I’m three weeks into my recovery period and, truthfully, I’m driving myself crazy. I think many triathletes may feel the same way. We know it’s important to have this recovery time to heal and rejuvenate our bodies (or, in my case, knew it was important but never actually did anything about it) but suddenly, having all that time back in our week where we would usually be out training is hard to fill productively. It’s a double edged sword. But after my recent revelation in regard to my current mental and emotional fatigue, I’m sticking to my guns and doing my very best to spend this time de-stressing and enjoying myself as much as possible. But that’s all easier said than done.
To do so, I’ve been trying to enjoy my downtime instructing spin classes at my local YMCA, indulging in some fancy meals while traveling, taking a few easy spins around my neighborhood to take in the Fall colors and smells, spending time in the pool playing with HRH, and watching a whole lotta Walking Dead. So do I feel better? Well, that’s entirely debatable.
However, recently, I was also contacted by Agnes, an Etheric Health Practitioner and Reiki Master (ReHolistically Speaking) who just happens to be the wife of a training peer of mine, who volunteered to spend some time with me realigning the specific energy fields of my Endocrine System.
I know, ‘say what now?’ Hang in there.
Similar to my first massage experience (click HERE), the automatic skeptic in me started asking all the immediate questions: what do I need to wear? Will there be chanting? Is she going cast spells? Will there be magic crystals? Am I going to be offered the purple Kool-Aid? Oh, and, yes, the ever-present ‘will I get a boner?’ crossed my mind too. Hey, it’s an important question.
Thankfully, the answer is a resounding ‘No’ to all the above.
So what is it she’s attempting to do anyway? It’s not like you have “energy rewiring” being advertised on every street corner it is? Nor is there any real hard information on this practice floating around out there. You certainly can’t run to Chapters and pick up an ‘Etheric Health for Dummies’.
As I figured out (thanks Google), the Etheric Body gives vitality, health, life and organization to the Physical Body. Think of it as the subtle level of the Physical Body, so healthy Etheric’s will inevitably lead to a healthy physical body; the two are intertwined in that regard. Anyway, that still doesn’t explain what it was that Agnes was attempting to do so my inquisitive nature was spilling over with all the usual ‘why’s and ‘what’s. I am game however to try just about anything once and, ultimately, I am interested to know if these ‘treatments’ will benefit me (if at all) so I took her up on her offer.
As she later explained to me (and after a considerable amount of research on my part), it’s possible that I am suffering from ‘Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome’.
I know, what the hell is that? I had the same question.
Well, as I discovered, Adrenal fatigue is a collection of signs and symptoms that results when the adrenal glands function below the necessary levels. Some might refer to it as ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’ (CFS) which I’ve heard of before but I think what I have been experiencing is a bit, well, different. However, the three main causes for the syndrome include: emotional stress, poor diet, and chronic inflammation of the body, of which, I’m guilty on all accounts. So maybe…
Strictly speaking, Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome is most commonly associated with intense or prolonged stress (yup, that’s definitely me). As the name suggests, its paramount symptom is fatigue that is not relieved by sleep, yet it is not a readily identifiable entity like measles or a growth on the end of your finger so you’re not likely to hear anyone ever say to you: “Dude, what’s wrong? That looks like Adrenal Fatigue”. In fact, you look and act relatively normal with adrenal fatigue and not display any obvious signs of physical illness, yet you still live with a general sense of unwellness (yup, me again), tiredness or “gray” feelings. People experiencing adrenal fatigue often have to use coffee, colas and other stimulants to get going in the morning and to prop themselves up during the day. Now, while I don’t necessarily think I ‘need’ extra caffeine every day I do recognize that I have been drinking more coffee in the morning and I can certainly identify with the whole “gray” feeling thing.
This syndrome has been known by many other names throughout the past century or so, such as non-Addison’s hypoadrenia, sub-clinical hypoadrenia, neurasthenia, adrenal neurasthenia, and adrenal apathy. Whatever you choose to label it as, it apparently affects millions of people in North America and around the world, yet conventional medicine fails to recognize it as a distinct syndrome leading to the misguided belief that any treatment process – Etheric or otherwise – is more viewed as a practice in ‘hocus-pocus’ than it is of any valid scientific remedy.
Adrenal fatigue is produced when your adrenal glands cannot adequately meet the demands of stress – of which, I have a lot. The adrenal glands, located at the top of your kidneys, mobilize your body’s responses to every kind of stress (whether it’s physical, emotional, or psychological) through hormones (including cortisol) that regulate energy production and storage, immune function, heart rate, muscle tone, and other processes that enable you to cope with the stress by initiating that ‘fight or flight’ response in your body as a way of increasing your pain threshold – a necessary evil for triathletes who constantly push their endurance limitations on a near daily basis; particularly those idiot ones who don’t follow a training plan such as myself. Whether you have an emotional crisis such as the death of a loved one (sound familiar), a physical crisis such as major surgery, or any type of severe repeated or constant stress in your life (i.e. training), your adrenals have to respond to the stress and maintain homeostasis (the property of any bodily system in which variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant). If their response is inadequate, you are likely to experience some degree of adrenal fatigue.
During adrenal fatigue your adrenal glands function, but not well enough to maintain optimal homeostasis because their output of regulatory hormones has been diminished – usually by over-stimulation. Over-stimulation of your adrenals can be caused either by a very intense single stress as I mentioned, or by chronic or repeated stresses that have a cumulative effect. Misdiagnosis is a serious concern since a patient could be suffering instead from a recognized adrenal disorder such as Cushing’s Syndrome (too much cortisol) or Addison’s Disease (too little cortisol, aldosterone and/or sex hormones), both of which can be treated with medication. I’m confident though that I don’t fall into either of these categories.
