ADJUSTING DIAGONALLY [T, 11-7-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—ADJUSTING DIAGONALLY [T, 11-7-23]

 

As Jessica got me situated on the table for my dexa scan, we started talking about walking and running. Even though she looks to be about 25, she has 15-year-old boy-girl twins. The boy is a cross-country runner. Jessica herself is a walker.

She said, “When I go for a long walk, my right shoulder beings to hurt. That seems strange.”

“Next time that happens,” I said, “pay close attention to your left hip and knee. It’s possible that you are using your left leg or foot or hip just enough differently from the right that a torque force is developing there. That gets transferred in your body diagonally…”

I learned that from my deep muscle therapist, Bjorg Holte, when she was working on me because I had almost debilitating pain on the outside of my right elbow. It was bad enough that Dr. Mack Hollowell had actually made an appointment for me with a surgeon, to have the ulnar nerve moved.

This was in my distance running days. I had pain on the outside of my left knee, too, but runners have foot and leg pains all the time. We pay no attention to those. But being right-handed, that elbow pain was a real problem.

I was telling church member-friend, Sharon Butts, about it. Sharon and I saw each other frequently because vocationally she was a marriage counselor. I sent a lot of business her way. She said, “You should go see Bjorg first.” So I did.

Bjorg came to the US from Norway when she was 20, so that she could study sculpture at the U of IL. Her work became quite renowned, at least regionally.

“I realized, though,” she said, “that I had no contact with people. I was in my studio all day by myself. That was not healthy. I knew about the body from my sculpting, so I figured I could use that knowledge in sculpting real people.”

So she went through training in the Pfrimmer Method and became a deep muscle therapist. Of course, she kept her studio and continued sculpting, too.

I told her about my elbow and she gave me one of the best pieces of knowledge I’ve ever received: “The body tends to adjust diagonally.”

After my session with Bjorg, I went for a run. It was winter, but distance runners sneer at bad weather. I decided to get out of the wind a bit, though, by running on the track around the football field at the university stadium. My left knee--the anterior cruciate ligament, I assumed, because runners love to use terms like that--began to hurt. The snow began to accumulate on the track. I was the only one there, so as I came around for another lap, I could see my own footprints. My left foot was toeing in just slightly more than my right.

So… the outside of the left knee is the diagonal opposite of the outside of the right elbow. I began to toe my left foot out to match the right. I could tell I was doing it correctly because I could see before and after prints in the snow. The pain in my left knee disappeared. So did the pain in my right elbow left. I canceled the surgery.

Even now, 40 years later, when I feel a twinge in my left knee or right elbow, I know I can make it disappear by adjusting that left footfall.

I know I’ve written about this before, but since Jessica brought the issue to mind again… I began to wonder if, when the soul gets out of adjustment, it can be corrected by adjusting its diagonal? Discuss among yourselves…

John Robert McFarland