Policing other people's behaviours

Recently I have been watching a lot of Chinese shows talking about all kinds of social and psychology issues in society. One of the episodes had a discussion about a newly invented label "green tea slut" that is supposed to be given to a woman who gives the impression of being innocent, elegant and naïve in order to make other men fall in love with her, but in reality they are scheming and they take advantage of these "poor men" financially and emotionally. These labels are usually given to women by other women. It's basically the Asian version of slut-shaming, with women being particularly angry that this type of women don't also dress like the promiscuous type to give obvious warning to other women. Also, promiscuity discussed here is not only about sexual behaviour. Women try to police other women for being "emotionally/verbally slutty" as well, ie. talking in a way that makes men feel like they have a chance to date her/become her boyfriend.

In the episode, instead of criticizing the type of women being given this label, the invited "relationship experts" and psychology counsellors try to explain that instead of listing all the ways women with this label are horrible, maybe one can try to admit one is actually jealous of this type of women, and figure out the specific relationship skills this type of women possess that make men fall in love with her easily, and one can think about acquiring some of the particular skills that make them likeable and attractive to men.

In the comments section, women continue to voice their hatred for this type of women. In actuality this is not a specific type of women. It can be any woman who is super well-liked and is fantasized by male classmates, work colleagues, and even most women's boyfriends. It could be a woman who "stole" the heart of one's biggest male crush. This woman can actively manipulate men's psyche such that her multiple boyfriends don't realize they are not exclusive with her, or she could simply be actively pursued by multiple high quality guys, all competing to become "the" boyfriend.

Since this "green tea slut"-shaming is not a thing in the west, I am having a bit of trouble understanding the mentality of it. I guess many women are brought up to believe that as a woman, there are "good" and "bad" ways to behave. Women who are successful at garnering attention from a large number of men are "evil" and men should be ashamed of themselves for falling for this type of women.

I mean, I guess it sucks to fall for manipulative people, period. It happens to all of us, whether in romance, at work, in politics, in social circles, etc. But from what I can observe, these critics consider non-manipulative women who have personalities that genuinely attract a lot of men to be just as evil as the manipulative ones. Maybe it all comes down to the question "why can't I attract the men I'm interested in and woman X gets attention from all the men?" Their interpretation of the answer to this question is that these women are behaving in ways that are not allowed (not allowed by what? By their inner police).

It comes down to what is attractiveness. The most obvious answer is looks. In the west, charm, sense of humour (for men) are also obvious. In the east, what makes a woman charming (besides looks) is less understood by women. The dominating judgemental way of thinking of how a woman should and should not behave will take some time to shift I guess. 

Bouldering progress

This is my first time bouldering after awhile. My back and shoulders are still a bit sore from climbing last weekend. The last time I wrote about bouldering was 4 months ago. Time flies! 

I'm not climbing much harder routes than 4 months ago. The difference is that back then, every boulder felt "weird". They required my body to twist into unfamiliar angles and bear weight in ways that were very different from my previous gym. Now my body feels more comfortable on boulders of the same levels. I am more used to the styles of boulders at this gym, even though I don't come to this bouldering gym so often. I still don't love slopers (big bumps that require the friction of an open hand to stay on), but I am getting to the point where I trust that they will hold me. My body has gotten stronger. It has learned that some standing positions, while feeling uncomfortable, will hold when I make my next move. I am actually strong enough to try a few boulders at the next level (blue ones at this gym). They require new body positions where my feet slip off again. I have no doubt though I will eventually figure out a way to place my feet such that they do not slip off of the footholds.  

A new friend climbed with us during this session. He has a very different style of climbing. His feet slips all over the place. He compensates with his incredible upper body strength. So basically at every position his hands and upper body are bearing his weight. On good foot holds his feet his feet/legs will bear some weight, but on less good, angled foot holds the legs are not really engaged. This is how a lot of guys climb initially, because many of them have the strength to do 10+ chin ups/pull ups before they even started climbing. I see that for boulders with good handholds, they have no problem doing chin ups all the way up to the top. However, on boulder problems (at the V1-V3 / 5-6b levels)  where the handholds are small crimps, they run into some troubles. At first I thought it's not a good way to climb, but after observing quite a few guys climbing this way, I realized that there are enough boulder problems in the gym that are upper-body strength-oriented that they don't reeeeally need to be great with footwork if they just avoid the routes with small crimps. It's the same that I basically cannot do any bouldering problems with moves that require more upper body strength and core strength than I currently possess. Sometimes I can do some intermediate moves to get me to the top, but sometimes I just gotta wait until I get stronger. 

I didn't think I would get to a stage where I really enjoy bouldering, but here I am. Enjoying means I can get through boulder problems that are just at the limits of my abilities. If a boulder is too easy, it is boring. If it is too hard and way beyond my abilities, it's frustrating and pointless to try them. The best boulder problems are the ones where I can make progress after several tries, I can practice the moves, try different things (toes at different angles), hands holding the handhold in different ways, etc, and get better at doing them. The leg, core and arm muscles feel like they are exerting at a strenuous level that they can handle (ie. The Goldilocks zone). It feels very rewarding.

