Category Archives: Hypothesis/Experiment

A Whole New Body, from the Ground-Up

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When I went back for my “high school” reunion in North Dakota, after having been gone for 16 years (I left in the 6th grade but my BF was running the reunion), my BF’s mom immediately recognized me. By the way I walk.

I didn’t give it much more thought until about 2 months ago, when I realized I’d been walking too “heavy” my entire life. Well, not only had I been walking too heavy on my flat feet, but I also had been walking “heavy” like a supermodel, one foot in front of the other.

I learned something really valuable this week:

If one walks one foot too close to the other foot, one puts a lot of stress on the low back.

I didn’t/couldn’t realize how much stress my low back had been in until I started walking like I was on a set of hip-width railroad tracks 2 days ago. It felt like I was walking with my legs WAAAY far apart, but really, my feet were directly under my hips.

When I was a little girl, I had seen a TV show that explained how supermodels walk. I assumed that was some standard of beauty and I decided to walk like that from then on. The result of that decision was quite terrible: I developed bull-leggedness, and created quite a lot of torque in my lower spine that ultimately contributed to a severe weightlifting injury to a disk in the low back during college.

The first day I started walking with my feet a normal distance apart from each other, I noticed two things:

1. My low back immediately felt soothed, like it had more room, like it could relax.

2. I noticed that I got more approving looks from people. This is subtle and prone to bias, but I really think the way I used to walk probably looked unathletic and a bit weird. Now I’m looking more stable/powerful, even just a couple days in.

I don’t know how long it will take to adjust to the new way of walking. My bones in my lower legs will have to change shape, which will likely take up to 7 years. I have time, haha.

www.healthyfeet.me

Experiment Updates, Piano-Playing

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Just a few life observations:

Have had the most productive two weeks of my life in recent history, may or may not be a coincidence that I’ve been abstinent for two weeks. Men can be a wonderful distraction from your life’s work if you use them in that way. Abstinence/productivity relationships, hmmm.

Have been trying to play a new piano hymn every night. I think I’m on 5, and it’s been 2 weeks, but, hey, it’s a start. My roommate and my cat both seem to really enjoy my playing so that’s nice. Especially because my cat hates it when I sing.

My foot experiment is still going well. I think I’m on week 5/6 now and still not fully habituated in the new way of walking but it’s getting smoother. I was so pleased to see my new lovely footprints on the beach this weekend.

I created a website to start to show people how I fixed my flat feet: www.healthyfeet.me

My 20/20 eye experiment is great but difficult. Made all the more difficult by the fact that I spend so much time these days at a screen, it is really hard to let the eyes re-adjust to a distant object after 3 hours of hardcore concentration. I need to set timers for mobile and laptop use I guess for distance refocusing and blinking.

Lalalala life goes on…

20/20 Eye Experiment Update: A Lesson in Miracles

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Today was a breakthrough day in my education about vision restoration.

I came to the realization that, when not wearing corrective lenses, I have to consciously choose to “look” at blurry objects AS IF I COULD SEE THEM CLEARLY, without strain. There is a subtle distinction here between looking with hope that you can see, and looking with confidence that you are already healed and can see perfectly. I had a good 2-3 mintes of perfect vision, which caused me to bawl my eyes out on the subway train in gratitude. In public. Like a crazy person.

The rest of the day was a constant challenge to see as if I already had perfect sight.

I learned this from my foot experiment: every step has to be as if you were healthy and normally functioning: that’s like 10,000-20,000 conscious movements per day. With the eyes, that number of conscious moments is exponentially increased, which is why it is much more difficult to change your vision than the structure of your feet.

But now I know that it is possible. I suspect my experiment may actually succeed this month, stay tuned. 20/20 in 20 more days…

Experiments Galore, bwahaha

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Eye Experiment (20/20 no surgery): after failing to buy contact solution two days in a row now, I will be going another day without any contact lenses or glasses. I kind of like these happy errors, they seem to help my scientific process. My eyes adjusted well to no correction at all today. I actually started having 20/20 flashes again, which was exciting. So from here on out, I will try to do 2 days no correction, 2 days equal -1.25 correction, and 2-4 days no exercises and perhaps full correction (-1.25/-3.00) on one of those days.

