Triathlon and Commitment to Improve

I have a 24 year-old-old male patient for the last three years who came to me because of excruciating abdominal pain that made him to bend over and ending up in the ER.  He was scheduled to be operated several times for exploratory reasons, but somehow he called me before the procedures and responded well to treatment in a matter of a few hours.  I treated him with IV major tranquilizers twice when these episodes happened.  I told him that his problem was his “breathing pattern.”  I ventured to make this statement instead of using something as “somatization,” “panic attacks,” etc. It takes years to understand that breathing can help us or destroys us depending on how we have learned to breathe.  This patient works as a musician and also his father. I told him since the first interview that he needed to learn how to breathe and insisted that yoga classes could help him.  He went to yoga classes almost three years after our first encounter!  That is how invested our patients are in their problems and how much they believe in advices. 

In his first yoga class, in a matter of a few minutes, he was able to reproduce the pain.  He stopped going to yoga classes because he could not stand breathing in that environment. He changed his singing teacher and started with a better technique practicing breathing; unfortunately or fortunately, he presented panic attacks during rehearsals and understood that he could work on the anxiety bouts.  Three years later, he understood that breathing was his main problem at this point in his life and increased practicing singing (breathing) more frequently to overcome his fears.  He came back happily and told me two things:

1)   “I spoke to my father about music and my problems and he told me that he wanted to teach me music and I just wanted to play the guitar; so he just taught me how to play the guitar.”  My father said to me:  “Now you are ready to learn music.”  For his father music was a way of living that encompasses the way of breathing and some other things for his soul.

2)   “I learned about many things that happened at the time I was born and after being born, I did not want to know about things happening to me.”

I like what Brackin says about planning because what we need is a knowledgeable and focus athlete.  Athletes should know what is needed to be the best.

  

The case is related to our athletes that are unable to learn about training and they do not want to see what is happening to them.  It takes years if they are able to tolerate the reflection about what they have done; and years to return to take a different path according to what they learned from what they experienced without lying to themselves.  We have seen many lives passed by without return because of stubbornness.

Can we create a short cut? Can we help these people before is too late?  We have a saying in Spanish:  “Nobody experiences in somebody else´s head.” We are here to do our best but we are not magicians.  “Commitment to improve” has to do with our commitment to see what is in front of us without lying to ourselves.  Please see:

28 nov. 2012

FALSE BELIEF AND TRIATHLON