Most importantly, my bunions didn't hurt during this session, which is amazing. Which means I should probably spend this period to boulder more and cut back on sport climbing. My hips, knees and toes click a lot after climbing sessions, suggesting that changes are happening to connective tissues lines (muscles, fascia, bones, tendons, ligaments, all that fun stuff).  I'm really hoping my body learns to move in a way that does not put excessive pressure on the big toe base joints. Oh yeah, I also learned that beginner shoes are fine for my level of climbing. I do not need advanced climbing shoes (which hurt my feet) to send V3-V4 problems. 

Back in the climbing gym

So I rested a whole week before I went back to the climbing gym. The feet were hurting the entire week. I felt tired every day. It's not very efficient to strain oneself for 1.5 weeks of adventurous holidays and then take an entire week to recover, but I guess I was just falling back into my usual laziness. The trip showed me that my body could adapt to a more active lifestyle should I choose to adopt it.

Climbing in a gym feels soooo different than climbing outside. My feet don't need to press down quite as hard as they do on the rocks. There are no wind currents blowing by, no birds flying over my head, no spiders or other large insects strolling past my hands, no geckos/lizards, no thorny bushes to rip open the skin on my hands, arms and legs, and in general a lot fewer unexpected encounters for my brain to process/worry about. There are only the handholds, the next moves, and the height to deal with. I felt so much more comfortable and grateful to be back in the gym after a week on the rocks. It's a very strange feeling given how much I enjoyed climbing outside, directly next to the gorgeous blue Mediterranean Sea. 

When started out I had no clue how to move my hands and feet to go up the wall. Now I'm at a stage where I know exactly what I should do -- usually: do a slight pull up with my arms, then move one foot to the next foot hold, which is a move initiated from the hip flexors. But my leg won't do what my brain tells it to do, either because I'm too tired, or that I don't believe my body can do this move, or that once the foot is in the air, it has trouble landing comfortably on the next foothold securely enough to take on some of my body weight, so my 2 hands and my other foot begin to feel my body weight more, and the brain begins to panic that I can't hold this position for much longer. So my brain knows the different things I can try: shift body positions slightly, try placing the foot in a different way or somewhere else, or place it where I wanted to place it, then move the other foot up quickly, then hands up quickly, until I get to somewhere with secure feet again so I am rest and calm down my nerves.

It's a bit like learning a dance move. Except on the ground, one can just rehearse the move, do it badly several time to get the gist of the general direction of where arms and legs and body are supposed to go, and then work on the details of the aesthetics. On the wall, panic sets in every time a move is not done well because the brain worries the body is not strong enough to pull off the move and one can fall off. Here we have the procedural-planning side of the brain who is proud to have figured out a procedure to go about the sport route, but the safety-check side of the brain is like "You might not be strong enough to execute the moves", and freezes the hip flexor so I cannot actually lift my leg. Even though I can probably override it, but I do feel sore, so I ask my belay partner to tighten the rope and I hang and rest, and then feel a little bad that I didn't try harder to complete the move.

When I was outside, the thought of falling and rubbing my body on the rock wall like pressing a chunk of cheese over a cheese grater was just too horrendous, so I definitely erred on the side of caution. Now that I am indoors again, the moves feel really different from the moves I did outside. So I wonder if indoor training is good enough for improving my climbing outside. My conclusion is that indoor mainly helps me get stronger overall so that I can eventually hang onto the wall longer and try several different moves, instead of having to hang and essentially skip the hard parts of a challenging route.

I'm looking forward to being able to move more smoothly on the wall and having fewer of these moments where my body is unable to execute a move due to internal fights between different parts of my brain. 

New experiences climbing outside and intense emotions

I experienced a very intense week recently. It was a climbing vacation, and I was pushed to climb every day. I didn't know I could do it. I tried to keep it very easy on the first day. By the third and fourth day I was really tired. Then I thought I got used to it. But then when my brain could not will my body to do the moves that required a little extra stamina and strength (the type of exertion that normally triggers the ecstasy during climbing), I felt angry and defeated. I felt like I was not in control of my situation. On this trip I experienced anticipation, excitement, joy, adrenaline high, fear, anger, frustration, pain, helplessness, senes of accomplishment, boredom, confusion, dread, tiredness, stubbornness, impulsiveness. The trip brought out a lot of feelings and thoughts in me.

For one thing, I was very fortunate to be able to participate in such a trip. The weather was perfect; the setting was gorgeous ( by the Mediterranean Sea); the companions were intelligent people who have led very interesting lives; my partner was super accommodating to my weaknesses and complaints. I was expecting the trip to be a lot less strenuous, but was amazed my body could handle it. I learned that I could push my body to do a lot more than I thought I could. Climbing outside is so different than climbing indoors. In the gym you stand on these deliberate footholds, and follow a distinct path. On the rock, you are supposed to trust your feet to generate enough friction to stay on the angled wall with rough features on it. It's really different. My bunions were hurting after 2 days, so I didn't dare to push my feet harder into the wall, which meant I couldn't climb any harder. I tried to climb in a way that prevented aggravation of foot pain. It's good technique, but also limiting. I will take it easy and see if my feet feel better as they get stronger. If the pain persists I might not be able to climb higher grades in the future.

