Learning to walk again

Using cannabis has had many side effects for me.

Learning how to walk again has been one of the most unexpected.

For years, my aching fusing back was tight. A tight back, led to a tight pelvis, which then locked up my hip joints as well. Walking was difficult. It was stiff and confined. My body couldn't fully move the way it was designed to move, and so walking was also not being done the way my body was designed to do it.

When our bodies aren't moving the way they are designed too, they end up with premature wear and tear in unsuspecting places, which then leads to more issues involving more stiffness and pain, which leads to more damage again. Compensation pain can be worse than the original pain. It's a vicious cycle.

But cannabis has helped me to break it.
 

My body had been so stiff for so long, I had completely changed the way I walked. Even after I started finding relief from pain, it took a while for me to realize that by not changing my damaging gait, I was still doing damage. I just wasn't feeling it the way I had been because the cannabis took care of the pain.  I needed to break the entire cycle.

We have joints. They are made to move and swivel. Not using these joints causes inflammation and pain just about as easy as over use does.

My joints weren't moving and I needed to change that.

There's an episode of the old TV show Alice, where Flo instructs Vera she has to "move like the waves in the ocean" in order to put her womanly wiles to use and attract a man. She needed to put some twitch in her step. Move her hips and derriere.

That's literally what I needed to do.

Again, cannabis lent me her hand by helping me to loosen up, both physically and mentally. Accompanied by either Bollywood or Bellydance music, my hips have started moving again. I can feel the fusions on my spine give as my body is able to move in ways it hasn't moved in years.

I can twist.

I can shimmy.

I can bend over and touch my toes.

And when I do, I can feel my joints thanking me for finding them and releasing them from their prison.



I rather doubt when the writers of Alice gave Flo this line, they saw it as anything more than Flo teaching Vera to be sexy, and may not have seen the truth to their words. Perhaps they did, but considering the era, I would be surprised.

Why does "moving like the waves of the ocean" work? Why does it loosen up ligaments and lubrication joints?

Simply because it is natural. We are designed to move like the ocean. We are 60% water. More water than any other matter. We are meant to flow. Not be rigid and stiff.

I have to remind myself when I walk of those words from Flo. They have become my reminder, my mantra.

"Move like the waves in the ocean."

No, it hasn't fully cured me, but it has helped tremendously, and that is far better than what I was.

Rise and Shine

I suck at getting out of the bed in the morning. 

When I was getting up and going to work in the morning, I did it. But now, that I don’t have to leave the house, don’t have the commitment nor the responsibility to be “there” for others, getting up hasn’t been near as easy. 

It doesn’t help that my sleep cycle has been completely out of whack either. 

I knew I needed to work on changing things: getting to sleep before 3 am, waking up motivated and staying that way, getting myself on a schedule again. 

When the email from my acupuncturist’s (Janine) office popped up in my inbox promoting a webinar on setting a morning routine, I thought it must be kismet. I immediately responded attending.

I had to wonder if it was somehow my fault when the appointed time of the webinar came and passed and no webinar. Technical issues had prevented it from happening. 

Not one to give up, Janine quickly emailed out a Power Point presentation for all of us who had registered. 

I eagerly opened it up and read through her ideas. 

Some I had tried before, but some I had not. 

I had been making lists for myself, something I had done years ago, but I was finding a difficult time completing them as of late. One of Janine’s tips was about lists, so I decided to keep that for sure, and commit myself to working on checking each item off. I added a couple different things to my planned morning routine and went to bed eager to start the next morning. I knew I could do this; I’ve done it before with no problem, and not even 6 months ago! 

I spent the next 6 hours tossing, turning, and attempting to shut off my brain. 

I’ve always been an insomniac, but lately, if I managed to fall asleep before 2 am, I would consider it a win. 

I spend most nights in a pretty typical routine. I take sleep supplements. I smoke weed. I have a special “night night time” play list complete with delta wave music. I smoke more weed. I go to the bathroom. I’m up so might as well try more weed. I start getting desperate for sleep as I watch the white numbers on the Alexa Show click closer and closer to morning. Of course, this whole time, the hubs is sound asleep next to me, Vader mask on and still snoring. I vape some weed. Eventually, usually between 2 am and 4 am, I fall asleep. 

This particularly night, I fell asleep around 3:30. I know because – Fitbit. I had planned to be up at 6:30 to start my new morning routine. Besides, three hours wasn’t much less than my average four.

