When physical therapy isn't....

Paul said to me..." No good wine."  

"I don't understand."

He said, "I used to say this in French, no good wine comes from vines that haven't been stressed."

So I had PT yesterday, I expected to work on the neck...and to ask him to take a look at my ankles as they were sore after competition.  

Paul was more interested in this tachycardia stuff.....but in a different way.  I have been seeing Paul off and on for almost three years and in all that time I have never worked with him the way he worked with me yesterday.....he has all of the typical Chinese medicine type posters on the walls, but I have never thought much about it.  Well, yesterday he starts with acupressure....checking my pulse in all sorts of places on my body.....then zeroing in on my left side.  I know this stuff works for people...acupuncture and all the energy flow stuff, but frankly I know nothing about it.  

He stops and says to me....

"You started this journey from a really good place, you go at this from joy and you are happy moving the way you do, but something is missing.  You'll never get better and you will never feel better until you let yourself tap into this pent up rage you are holding on to.  You are moving in a way that should allow for it, but you are afraid so you stop it before it can release.  That's part of what is going on with your heart.....and why you can't sleep.  I don't want you to think that what you have done is wrong by any means....it's just you can heal with this sport from the trauma that sits in your body if you learn how to use it."

Transform the poison to make it useful so to speak.

Now first...I need to say...everyone has fucking trauma...we carry our own special sorts. In fact, the few people I have met who don't have some sort of trauma in their past have been cold and mean humans.

Still.....I am not really getting it.   I am scared of it.  I am this joyful person on the field you know? There are already expectations for how I am...how do I "tap into rage" without being a total dick?  As you can guess, cause I am who you know me to be, I get very upset and I fucking cry.  

Sigh.

Then I remember two things.....

The first? Deadlifts.

The only time I have been able to get super heavy shit off the floor, the last time being 380....I actually did what Paul was talking about..I dredged up a painful moment when someone I loved was super ugly  to me....I looked at that bar as if it were the person who stood in front of me and said "fuck you." I got it off the ground...and I also let go of the edge of pain that moment caused me.  

The second?  Just happened in Idaho during WOB.  I was at 19 feet....I missed the first two times....and at this point I was getting huge support from the women around the field....I was laughing as I took my second throw, trying to let it go...not think too much...let it go...blah blah. When this guy Bob that I had just met....did something that I did not know how to take.  I was placing the weight after and as I stood up he came up to me and hit me in the chest.  Not HARD~not mean...but it shocked the crap out of me and made me so fucking mad.  I picked up the weight and said fine, "I'll just throw the damn thing then."

I cleared 19 feet.  

I told Paul about it yesterday...he asked me if I understood what that guy did....I had a couple of thoughts...he said no...men are often better at spotting that need to tap into rage....mainly because boys are raised to either bully or be bullied.  He saw you had the technic, but were missing that anger that rage, so consciously or unconsciously he triggered you.....

And in my usual dopey fashion.....I teared up again.

For my son, for me, for the stuff that I KNOW I am angry about, and for the stuff I don't know I am angry about. 

He wants me to "play" with this.....I have a game in a week and another game the week after...I'm not sure I know what to do....but the last thing Paul said to me was...."your body is telling you it's time to move on, it's time to release this trauma.  You can't rewrite what's been done to you Mona, but if you listen to your body, you can rewrite your relationship to it....which really? Kinda rewrites the way you tell the stories to yourself, doesn't it?"

I had no idea when I started this fitness/weight loss journey 3 years ago that this could even be possible, in this sort of way.

Perhaps my body can make more sense of trauma by moving than  "talking through things" ever could.