A lot of extra factors outdoors generate more fear and give the brain more factors to process. The wind; the sun; will this thin rock that I grab break off? Can this step hold my body weight? Many times I have to tell myself to breath, that I can get through this route. There was one 5a/5.7/5+ route where I felt very uncomfortable to push hard on my toes so I could grab higher and reach the next comfortable handholds / footholds. So I had to down-climb to the last quickdraw that I clipped to go down. That also felt really difficult as I had never down-climbed on rock walls before. I felt like I was gaining a lot of new experiences. The more I experience, the less scary they feel, the more my brain can handle it, and the better I can climb.

Because there were so many intense emotional triggers on this trip, I am reminded of how some of my friends used to tell me how "they are afraid to be bored". Yet they normally resort to activities like shopping, movie watching, socializing with friends, regular sight-seeing travels, alcohol drinking, and almost never adrenaline sports. I feel like when some people say they are bored, rather than craving true excitement, it means they want to be distracted. They do not want to be in a focused state. When I am up on the wall, there is no complaining I am tired, or bored. There is only problem solving so I can come down the wall safely eventually.

I'm hoping this experience will help me climb better in the future, both in the gym and outside. I'm also hoping it will help me  handle my emotions better in normal life.

Crazy dreams

(This is a  brain dumping, quick information look up and document entry)
Sleeping serves to regulate our metabolism, blood pressure, brain functions (cleaning brain waste, memory sorting, and learning integration) . Apparently, the role dreaming is more controversial around scientists. Some theories for the purpose of dreams include: 

Dreams as therapist

Dreams seem to operate from an emotional regions of the brain, where the logical region is shut off. The brain may be trying to make connections regarding feelings that the conscious self wouldn't make.

Dreams as fight-or-flight training

The amygdala, associated with survival and fight or flight response, is one of the most active part of the brain while dreaming. One theory suggests that dreaming is how the brain trains to deal with threats.

Dreams as muse

Dreams may serve to facilitate our creative tendencies. Many artists credit their dreams for inspiring their creative work.

Dreams as memory aides

Dreams may help the brain to integrate what you learned during the day and sort through complicated thoughts and feelings, to integrate your interpretation of what happened during the day, and to store important memories.

Factors that influence dreaming include daily activities, food taken that day, and health conditions. Sleep deprivation seems to induce more vivid dreams when you do eventually go to sleep. Pregnancy also induces intense dreaming due to increased hormone production. Mental health conditions can cause intense dreams. Antidepressant and antipsychotics have been associated with higher risk of nightmares.

(sources 1, 2)

Why do I suddenly look up a summary of what is known about dreams? I woke up from a night of crazy dreams, one involving my mother owning a giant draw of bras of all sizes. She claimed that she "won" them as a prize). Another was about the mother of a friend who has passed away in real life. In my dream she came back to life to teach me about meridian lines on my body.

Sometimes my dreams are about stuff I encountered or thoughts I have been thinking about during the day, but I haven't been thinking about my mother or my friend or her mom. So where the hell did those thoughts come from (from the unconscious mind of course). Some people like to do dream interpretations, and they are basically creative endeavours which can go in any direction. I just want to know at a higher level what mine are trying to tell me. I think I have my crazy dreams because I am too stressed during the day (why? I have no clue). Yesterday in the afternoon while shopping with boyfriend I suddenly got sleepy and wanted to sit down, even though I have been doing next to nothing all day.

I have tried to read up on dreams before and wasn't satisfied with what I read. The scientific interpretations are very dry, because not all scientists studying dreams and sleep have crazy dreams themselves. But I think I should look up more about dreaming and how to take measures to resolve some of the issues so I don't dream about them any more.  Healthline.com suggests exercising in the morning and reducing stress in daily life in general. I suspect I need to do more meditations and a few more things.

Climbing progress post

Normally, when I go climbing, I climb until my body is not able to do the big power moves any more. So my muscles are tired and I have to go on easier routes. I stop when even the easier routes start to feel tiring; the skin on my hands feel tender, and my toes are in pain.

Last weekend, I managed to climb until the hand skin and toes were in pain, but my muscles, tendons and bones felt like they could handle more. Specifically, with my big toes: the climbing shoes push the big toe towards the center of my foot, so my bunion (base of big toe) experiences too much pressure from my body weight. The proper technique is to push on the big toe to hoist myself up the wall and I couldn't really do it. The hand skin was from a bit too much bouldering before the sport climbing session started.

In general, this means my body has gotten stronger, since I can boulder more in the beginning. Just when I feel my body is ready for bigger power moves, my toes say no. I'm not exactly sure how to continue. If I just ignore it, I think my bunions will get worse (one is starting to develop on the left foot, which didn't have much of a bunion before).

