Last weekend was not fun, Friday night though to Saturday morning I had serious stomach pains – in what seemed to be focused around my right hand side. The spectre of appendicitis reared its head again, so to be safe I went to A&E on Sat morning, using the new found positivity learnt from Victor Frankl’s book and this worked. Whilst the relief of not having appendicitis was short lived and the pain in my stomach subsided it didn’t disappear completely. Intuitively it felt right to run and use Wim Hof breathwork to jolt my gut, flood it with blood, CO2 adn nitric oxide. I thought that if it was food based (post Christmas) a long run would break up everything and strong breath holds would dilate the blood vessals / muscles and let it all loosen and relax. This worked for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. By now I sensed the running was counter productive, so stopped, as the pain had begun to isolate in the right hand side. Day off running on Tuesday, being kind and by Wednesday everything seemed so much better. Trusting my intuition and using the breathing to heal felt good, still not needed any medicine and listening to my body and giving it what I instinctively felt it needed, space to heal and grow proved the right thing to do.
Wednesday I managed to complete a progression run, starting at 40sec off lactate and every 5 mins coming 10 seconds down until @ lactate threshold. This felt good, not great, but good. The fact that I was able to do this (considering how hard I found it to breathe on Friday & Saturday) was wonderful. Alongside the way I felt watching the Whoop data mirror my physical state was fascinating. Respiration rate & heart rate really elevated, however HRV kept pretty healthy (Wim Hof breathwork?) throughout.
Central London Saturday morning was so quiet, Baker St incredibly so. One of the upsides to COVID, seeing a city without people to really look at it and take it all in.
With my stomach nearly better, but not quite Jenny was worried and kind enough to go and buy a selection of kind biotic foods for me to eat and drink, kimchi, kambucha, yoghurt. Friday I still had really bad wind, so this seemed like a really good idea. Today (Sunday) everything does seem a lot better. One thing I do need to need to keep an eye on is HR when running easy, as this still pretty high for the effort I am putting in.
Book wise this week I’ve finished Coherent Breathing by Wilfried Ehrmann. Well written and has a standpoint I definitely agree with – the idea of taking personal ownership of your health care until you need a medical specialist from the health profession to support with anything out of your own remit. My experience last weekend supporting this. Coherent breathing is such a wonderful practice. Aligning breathing and heart rate to help improve HRV. My own experience of coherent breathing is great. When you get the exhale right it feels so peaceful and as if you are physically at peace. This must be the triggering of the parasympathetic nervous system. It was interesting to discover the idea that you should be using around 50% of your lung capacity and mirror the distance the diaphragm travels up and down (which is now clear to me the difference from Oxygen Advantage breathing). The relax on the exhale was helpful to find out, as was how you can integrate alongside other breathing protocols. Definitely one to do at the end of a work day, pre-food, to calm and sooth your body and shift into a different state.
