Shadow Work
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to work with a shaman named Kaleo Selah and I was introduced to doing shadow work on myself. Shadow work is the process bringing to awareness hidden elements of yourself that you've had to deny or hide in order to integrate into culture and cope with trauma. These hidden parts of self are all connected to hidden core beliefs that affect our behavior, thought patterns, and emotional patterns. These beliefs are based in protection, they cause us to live in a reactionary state of being, running on auto pilot and hiding all the ways we sabotage ourselves and our relationship to the world. For anyone who's gone through considerable pain in their life it's important to become familiar with shadow work because when we experience pain we develop protection mechanisms to prevent further suffering. Allow me to use myself as an example, one of my shadow core beliefs that have me on auto pilot is the belief that my life is going to be difficult which generates a set of behaviors that work counter to my goal of wanting to heal. This belief most likely developed from being a child and realizing it was harder to do certain things because of my condition and being in those situations also led to pain. So to prevent suffering I adapted this belief to either always be prepared and braced for pain/difficulty or to not even try things in avoidance of pain/difficulty. Now knowing the origin of that belief isn't of much importance in comparison to being aware that it's there and understanding the patterns of behavior, thought, and emotions it creates in my life. I can use my want to better manage and heal from sickle cell as an example. I say I want to heal but since I hold this belief it causes me to behave counter to my goal, because I believe my life will be difficult I procrastinate, and sometimes I can be so intimidated by the belief that I don't carry out most of my ideas at all, or having a high level of perfectionism that stifles the elements of my life.
I believe this is an essential practice in my process of thriving with sickle cell. And bellow I posted examples of my shadow work. I've also attached a video explaining more and Kaleo Selah's information. It's great to be able to do this on your own but to really be initiated into the practice I highly recommend working with a professional.
A brief overview
Working with Kaleo Selah
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My personal Shadow work
This is a recording of a session I did with my friend Kate Phillip, through asking the right questions and taking the time to answer them without thinking no matter what came up we we're able to get deep into the core beliefs that are creating a lot of internal conflict for me in this stage of my life.
After the session I wrote down these hidden core beliefs and how they affect my behavior and thought patterns. Then I evaluate how each belief can be calling me to expand in a positive way, the opportunity of it, and focus on applying my hidden beliefs to those areas rather than my self sabotaging behaviors. This practice naturally leads me to new and better beliefs about life rather than repressing myself or shutting down from shame—because anything you repress or shame only appears in other areas of your life, like the saying says "what you resist persists". I also list the signs to look out for when I'm reacting from a situation based on these beliefs in a negative way, knowing the signs helps me stop, relax, and re-approach the situation using the opportunity perspectives of the belief or ask questions.
You say you want to heal and reach for these goals/dreams outside of what you've experienced so far, shadow say you have to look at yourself, where you are, how you've gotten here, and accept the truth of who you are right now first.
Sickle Cell and Muscle Imbalances Pt. 2
This is a continuation of my earlier article where I talked about the relationship between sickle cell and muscle imbalances. To address my imbalances and to continue on my mission to thrive physically with Sickle Cell I've incorporated some corrective exercises into my daily routine with the help of my coach and some personal research. The goal with these exercises is to lengthen tight hyperactive muscles with stretches and the strengthen underactive muscles.
First, bellow is a video that will give a better understanding on stretching and different types of stretching and their benefits. As of right now I'm mainly practicing C.R.A.C. stretching since not only do I get a stretch but I'm also incorporating the movement of the stretch into my muscle memory.
Corrective Stretches and Strength Exercises
Tight Over-active- Hip flexors
Weak & Under-active- Glutes
Corrective stretch: knees and hip flexors
Followed by corrective strength exercise: glute bridges
Tight Over-active- Shoulders/Peck minor
Weak & Under-active- Scapulae
Corrective stretch: Shoulders
Followed by corrective strength exercise: Scapulae wall presses.
Resources
What is a stomach vacuum and how to perform it.
Correct form for glute bridges.
Tight Over-active- Lower back/Lumbar spine
Weak & Under-active- Lower Abdominal
Corrective stretch: lower back
Followed by corrective strength exercise: stomach vacuums and planks
Tight Over-active- Neck extensors
Weak & Under-active- Neck flexion muscles
Corrective stretch: side neck flexion and neck extensors
Followed by corrective strength exercise: 3 minute isometric neck extensors holds.
How to plank correctly.
How to perform correct scapulae wall presses for mobility.
Extra Notes
One major piece of knowledge I keep in this process is that this is a correction that deals more with the nervous system than the muscular system. This means focusing on my habits to train my body into new movement patterns and posture even more than stretching and exercising. This includes changing the way I sit, learning to activate muscle groups that have been programed to be less active and to not overly recruiting muscles that are hyperactive (an example of this is activating my core, under-active, when I work out and not recruiting my lower back muscles, which are under-active, as much.) and avoiding foods that causes inflammation.
This is just the beginning of the process and I'll be sharing more in later posts.
Movnat shared this on their Facebook page not too long ago on alternative ways of sitting that are not as unhealthy as sitting slouched in a chair. www.movnat.com. It's recommended that we rotate between different sitting positions instead of sitting in one stance for hours.
Redefining Our Relationship With Sickle Cell Anemia
One of the biggest breakthroughs I've had with sickle cell was through a conversation I had with a friend who has aspergers. He was telling about his experiences and I began to mention how bad I had it with sickle cell and he said something I didn't know how to use until recently. He told me that every mutation developed as evolutionary advantages and even if our circumstances were though there is still a way to use it as a beneficial tool.