I think I have to see a podiatrist who understands climbing for some advice before I dare to push harder. It's probably okay for me to climb at the level that I climb (~6a+/6b) and stop when my feet start hurting. It's just frustrating that my endurance is improving but my feet don't allow me to climb for longer or push the feet harder for propelling the body up the wall. That's how life is, I guess. I will probably stay at this level for the rest of the year. Will try to focus more on aspects other than foot pushing, such as body positioning, breathing, and stronger hands. I'm not too concerned about hand skin.. I have no gaping holes on my hand so far. The indoor holds are nowhere as bad as outdoor rocks, which I have yet to try this or last year. I really hope to be able to get to try outdoor climbing before the end of this year.

Reference for foot problems for climbers: http://thomasbondphysio.blogspot.com/2013/08/feet-and-rock-climbing.html

What beginner meditation is like

I used to only do guided meditations. I would find my mind wandering whenever the speak stops speaking for a period of time. Lately, I have been doing 10-15 minute meditations with an app that makes a dinging bell sound every 5 minutes. Boy, seems like it takes forever for 5 minutes to arrive. I find myself pondering "Is it 5 minutes yet?" when only 3 minutes have passed.

So at this stage, I definitely don't achieve the "meditative state" (ie. a mind free of thoughts) all that frequently. I'm basically sitting for 15 minutes, letting my mind wander for 90% of the time, and being able to stop it a few times for maybe 10 seconds or so each time.

What's important to note is that:

1. It is not super easy to catch myself lost in thoughts, but when I do, I do have the capability to temporarily stop the string thoughts, as least for a few seconds, until my mind wanders again and I'm not aware it is happening.

2. Sometimes the thoughts are quite persistent, so I have to listen to the train of thoughts to see what issues are nagging at me.

3. Instead of some one line  verbal mantra, I try to pay attention to different body parts internally to see how they feel. I'm not sure if this is the right way to meditate, but I feel like the body scan is useful for me as I often hold unnoticed tensions in the neck or in the back. When there are local discomforts, sometimes if I pay attention to it and "breath into it", I can get the discomfort to ease away (probably some sort of tension or blockage).

4. The "meditation", or more accurately, a self-examination session, allows me to check in with my breathing as well. It seems to be always too shallow. I understand that sitting still does not require deep breathing, but I do notice that the rhythm of my breathing is not smooth most of the time.

5. With a million thoughts going through my mind, if I pay attention to my thoughts, the unimportant ones disappear. The ones that bother me would persist, urging me to write them down. When I start writing, they would morph into something different. Sometimes they disappear again, and sometimes something completely different comes out.

I really hope I can extend this into a daily 30 minutes session. I need to be better with time in order to do this.

The psychology of climbing grades

Climbing is a graded sport. Every wall or piece of rock can be assigned a level of difficulty, based on the several factors: the distance between the handholds and footholds (for easier routes you can effortlessly reach the next handhold without reaching very much), the size/shape of handholds/footholds (for easier routes the handholds are easier to hold on and feel secure), the strength/power required to reach the next hold (for harder routes, it might take a gymnast/ninja move to reach the next hold), and the angle of the wall (walls that lean towards the climber, where the climber have to fight harder against gravity are harder).

There are also style preferences. A strong but not flexible person might not mind the power pull ups but hate routes that require one to lift one's foot super high or far out to reach the next foot hold, while a super light person might have less trouble with crimpy handholds (holds that barely fits a finger knuckle) than heavier person.

While there is logic to the grading of a route, there is also a lot of mental games involved. The other day, my boyfriend struggled through a 7/6b/5.10c lead climbing route, but told me to try it. While I have top roped many routes at this level before, I have never lead climbed at that level. I was sure I couldn't do it, but he said to just give it a shot and come down when I have hit my limit. So I went up, and with several hanging rests (I tend to rest when I have trouble reading the next section or think the next section will be challenging), I made it to the top with no problems (cheated on one foothold).  I was super (pleasantly) surprised. So then I tried another route, graded 7-/6a+/5.10b, which my boyfriend also struggled on. Because I could do the harder route, when I struggled on the 7-, I told myself that since I just did the 7, my body must be able to handle this route. And so, even when the hands felt like they were burning, I just shook them out and kept going. I kept expecting the burning hands to fail me while I clipped in the rope with the other hand, they hung on with no problems. So I managed to onsight this 7- with no hanging rests. But I know for certain that I would have taken hanging rests had I not just attempted a 7 before this route, because: hands and forearms felt like they were on fire.

As I have mentioned before, sensations are not good indicators of how much stress my body can handle. A lot of the on fire feeling may have been generated by the head to protect my body (and my mental security). In my case, maybe my brain is a bit overprotective. But maybe not, because every time I come home my body is sore for 3+ days. So while the body could perform at that intensity in the moment, it basically tells me afterwards to take it easy for a few days.

I hope I can keep pushing the limits of my body and my mind for many more years to come.

Why do I climb?

I just purchased a book called "Why We Climb" by Chris Nobel, which includes a compilation of answers from world famous climbers, along with amazing photos of these climbers performing their wall gymnastic in gorgeous places all over the world.

