Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

There’s an adage that goes something like, “If you visit a doctor, you’ll get medicine. Go see a nutritionist and you’ll learn that all of your problems are caused by your diet. If you visit a chiropractor, you’ll find the problem is your skeleton.  Visiting a massage therapist, you’ll be told it’s a muscular problem. A neurologist will find a nerve issue.  A Reiki master will tell you it’s all about your energy. Go see a psychiatrist and it will become clear that it’s all in your mind.” Basically, you can’t really trust anyone who’s set up to make money.  Once someone is getting paid for their information, they immediately become biased. I’m not saying they can’t be trusted at all, but I’m advising you keep in mind that if someone is making a livelihood from giving you specific information, then they’re going to be highly motivated to believe and dispense said information; no matter what. Paula Deen is an example of this.  When she was told she had Type 2 diabet...

My exercising has been sporadic lately. About three weeks ago I stopped my programed workouts because of a series of small injuries. My thumb was sprained, my back was seizing up and the issue that I had been working on to fix and realign my foot/ankle seemed to have transferred up into my knee, causing it to feel unstable, but thankfully, without pain. The ankle pain had finally stopped, but whatever misalignment that was causing it has obviously repositioned itself and has destabilized my knee.  So, I hobbled around for two weeks and spent another week fairly pain free, but still not prepared to get back into it. The knee, as I said, doesn't hurt, but the weird clicking and feeling of instability are off-putting.  I did go back to the studio and try out some of my movements to see how I’d feel the next day, but it wasn’t encouraging; I still had residual pain in my wrist and back and the weird misalignment in my knee. Now, three weeks since the last time I worked out, ...

A year and a half ago, I started practicing breathing reduction, based on the teachings of Konstantine Buteyko. His program included this exercise that you were supposed to do every day. So, for about three weeks, I did it every day. But I soon gave it up because I was struggling to hold a control pause any higher than 8 seconds, and the teachings say that a “healthy person” should be able to easily hold a control pause of at least 20 seconds. Any less than that, they say, is a sign of poor health and an imbalance in your body. I was told that if it weren’t for the fact that I exercised so much, I would have much more disease in my body because of my poor breathing habits. Buteyko taught that an extremely fit and healthy person could easily hold up to forty second control pauses. My ego was riled. I considered myself a healthy person, at least. (and I’d even go so far as to say in excellent health and fitness) but I couldn’t even imagine holding a twenty second control pause, much l...

Here’s some of the yoga poses I’m working on this month.... In this video, I show some warm-up, preparatory poses before I start getting into the more challenging stuff. At 1:40 I make an attempt at my Scorpion.  I held it for a few seconds, but that’s all I need, because I’m not solid on the pose. My right shoulder is just finally getting to the place where it can do its part to support me in the right position. It’s been just about three full years, now, since I shredded it.  So, it’s been a long, slow healing process, but its encouraging to be able to support headstands and scorpions again. Then, at 1:50 I’m practicing my Garland pose. This is a deceptively hard position, but every time I practice it, I get a little bit closer to it. At 1:55 I start to practice my Crow pose, which is something I have been doing for over a decade and it is no problem for me. But I’m now starting to graduate into the Crane pose, which is like the Crow only both arms are locked strai...

OK.  So, I got off track. This whole past week I was... well I... I sort of blew it.  I guess I was off in another world or something, but I didn’t do my exercises or my shopping trips, my morning routine or my nine cups a day of vegetables. In a word, I failed. But, the important thing is to be resilient and not let this become all about me failing. I can sit here and blame the snow, the power outage, the injury I had in my hand or anything, but the reality is, in the end, I didn’t do what I set out to do.  Excuses don’t change that, they only maybe help us feel better about it. So instead of excuses, I’m going to reboot and do it right this time. “You can’t fail if you haven’t given up yet.” So I'm not going to give up, I’m going to take this opportunity to go over what was and wasn’t working with my program and move forward. First and foremost, it’s crucial to re-assess my goals. Since I’m always working towards them, my goals will be changing and my ...

I’d gotten out of the habit of meditating. So, on New Years Day, I took the opportunity to reintroduce it into my life in the form of a Daily Morning Ritual, which also includes a twenty minute joint-mobilizing movement sequence and twenty minutes of breathing reduction practice. The first few times I sat, I was relaxed and it went fine, but I was aware of the time passing and of not being comfortable and I didn’t ever really disappear into the meditation like I remembered doing in the past. Then, I switched my technique and got out my old mala beads. After completely going through the whole string of beads and mentally repeating my mantra, I focused on circulating my attention through my chakras. Except for the first day, which was an anomaly (perhaps due to the novelty and excitement of getting started again), I was impatient as I sat. There was even one morning when my body was strongly fighting being still, and I was restless. I actually got up and turned the timer off with a...

My January workouts are progressing nicely. Here is a video sampling of the progression I’m cycling through for this month. It’s a four day cycle of increasing intensity and changing focus. ************DAY  1************************ It’s not a day off, but Day One is for RECOVERY. I usually do lots of simple movements, stretching and relaxing.  I don’t sweat on this day; instead I’m more focused on treating myself nicely and undoing any damage I may have done the days prior. ************DAY 2************************ Day two I call my FLOW day. I may do Nia or Yoga on this day.  It serves to sort of re-amp my body after a day of rest and to prepare myself for the onslaught of the upcoming two days. I will get deep with my stretching today, and may even use a foam roller or a rubber ball to address specific needy parts. I may sweat today, but only a mild sweat.  I don’t usually push myself much on this day, I treat it as flirting with my edge without going ...