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Writer's pictureJames Drewe

Doing Nothing About It

There are so many great sayings in the English language about putting up with a state of affairs, aren’t there? ‘Grin and bear it’, ‘Put a brave face on it’, ‘Man up’, ‘Pull yourself together’, ‘No gain without pain’, ‘Make the best of it’, ‘It could be worse’, ‘Just get on with it’, ‘Bite the bullet’, ‘Stiff upper lip’, ‘Make the best of a bad situation’… and there are undoubtedly many more.

I know that thinking any of the above can actually induce positive chemical changes in

the body, but my interest in all this is that you often do have the power to change situations as and when you want, but for any number of reasons, choose not to. I come across students of all ages who put up with a wide variety of physical problems which are causing them discomfort and yet do nothing about those problems.  It always makes me think of being stuck in the mud.

It will pass… I hope! Maybe you have an ache or pain because of an injury in a sport, or perhaps you overdid it at the gym, and I often hear people in classes saying, rather resignedly, that their discomfort is due to ‘getting older’. I’m not at all convinced that this has to be the case.

Sure, certain things happen as we age (e.g. shortening of tendons, maybe muscle loss, maybe weight gain), but taking your body for an MOT more than once a year can keep the engine running significantly more smoothly. As we get older, things might be slower to repair, but, in my opinion, the majority of aches and pains are repairable if we go about it the right way, at the right time, and particularly from a whole-body viewpoint. Above all, I think it is very important not to wait until a problem rears its head and only then do something about it.  It’s better to service your car regularly rather than wait for it to break down.

It will repair itself in time I know a lot of people who, when they hurt themselves, just wait for the problem to get better.  Sometimes this will work, but often it sets up a counter-balancing system within the body, where the body alters in order to accommodate the original problem, and only does a partial repair.

For example

For example, perhaps you have hurt your lower back.  You go to the osteopath, who makes some adjustments, and then possibly the pain reduces or goes away. A few days after that, your neck starts to hurt, and you have to go back to the osteopath again. From what I have experienced myself and also seen in others, this is a very common scenario; in other words, when the lower part of your spine (sacrum or lumbar spine) is altered, the upper part naturally compensates to recreate a balance within the body.

Various scenarios:

First of all, if you damage your lower back and don’t get it looked at fairly swiftly, (although admittedly the damage may or may not repair by itself), you will still get a corresponding reaction in the upper spine; like a seesaw, the body will naturally try to balance itself. The body is clever, and because of this auto-repair system, we can usually continue to work and move and are not totally debilitated, even though the body may not have fully repaired itself.  The auto-repair system allows us to keep functioning.


The problem is that, sometimes, when left alone, the original damage doesn’t completely repair.  When this happens, the body has made its usual compensatory adjustments, but has not fully repaired.  This might be okay, as, given time, the body might still get around to repairing itself. However, if we then compound the issue by repeating the damage with another or similar fall, this knocks the damaged area even further away from the original structural template. Once again, we adapt, do some further compensating in the body, and carry on.  But there are now 2 areas of our bodies that are not functioning at 100% – the original damaged part, and the part that compensated.

Knock-on…

In addition to that, those 2 areas have their own knock-on effects which affect other areas. For example, if you damage your lumbar spine (lower back), the sciatic nerve originates there passing through the pelvis to the legs, ankles and feet – so although you damaged your lower back initially, the knees and ankles can be affected. A similar problem occurs with the neck, and the nerve plexuses running to the arms and head can cause other issues.

What happens if we do nothing about it? Simple… We get used to it, put up with it, and it becomes the new ‘norm’. The whole structure is now weakened in a more permanent way.  We live with it, and because we’ve ‘got used to it’, we no longer notice it, and it becomes who we are.  But other parts of us now have to work harder to make up for the initial ‘deficiencies’ – to use the TCM expression.

And the conclusion? Sort the problem out before it becomes embedded, you really don’t have to put up with things the way they are.  There will be a solution somewhere, it’s just a case of finding it.

Many years ago, I trained in acupuncture (which I no longer practice), but I still go to see an acupuncturist every week, and have done for years.  I also go to the cranial osteopath roughly every 3 weeks, and, although I no longer do so, I used to go for Alexander Technique lessons for about 30 years.

Surely there’s nothing more important than your health?

___________________________________________________ James Drewe teaches Tai Chi and Qigong in both London and in Kent and online. Details of weekly classes both live and online can be found on the website, and there are classes for 2-person Tai Chi on one Saturday a month. You can also learn both tai chi & qigong through a monthly subscription, and there are also many free videos on YouTube.

CONTACT: http://www.taiji.co.uk https://www.qigonghealth.co.uk Email: taijiandqigong@gmail.com Phone: 07836-710281 ___________________________________________________

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