Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

Sunday morning, oatmeal before Nia class. Had lots of energy for class, but my voice seemed tired. After class, I made a vegetable cinnamon curry with sliced carrots, diced cauliflower and wilted spinach and the rest of the sliced flank steak. When I was about to leave for the matinee, I knew I was going to need more food, so I made a snack of walnuts, cucumbers and dulse.  During the show, of course, I had those three or four peanuts and a glass of grape juice posing as wine. Immediately after the show I drank a glass of chia seed gel so that my stomach wouldn’t be full, but I’d have energy for the upcoming workout. While I was doing my workout, My goal was consciously going as fast I could without losing control or neglecting my conscious alignment. I was working hard yesterday on getting all the moves ergonomically correct, and today was about blasting them out.  It turned out that, my focus on keeping my neck aligned and my upper back relaxed was really taking a lot of the...

I woke up this morning and my body was pretty achy.  I’m performing in a show called Dancing Fools, which requires me to do some pretty physical stuff.  I think the show has a lot to do with the resurgence of my latent shoulder problems. As I mentioned, I’ve been seeing my mentor, Body Tuner Shmuel Tatz for a couple of treatments so far and the experience has been quite enlightening.  I’ve blogged about it here. I started off my Cheat day with a cherry scone from Amy’s Bread.  That and my morning coffee were all I used as fuel for my workout. I was scheduled for a ten am work out, and I didn’t want to cancel, or be late, because my friend was expecting me at that time.  Making the appointment was a great idea, too, because once Saturday morning rolled around, I wasn’t in the mood to work out. I kept my appointment and dragged myself to his house. When I got there, I started by rolling out my neck and upper back with my Therapy Balls .  This was such a rel...

Today I had a session with Shmuel Tatz.  I’ve been observing him tuning bodies for about four months now, and I finally get a turn. My shoulder had begun bothering me again, for the first time since I originally recovered from the January 2009 injury.  I was in pain for a good six to eight months and then, by late 2009 I finally found the pain was gone and I was ready to start rebuilding my strength.  It has been going very well, and I’m getting my strength back in the right side of my torso.  But here we are, two years later, and I suddenly felt like my body needed more tuning. Once I got on the table, it didn’t take Dr Tatz long to find the locations in my shoulder that were most painful.  I’m quite sure that he simply puts his hands on a body and listens.  Then the body will tell him exactly what it wants.  He worked a bit on the back of my right shoulder before he passed me off to one of his assistants.  Viktor is a big strong Russian massage ...

This morning, all I had for breakfast was a bowl of oatmeal with a handful of goji berries. But this clearly wasn’t enough because by noon I was famished.  Usually I don’t feel hungry again for another hour or so.  Mental note: Bigger Breakfast is Better. So I made myself a pork chop with roasted carrots and fennel on a bed of raw baby spinach drizzled with olive oil and salt.  About an hour later, I felt like I needed a little something more so I grabbed two handfuls of trail mix with raw nuts and seeds, dried apples, dates and raisins.  Around four pm I did an extended Flow with a focus on postural restructuring, and I heated up some of my chicken breast in peanut curry and served it on a bed of olive oil drizzled baby spinach. I had a tuna nicoise salad around 7pm. This was on Romaine lettuce with hard boiled egg, tomato, red bell peppers, olives and, of course, tuna.  With a vinaigrette dressing. Then, as always on night that I’m performing, I had a few pean...

For breakfast this morning, I cut up half a cantaloupe and had it with a bowl of oatmeal with goji berries and two slices of nitrate and preservative free, uncured turkey bacon from Applegate Organics. This is much healthier alternative to standard bacon which is heavily salted and cured with chemicals and a hefty dose of preservatives. This kept me satisfied all day, until I got home and had lunch around two pm. I had an apple with peanut butter on it, and a handful of almonds and a chicken breast leftover from the other night.  For dinner, I made a big flank steak which I had a few slices of with a half of a steamed butternut squash and sliced avocado. Then, later, after my show, I had a bowl of Navy Bean soup and a stalk of celery with some avocado/spinach dip. And a bowl of yogurt and a handful of almonds. My shoulder is still on the mend. I did my yoga flow today and I’ll do it again tomorrow. I’ll do a bit of a longer flow and amp the intensity up just slightly.  Then, ...

Last night I saw The King’s Speech and was struck by how methods of the speech therapist, Lionel, was so much like Body Tuning.  Even some of the movements he had Bertie do were reminiscent of what might go on in a Body Tuning session. Now, if you haven’t seen The King’s Speech, this is a spoiler alert. I might be saying some things here that are revealed later on in the film for dramatic effect, and you may want to wait and see the film before reading this. That being said, I was especially struck when Lionel was going to be fired because it was discovered that he didn’t have a PhD. He had never represented himself as a doctor, and yet he was the only one who had been able to help the Duke.  But despite his successful track record, he was about to be fired due to lack of ‘credentials.’ It’s such a shame that people value institutional learning so blindly that they are unable to see that the man knew what he was doing. They refused to work with him because he wasn’t part of “t...

Even though my shoulder feels MUCH better this morning, I’m still going to skip my intense workout today. I’m sort of glad this happened.  In a way.  I mean, it would have been much better if this didn’t happen, of course. But the reason I’m saying I’m glad it did is so that I have the opportunity to demonstrate, by example, an important concept that I see my clients struggle with all the time and that is something I call “Not Being a Hero.”  Or in other words, not exercising when they’re not feeling right. If I were to exercise today, I may do something to my shoulder that could put me out of commission for months!  So, why would I risk ONE day of exercise for six months of rehab?  It’s a no brainer.  I’ll just take two rest days in a row, the days that should have been my Intense day (today) and my rest day (tomorrow). And I’ll have Shmuel look at my shoulder.  By the time I go around again, I should be back to normal. So, I also have a little confes...