Only I didn’t get three hours, I got an hour and a half, because at 5 am the hubs called, and his car had broken down. Long story short, by the time I got back home, it was after 9 am, I was exhausted, and the rest of my day was shot.

Ya think I would be able to fall asleep pretty easy after that. 

Nope.

That night, I repeated my routine. 

This time, at 1:00 am in the morning, the feral cat I had been helping out, showed up in a panic. I got him inside and settled into his room for the night. He was injured, and I decided it was time, whether he liked it or not, he was going to the vet the next day. 

Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep.  

I was stressed out because I knew his tail had been bit and I was concerned at what the outcome would be. The next day and $800 later, I was the proud owner of a feral cat under rabies observation for the next ten days. 

This sleep and schedule thing weren’t working out quite like I had been hoping.  I would make my list, set my plans up, crawl into bed, and still I couldn’t sleep. When I would make in the morning, something would go wrong from sleeping through my alarm, to sick grandkids, to the passing of a family member.  

My two weeks attempt at setting a morning routine had resulted in zero days of completing my planned routine. At this point, I really don’t know if a morning routine is the thing for me or not. But I decided, maybe I needed to start broader. So, I’m starting with a weekly routine instead. If I can manage to start getting certain tasks done on certain days, at least I have narrowed it down a bit and given myself a win instead of constant losses.

I’m not lowering my sights, but I am giving myself a step up instead of going for the full leap. I’m not in a race, I have no timed finish line. Maybe it will take a few more months for me to figure out a set morning routine, or maybe, I never will. But for right now, trying to set a routine as been far more counter-productive than if I had left well enough alone. 

Sometimes what we want to do, may not be what the cards have in store for us. Now when I can’t sleep, instead of lying in my bed staring at the ceiling or playing a game on my phone I either pick up a book and read or get out of bed and write. 

I’m still not sleeping, but at least I’m finally getting something done.

Fighting the pain with cannabis infused oil

Now that I am adjusting to life as a writer instead of life as a bookseller, I am also focusing more on getting back into better shape. I know the effects sitting at a desk has on my body, and I must consciously and consistently work to reverse the damage it does. 

My preferred method of exercise? Dancing around my house. Sometimes I use Misty Tripoli’s Body Groove online videos (love it!), other times one of my multitude of different themed playlists I have created for my daily dance-a-thons.

Occasionally several rounds of Beat Saber get tossed in particularly when my arms need a workout, or it’s game night, or I’m high and my son is playing it already (because I have no clue how to set it up on my own even though he has showed me a few times), or…well ok, I like the game.  

Fun and energizing, yet these activities also leave my almost 50-year-old body sore and stiff.  And with the multitude of inflammatory and auto-immune issues I have, it leads to a lot of pain. 

While I can take a few hits to ward off the immediate pain, I quickly learned I needed to find something that would give me more long-term relief. After lying still all night, the next morning would be awful. It could take hours for my body to begin functioning close to normal again. I would have to medicate in the morning just to be able to get out of bed on my own because I was so stiff, I couldn’t move. 

My acupuncturists had recommended Oil of Ojas (an incredible mix of essential oils from the Dominican Republic) to me years ago, and while it helped some, it took a while and still did not give me complete relief.

I decided to try mixing it up into my own recipe by combining it will cannabis infused jojoba oil.

To make the infused oil, I first use my Ardent Nova to decarboxylate my cannabis. After that, it goes into my Magic Butter machine to infuse the jojoba oil. Finally, I mix the cannabis oil and Oil of Ojas in a 50/50 mix. At night, before I crawl into bed, I use the mixture on my arms and legs. This mixture keeps my joints and muscles from stiffening up overnight, so when I wake up in the morning, I am ready to go again. 

There are many ways of using cannabis, consuming is only one of them. THC and CBD both can have extremely beneficial effects when used topically as well.

So far, this mix has completely worked for me in situations I know would have left me basically incapacitated for the day, if not for several days. It has been a goddess send, and now I know I can push myself harder and not have to worry about feeling the pain the next day. It has made it so I can get in daily workouts instead of having to recover for days in between. This has been a huge boost to my weekly # of steps and active minutes. Instead of a couple of days a week, now I can get up and go at any time of the day, every day. 

Which is good, because after sitting in my desk chair for hours on end (and with edits starting – I will be doing a lot of sitting), I need to be able to get up and move, not to just shake out my body, but to shake out my mind.