Sunday, March 23, 2008

On Faith and New Beginnings


I love this time of year. Spring is bursting forth in all her glory, bringing with her the sweet scent of hope and new life.

I was on the pity pot last week - fighting the same battles and trying to crawl out of the same pit . . . again! Thankfully, Geoff reminded me that this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of faith. How blessed we are to have our faith tried and tested, because it is only then that we can know what our faith is made of. As James 1 says "2Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

I have to admit I was not all that joyful. But today . . . today is Easter Sunday. The ultimate celebration of new life and new beginnings. The ultimate source of hope and the foundation of our faith. A story that is so elegantly echoed every spring, as the flowers burst from the ground, and buds blossom on "dead" branches. It is an echo of the story of our risen Lord, who came, died, and rose again, so that we may have life, and be with Him for eternity. The Lord says in Isaiah 43: " 19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

I must again choose to believe. I must again place my trust in "Him who cares for me" I'm getting my reps in - allowing my faith muscles to keep growing.

Today I am glad. I am thankful that God has reminded me again of new life through the celebration of Easter and a beautiful spring day. Today I am victorious. I will press on in renewed strength to fight the battles that await me another day - even if it is the same battle . . again.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
2 Cor 5:17

Sunday, March 16, 2008

S phase Update

Back from an amazing week in Phoenix completing the S phase certification with Z health. It was an awesome opportunity to hang out with some great like-minded folks, learn a lot, move a lot, and just have fun. For those of you not familiar with Z health, a quick explanation is that it is a multi-dimensional system designed to achieve rapid changes in performance and health by driving neural change. S phase is primarily about sports performance.

We learned a lot about the visual system and processing, and how that relates to movement/health/performance and even cognitive function. Vision is much more than just acuity! For example, if the eyes do not team correctly, or if the images from the eyes are confusing, it places a constant stress on the nervous system as it tries to compensate. This can create significant alterations in motor processing, movement, and behavior. From a biomechanical aspect, eye motion has a direct impact on the dural layers (connective tissue) which surround the brain and spinal cord. A lack of eye motion in general or in certain body positions can affect joint motion and neural tension adversely. Pretty amazing stuff!

In addition to the visual fun, we learned the ABCs of sports specific movement. It amazes me that with our societal obsession with sports our kids are never taught how to move to perform these sports safely.

Throughout the week, I discovered that I had some significant difficulties with processing visual information, especially with respect to articulating visual information. During my session with Dr. Cobb, we discovered that I had difficulty tracking darker colors (green, blue etc). After working a bit on color specific visual drills, my other processing problems and residual joint stiffness improved significantly. Amazing! I'm wondering how my brain training will be affected by some of this stuff as well - it will certainly be something to experiment with!

I plan to post more on my brain training thoughts soon.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Quick Update

Well, I'm off to S phase (Level 3 Z health certification) tomorrow AM. I haven't had much time to update the blog lately so I plan to do so when I return. I'm really looking forward to seeing how my body and mind respond to the training next week! It should be a lot of really good neural chunking! Woo hoo!