20240124 : balancing the equations...

It is fascinating to read and understand how muscles work. For all my life, (since I had not given it any thought earlier), I simply had assumed a muscle is 1 muscle. Ex, if we say bicep muscle, it was one muscle in my mind (I don't know why I imagined so, but so it was). The truth is very far from it . Each muscle is made up of hundreds of strands (maybe thousands). And the best part (I have practically understood, not backed by any medical stuff) - is that each strand is connected separately to the brain and not as one. 

For mechanical enthusiasts, each strand works like a sort of rack and pinion arrangement, operated by a chemical reaction, triggered by the brain. Each strand has two separate connections to the brain - one to work the rack and pinion arrangement each way (to contract the muscle strand and the other to release it or relax the muscle strand).

In short, that's how it achieves any movement. By selecting the set of muscle strands to activate (how many most probably based on how much force is needed to be exerted) and relaxing them afterwards alternatively. For example, take simple walking - there are many many muscles involved (starting from our toes , feet, ankle, calf, thigh, hamstring, Hip, abdominal muscles, back muscles, etc). As I said above, each of them is not one muscle, each of them are hundreds of muscle strands each firing in a very very complex sequence of contracting and relaxing to take a step forward.

It all happens in a second without thinking about these things. We only have to have the intention to walk and everything happens automatically.

Now imagine a batter in cricket or striker in baseball who manages to hit a ball out of the boundary or stadium reacting to the bowler/ pitcher with 100% accuracy in 2-3 tenths of a second. My stomach turns thinking about the response speed involved.

Most usually it is called "reflexes" or "muscle memory". 

I have very little respect for such terms after my stroke. I am absolutely convinced there is no such thing.

Every muscle in my body is absolutely fine. Every muscle is properly connected with my central nervous system (the spine). Just that after my stroke, my spine is not connected with the brain (brain stem) after my stroke.

If there was anything like reflex or muscle memory, there would have been many many actions that would happen reflexively.

But nope, nada, nothing like that has ever happened in the last almost 5 years.

Folks who recognise the verses, will recognise  " इच्छा शक्ति ज्ञान शक्ति क्रिया शक्ति स्वरूपिणी...”

इच्छा शक्ति (Iccha shakti) - the power of intention. 

ज्ञान शक्ति (Gnaana shakti) - the power of knowledge 

क्रिया शक्ति (Kriyaa shakti) - the power of action.

Intention, knowledge and Action.

All 3 are needed for doing anything. I have understood it (rather painfully). 

In my understanding, 

Intention resides in the mind. That's where the thought or desire to do anything arises from. But the mind doesn't know how to do anything. My mind is fine, yet it doesn't know how to get anything done. 

Knowledge (knowledge, not knowledge as information and logic, but knowledge of how to work the body). It resides in the brain. It knows the very intricate orchestration and coordination of the muscles, skeleton everything and how to work them. We need that knowledge to do anything. 

My brain (presumably), has this knowledge. Part of it may have been ruined by the stroke, but going by the research that has been done and attribution of the various parts/ lobes that are responsible for all the related actions, the assumption is most of it is still there.

We cannot have a mind and brain and no body for actions. We can want to walk, a brain that knows how to walk but to walk we need a healthy leg. We cannot walk with the legs amputated. We need the body/ limbs everything intact to perform the action.

As I said, I have a perfectly fine/ operational body.

The only problem is that the Gnaana shakti (brain) is not interacting with the Kriya Shakti (body)

Firstly, why do I think each muscle strand has two connections to the brain? Very simple, in many many parts of my body, only one of them works. Ex,

my right forearm, i can contract it tight/ make it rigid but afterwards I can't release/ relax it . It takes a few minutes to relax on its own.

 

Same with a few fingers  on my right hand. With some difficulty, I am able to curl it like a grasping action but i can't open it afterwards.

On my right leg, for ex, say I am sitting on the wheelchair and it is bent down at the knee, i can contract and make it straight but that's it. I can't relax it and bend it down again. I have to wait for Newton & his gravity trick with the weight of the leg to slowly bring it back down. It's so funny to watch 🙂.

So, each muscle strand has 2 separate connections, I am very sure of it.

After I had my stroke, I was only a mind for many weeks with absolutely no body. No muscle being connected to the brain properly I guess. It was a very strange feeling. A very scary feeling yet a very liberating feeling in a way. After the situation sunk into the mind, it was very liberating. I was only an observer for everything around. I didn't have to act on anything. I wanted to . I very very badly wanted to initially but after the reality sunk in and I realised I couldn't do an iota about anything, it was - I shouldn't say liberating but observing everything,  understanding everything just assessing the cause and effect of situations on people, what might happen without getting involved to influence any of it - it brought a feeling of separation from everything and everyone.

Then it started to wake up. Bit by bit. Starting with 2 fingers on my left side. Imagine, a fully capable mind having only 2 fingers that it can wriggle. It sounds like some eerie movie but that's how it was . I can't describe the feeling in words.

The mind, through the eyes can see the full arm and understands the full arm is there. But the brain doesn't see it. It (presumably) knows what to do to move the whole arm, but because it is not connected to the arm it doesn't see it. It's a very strange feeling indeed.