At the time it was just annoying because the only advantage to sickle cell is immunity to malaria, which has no use in America, and which only applies to those with the trait not someone with full on sickle cell anemia like myself. However recently my mind has changed and I do see an advantage.
With sickle cell my body is so sensitive that anything that is toxic to me (emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually) will trigger a signal in my body. This may seem insignificant but that simple outlook has been a major tool in helping me get my life in healthy alignment this past year. All that is toxic either causes pain or keeps me in a low energy anemic state. Knowing that I can use my body's signals to get rid of or correct the things that are causing disfunction in my life .
Keeping A sickle cell journal
With the outlook of using sickle cell as an opportunity, I began a journal where keep track of moods, diet, physical activity, and other factors during the days I'm in pain. I'm happy to share my process with you.
It starts with recording what you were eating, drinking, what you were experiencing physically and emotionally the day of and days prior to when you started experiencing pain. You might notice the first time that your pain was triggered by something you ate, while that is good it's not all that this habit is about, this is for seeing patterns.
For example noticing that for the past three times you were in crisis you were feeling intense guilt or shame and your heart beat was irregular. That's a pattern and once you've found one you explore the connections, ask your doctor about your heart beat, ask why is shame causing me to be in crisis, do some research, ask why am I feeling shame in the first place, and start making steps to correct the cause.
Information I'm recording in my journal.
Water consumption, diet, physical activity, where the pain was and where it began are the basic starting points. I assess inflammation and heart rate because those are specifics to my prior history that I want to track. You can customize your own program and record what's more necessary for you to assess, ex. breathing, weather, etc.
Feel free to download this image.
Below are examples from my journal, to the left is what I recorded from the last time I had a crisis and on the right it's a page from the daily journal I keep to track my diet. It helps if you track your diet and if you keep other kinds of journals so that when you're assessing a crisis you can return to your records and look at multiple consecutive days instead of what you can remember from today or yesterday.
Choosing to practice a relationship like this with my condition helps me to not simply experience sickle cell as something thats happening to me but as something I can use, something I can manage, and also something that informs other areas of my life. This is also great information to present to my doctor so they know more about what's specifically going on with me and can better assist me.
Sickle Cell & Muscle Imbalances
I've been assessing how living with sickle cell anemia has effected me emotionally, physically, psychologically, and spiritually over the past few years. One of the ways I found I've been affected physically is by the muscle imbalances present in my body.
“Muscle imbalances can be characterized by either side-to-side (right versus left) or front-to-back (agonist versus antagonist) differences in muscle length or strength. Most musculoskeletal pain syndromes are caused by front-to-back differences, or imbalances of muscles surrounding a joint, rather than side-to-side differences. - See more at: http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/what-is-muscle-imbalance/#sthash.JGvNVIsz.dpuf”
Lower Crossed Syndrome
- Tight lower back muscles
- Weak/underactive abdominal muscles
Upper Crossed Syndrome
- Rounded Shoulders
- Neck shifting head forward
How having sickle cell relates to muscle imbalances:
While a lot of muscle Imbalances can be attributed to bad everyday habits we've developed (like sitting too long, or being hunched over at your computer) while investigating my lower crossed syndrome I found another cause connected to my sickle cell experience, the powerful pain killers I've been taking for most of my life. See the thing with our abdominal and pelvic floor muscles is that they are directly connected to our digestive system and anything that shuts down or shocks our digestive system shuts down our abdominal muscles. Things that cause this to happen include antibiotics, inflammation, very poor diets, and in the case of someone who has had intense pain crisis for most of their lives its the pain killers too powerful to be sold over the counter. So my core muscles are weak and under active causing my lower back to compensate by becoming over active and tight and the rest of my body works to balance itself . To compensate for my pelvic tilt my head comes forward to keep my vision aligned with the horizon and due to that same imbalance my knees lock when I stand causing tightness.
How muscle imbalances affect my everyday life with sickle cell:
Having healthy circulation i a major part of thriving with sickle cell. However muscle imbalances disrupt normal circulation. For example, since I have lower crossed syndrome I've assessed that I lock my knees in standing position which causes poor blood flow in my knee area. When I have a crisis I experience pain in the areas that I have over active muscles: lower back, knees, back of my neck in a addition to the typical joint and stomach pains.
I remember being younger and wondering why parts of my body looked the way they did, I remember being at a sickle cell summer camp and wondering why a lot of children an anterior pelvic tilt. I'm not saying we shouldn't take killers at all (sickle cell pain is excruciating) but we should be looking deeper into how our experience has affected us and taking steps to heal.
Over the next few posts I'll be sharing the what I'm using to manage and heal my muscle imbalances.
General Information:
http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/what-is-muscle-imbalance/
Introduction
I've been diagnosed with Sickle Cell Anemia since I was three months old and I am starting this project to address the psychological, emotional and physical traumas I've endured through growing up with the mutation. To overcome these barriers, I will be applying research I have accumulated, conducting my own experimentation, and developing a personal fitness discipline.
Hi, my name is Reginald Cineus, and this is my personal blog dealing with all things related to the personal management of Sickle Cell Anemia.
I've been diagnosed with Sickle Cell Anemia since I was three months old and I am starting this project to address the psychological, emotional and physical traumas I've endured through growing up with the mutation. To overcome these barriers, I will be applying research I have accumulated, conducting my own experimentation, and developing a personal fitness discipline.
By committing myself to sharing my experiences, past and present, I am challenging the major hangup I've developed of concealing myself and opinions and replacing it with the act of openly sharing my own personal truths.
Although this is a very personal project, I am not advocating any one method of dealing with Sickle Cell but rather promoting the habit of experimenting itself in order to design a suitable lifestyle.
Join me as I go through this transition into a more balance relationship with my body.