Stress Relief – Week 1

Sorry I am blogging a day late, everyone. I was sick over the weekend and didn’t really get off the couch yesterday. I’ll detail my symptoms in next week’s blog.
Week 1 was exciting but exhausting. My son turned 2 so we had a birthday party and he started preschool. Instead of kissing him goodbye and walking out the door in the morning while he’s still in his pajamas, I now get him up and dressed and drop him off on my way to work. I decided to bike with him to school since he loves the bike and I’d love to be getting more exercise. The only problem is that my bike is old and really hard to ride and there’s a steady incline about half a mile into our 4-mile ride to school. And several times at this point in our ride, my son asked me to sing. But we rode to and from school every day last week. It was a nice change from the train but I was beat. There were many times when I felt I wasn’t so much applying pressure to points on my face as I was collapsing, face first, onto the tool I use.

By the way, I enjoy hearing what sort of tools everyone is using. I will get a picture of my “mushroom” on the blog ASAP.
I didn’t start right away with all four protocols in my plan of action. I started with “exhaustion, nervous” and “overwork.” Two days later I added “headaches” and “back problems.” My thinking was that I would hold off on the latter two since they are not things I encounter on a daily basis. But I soon added them thinking the cause of all four might be related.
I started my first session by stimulating my points making 3 turns in a counterclockwise direction. Many of the points in my plan of action felt really good (i.e., relaxing) when I applied pressure to them: especially point 126, point 342, point 103 & point 106 (I’m writing out the word “point” each time I make a reference thinking this will make it easier to search the blog down the line). Point 124 on the left (my left) side of my face was a little painful throughout the week. Some points felt awkward: point 1, point 43, point 45 and point 143. The awkward points, all falling near the bridge of the nose, felt difficult to find and difficult to apply consistent pressure to which made me wonder what exactly we are aiming for. If a point falls on a bone or a spot where the skin moves easily, how do we know if we are hitting the right spot? Are we aiming for the bone, a nerve, part of the skin?
There’s a chart in Marie-France’s book which describes the direction in which each point should be stimulated -- I started reading through the book a second time at the beginning of week 2 which is why I didn’t adhere to the chart during week 1 -- I don’t have the page number handy but will add it. I wonder if this chart might help address the issue of hitting awkward points since it allows you to approach from several directions and offers mobility. Thoughts?
Following my first session, I sat down at my desk to check my email. Something somewhat stressful came up and I noticed feeling slightly removed from it, like it was happening but not affecting me internally, not penetrating. I noticed this only the first time.
I had a pain in my shoulder on Saturday afternoon. I rubbed Tiger Balm on it before I had time to look up which point(s) correspond to the shoulder. The balm pretty much took care of the pain.
Goal for the week: familiarize myself more with the image of the frog on the face so that addressing new ailments doesn’t require the time it takes to get the book out and flip through it.