When my physiotherapist asks me to do something (started with my left hand), I am not even able to understand what he is asking me to do. I understand the words, I understand what it means, but the mind doesn't understand why it is not happening. The brain is not connected so it doesn't even feel the arm . It's a very confusing feeling because you are understanding and comprehending the words and (presumably) it is transferring the intention to the brain and (presumably) the brain is trying to orchestrate the action but nothing  is happening. It cannot even see/ feel the hand internally. Only externally, the mind can see it. It's a very confusing feeling.

When the strands get connected -  one at a time (neuroplasticity is indeed a miracle), the first thing I notice is that I can feel the part of the body. Not entirely as it "wakes up" very very gradually, but I start feeling that location vaguely. In fact, the precursor to anything is pain. My body is going through so much disuse and wrong use sometimes since my stroke I can't imagine how much it should be paining normally. But I am conveniently spared. No connection to the brain, no pain (that's another thing I have realised: all bodily pain doesn't pain in the body locally. Only the brain can sense the bodily disruption of any kind and transfers that composit perceptions as a feeling of pain to the mind and the mind reacts to whatever)

As far as I am concerned, no perceptions from the body - no pain. Amazing right.

Ex. I have a very bad sublexation in my right shoulder for the past 4 years. I can see it - that the arm has slipped almost 1½ inches from the shoulder joint. It's an extremely, extremely and an excruciatingly painful sight. But, lucky me. No pain absolutely. 🙂

I have twisted my ankle so many times so badly I can't even remember. When I used to play basketball in younger days, a sprain even half like now needed 2 painkillers and ice packs and it would be swollen like a balloon for a few days. Now, not only is there no pain, it doesn't even swell. Since the brain is not connected, no pain. Since there is no pain perception, no response of swelling/ inflammation. Wonderful mechanism isn't it.

Some days ago, I tried some stunt. It didn't go as I anticipated. In short, I put the body through a lot of distress. In normal situations, it should have been very very painful. But as expected, no pain 🙂. 3 days ago, it started paining very badly in one particular place. I was overjoyed. Unfortunately, it was a false start. The pain went away🙁. Basically the muscles which started to wake up went back to sleep. 

So, when any part of my body starts to wake up, since it is already paining for a very long time (but not perceived), the first thing is pain. Since it wakes up very very gradually (strand by strand), while it starts to pain, it is not unbearable, it's a vaguely bearable pain.

I still can't move anything, not enough to have a few strands to perform any task. But when my physiotherapist asks me to do the usual things, I can now feel that part of the body and understand what he is asking me to do as I can see/ feel that part from the brain. 

But as I said, a few strands of muscle are not enough to do anything. After a long time (sometimes weeks, sometimes months) I can feel a sort of belt in that part. It still isn't full , but feels like a belt in that part. Sometimes, I can make a slight movement with it. That's the cue I keep waiting for. After that, it's completely up to me. I have to keep trying and doing the slight movement over and over to wake up the rest of the muscle strands and to build endurance/ strength in that muscle (with whatever nutrition I get in my feeds).

However, it's not linear.  Sometimes/ some days, it goes completely out of whack. The improvement I have seen just vanishes and I don't get it to work.

Which (after a lot of digression) brings me to the original thought I started with for the title I started with - "balancing the equations".

This non linear pattern of improvement is most pronounced with my balance - when I am trying to stand or walk with my physiotherapist.

Some days I am just not able to balance and keep myself from falling. I don't feel weak or tired or anything abnormal either. It baffled me over and over.

This is my theory (not backed by any scientific or medical stuff of course)

I have written sometime back that balancing is probably one of the most complex achievements by our body (brain actually).

There are so many muscles that need to be pushed and pulled (contracted and relaxed) all over the body from toes , feet, legs , hips, waist, abdomen, back etc. and it's constantly taking feedback for correction from sight and most importantly, our gyroscope - the inner ears mechanism. If this were to be put down on paper mathematically , imagine the complexity of the equation to be balanced on both sides to achieve standing/ balance.

Yet the body (brain) manages to do it. It figures out how to balance the equation as early as less than a year growing up and keeps getting efficient at solving this complicated equation over many years.

However, when I had my stroke, the equation became a scrambled dish . Most of the variables in the equation no longer could be varied to achieve balance in the equation.

However, over the years, some variables have "woken up" and started to vary. It's not enough though. The body (brain) gradually compensated for the inactive variables and gradually changed the equation to achieve balance. In practical terms, what it means is - ex, that since the right hip didn't work and support, it compensated by putting more load on the left hip so on. Hundreds, maybe thousands of such compensations all over. When I stand and balance, I can't even make out I am compensating. It feels like the normal thing to do for me (because it is a new balanced equation in the brain).

As I mentioned, this compensation and redrawn equations are all over the body (brain). It's only pronounced in standing balance.

This should be good enough. However, as I mentioned, every now and then, I completely lose it and everything goes haywire.

My theory (based on the above observations),  is because some new strands of some muscle (variable) suddenly woke up. It's good news if I think about it. However, its suddenly  is introducing new unknown variables in the complicated balanced equation. It obviously goes unbalanced immediately - till the body (brain) can adjust itself to the new/ changing reality and figure out how to redraw the equation to balance itself.... 

This might be a complete fiction/ fantasy of mine. However, it has been a question dogging me for a long time and it balances the equation in my mind  for me 🙂