So what next?
Well, a quick and simple self-evaluation that you may be suffering from Adrenal fatigue might include asking yourself such questions as:
- You feel tired for no reason.
- You have trouble getting up in the morning, even when you go to bed at a reasonable hour.
- You are feeling rundown or overwhelmed.
- You have difficulty bouncing back from stress or illness.
- You crave salty and sweet snacks.
- You feel more awake, alert and energetic after 6PM than you do all day.
I can answer a resounding ‘Yes’ to all of these. So perhaps these sessions are a step in the right direction. They certainly aren’t going to hurt any are they?
Now, where I can’t say for certain what Agnes was doing during these sessions specifically as I tended to have my eyes closed and I’m about as close to sleep you can possibly get without completely going under, what I can relate to you is how I felt during and after the sessions. I think I’ve already successfully documented how I feel now (i.e. before these sessions), however, just in case you’ve forgotten here’s a quick summary: I feel shitty.
But before I get into those results, it might help to try and explain the actual intent of these sessions; Lord knows I needed some help in understanding them myself. In short here, the aim is to get the adrenals to stop running your body and rewire it “energetically” so that the pituitary gland runs the system as it is normally designed to do. Likewise, she is working to restore the flow to my body’s energy system. As it could be now, my adrenals might be permanently stuck in the ‘ON’ position leading to an unhealthy increase in cortisol (see my previous ‘Reset, Recharge, Replan’ post) with all the unfortunate consequences that go along with it (i.e. stress, fatigue, etc.).
So what is this “energy” she’s channeling exactly? Well, think of it this way…everything in the universe is comprised of energy and energy is all around us. Agnes works with the energy field around the body and senses where it may be blocked or out of balance. In doing this work, she also takes into account the emotional state of the individual, as the emotions we feel in the body are “energy” as well and vibrate at certain frequencies. Emotions such as anger, sadness, irritability are thicker, more dense vibrations are usually carried in the lower part of the body, making us feel burned out, run down, unmotivated. Emotions such as happiness, joy, etc., consist of a higher frequency and leave you feeling “lighter”, whereby, you feel more “enlightened”, or peaceful and relaxed. And who doesn’t like to feel like that? Surely, this is the entire point of a successful recovery period – something I have failed miserably at this year, hence, my plateau in training this year and my feeling the way I do now. So what I’m really looking for then, is beginning to reconnecting more with those good, good, good, vibrations…
“…good vibrations, Oom bop bop.”
Sorry, couldn’t help myself there. Anyway, back on track…
Think of it this way, your body is a river through which energy runs from head to toe and that energy is the veritable life force for each individual system that, together, regulate the body allowing it to function healthily. If something should ever block that natural flow of healthy energy then everything begins to be negatively affected. During my second session, Agnes reported that she ‘felt’ an overwhelming sense of sadness in my chest represented by a dense vibration which is not surprising seeing as what’s transpired over the past seven months. So if that overwhelming sadness, or dense vibration, has been blocking the natural flow of positive energy through the rest of my body, then maybe that explains why I have been experiencing so many nagging injuries in my lower limbs lately. I mean, shit, there’s no real ‘medical’ explanation yet why the soft issue of my right foot continues to ache after a month of relative non-activity, or why my left Achilles tendon is stiff in the morning despite my not having run for some time. Maybe that part of my body is still laden with thick, unhealthy, negative vibration, or “energy”. Any removal of dense vibrations or a “rewiring” of my body’s natural flow of positive energy should yield some positive results, right? Go Agnes.
I mean, why not?
However, don’t go donning all your flowing robes just yet because, I admit to being more of a pragmatic type of person that needs to understand the specifics of what I’m dealing with. But, sometimes in the absence of certainty and rationality, the irrational might just hold true. Can you touch or directly detect your body’s ‘energy’ directly? Maybe not (maybe so), but you can definitely feel it so maybe that then becomes your ‘measure’ for improvement. So the real evidence then that my rational mind might be craving should be based on how I feel as a result of these sessions and not the logistics of the actual session itself. Follow me?
So the ultimate question then becomes: how do I feel afterwards?
Well, truthfully, after three sessions over a two week period I genuinely feel pretty damn good. More correctly, I feel more relaxed; more so than I have felt in the past year or so since all the shit started being flung in my direction. Am I healed? No, probably not yet. But in the past two weeks I have noticed a slight improvement in my lingering injuries (and anything is better than nothing), some improvement in my overall mood and, hell, even a sense of ‘calm’ that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time represented in the fact that I am sleeping much better these days. Am I perfect? Shit, no. But I do believe I am getting back to feeling somewhat normal again and that definitely weighs very favorably in my conscious mind so, yeah, pass the flowing robes; there might just be something to this whole Etheric’s thing.
I am getting convinced now that there is more to this body then simply the muscle, bone and various tissues that make it up – it’s just not that black and white. And my failure to initially recognize that just might – in itself – be the biggest mistake I’ve made all year; a mistake I don’t care to repeat thank you very much. Any if you don’t learn from your mistakes and make efforts to correct them through whatever means necessary, well, I think that’s pretty sad – and I’m tired of being sad. So any effort, practice, or what have you, that helps me ultimately heal my mind, body and spirit, is gratefully appreciated and very welcome and maybe this needs to be a part of my regular recovery process.
Pass the Kool-Aid.
fatandthefurious 