I look at how people around me spend their free time. People sunbathe, go to cafes, hang out with friends, play sports, go shopping, watch TV, go to the movies, play video games, surf the internet, hike, travel, you name it. To me, climbing isn't any more or less pointless than these activities. In Vancouver, my Canadian friends are super active. They ski, surf, run marathons, participate in the Iron Man, hike, go to CrossFit, you name it, they do it. I used to be in awe of how active they are. I could do yoga 3 times a week and go hiking occasionally on the weekend and that was about it. Once I moved to to Europe, I was among people that were much less active.  People will try activities, but all have trouble sticking to a regular routine (me included). We are all older and busier. It is extremely difficult to get together to do any sort of sporty activity together. Many with kids would consider 30minute post-dinner walk with their children to be all they can muster to give their muscles and hearts/lungs a work out.

Climbing... it's a fun, meditative, addictive, intense, exhilarating activity, so why not. It works the muscles, the tendons, and is pretty cardio-intensive as well. The other day, I found out that I am unable to try hard moves if my heart rates are too high. This solves the question that I always had for myself: when I am running, is the heart rate or the muscle soreness more limiting for me? Answer: heart rate -- my cardio can definitely use some improvements.

So how did the author manage to fill an entire book with answers to why people climb? According to him, he set out to write this book to find out more about answers as to why this activity brings him more joy than anything else in life. He wishes he could be young again so he could spend even more time climbing. I guess I haven't personally come across people who live in a van next to a mountain range so they can spend most of their waking lives climbing. For them, this question is more profound than for the recreational hobby climber.

I think a large part of climbing has to do with the desire to be closer to nature, to conquer a big wall,  to reach for the top, and to challenge oneself physically and mentally. I think a lot of business workaholics have the same desire, but they want to be closer to big fortune, and to overpower other people. Climbing seems so much healthier and less harmful compare to making billions of dollars.

Meditation: checking-in with what bothers me the most

I have been feeling extremely scatter brained and have been having trouble forcing myself to sit still for 10 minutes a day. Today I managed to do it. I realized that the feeling of having 1 million thoughts going through my brain is just the overstimulation of substances like caffeine, sugar, alcohol, or even carbonated water. My hypersensitivity really means I should just drink more still water instead.

I also still feel like my mother would pop out at any time to criticize and nag. I have left home for >6 years now. I don't think the feeling will ever go away completely. It is really terrible I internalized her anxieties. I feel like I would go a lot further in life if she didn't nag so excessively. I did leave home for 2 years after I got my uni degree, but the masochist in me returned home, because at the bottom of my heart, I am really attached to the idea of home and family. For all of my life I wished for a mentor who would guide me through life, help me understand how to navigate through society. I never had that mentor. I learned through just placing myself in foreign situations.

I don't really know why I get so scared about the possibility of being hurt emotionally. I seem to think that if I don't get hired for a job, if the boss doesn't like me, if I made a big mistake at work,  if I get fired, if I get rejected by a man, then gasp, my world would crumble. The floor below me would disappear and I would fall eternally towards and beyond hell, or something dramatic like that. This is why I am so scared to try anything involving interacting with other human beings. I'm trying to figure out why I feel this way. I'm guessing it's because my mother used to react so dramatically when I made any small mistakes. Her response to my toddler misdemeanours felt like how a more normal person would react to her child setting the house on fire, or shooting someone in the face with a gun. It really seems like her melodramatic reactions over the years have caused long lasting trauma in me.  I recently read that emotionally immature parents are simply unable to feel empathy towards their children's distress. I guess all these years I had been wishing for mother to become a bit better at sympathy is like wishing a blind person could recover his/her sight.

When I meditate I feel a lot of jitter. I am unable to focus with all these jitter going on, so I try to cover them up by drinking sugary/caffeinated drinks. I go climbing, because the intensity of the sport justifies for the jitters that I feel. Actually, climbing brings out a lot of feelings of fear, anger and hatred. When positioned on an inclined, overhang wall, with wind blowing at me, feeling extremely insecure, the sensations feel extremely familiar. It feels just like when I'm about to make a mistake, or when someone is screaming in my face. In these situations, I feel like I'm about to fall. I never actually "fall", but I feel like if I dare to go as far as actually letting myself fall, then my life, as I know it, will be over. And it's not just my life. The Earth itself will explode spectacularly right after I die (cue some glorious Hollywood explosion scene).

It's not just my mother. My aunts, my cousins, sometimes my sister, also let me feel that my mere existence is one big mistake. Everything I do is wrong. I say the phrases that are negative and hurtful to them, I don't perform certain cultural formalities that are expected of me at the appropriate times. Whenever I return home, I feel like I say all the things and shouldn't say and don't say all the things I am supposed to say. I actively bring unhappiness to those who are around me.

Is this true? I have been examining myself. It's partly true. I do tend to point out the negative aspects of what I observe and fail to mention the positive aspects. Why do I do it? I want things to CHANGE FOR THE BETTER, to IMPROVE. But I am the only person in the family who feels that way. The others in the family maintain the status quo by just saying niceties. Floral wishes. They perpetuate old wives' tales and pretend the ongoing conflicts do not exist. By faking a celebratory ambience every time the family meets up, the conflicts are never actually resolved. Everyone still secretly hates each other. People's lives do not improve. Marriages fall apart. People's healths deteriorate (due to wrong beliefs regarding what is good for health). Meanwhile they become more and more intentionally psychologically delusional in order to maintain the mirage.