A great benefit I’m already getting is more eyebrow lift in my left eye. I am starting to look more symmetrical in a mirror which helps my beauty as well :-D

Foot experiment:
I’m getting more prominent foot arches, now into my fourth week of wearing flat-soled shoes and pushing off the balls of my feet consciously. My left foot especially gets tired quickly but I feel the postural benefits all over. My belly sticks out less. It’s a muscle soreness in the arch near the metatarsals and not an aching pain feeling in the heel like I used to get when i’d walk incorrectly.

More beautiful feet too, yay!!

My life is getting exponentially more awesome. Life is but a dream — a really freakin persistent dream.

Eye Experiments, Day 5

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I guess today was more like a natural day off from my eye experiments, which is good because I have a hard time planning time off generally! Had to wear regular prescription today in order not to strain to see the speakers at the Day of Tikkun conference, which was incredibly inspiring, by the way. Definitely feel like I’m at the right place, right time. Finally :)

Will take another day off from eye experiments tomorrow as I will be driving most of the day. Did notice a headache around the eyes today though. Also, I noticed I needed to lift my eyebrows more to see more clearly without correction in left eye. This should upgrade my appearance as well, no eyelift surgery needed! Just have to remember to keep the eyelids slightly raised at all times, which feels like work still.

Feet Experiment:
I feel that my feet are much stronger. My calves are still extra-tight from all the extra work, so I’m hoping that will go away in a couple of weeks. Probably still need more water generally.

Life is good.

Eye Experiment (day 3?)

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Mostly just wore one contact lens in right eye so that both corrected to near -1.25.

Stopped gazing at own hair obsessively after each notice (25-50 times?) Next, to stop entirely.

Forgot all eye exercises. Worked on extra blinking all day and read print on a far wall for 10mins with constant relaxation and soft blinking focus.

No obvious permanent improvement. Extra blurry leaving house at night after computer work.

Killing Two Birds – Eye Experiment Update

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EXPLETIVE

Just realized I have to break my hair-pulling habit in order to improve my eyesight. I preferentially pull my hair on the right side, likely causing more strain on the right eye (the worse eye).

This is a blessing in disguise.

To re-post what I put on my Facebook page this morning:

“You blink only half as many times in a minute when staring/squinting at a monitor/device. Eyes need to blink to stay relaxed and healthy. How can you tell if you’re squinting? Blink for a minute more often and feel the difference.”

Most likely that staring at an object the size of a split hair would fall under “squinting”, or at least eye strain with reduced blinking…no wonder I have eye problems… :-p

Would be fun to see eye data on other compulsive hair pickers…

Eyes and Feet Experiments

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I have two ongoing body experiments right now that I wanted to journal about, lest I forget my progress.

Feet Re-Sculpturing

I am currently 2.5 weeks into changing the way I walk, so that my “flat feet” develop the proper arch support to carry my big-ass frame.

Things I’m starting to realize: I typically put most of my weight in my heels when I walk, then let the rest of my foot sort of slap down. I figured this out by wearing flat ballerina-type shoes for a few days in a row while doing a ton of walking:  my heels began aching and I began dreading each step.

Then, I remembered my father’s voice from childhood: “Stop stomping around the house.” “Walk more quietly.” We had a trailer house and footsteps in one end of the house could be easily vibrated through to the other end. I had no idea what he meant at the time. I thought it felt weird to step softly or tiptoe around, so I basically ignored his rather good advice.

My feet always felt and looked “flat” growing up. My feet would burn and fatigue quickly during activities where my foot was confined to a straight forward position, like ice skating or roller skating or skiing, or if I had to do basketball shuffle drills for any length of time where you stay on the balls of the feet. But no one understood the issue properly enough to address it with me I suppose.

My feet are large (size 11), so this may account for me getting “lazy” about using them.

A side effect of not properly rolling forward onto the front pads of the feet was that my posture had to adjust accordingly to keep me centered. My butt sticks out farther back, my stomach pushes forward more, and my shoulders are more forward. As a result of my slightly forward shoulder posture, my shoulders became more unstable, likely leading to my shoulder ligament tear my junior year of high school, and subsequent 2 shoulder surgeries. I tried to “fix” my posture in college by sitting up straighter, which just ended up in me looking awkward to people, like I was trying too hard to sit up straight. I needed to sit up straight from the ground-up.

