Potty Training

I'm pretty used to training schedules with the lifeboat. Saturday mornings are filled with routines on first aid, rules of navigation, firefighting etc.. Training is what keeps you alive.

But now I'm on another weekly training schedule. This time it is to retrain the bits of me that got seriously re-mapped, or even lost, with the various operations I had last autumn. The physiotherapist, whose glorious task it is to potty-train me, is as patient and supportive as the lifeboat cox, but, being female, a good deal more glamorous. Still, a white coat and rubber gloves do wonders to turn her into the same kind of authority figure as Lolo1. If I was already willing to make a fool of myself casting towlines with him, then I am, I suppose, equally game for some of the rather embarrassing exercises with her.

After a long session taking general notes about my physical condition, she beckoned me into the treatment room. Expecting the worst, at her command I dropped my trousers and climbed up onto the treatment couch. I asked myself silently which part of my body she was going to apply her skills to first. Figure my surprise when she started checking the articulations, starting with toes and working up, via the ankles, to the knees, hips, etc., right up to the neck. I didn't have to waggle my ears, though, which was something of a relief.

It seems that the way forward, for the kind of post-operative problem I have, is to treat the whole body, including breathing. "γνῶθι σεαυτόν: know thyself", a Greek once (or maybe more than once, considering the saying is attributed to a confusing range of thinkers) famously enjoined, and it was clear I didn't know my body very well.

Lesson one was indeed heavily concentrated on breathing, with the diaphragm and abdominal muscles particularly implicated. I wonder where, holistically, she will turn to next week?