Still sick!

Woke up this morning feeling like shite, again. I've been ill now for nearly a week. First off it was a sore throat which became chills and sweats then developed into a mild dose of laryngitis and a chesty cough. Admittedly going to the Salle Christmas party in Helsinki was probably not the cleverest plan, but I'm very glad I did as I had a lot of fun and although I'm still ill, the sheer enjoyment of the party and getting out of the house was great. As the saying goes: "A change is as good as a rest". This got me to thinking about the effect of mental state and other less concrete factors on health.

As I've written before, this time of year gets to me, the darkness, the GREYNESS, the lack of snow, the lack of sun. I don't mind the cold, doesn't bother me at all actually. So, I guess my immune system gets a good kicking during winter but isn't best reinforced by my mental state, making me more prone to getting sick.

I've practiced chi kung for the past five years. This involves daily practice (pretty much) or at least every five days out of seven. Some of the effects of chi kung include immune system boost, clearer mind, lowered stress etc. In line with being a bit apathetic over the last month or so, I stopped practising chi kung, with the excuse that I couldn't be arsed doing it. Now it seems I'm paying the price for that apathy. I don't mind if readers believe in chi/chi kung or not, that's their business. All I know is that when it comes to health, I usually don't get sick. If I do, I can kick it in about two days. This tells me that either I generally have a good constitution or immune system and/or practicing chi kung augments it.

Nevertheless, I think it might not necessarily be just one thing which contributes to getting sick or the speed of recovery. This also includes physical injury. I subscribe to the idea that sickness is caused by a combination of factors, in my case, mental tiredness, winter blues, lack of daily preventative measures, not enough sleep, poor dietary choices and worry related to work and daily life. As a good example of how our bodies can be super-resistant to sickness, I remember back to when I was finishing off my PhD. In the last 6 months I slept badly, worked 20 hour days and was stressed to the max. Amazingly, the high stress burden, primarily mental stress took over and did not allow me to become physically sick with flu or anything else. I was aware of this and knew that as soon as the stress ended, there would probably be a health price to pay, because my body would have "time" to be sick, once the degree was completed. I'd noticed this with quite a few colleagues who'd been in the same position and who were completely knocked out for up to 3 weeks by simple colds and flus.

As luck would have it, I managed to dodge this health "bill" by moving to Finland as soon as I'd done my degree. The weather in Finland at the time was glorious, very sunny and much warmer than Ireland. It was a total change of scene, new and exciting and I was very aware of being able to slow down and return to a "normal" pace of life. I remember sitting outside in the sunshine and marvelling at having the time to watch clouds and count grasshoppers on the lawn. Time seemed to move much more slowly! Sounds daft, now I describe it :-). I sometimes wonder that the novelty of my first autumn, winter, spring and summer in Finland helped to alleviate or at least delay the stress effects. However, as I stayed here longer, the novelty and "rose-coloured glasses" came off and like everybody else, I had to deal with the usual stresses of finding work, paying bills, relationship stuff etc. As a result, winters started to have their blues effect on me and the longer I'm here, the worse it seems to get. The piper must be paid!

I've hear it said that when mentally tired, some physical activity can have a good and refreshing effect on the mind. If the body is physically tired, sick or injured, adding an extra physical tax doesn't help at all. In this case, the only remedy is rest. The super-resistance described above is a stress-state effect and not something I would want to be in for an extended period of time. It's really burning the candle at both ends. I reckon that people who suffer burnout at work often become very sick after they are forced to take a step back from their working lives and try to recuperate.

In conclusion, although a single factor may be responsible for making one sick, I think becoming ill is a sort of process. Suffering the symptoms of that sickness is the endpoint of a net of circumstances, e.g. immune system, lack of light, amount of sleep, diet, mental health, stress, overwork, physical fitness, etc. These circumstances can be internal or external but they all interact to produce a person who is somewhere on a spectrum or sliding scale of unhealthy/sick to healthy/wellbeing at the physical, mental and even spiritual/energetic levels.

In sickness and in health....

Well, despite the flu I went along to training tonight determined not to do much. I had no training gear with me even. Today seems like it was "one of THOSE days", where despite getting a satisfactory amount of work done, proofreading at least, I kept making silly mistakes like missing the bus into town by two seconds and the piece de resistance was locking my house and bike keys into the lab when I left work. DOH! Lea was at work tonight so at least I could borrow her keys and get the bus home.

This damned flu is annoying. I seem fine one minute, the next I'm sweating buckets, then I'm freezing and can't seem to get warm. I think I am ok with my throat, then it's sore, then ok and now I think I'm losing my voice. I've got some sort of stomach gripe as well. I shouldn't have gone to training tonight really, but I thought I was ok, if still recovering. I hardly did anything apart from chase people around in the stick game and even that got me into a fine lather. I'm taking it easy tomorrow and on Saturday. It will be bittersweet to watch people at the salle. Sweet (well, sort of) not to have to work, sweat train; bitter because I'll be stuck on my arse all day watching people have a blast. At least the Christmas party will be good fun, judging by past experience.

