I'm happy to report that my two balls, which are of different size and density, have been getting a lot of use lately. The bigger one is blue and firm, while the smaller one is green, less firm, and a little fuzzy.
I've had many self-massage tools for years. I would use them, but usually not find much change or relief. Sometimes I'd just end up uncomfortable and sore. Often I'd feel frustrated. “Why do these things that work for everyone else not work for me?” I've had similar experiences and thought patterns when attending things like yoga classes - I'd leave feeling grumpy, holding on to a notion that everyone in the room had benefited except me, while I was the one in most need of relief.
Recently, the guy who made the familiar cat ears and all the good light projects at my house crashed with me for a night on his way out of town. I’d received massage from him in the past and remember him commenting on how massive my knots were, which made me feel seen. He gave me another massage that night, and by the end I felt much more aware of where my body needed work. He also brought me a pair of cat ears, but that’s a story for another time.
A few days later, something clicked, and I finally understood how to start using these tools to clear away my knots and adhesions. On some level, I think my neurosis and fear of tools not working caused me to tense up in a way that prevented them from working. It’s like it required a certain level of trust in and patience with the process in order for the process to work for me.
In the past several weeks, I've spent a lot of time on the floor or against a wall, with a ball between me and the hard surface. I've experience the kind of radiating sensation and release that let me know I'm targeting the right spots. I've seen noticeable improvements in my range of motion and in my awareness of my body. My joints feel different. Stretching feels different and far more accessible. It's been pretty addicting, and maybe a little distracting from my work. Like I said, my balls have been getting a lot of use. I also have an orange nipple that I find very useful.
I’m also becoming increasingly aware of all the places where things in my body are stuck. There are places around my hips that feel like there’s rocks inside. I’ve been wondering if that’s normal, maybe everyone’s body has rocks in those spots. I now believe it is not normal.
As I work through my knots, only to then discover more underneath, I'm reminded of my path to where I am now. My knots are artifacts of the many years I was very depressed and stuck in my neurosis. I’m glad to have made progress, but I also still have a lot more work to do. A decade of mental tension, which I now see to be closely linked to physical tension, will take more than a few weeks to unwind from the body. And perhaps it will never be completely gone.
I want to thank a few people for helping me have the tools to take care of myself and work out my knots.
[Arielle Miller](https://www.facebook.com/arielle.miller.92?__cft__[0]=AZXg7x_lWSnzDiA7MTMwNgoalA_QaErKf0w74jBDsT5doQkiYvsdFG68IZW37vKp7m_HFRadUmIbrXXc95xKqliEr7ov8iB1M98zO6RilWzGQOlmwfHNqdEVO9pufgbHctw&__tn__=-]K-R) for:
[Ten Soup](https://www.facebook.com/kristen.hattaway.7?__cft__[0]=AZXg7x_lWSnzDiA7MTMwNgoalA_QaErKf0w74jBDsT5doQkiYvsdFG68IZW37vKp7m_HFRadUmIbrXXc95xKqliEr7ov8iB1M98zO6RilWzGQOlmwfHNqdEVO9pufgbHctw&__tn__=-]K-R) for recommending a book to me after I shared my intention for the week at the place where we sit and talk about what we’re working on. I could tell within the first few pages that the author and the content were going to resonate with me, and I shared some quotes from the book with my former assistant. I told her the book was called "Ten Things" as a joke, because she’d been trying her best to get me to stop splitting my attention across so many things and had recently recommended a book called “The ONE Thing” to me. I haven’t read it, but I feel pretty strongly that the optimal number of things for me to do concurrently is more than one, although it’s probably less than ten.
The book is actually called "The Science of Stuck". I’m not much of a reader, and progress has been slow and sporadic, but here are a couple of my favorite quotes so far: "The answers to your questions are found inside the dark woods of your own mind" and "The language you use to describe your experiences has a huge impact on your ability to change your experiences." For better or worse, I’ve always spent a lot of time in those dark woods. They’ve been becoming less dark, which has allowed me to go deeper, and I have been learning more about myself in those depths.
As a person who can spend way more time thinking than doing, I’ve wondered if I’m spending too much effort trying to understand why I do some of the weird and suboptimal things I do instead of just working on doing things differently. This book has helped to validate my focus on understanding the why.
If we try to erase patterns without understanding the function they were serving, we’ll likely find our way into similar patterns, which serve the same function but look different. We’ll fool ourselves into thinking we’ve made permanent progress, when in fact we just made our problem look different. Understanding why my patterns serve me is a first step in starting to unlearn those patterns and feel like I have a choice to be different. The understanding also helps me have more compassion and patience with myself through this process - unlearning lifelong patterns usually doesn’t happen in a day.
For example, I’ve realized that all the clutter in my space is a way to help me not lose track of unfinished tasks. I leave things out to help me remember there's something left to do with them. And then I get overwhelmed, because I'm surrounded by reminders of how much I have to do. It’s not the best system, but I’m glad to have developed some understanding of why it happens. And as much as I may struggle to get things done and be self-critical about that, it’s helpful to remember that even that pattern has benefited me in some ways. If I’d been someone who got things done a decade ago, when I was feeling and thinking the ways I did, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m glad to still be here.
Lastly but not leastly, to the beautiful and non-binary (by definition) Qubit who can't commit, for: