Special thanks to Mandy Starling for another great guest post in this 3-part series!
NOOOOOOOOO! Not again!!!! I shouted in my head about 8 miles into the Deseret News half marathon last July. The all-to-familiar IT band pain returned to the outside of my right knee. I’ve struggled with this since I started training for my first half marathon in 2012.
Over the years, it switched knees and varied in intensity. It cost me some really stellar PRs and podium finishes. It sent my emotions nose-diving, taking days to recover. I still achieved a PR at last year’s race, but the last three miles were so slow. I’ve often wondered just how fast I could go if I could only get my IT bands healthy and happy.
This 2nd post in our series covers the 2nd biggest roadblock to achieving triathlon and fitness goals: recurring illness, injury and overall lack of good health. Plantar fasciitis just won’t leave you alone no matter what you’ve tried? Suffering from your 4th cold in 4 months? Can’t seem to let go of that 20 extra pounds and muster the energy to exercise more than 10 minutes? Keep reading.
I’m going to share a few things I’ve discovered that are helping me heal and prevent serious recurring illness and injury from happening in the future. AND each of these options cause 0 to very little pain!
Harmonic Light Therapy
I already know sunlight makes me happy, and I’ve heard of light therapy. Harmonic light therapy is even better. Different colors of light pulsed at different frequencies allow our bodies to get out of fight, flight, or freeze so they can heal tons faster.
Last November, I was sandwiched in between two cars on I-15 during rush hour. I walked away with two cracked ribs, a hematoma in my arm, bruising and swelling in several areas, C1-C6 out of alignment in my neck, and some pretty serious PTSD.
The doctor told me it would take at least 6 weeks for my ribs to heal. I had just started getting back into a regular exercise routine before the accident, and was devastated over a 6-week setback. I’d recently heard about harmonic lights at a conference and decided to give them a try.
Utilizing different harmonic frequencies, I used blue lights to help calm my body down, green lights to reduce inflammation and increase cell regeneration, and red/near infrared lights to speed up bone growth in my ribs. After only three weeks of using the lights 20-40 minutes a day, I was feeling almost back to normal and was exercising fairly regularly again. At 6 weeks, all the rib pain was completely gone.
In December, my husband got really sick. Once he combined the harmonic lights with other remedies, we noticed a quick uptick in his recovery. I was so happy with these results, I decided to buy the set. The lights have helped me get rid of headaches, sleep better, reduce pain after workouts, and uplift my mood. If you want to try them out, let me know and I’ll hook you up.
Osteopathic Therapy
An Osteopath is basically a masseuse, chiropractor, and orthopedic specialist wrapped into one. They are trained to adjust muscles, bones, ligaments, tissues, and internal organs, along with doing myofascial release and using trigger points to release stubborn areas. They work to return balance and order to the body.
Since I started visiting an Osteopath, I’ve had my psoas muscles unstuck from my ribs, improving my digestive system, hips and IT bands. My upper bladder was unstuck from under my pubic bone, eliminating the feeling like I had to pee all the time (see my last post for more on that struggle!).
My diaphragm was unstuck from my sternum and ribs and can now inflate fully, making it easier to breathe during exercise. It’s amazing that slight, easy movements and adjustments can make me feel so much better!
Here are two tips I’ve learned from the Osteopath:
1) Give crawling a try. I dare you to do it for 20 minutes (I still struggle to do it for 5). Get on your hands and feet, placing your hands into different positions while crawling (fists, finger tips, and flat palms). Crawling helps your body parts reset into their proper positions and can help digestion issues.
2) Go for a 20 minute walk after your meals. This triggers your digestive system to work better so you don’t feel bloated and gross (unless you just ate a big mac, large fry, and coke… no amount of walking can help that).
If you want some recommendations for an Osteopath, I’m happy to share!
Stuck emotions
During Florida, I smiled a lot during the bike, broke down each discipline into smaller segments, and repeated a couple of positive mantras throughout the race. Yet, I still had IT band trouble halfway into the marathon (I was on pace for my fastest marathon ever and barely kept my disappointment at bay during the last half of the run). And I still had a major emotional slump post-race. Why was that? What was I missing? I felt like I was doing all the things!
The more I learn about emotions and the body, the more I’m convinced emotions are to blame for a lot of the chronic pain and illness I’ve experienced. Like light and sound, emotions have a frequency. MIT even developed a machine that measures emotional frequencies using radio waves. When I experience emotions, my brain sends out frequencies (energy) and chemicals into my body.
Over time, my body became addicted to these emotional/chemical cycles. This past year, I realized I didn’t know how to stop the cycles or release the negative energy from getting stuck in my body, which led to a lot of recurring pain, illness, and a general feeling of being unwell and having a lack of energy. Here are two of my favorite techniques for releasing stuck emotions.
Full Body Crunch
This is the awesomest crunch you will ever do, I promise, just stay with me!
1) Set a timer for 20 seconds if you’re by yourself, or if you feel comfortable, have someone coach you through and have them watch the timer. I’ve had better results when my husband coaches me through this exercise, so I recommend that if you can.
2) Once the timer starts, think of that emotion and the event(s), person/people that triggered that emotion and clench up every part of your body.
3) Bear down as if you were having a baby or going poop.
4) Close your eyes, clench every muscle, and imagine all the emotion collecting in every cell in every muscle. Shout, yell at the person or event, swear, growl, whatever you need to do.
5) During the last 5 seconds, give a final strong push, throwing everything you can into your crunched up body, and hold your breath. When time’s up, immediately release all your muscles, whoosh out your breath, and be mindful of the release of emotion you just had.
6) Imagine all that emotion disappearing down a drain or deep into the earth, or whatever you resonate with. Slow your breathing and return it to normal. Take a minute before getting up as you might feel a little woozy.
7) It’s normal to sweat, cry, and feel a little dizzy after the release. I recommend drinking plenty of water afterwards to further flush out any emotion or toxins the exercise stirred up.
Visualization
I talked about visualization in the previous blog post, and it’s because this is such a powerful tool. This visualization will specifically help release stuck emotions out of the body that are causing pain or dis-ease. You can do this anytime and anywhere, as long as it’s safe to close your eyes.
1) Close your eyes and take several deep breaths.
2) Ground yourself by visualizing a tree trunk growing out of your spine and/or feet into the earth and say to yourself, I am grounded.
3) Connect yourself to your higher power by visualizing a brilliant white or golden light coming down and entering the top of your head.
4) Now focus on the part of your body experiencing pain or illness. Observe the space this is occupying in your body.
5) Ask your body to let you know what emotion is behind the pain or dis-ease. Whatever emotion comes to your mind first, go with that. There may be more than one, but focus on one at a time.
6) Next imagine the emotion turning into an object. For example, one time I turned fear into a giant, black, sticky, tar-like puddle coming towards me, growing in size as it got closer.
7) Does the object have a smell? How big is it? What color is it? Does it have a smooth or rough texture? Does it have a taste? What is it doing?
8) Ask the object what it wants. Once when I was working on grief, the object wanted me to be sad forever. You may find the object wants you to be happy or free from pain.
9) Now give it 100% of what it wants. If it wants you to be happy, give the object 100% love and joy from your heart.
10) Sometimes, when you give it everything it wants, the emotion is released and you can finish your visualization.
11) Sometimes the object gains more power. If so, determine how you’d like to get rid of it. I’ve used everything from flamethrowers to bulldozers and even asked God and angels to help me obliterate especially stubborn negative objects/emotions.
12) Once the object/emotion is completely gone, take some deep breaths and send gratitude to the area of your body the emotion was stuck in. I’ve thanked my body for letting me know about things from the past I could now let go of. I then send love and gratitude from my heart to that area for being strong and putting up with the pain or illness for so long. I’ve also asked that part of my body for forgiveness for being stubborn and not letting the past go.
For those who will be at the SLTC/SUTC tri camp, I’ll walk through these two techniques with participants Sunday morning. As you’ve heard before, emotions come off in layers. You may find yourself working on the same thing multiple times, but it’s just a new layer that is ready to be healed.
There are many different techniques for releasing emotions that get stuck. If you’d like me to walk you through a visualization or share some more ideas, send me a quick email at MandyStarCoaching@gmail.com.
Our final post in this series will cover the third biggest roadblock to achieving your triathlon and fitness goals: money. I have stressed many times about paying for a race, covering travel costs, buying tons of nutrition, upgrading my gear, massage and doctor appointments, and splurging on the latest tri kit.
This stress and scarcity/lack mindset lead to… more stuck emotions causing more pain and attracted more financial strain to me! I’ll share some techniques on how to have a healthy relationship with money so it doesn’t add more stress to race day. Or stop you from signing up for that race you’ve been longing to try. Or buy that new bike… you get the idea!
*****Below is the 2022 UTCS - the only update we're aware of from the below is that Brineman will be a unique Friday race on Sep 9th. Check out this post if you need a refresher on how the UTCS works.*****
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