8/2/26 – Sick Day
I’ve been sick all day. Not much else to do when you’re sick except lay around with your thoughts, and watch TV. My mind is a bit tired too from it all. I would like to just rest.
8/3/26 – Integrate & Head Up
Well, yesterday was rough. My body today is feeling the overflow of lying too much, yuck. Also, what was interesting is yesterday when I was sitting in a long sit, my legs were literally pushing out! A lot! My quads and hamstrings were really engaged and pushing my legs out more and more, to the point that they were almost straight in the bed! It was a great sight to be able to see my legs all stretched out! Only thing is, boy did these hamstrings feel tight! Goodness!
My body is really feeling some changes! I swear, every time I get sick it also feels like a neurological overload is happening in my body. My entire back and hips are feeling online, my lower left abdomen is loosening up, and my feet are feeling so much! It’s incredible!
On Saturday I was trying to load my joints and jump a little bit!? It was cool how much sensation this was providing into my knees and ankles! I got keep this one up! Just small incremental movements!
Hmm, integration? Really, this is what I am trying to do:
– Not just getting stronger
– Not just recovering sensation and activation
– Not simply returning to my routines
It’s trying to make all the separated pieces of my life belong to the same life again:
- My legs and my intentions
- My body and my mind
- Rehabilitation and ordinary work
- The person before the accident and the person emerging now
- Painful experience and meaningful language
- The Astronaut — observing from above or down below and the human actually living here on Earth
Right now, I often feel forced to choose:
– work on the house or work on the body
– accomplish a task or something or move
– participate in life or rehab
Integration would mean these categories gradually stop being so rigid. This is what I’m working towards. Slowly. Day by day.
I’m just wondering, when I have brakes off, and knees extended plus quads activated, do I just need to keep loading them? Is there something about BPMs and loading our muscles? The frequency for which we load them? Like when a baby is bouncing up and down in a bouncer? Or when they’re being held and kicking their legs? Is there something special with this? Like on the order of 150+ BPM? This makes me think about Ashley’s wedding, and the previous weddings I’ve been to, and how my legs feel more charged up and alive after a bout of moving and grooving to the beat of the music? What is happening?
It’s like small movements? But fast? What else? Paired with the breath?
Okay so I noticed something too? When I’m wearing my work apron, my hamstrings seem to relax? Like, that lack of eyesight or something has an effect on them? What is this? Something about just trusting my legs to be there, feeling them, and allowing my body to move with them helping support me? Not sure though?
I guess I do kinda have a problem with finishing things? I wonder why? I feel that way with all my open draft posts. Today I finally cleaned up about 4 weeks of backlogs from blog posts. I also have 3 other big articles / posts I’m making. It’s hard to carve out time for everything that’s going on, if I’m being honest.
I think some of the most fascinating discoveries in human history are the ones we’ve been able to make right underneath or in front of our own eyes. The mystery of the body. The mystery of the world. Everything on the micro & macro scale are all observed in some way right here around us. It’s not magic. It’s observations. Yes x-rays and MRI’s are not our eyes, but they’re helping us see what is right in front of us, interestingly enough?
All this to say I know there’s more going on inside us than we all still seem to think to know, it’s just can we actually observe it? Take for instance the signals inside our own body. How can we actually observe the signal traveling thru the nervous system? Isn’t it similar to how we can’t see an electron travel thru a wire? We are left relying on the output of said signal, rather than the signal itself?
What electrons and neurotransmitters are doing between point A & B, we don’t yet fully know? We know they’re somewhere, but doing what exactly? How do you better “smooth” out the path or trajectory?
My head is spinning with ideas on ideas, I need to continue to work on them, but also try to see some of these thru now to fruition? Maybe that’s the next step in my journey, see some of my projects thru to the end, instead of starting more and more?
Test – Fail
Test – Fail
You know the drill? It’s okay to fail, but you have to actually try first, before you succeed.. hmm….like inhibitory signaling in Stim units or Neurological rehab language? Let’s work on these….
8/4/26 – Rhythmic Loading
Okay you know what, this rythmic loading of my body and joints is really having some tremendous effect?? I didn’t do any other significant type of movement except small little assisted jump squats out of the chair, and my whole body is feeling so extremely engaged and different right now??? Is this the next big move?? We will have to find out and try and see!? What is functionally happening during these movements??
Omfg when my body feels this effing awful, I seriously want to blow my brains out, I feel awful. This sucks. It blows so much. Ugh. I better try to move because this is miserable. I hate sitting. I hate sitting. I hate sitting in this chair so goddamn much.
Biofeedback everyday while doing activity?
Spinal and pelvis rotation? 2-3 degrees of rotation? Like a helix?
How does creatine help you if your body is low on creatine?
So, uh. Hmmmmm.
I honestly still havent figured out why I write so much? I do it to think. It’s weird but the thoughts really seem to flow when I actually just write em out. I can’t really conceptualize all the thoughts until they’re out of my head. While in my head, they boil, they spin. They’re unresolved and sometimes angry. There’s all sorts of thoughts. Once I write them down, they start to make a bit more sense. I don’t really know why? But, as I do it more, the more I begin to learn.
My body could really slow down now, as I’m trying to get ready for bed. He’s so restless, that’s what today was, most certainly. It really doesn’t feel well.
8/5/26 – Lifted My Ass
We’re all in our own heads. All working on our own problems. Hard to always remember that.
