For nearly a year, I have dealt with varying degrees of pain in my hands, specifically my fingers. It happened before I had Everyone's Favorite Virus™️ in January, but after I took the jab a year ago. Thankfully, I don't feel it when I type. I feel it when I clench my hands into fists or try to grip things. There's a sharpness in my knuckles like the skin is too tight there. It usually feels the worst in the morning as opposed to after a long day tapping at a keyboard.
My telehealth doctor advised me to "keep an eye on it" and suggested I might need an x-ray. That, of course, was a silly answer. My new doctor ran an autoimmune blood panel to rule out an autoimmune condition. The tests all came back negative. She suggested it might be the beginning of arthritis and recommended I start taking proteolytic enzymes at bedtime on an empty stomach. When you take enzymes with food, they help break down the food. When you take them on an empty stomach, they help the body clear misfolded proteins and other undesirables circulating through your system and potentially causing inflammation, which is the root of arthritis. There might have been a slight improvement after taking the enzymes for a couple of weeks, but overall the pain has been the same despite other modalities such as ice packs and using a hand massager regularly.
This week, I was introduced to a Qigong breathing exercise called the "huff and puff." You lie down on your back with arms at your side and palms facing up. You do all breathing through your mouth. You take one breath in, then a second breath in. Think of it like how you breathe right before a sneeze. Then you exhale. You can go as deep as you want, but you want to keep a relatively quick pace for fifteen minutes. This practice is considered a hard reset for the nervous system. It is designed to bust through any blockages of energy (qi) occurring in the body. It also has a tendency to bring up emotions.
My experience after the breathing session was feeling tingling and warming in my hands, specifically. My vision also changed, and I had a buzzed and woozy feeling as I staggered back to the pod room. As I was getting wired up, that's when the emotions hit me. This led to some breakthroughs in the pod regarding my hands and what they represent.
At the end of his life, my father lost the use of his hands, which had become locked closed. He only had his two index fingers for typing. I never got to the bottom of the cause. I discovered that I feared the same thing would happen to me. Hands are important to us, but even beyond the superficial, I discovered that my hands represent trust for me. This was an incredible insight.
Believe it or not, after the breathing session and my realization, my hands felt much better. In one day, my hands felt 95% better. Today as I type this, my hands almost feel completely back to normal. My thinking brain was looking for a physiological cause, as you would normally expect. I can't really explain what happened. All I know is I feel the difference.