The last paragraph came out of nowhere. But it did point how how I have felt for a long time. I want to point out things that are wrong (with the intention to fix the problems). They point out I am (one of the) problem instead. If everyone says I am wrong, then who am I to argue with the majority? So something must be wrong with me. It is true that I am wrecking the harmony and the celebratory mood of the family gathering. But indeed their lives are progressively doing worse. The intention of my family (and most organizations) is to sound positive and maintain the status quo. I have a desire to diagnose problems and resolve them, which is not welcomed. For my own sake, it would be better to go along with whatever they say, ignore the errors, try focus on the positive aspects of the interaction/relationship.

It took me nearly 40 years to understand that that most people have zero interest in truths. They are not interested exploration, or finding the best path towards getting what they want. They want shortcuts. They would rather pretend to have gotten what they want than to spend time to find the right strategies / correct paths. They take turns boasted about their limited knowledge, even though they sound clownish in front of anyone with actual knowledge on the topics. It seems wildly absurd to me, but I suppose this type of chest puffing probably was effective before the Internet was invented.

I should try to participate in their charade next time, and see if I get a different outcome than my normal yearly visit.

[p.s. This post definitely needs major rewrite, but I just wanted to get the ideas down into some written form first]

Regarding desires for achievement

When I was practicing Ashtanga yoga regularly, I was trying super hard to learn to do every pose in the primary series as perfectly as I could. My deep desire at the time was to finish 1st series, zip through 2nd series (back bends are naturally easy for me), and then spend some years working on the advanced 3rd series.

When I started climbing, I progressed much faster than anticipated, from not being able to move to very much on the wall at all, to being able to hold on to some pretty bad hand holds with locked bent arms. I thought I would be able to keep progressing at a linear rate and hit the advanced grades at a steady pace.

This mentality makes sense in the 20s and early because the body can handle a lot of training and adapt to the intensity when one is young. I am very glad I exercised my body as much as I did in my 20s despite my culture (most of my relatives and many of my friends do not exercise much at all besides occasional walking).

Now that I start yoga again a little after many years of not doing it, the primary series Ashtanga feels hard again. There are very strong feelings in the hamstrings. I'm not sure if climbing tightens my hamstrings or is it simply from lack of hamstring-specific stretching exercises. I no longer feel the desires to perfect my poses again. I'm just happy to lightly practice yoga occasionally to get some stretching in. I'm still super motivated to continue hard climbing training, but I don't really expect to hit a high grade any more. If I were 25 years old, I would totally aim for an advanced grade, and get disappointed when my improvement levels off.

However, my mind still feels pretty unsettled even though I don't mentally chase high achievements any more. The formerly achievement-addicted mind still wants something else to obsess about. I will keep searching for "it" I guess, hoping to calm my mind and achieve equanimity.

Being overly cautious while climbing -- less risk taking, less rewards

I have noticed that I don't fall very often when I climb. I do slip sometimes (footwork still needs improvement), but now I manage to hold on with my hands when one of my foot slips. When I get into an uncomfortable position, I don't dare to move on. When sport climbing, I cheat and use handholds or footholds from other routes. When bouldering, I abandon completing the route and jump down instead, without even bothering to make an attempt on the next move.

There was one move where I have one hand on the last hold, but it just didn't feel comfortable to let go and touch my other hand to the final hold as well (to truly complete the boulder problem). The hand on the last hold was in an open position (on a sloper), and it just doesn't feel like it could support my weight if I let go fo the other hand. My boyfriend insisted that even though it feels uncomfortable, I will be able to hold it with one hand. So I tried it, with the expectation to fall, but I was totally able to release the other hand and match it to the final hold.

This taught me that I do not know what I am capable of. The brain sets a lot of constraints on what it thinks my body can and cannot do. It also sets a lot of constraints on what it thinks I can and cannot do. It is the main reason why I have been not very successful in life so far. I don't dare enough.

Bouldering is a relatively low risk activity. If I don't manage to hold on, then I fall onto a giant crash pad. But I don't dare to try many moves just because I believe I cannot do it, having never tried the particular move before.

I have observed people on the other spectrum: climbers with very sloppy feet who will try very wild moves and fall a ton. What are sloppy feet? Ideally, the front of the shoe should stick to a single spot, so one can push off of it when making the next move. The climber may rotate the foot on that spot, but any other changes to the toe positioning should look very deliberate rather than slippery. The "sloppy" climbers are usually able to improve in grade difficulties much faster than me, because they dare to try new moves and build up muscle power. Usually these people are male and younger though, and are comfortable taking more scrapes on the skin than I am. I imagine they are also more daring in life and are more comfortable in their life journey than me.

I still hope to keep improving in my climbing and learn to be more daring in life as well. Dare to try different experiences and make mistakes. Hope for different outcomes. 

Climbing as therapy for the brain

The other day I saw a big guy wearing a helmet climbing a relatively easy route in the indoor gym. He was making these horrendous screams as he was climbing. My boyfriend noted that he is probably someone with some mental issues, brought to the climbing gym to try out climbing as a therapy to help him to perhaps quiet some strongly intrusive (violent, abusive?) thoughts.