Balls of my feet, shins, outer legs, thighs are all lighting up today!!! The increased pressure thru my feet is huge! This is really what I need to continue to progress!
I JUST JUCHZED!! YAAAHHHHOOOHOOOHOOOO!!!!!!!
I lifted my ass!!! At Pilates!!
My legs and abdomen took a giant step change in function today!!! This was insane!! My left abdomen is so much less loose!! My body is feeling so much! This is so much more loose and active than it’s ever been! It really is amazing!
8/6/26 – Consolidation Day
I’m shook right now! This has been such a substantial change to my body over this past day/ night!?! Low back and glutes are ON! Low abdomen, and quads, outer legs, shins, gastroc’s, balls of feet! Goodness! This is huge!
I was contracting and relaxing my whole lower body last night to The Coach app kegel workout, and it has some very interesting contract and relax patterns? I’m not sure what it’s doing to the rest of my body, but I figured it can’t hurt to do at the same time as the kegels to get everything firing a bit more?
I can’t believe I lifted my butt off the ground while on the reformer yesterday! My hips are really opening up!! All this information I’m giving him, is really helping make a difference! I’m just ecstatic! And this lower left abdominal region ???? Changing DRASTICALLY! Honestly I wonder if getting sick earlier this week wasn’t also partially contributing to some of this new wake up as well? I swear, every time I’ve gotten sick I feel something significant change afterwards?!
My legs right now are feeling very different too! But my low back! My glutes! They are feeling so ON! Let’s keep wiggling and groovin in the chair throughout the day to keep things loose, and let’s get up in that standing frame!
Rough afternoon. This was not pleasant.
8/7/26 –
OK. If last night wasn’t a neurological breakthrough type of night and I don’t know what was. This was insane! My legs are feeling wild! This is honestly just kind of wild right now my legs were extending, my hip wasn’t sweaty my right hip isn’t Engaging, like lucerne, engaging, my feet are engaging, you name it their eyes! Everything is feeling very different? It’s all feeling “softer“? Less tingly? Legs are feeling more full. I am breathing and opening more? This is just very odd?!
Even right now after using the bathroom and going pee, my body is feeling so much different?!
Brakes off” / “brakes unlocked” has quietly become a load-bearing phrase across three of these posts — it’s doing double duty as literal wheelchair mechanics and as a metaphor for surrendering conscious control. I wonder what conscious control has on Neuro recovery? Conscious vs unconscious?
The amount of water I had to drink this morning, goodness!! Wow!!
Also, I’m pretty sure I’m now past 400,000 words written?! Like, what on earth? How did I somehow manage to write almost as many words than the Lord of the Rings Trilogy?? I’m like 85% of the way there???? This is nuts?! It really does get you thinking, and also gets your mind working completely different as well!?!
Had a decent walk today at PT! Worked with Christa for first time! Went really well! SO MUCH INCREASE in feet sensation and low back activation!
Tried to call it early on working on house for the night!
8/8/26 – IKEA OVERLOAD
So, turns out I got sick this morning after being up since 4AM, and puked at 7??? Whet the heck is going on in my GI tract??? By this point it was all watery yuck, so my body was almost getting ready to get it out of my stomach? It was weird because the squeezing was from my typical spot? It was deeper, lower, and more distributed from the left to right in the middle? For some reason? It wasn’t the same typical spot on the left???
So I got up, went bathroom, you name it to try to relieve the pressure. I then got in the standing frame even for half an hour!? Nope.
Got back into bed, and within 15min I bet, I had to get sick??? This is so weird!?!
What’s been wild too is the constant increase and change in activation in my entire pelvic region, low back, low abdomen, upper quads, glutes, knees, gastroc’s, and feet!?! It’s been a huge rise!? Which has gotten me thinking that if this is happening, maybe muscles down low touching or affecting my GI system are waking up too??
As I lie here in bed this late morning, I’m almost wondering if this is the case?? Maybe a bit of that and a bit of the stomach flu/ wrong food? Eating a burger has NEVER caused this type of reaction? So what on earth is happening? The bit of milkshake I had too with dinner?
It’s been racking my brain, this week of stomach bug, lettuce bug, or whatever it is! I’m trying to be able to eat as well as I can, but apparently that’s too much to ask right now too?? Ugh.
My left and right side of my abdomen have been waking up like crazy, I’ve been stabilizing in the chair much better on long continuous pushes around, and you name it! But why on earth am I puking so much??? All the wake up down low!?! It has been loosening up, low back has been cracking and loosening and allowing more rotation, maybe these are all signs something is happening down there??
Bananas Rice Applesauce and Toast – that’s what I am gonna have to eat. Ugh.
Well, trying to go to IKEA didn’t work out so well. I’m pretty sure this was all reason to just slow down, and get some rest. But today was again pretty filled with things to do. I’m gonna have to go get checked out for the Lettuce Bug. Just what I’m excited to have to do. Ugh.
I feel like I need to slow down and get things under wraps. So many changes happening at once right now in my life. No wonder I’m so stressed and can’t shake whatever bug it is I have right now. Honestly. There’s too much to be trying to simultaneously do right now. It’s all just too much. I wonder what the limit is for what people are good at / optimized to do? 2-3 “things”? Is it more or less? Seems to me I’ve maxed that quantity out, and then some.
Hmm…
Well my gut this week has been awful. I can see my arms getting skinnier each day I don’t do stuff, yuck. Gonna need to get a new routine. This ain’t flying. We gotta shake things up.
The Astronaut on Earth 
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