The Body War, Part 1

I am in a constant war with my body. Never ending. Well, I would like it to end but right now, it's difficult.

I used to be slender and tall (well, I've always been tall, can't change that). But I was 5'9" and weighed 135 pounds. Skinny. Probably too much so. Apparently good looking. But I don't think even then I thought I looked good although occasionally I look back and think, "Well, okay, I might have been considered hot." Tall, slender and fairly strong, taking Tae Kwon Do almost four nights a week. I was dealing with some of the chronic pain stuff, now I realize, likely brought on by the deep depression I was experiencing from 12 to 18 years old, and then settling into my body like an unwanted guest. I'll get to that whole thing in my next post, Part 2.

So, I went to the gym today and attended the Iyengar Yoga class at 6:30pm to 8:00pm. The instructor had some sort of accent that I kept trying to identify the entire class. Some sort of mid-western, New England kind of sound to it. And with one of those sick yoga bodies. You know the type, slender with a good butt shown off by those skin tight type pants. And when she says, "Okay, and now into Downward Dog." and pushes down and up with her butt, you're like, uhm, do bodies really move like that?

But I gamely engaged. I think I was a newbie because she was calling a lot of the class participants by name. I may have gamely engaged but my body was like "Uhm, no." I used to be very flexible, able to put my foot behind my head and easily do kicks over people's heads as tall as I was, even taller. So here I was, struggling to get my body to stretch into positions it's probably never seen and hasn't seen in almost two decades. But I did discover that all is not lost, that I still had some measure of flexibility. It's something I'll have to work on for sure but at least I'm not a rock with no mobility.

The previous paragraph may have inklings of positive regard for the situation but it really didn't go down like that. I was at war. I've developed some sort of weird thing in my wrists, especially my right, where I can't bear weight on it. I can if I make a fist and support myself that way with the wrist straight but bent, palm out on the floor, it's agony. And yoga has a lot of this type of support required. But I was like "FUCK YOU, WRIST!! You will do what I tell you!" No positive regard there but pure, snarling pissed off-ness.

I am so sick and tired of picking up something and then having my body get in the way of doing it. I quit fencing because of my right knee, something in the little tendon attaching the bottom of the kneecap to the shin. I quit Taiko because the stance was starting to aggravate the tendonitis in both my hips (which originally was from fencing). I can't run because it hurts my knees so bad I don't want to walk the next day, much less the same day. And when I engage in something active, my body starts up and I listen to it. I say, "Okay, I won't. I can't. I hurt too much."

But tonight, I wasn't having any of it. I said to myself, "I want to start going to the gym. I want to start being physical again. I want to LIKE being physical again." I remember loving being hard core physical at Tae Kwon Do. "Wrist, YOU WILL FUCKING DO THIS!!!". And it hurt. It hurt bad. But I did the Downward Dog. Not anywhere nearly as gracefully as the instructor. I did the whatever-the-hell-they-are-called poses that required me to bear most of my weight on my wrists in that foul bent position. I was almost to the point of tears a couple of times. And a couple of times I let off and tried to do the poses with my hands as fists, which didn't work all that well. But I made it through the class in pretty much one piece.

And then, I went to the Karate class at 8:00pm to 9:30pm. Yeah, I know, crazy. And no, I wasn't trying to kill myself. The karate is Ogasawara-ha Shorinji Ryu Karatedo, basically another one of those many forms that karate seems to have. Karate is Japanese, Tae Kwon Do is Korean. I walked in and was the newest member of the class, meaning I was last in the line up, all senior members first, no matter the skill level. Same with Taiko, you lined up by seniority of time, not skill. I could probably go back to the beginner's class and line up at front even though my skill would be less than the first person in line. But again, gamely forth I go.

The class was taught by a white guy, black belt in the type of Karate mentioned above. He seemed quite nice, explained everything well, wrote Japanese terms on the board and did not drive the class hard (which makes sense if it's made up of YMCA exercisers, although some of the folks were in gi's with belts up to green).

Again, he was nice but he wasn't Sabum Nim (Master) Lee, my Tae Kwon Do instructor in Greenville. I was one of Master Lee's first students when he opened his Do Jang as a very young instructor fresh from Korea, in Greenville, NC, of all places. I was with him for almost 4 years and I was a high red belt (my next belt would have been black but I moved away). And I have never found another instructor that I wanted to learn under after him. No one measured up. Well, maybe Sensei Tanaka, my Taiko instructor, but that was Taiko, which considers itself something of a martial even though it's about drumming, but it is not a hard core "martial" art. While engaged in the class, I missed Master Lee. A lot. A whole different part of my life there.

But the YMCA instructor was nice enough to feel like I didn't have to reject the class out of hand although I doubt I would give the same kind of loyalty and fierce attention that I gave Master Lee, even over time. Especially only going once a week (the second class held is Thursday night, which, of course, is my overnight, and impossible to attend).

This Karate, at least at the beginning level, was almost exactly like the Tae Kwon Do I remembered and apparently that my body remembered. Really well. Other than the extra weight, loss of flexibility, stiffness and pain, it was almost as if I were back in my old Tae Kwon Do classes. Let's fucking hear it for cellular memory. Although, this curious thought arose for me. Cells replace themselves over the course of time. I'm not sure how often, or if, muscle cells replace, but I assume they do since I've heard most of the body replaces itself over the course of one's lifetime. If they do, then how do they pass down the "memory" of the action to the next generations to come so that, decades later, you still remember how to do a flying jump kick. Here's a Wiki entry on muscle memory that didn't make much sense to me but you can give it a shot.

I really, really remembered. Sometimes, I needed to see the move as I didn't recognize the Japanese word or even remembered the English term for a move but then it was, "I know that." And for the most part, my body responded fairly smoothly. And several times, my body responded with fierce glee. I threw myself into the first half of the class with a fierce gusto I don't remember experiencing in a very, very long time. I went hard and precise, reveling. I think, perhaps, I shall have to pace myself next time because I was definitely struggling the last half, drenched in sweat, exhausted. I'd already been through the torturous yoga as well. At one point though, my right knee started hurting, more than the usual pain I get from impact work. Later, I realized that it might have been due to the scooter accident I had months ago where I came off my scooter (I was going 30 miles an hour) and first impact was my right knee. But again, I engaged in the Art of the Body War. "FUCK YOU, KNEE!! You will do this!! Keep going!". And I kept going.

I was limping when I got home. My feet were fairly swollen and I had some blisters (why is everything barefooted on wood floors?). And I knew I would pay for it in the next days to come.