The Change: 4

I'm Giving Up Gluten

(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)

There were a couple of other things going on right around the time I first saw AE.

One was I started working for a new client and the work did not come easy. I began writing for a non-profit that does good works internationally and my ignorance about geography and world politics required me to look up everything I was writing about. That. Makes. Work. Go. Very. Slow.

Another was that I joined a Buddhist chanting group last spring, so besides learning about the geopolitical affairs of Africa, I had to learn the (also foreign) ritual of chanting for an hour in another language. This kind of learning can be very invigorating, but in the beginning it just makes you feel like a big loser.

It was also around this time that I learned that three friends had been diagnosed with cancer.  Nine months later, one is in remission; one is still fighting her battle; and one just passed away.

Early in the spring, before I ever considered seeing AE, I had gone for a walk with my friend Jillian, a yoga teacher who is wise beyond her years. Jillian has historically popped into my life at precisely the moments I need her most.

I told her about my knee pain and about my theory that maybe gluten had something to do with it. 

“I’m giving up wheat to see if I can make my knee better,” I said.

“It doesn’t sound like a wheat problem,” she said.

“I think it’s inflammation,” I said.

“When you say ‘knee’ problem, I don’t think ‘wheat’, I think ‘foot’,” she said.

This is not at all what I wanted to hear. I wanted her to corroborate my theory that wheat was creating inflammation in my joints and a few weeks without it would make me good as new.

Instead, she started talking about our base, our foundation, our center. She said when you have problems with how you stand, it can, over time, affect everything in your body. And when she said “everything,” she was including our psyches, our cognition, the ways we relate to the world.

“If your feet are not planted solidly on the ground, you’re out of balance. The relationship of our feet to the ground is at the core of everything,” she said. She thought I should go get private yoga lessons to learn how to stand more solidly.

I nodded and smiled and gave no credence to a word of what she said. I felt certain that giving up wheat would clear up what ailed me and I went home and threw away all our bread.

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The Change: 3

The End Of Tennis Season

 (This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)

I made my first call to AE after a long winter that never seemed to get cold, in the middle of a long spring that never seemed to warm up.

From September through April, I usually play tennis two or three times a week, in an indoor court with a few different groups.  Monday Tennis is a group lesson. My long-time instructor brought us together based on ability and temperament and we’ve been together for many years.  I don’t know how or why this group gelled like it did, but it's like therapy for me. Starting on Friday afternoon, I begin counting the hours until Monday Tennis.

Thursday Tennis began as a practice game for a country club team. I wasn’t part of the team, but they were looking for another person to join the group and someone suggested me.  There were seven of us in total and every week four were scheduled to play. I didn’t know most of the women when I started, but I’ve played with them every other week for a few years and it’s a really nice game.

Friday Tennis is a group of women, hand-picked by me, that all have one thing in common: they’re fun. Our Friday Tennis games are severe, silly, bawdy, tearful, and sheer bliss. As women’s gatherings go, they fall somewhere between a knitting circle and a Fuckerware Party. It’s a place where we learn how to rear our teenagers and weather our diagnoses. I’m not even really a good enough player to play in this game – I lose all the time. But we all depend on each other emotionally, so they let me stay.

When I made my first call to AE, these groups were all ending for the season. From that point on we would start to play outside once a week, a big group comprised of many people from each of my three winter groups. I’ve organized summer tennis for several years now. For me, playing with the same women over the summer makes the change in my regular tennis routine less upsetting.

Apparently AE was on a long trip over the spring and that’s why she didn't called me back right away. I called her again a month later and then again and finally got an appointment in early June.

My knee hadn’t gotten any worse, but over the spring there were a few old injuries that were starting to bother me. I refrained from visiting any of my regular team of healers. I wanted to hold out and wait for my AE session. I hadn’t even met her yet and I’d already decided she was going to fix everything.

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The Change: 2

Where Did AE Come From?

 (This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)

I found AE through my husband. Three years ago, he slipped on an icy sidewalk and suffered a dislocated fracture. He needed emergency surgery and they had to put his ankle back together with plates and pins. After two years and an arduous rehab, he still wasn’t entirely happy with how his ankle performed.

Scott doesn’t drive and his main mode of transportation is walking, so he needed his ankle mobility back 100 percent. In addition to physical therapy, he started working with an Iyengar Yoga instructor who helped him bring his ankle back almost to its original state. But he hit a plateau and that brought him to AE.

Others in his yoga classes had seen AE and swore by her. These were men and women who did rigorous yoga, 5-7 days per week, and when they hit a place where their bodies were “stuck” – unable to bend or stretch to the degree that they should be able to, given their training and practice – they’d go to AE and her body work would help them.

After a few sessions with AE, they all were better.  One guy even passed a kidney stone the day after his first session with her. For the record, this was kind of a deterrent for me; I didn’t want to pass any kidney stones of my own. But I’d been having several inexplicable physical problems for the last many years, the most recent of which was a pain in my knee that no one could really make heads or tails of.

Of course, when I say “no one,” I mean those in my small cadre of healers.  My beloved chiropractor/acupuncturist.  My internist. My physical therapist.

I could have gone to an orthopedist (what some of my friends would call “a real doctor”) but I was afraid that he’d say I needed surgery and I wasn’t willing to do that.

Also, when I say “pain,” that’s a bit of an overstatement. This particular malady was more of an annoyance than a pain. I couldn’t sit cross-legged on the floor. And if I dropped down into a full squat, I would have a hard time getting back up again. These are two activities that a middle-aged woman should probably consider foregoing anyway.
 
In fact, the only time my knee actually “hurt” was when I put on a pair of pants. There was something about that movement – bending my leg with my knee pointing outward – that my body did not like.  The “pain” would last for only a few seconds. It wasn’t debilitating, and as soon as my pants were on, I felt fine.

I’m not sure why I felt so compelled to address my knee problem. Maybe because I felt nervous playing tennis with it feeling so vulnerable. Maybe because it seemed like a harbinger of growing old. Whatever the reason, I got it firmly planted in my head that AE would be the one to fix it.

“Do you think I should see AE about my knee?” I said to Scott one day last spring.

“Definitely,” he said. “She says she can fix anything except broken bones and death.”

So I called and made an appointment.

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