I'm never happy it seems, I moan about training when I'm healthy and I moan about not being able to do it when I'm sick.

Mental tiredness

Changing perceptions with responsibility
I have noticed that since I started to have some responsibility in my sword group, my appreciation of the fencing arts has changed, sometimes I am as enthusiastic as I was on day one, sometimes I never want to hold a sword again! I tend to fall somewhere along this gradient and as time has gone by and my experience in teaching slowly grows, I find the source of my enjoyment has changed and even if I don't get to train as much as I'd like, I get a major kick from leading classes.

But there's a hole in my training, dear Liza, dear Liza!
For a while now though I've felt as if this experience has become a little "top-heavy" mentally. Most of my swording experience seems to be learning the syllabus mentally rather than physically. As a class leader, I'm supposed to be au fait with the syllabus material at a fairly deep level. Fair enough, to be a good class leader this is necessary and important. However, it feels too one-sided because I'm not taking the opportunity to train for myself so that I also form a good physical knowlede of the syllabus, something which is also vital. Understanding something intellectually is fine, but with a physical art like fencing, there must also be physical training.

Sometimes fencing adds stress not relieves it
Maybe it's the time of the year, a time that I have a tendency to get a little depressed and thus a bit obsessive about the details, not just swording, but work, lack of work, etc. Sometimes, just sometimes, I tend to let all these things pile up to the point where the things I usually take pleasure in, become things to be endured, sword classes, seminars, our new flat, work, time spent with friends, and so on, even getting out of bed in the morning is a major obstacle. I wish everyone would just leave me alone and I could just spend my time quietly watching TV, reading or sleeping, because all social interaction just takes away what energy I have. I guess I also suffer a bit from what in Finnish is called "kaamos" or winter blues, or SAD syndrome.

Fencing stress coming to a head
This weekend will see another syllabus day take place in Helsinki, followed by the Christmas Party. I'm becoming less enthusiastic about it as it draws closer and begin to feel stressed, primarily by the thought that the purpose of the day is to see what we know, what progress we've made, and what aspects we need to train more. This stress is double-edged. Firstly, the standard of the Turku students is, in part, a direct result of classes I've led. I want Guy to know I'm doing my best as much as I want the Turku students to know they've made progress and still get a kick out of coming to training. So, rightly or wrongly, I feel responsible.
Secondly, and this links with the second paragraph of this post, I feel like I'm going to an exam totally unprepared. I'll have to stand in front of the class and physically try to demo stuff I know or at least am very familiar with intellectually, but have not actually trained for ages. I'm not looking forward to this, but I think I have enough experience and knowledge to carry it off. Then there is the one-on-one lesson with Guy or perhaps Ilkka, where we may do freeplay. This is the scariest thing for me because I'll be put under stress to see how I'll perform, and I haven't trained ANY free play preparation, let alone free play itself since last I met Guy in a freeplay lesson. So, I know that I have made no progress, at least in this aspect of sword training. My last freeplay lesson wasn't fun, it was very stressful for me, I didn't enjoy it at all, and only realised that I need to do more of this type of training, if I want to do better and realise some progress.

Disclaimer!: Freeplay IS fun!
For anyone reading this who thinks that freeplay is scary, it's very important to make one thing clear though: freeplay preparation and such training is not actually unpleasant per se, it is actually ok and even fun to experience some stress and test yourself because what is freeplay or even tournament bouting after all? The biggest positive lesson one takes away from freeplay is that you need to practice more, sometimes it might even be a specific technique or a sense of distance or often something you thought you "knew" or had simply taken for granted.

The answer can be "yes" and "no"
So, what is the solution? Is there one? I have to answer positively and say "yes". A general yes to the general problem, perhaps a specific yes to a specific problem. Then again, sometimes the answer will also be "no", and this is completely ok too. As in, do I have the solution now, today? In these cases, the answers may well be "no", but with a qualifier, "no today, now, but maybe yes later, tomorrow". There has to be some room for improvement, progress, change. I can feel like shit now, confused, pressured, useless, but I don't have to feel like this all the time.

No Beginner's Course for me next year
Regarding training, the solution is obvious. I need to take a step back from letting leading the beginner's course take over the rest of my training, get assistance from the rest of the more advanced students who, I'm sure are more than able and willing to help out. I will definitely NOT lead the next beginer's course and make way for the others to lead the classes. Even leading the advanced class takes less from me because I can train with them and they are at a level where they pretty much know what they have to do, if not they can make that "jump" most beginners could not. The group is smaller and I would not have to be as vigilant as with the beginners either.

Ok, rant over!
Ok, these were just some ides I had rolling around in my head for a while. Guess what? I'm just as screwed up as the next person! Surprised? Well, if you knew me, probably not. Don't worry though, most of my posts will be about swording. En garde!