Also, I sustained many injuries to my ankles, especially in basketball games. This can be explained by the fact that my feet would flop down, and they lost their innate ability to “paw” the ground front/back and side-to-side. As a result, if I caught an edge of anything, my atrophied feet muscles were of no help, so the next joint up got the brunt of the force: the ankles.

My experiment, which basically involves:

  • Wearing flat-soled shoes
  • Walking “softly”, rolling completely onto the balls of the feet
  • Keeping the toes and heels pointing forward, preventing foot eversion in my case
  • Keeping the feet hips-width apart (two fists’ width) rather than my tendency to walk like a supermodel, one foot in front of the other, as I was taught to by television at a young age

…is teaching me that I haven’t been using my lower calf muscles at all to walk. My lower calves BURNED for about the first 2 weeks of my experiment. Granted, I spent the first 2 days walking entirely on my balls of the feet and barely touching the heels at all, to see if that was better. I decided that, no, the heels need to land very softly.

What I notice when I walk more correctly, is that I feel taller, lighter, and like more work is being done by my feet and calves to walk. Much more energy out of the lower legs. Finally TODAY, the lower legs have adapted to the work and do not feel as sore anymore. And my belly comes in slightly.

AND…I am developing a little arch in my feet already! I took a picture tonight. I will have to find some old pictures of my bare feet from childhood, if possible, for comparison, then I will post them. I know I have pictures of my flat footed footprints after walking at the beach and it looks like bigfoot has stomped through there, rather than that cute little arched footprint most people should have.

So far, so successful.

Eye Experiments

Today I decided to utilize the -1.25 contact lenses I have for my left eye, for my right eye only (currently -3.00). If I don’t wear a left contact lens, then both of my eyes are roughly at the same -1.25 level of blurriness. This feels much better to me than wearing the -1.25 correction in both eyes. I feel like my “good” eye was just taking over for the weaker eye when it was adjusted to 20/20, so with them both at the same level of sight, I expect I can progress faster with my focus and relaxation exercises, which I started doing on the MUNI. It’s only Day 1, so more progress to come, I hope. My left eyelid is slightly lazier, I suspect because it has had to compensate more in its life. I’m hoping that by “fixing” my vision, that I will also improve my appearance by both eyelids and eyebrows raising similarly.

Dogs vs. Cats (a hypothesis)

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Had an interesting talk with my hikers today about animal psychology and my theory on why dogs and not cats are man’s best friend.

My hypothesis has to do with the fact that a cat’s heart rate is much higher than a humans’ (150-200bpm resting pulse vs. 60-70bpm for a human). Cats are a bit more high-strung-they operate on a higher frequency. Large cat trainers will tell you that you must always be “present” around cats. This keeps them relaxed.

It’s similar to walking a dog. When a dog is being walked and you give up your leadership position, either by letting the dog walk ahead or getting distracted by checking your phone, talking, etc., the dog loses respect for you and takes over leadership. A dog wants to know that the pack is safe and packs need their leader. A dog may get anxious if put into a leadership position when you ought to be leading, and will react by being “bad”: pulling you, wandering, etc., attacking other dogs. They are just nervous.

Cats always are on high alert. I think this may have to do with their heart rate. If you lose focus around a cat, the cat will perceive you as unstable/unpredictable, and therefore a threat. My cat is basically half feral so I think she is a great example of this instinctual behavior. The cat may seem to suddenly “out of nowhere” attack or do something unpredictable. Usually, this is just because you simply weren’t paying attention. You weren’t on their frequency. Rabbits and birds have even higher heart rates than cats, and this behavior is similarly exaggerated. Their nervous systems are simply running on a higher frequency.

Dogs, with a frequency close to humans (60-150bpm) probably fit us like a best friend because they are easier to predict. Higher strung/high energy breeds (like pit bulls) exhibit more quick-turn tendencies which may explain why they are the black sheep of the species.

We are comfortable with animals we can relate to :-)