Normally I would not be able to help myself but to judge other people, but since some of the greatest climbers in the world also scream like they are giving birth to a baby without epidurals when they attempt really difficult climbs (eg. Chris Sharma, Adam Ondra), I knew pretty early on that screaming had a function.

Our guess was that this was his first time trying out climbing, and he insisted on wearing a helmet so it would help him feel more safe and secure about the activity. We didn't want to be impolite and stare at him too much, so we continued our own climbs on the other end of the wall. We could hear his torturous screaming, then there would be a break, then he would start screaming again. It was obviously pretty awkward for everyone else in the gym, but it kind of made me feel happy too, because I think he knows that the activity is helping him, so he must have made a second climb, or at least took a break and then kept going.

Again, I always find the most fascinating part about climbing to be the mental part more than the physical aspect. I also have racing, random, ruminating, and intrusive thoughts. When you are on the wall hanging on for dear life, those thoughts are forced to take a break. So for a few moments, the brain experiences fear (of heights, of the unfamiliarity with the body being in funny 3D positions), and simultaneously welcoming peace from nagging, wordy, annoying thoughts.

The thing is, if the climb is not intense enough, that is, when my body and brain start to feel quite comfortable hanging out or moving about on a route, the thoughts would come back. So basically, if I am experiencing nagging thoughts again, it's time to try a harder route. I'm at a stage where I feel like I have trouble finding Goldilock routes, that is, routes not so easy where my brain starts yapping at me about my daily worries, and routes not so tough that I need to take a break after every move I try. I need routes that a physically challenging, intense, but at the same time, allow me to perform some flowy movements. Not something easy to balance.

An interview with Dr. Gabor Maté, an expert on addiction, reminds me how fast brains adapts to chemicals and stimulants. It also reminds me how we are often unconsciously drawn to drugs and everyday activities that our brains inherently need. When we take drugs, either prescribed or illegal, our brains adapt to the normal dosages rather quickly, and we need to increase the dosage until the side effects do terrible things to our body. In the case of climbing and other sports, our brain and body also adapt quite quickly, but we just need to increase the intensity or difficulty of the activity.

For that man with the helmet, I hope climbing is helpful for him, and I hope he can keep doing it if he finds it helpful.

Climbing: working on the body vs. working on the nerves

The last few weeks, I have been working on getting used to lead climbing, which, as a reminder, works by bring a rope with me up the wall and clipping it to a metal draw located at evenly spaced out sections all the way up to the top of the wall. The pile of 40-60 m long rope lays on the ground, and your belay partner slowly gives out rope to the climber on the wall through a belaying device, so that when a fall occurs, the climber hangs off of the draw he/she last clipped. Such fall could happen any time, but a likely position when a fall happens would be when the climber attempts to slip the rope in a draw and fails to do so, in which case he/she falls all the way to below the previous metal draw where the rope was clipped on. This is quite a large fall that is quite scary for the climber, and the belayer also gets dragged some distance up and into the wall (the belayer should stick his/her foot out towards the wall to help control the fall). Here is a video of what this process looks like. The whole process is supposed to be relatively safe for the climber and the belayer.

So despite practice having practiced falling in a controlled manner, at this current stage of my climbing journey, my heart rate still goes way up even as soon as I don't have at least one secure footing and at least one secure handhold. This is why I am currently only climbing very easy routes, over gripping my handholds, and "cheating" -- ie. grab or stand on a handhold or foothold that do not belong to the designated route I am working on. On these easier routes, the handholds and footholds are pretty large and non-tricky, so simply climbing them isn't a work out for me. Well, I mean, they still tire me out since I am gripping them too hard, but it doesn't work my hands and my body the same way that a higher level route does.

My boyfriend, having stronger grips, better endurance, and less fear of heights, is on a different game. He is able to attempt routes that are way closer in difficult to what he normally climbs on top rope. He also hates falling, but he is able to overgrip trickier handholds for longer than I can. He likes to work on minimizing the number of hanging rests on a hard route so he can eventually "onsight" such routes, or get through an entire route upon first try without hang-resting or falling, having never watched another person climbing that same route.

To be strict, you should rather fall than to use holds that do not belong on your route, because on an outdoor wall of labelled level X, there are no additional holds other than all the ones available to you on that wall. However, currently I cannot play that game, because I have to first get over my psychological roadblocks. Otherwise the falls would not be fun (will be fall of tension), and I would lose my desire to continue climbing.

So anyways, my boyfriend and I had a conflict over the fact I sometimes place a foot or a hand between the rope and the wall. You should have your body parts over the rope, otherwise when you fall, your leg or hand can be jammed up by the rope and the resulting fall could be messy. I understand that intellectually, but I was so focused on not falling that when he yelled out at me from the below when I had a hand under the rope, I totally panicked and could not climb any more. His warnings were out for safety concerns, but the problem was that I reacted over the fact that I did something wrong and I didn't know how to fix it immediately.

