can.

i had no diagnosis for whatever it is that is wrong with my lungs in high school. until i was out of school for three years. and what a relief it was to hear that i had something. exercise induced asthma they called it, after a pulmonary functions test, which involved a series of lung exercises…that are strangely painful in ways not expected. especially, i suppose, if you have cause to get this particular diagnosis. it’s not the kind of asthma that gives you sudden fits when you get into a dusty room. this is a type where during periods of exercise, the brain, called upon to open the bronchial tubes to supply the blood with more oxygen because the body is operating at an elevated level of physical stress, instead shrinks them, cutting off oxygen supply to your blood when you need it most. which, of course, means you must stop whatever it is you are doing, be it running, jumping, or kicking. there simply comes a point where your chest aches because your blood is starved for oxygen and your heart can’t pump fast enough to bring it.

other people around you can keep going. they seem superhuman. your chest is seizing up and you want to push through. you try. you are embarrassed at how fast you are fading. you call upon your willpower to plow through. and pain seizes your heart with increasingly iron fingers and you simply cannot do it. sweat runs in sheets down your face, your neck, your scalp, your back. soon, you curl down to the ground and rest, heaving. others may say something or not.

not having a diagnosis means you are Normal, but insufficient. not as good. i actually thought i had a heart problem when i was a teen because of this. so having a diagnosis means you can console yourself that there is a REASON you can’t do what they can. but it doesn’t remove the reality of it. and the danger of using that as an excuse in your own mind is always a possibility. i don’t do that. i push until i can’t go anymore. and then i stop. what else is there to do?

i remember falling into the locker room in high school after a day of particularly hot and harsh jv football practice, vomit rising in the back of my throat. my skin was wet and electric, pores nearly puckered with a thirst for oxygen. screaming shimmery feeling all along my scalp. i fell onto the metal bench and my lungs scraped the air for precious oxygen. i couldn’t do it anymore, football practice. not another day. it was too hard. i told my best friend that night. he was the second smallest in our class. i was, of course, the smallest. we teamed up when everyone coupled off for drills. which meant that i had to carry him up my back, both of us with football gear on, as we ran drills up the super steep hill that ringed our playing field. however, we were not equal in size, and there was a gap between “smallest” and “second smallest” that was a bit steep.

he responded strongly when i told him i had decided to quit the team. his was a sports family, and i was at his house when i told him. he had eight siblings. generations, practically, of sports achievers. talking of quitting  there was heresy. i wasn’t even thinking that he had to be partially concerned with pairing up with someone even bigger than himself if i was no longer on the team. not to be ungenerous, however. i think he didn’t want me to quit because of what it would “say” to everyone about me. or what it meant to him. both. also, he didn’t want to lose my presence on the team, sure.

i let him talk me out of quitting. i stayed on, finished the school year as the smallest running back tri-valley junior varsity had who lost three yards the only time he carried the ball in a game. but i finished.

i’m proud of that decision. always have been. i think it was the first time i really really wanted to quit something, and pushed through. this is no small thing when it comes to small town football, either, let’s be real. being on a team or not will have an effect on your social standing. even if not, quitting sure will.

i think hanging in there was probably a very good lesson for me. i think quitting high school a year later was a good decision, too. but while i left with the lesson that i could push through pain and against my own desire to take the softer road, i left with no understanding of what was wrong with my body. or that there was anything wrong. i had my own ideas of what was going on. and it would be another four years or so before a doctor told me why i could never finish a basketball game without resting.

comparative to most people i’ve had reason and means by which to measure, i am a fast moving person. i won’t pretend i am not proud of it. it is, of course, beyond my doing. like my good muscle tone, i attribute it to not much more than genes. but i don’t mind being proud of my physical skills or shape. i won’t put that away for anyone, that pride. i don’t care what their problem is. more than one or two people tried to physically control and degrade and humiliate me growing up. it is my pleasure to nonetheless be fast enough to run circles around many people. small and agile and strong and super quick. when i hit that court, or mat, people just don’t know where i’ll be in the next second. which is why i love challenge like taekwondo. that speed and balance doesn’t really matter out in the street-walking world. it is not engaged, utilized, or nurtured. unimportant. feels like a waste. of course you get soft in modern living. easy to be sedentary. but get into a dojang, and then these things matter, then you can make use of more of your entire Self.

but after only a little while of intense output, i use up all the energy. it’s like a video game, and i’d burn that energy bar down to the empty position, while demonstrating triple speed powers. i always thought the wall of pain and depletion i’d hit before long was due to my above average speed and twitch potential (which i’d later learn about as a particular chemical that resides in the cell and “snaps” off a part of itself to produce the quick pop of energy that lets you move fast as well as begin moving from a rest position at all) which i could call on. i assumed the chest thing was a gift/curse balance. i guess i still think of it that way. when it comes to these things, i’m inclined toward a final tallying of balance—not to be confused with Fairness.

i have a prescription of albuterol to huff. which helps a little, tho it doesn’t make my lungs work normally. i still max out and have to stop before most people do. and that’s just life.

i don’t talk about this in the dojang. i don’t want special attention, though it’s humiliating to run out of stamina, as this is one of the things we develop in tkd. but i can still condition myself and my lungs, and i can get better and better. and i will. i figure everyone has drawbacks and challenges, and gifts, too. i’m pretty sure there have been world renowned athletes with asthma. overall, i’m very lucky, and that’s one of the reasons i don’t dwell on the lung thing. no, i don’t love this condition and no i am not at peace with it. this synaptic misroute is not my friend. sometimes i get mad about it. damn you, idiot lungs. why do you have to be weird? can’t you see what i’m trying to do here? stop sabotaging me!! my will is so very strong, my heart inexorable. i push myself on my bike or in my dojang with all intensity available to me. i leave no molecule of effort, no cell, no wavelength of joy behind. but my body remains clay.

and/but i love my body, too. and i will do what i can to help it overcome. more conditioning, healthier air. at least i quit smoking cigarettes…6 years ago? something like that. which means, they are still recovering from that abuse that began at 14 years old. it takes a long time to negate the effects of that poison.

finally, we can’t all be turned up to 11 with every trait. you have to know yourself and use your skills where they excel, and compensate for your weakenesses. like when you create a character in AD&D. high strength, low intelligence? you make that one a warrior. high dexterity, high intelligence, low strength? thief. high intelligence, low strength, high constitution? perhaps a magic-user. that’s life. if i will never have record-breaking endurance, i will use other strengths. regarding self defense, i give special loving focus to strikes that debilitate at once, and that rely on speed. regarding olympic style sparring, i give special loving focus on moves that give advantage to fast reaction time, ability to close in fast, and score through surprise. unpredictability. train and prepare for those who would try to wear you down. what would be their weakness? prepare for that. don’t let yourself be exhausted and left with nothing. and so on.

meanwhile, i do have breath. that, above all, is what matters. as was said the day before yesterday while in conversation about self-defense with an instructor at the dojang, if you don’t have your health, what is there to defend?