The main thing is, what I did was dangerous if I fall. My main focus was not to fall. I would have grabbed all the things I was not supposed to grab (the rope, the draws, the bolt etc) in order to stay on the wall. So we were playing totally different games with totally different rules. This was why it was impossible to solve the conflict. I understand his game is how climbing should be. You are supposed to practice using the appropriate body movement to get up a route, falling as many times as necessary until you get the movement to work. But I needed to just get comfortable on the wall holding my body in uncomfortable positions until I feel comfortable enough to work on falling and then work on following the rules as well as more advanced climbing movements.

Being on the wall, standing on your toes and hanging by a rope, there are a million things to think about. One has totally different perspectives being on the wall than the person maintaining your safety from the bottom of the wall watching you climb. There are a lot of parallels between this activity and real life. I think I might have been failing certain things in life because while I know the rules of the game for career advancement, due to my own psychological shortcomings, I want to be given a break and be on my own terms, while being attached to other people. But the administrators, the boss, the colleagues do not see my perspective and are not willing to give me a break. If I really want to play my own games, then I need to be independent, belaying myself. Otherwise I have to play their games. It's something for me to contemplate further for sure. 

Neuromuscular recruitment in climbing part 2

In a previous post, I mentioned I knew next to nothing about neuromuscular recruitment. This article by Tom Randall lets me know that I do have some experience with this recruitment phenomenon.

So every time I go to a climbing gym, I have to start warming up by doing a little bit of stretching, then climbing the easiest boulders, then move on to the big walls, whereas my boyfriend can start on pretty challenging routes right away. I have attempted to go straight to a long climbing wall before, and I felt like crap. It feels like I can't reach as far as I'd like to, even though I could, because I stretched. Once I reach a high hand hold, I feel like I struggle to pull myself up (even though I should be using my legs more, like taking the stairs up rather than pulling up, but still). I feel tired half way through, even though it's a route that I would have no problem with if I do it 30 minutes into a climbing session. I always thought it's an issue that my muscles are not warm up enough. I never thought of it as a muscle recruitment issue.

Randall's article reminds me that it is totally a neuromuscular recruitment issue. If I go straight to an intermediate wall, probably only 50% of the nerves and muscles are awakened. No wonder the climb feels much harder than it does when I am fully warmed up on easy routes. In fact, at my current level, the best time to try a route that is at the limit of my level is on the 3rd or 4th long route after warm up on boulders. That is when I feel my performs at its peak. I feel a flow inside the body (blood circulation maybe); my movements are also more flowy. I can push my body's limits -- try a power move that I couldn't do previously, or hang on to that crimp for a little longer than I am comfortable with.

Every person's body works a bit differently than others. My boyfriend seems to be able to do hard stuff right away, and do a hard route at the end of the day when he's super tired. I guess that means he hasn't been climbing at his limits yet. He also recovers super quickly (0-1 day rest), whereas I need at least 2 days rest after a hard climbing day.  Higher testosterone levels and low body fat composition probably helps a lot in this regard. I have also seen beginners who try hard stuff right away without warm up, push as hard as they can the entire climbing session, and then wonder why they do not seem to improve much after a year.

I am sure my training routines are not yet optimized, but I am just enjoying the activity. I am at the stage where I have acquired a bit of endurance that I can "waste some energy" trying a few different things on the wall. I'm sure if I have to climb harder routes later on, I will need to learn to climb more efficiently, ie. clip ropes faster and hang less, and use my legs to hold more of my body weight than my arms.

Climbing -- mental models and perceived limits in my body

As I climb up a tall wall, I get scared by the heights. Being strong muscularly and positioning my body and limbs in steady positions help alleviate the feeling of anxiety. However, I get tired after so many moves. For climbing, often a "pump" is experienced in the forearms. A pump, or a feeling of tightness and burn in the forearm, is caused by gripping a handhold strongly for too long, where the long static contraction of the forearm finger flexor muscles results in restricted blood vessels, limiting blood flow (and thus oxygen + other chemical exchange) to where it's needed the most. 

So at this stage of my climbing career it's mostly caused by bad techniques. I'm gripping handholds for way longer than necessary because my rope clipping technique is atrocious, and I grip harder than needed because I am scared of heights. Nevertheless, when feeling pumped, my instinct is to just take a break (ask my belay partner to tighten the rope and I just hang out for awhile, shaking out both my arms and my calves, before moving on. However, when I climb a relatively easy overhangy route, even though I experience a pump and tiredness in my fingers, I find myself ignoring the pain, pushing through, and continuing to climb until the wall is straight again, because I have this big fear for hanging too far away from the wall (happens when you release your arms, you are hanging perpendicular to the ground, and the wall is tilted away from you).

So, it seems like my fear for hanging in midair combined with my fear of falling can overcome my feeling of tiredness, and my hands work fine. I can keep climbing with pumped arms and cramped fingers for several more moves than where I think my physical limits are. Given this is the case, should I push harder when I climb straight walls too? It's hard to say. There are several conflicting goals. I want to improve my endurance, but I don't want to overdo it and injure my body. I want to push myself hard, but I also don't want to promote bad habits (again, there are better ways of improving my techniques, such as positioning my feet and my body better). But climbing through the pump does help improve endurance.

I guess for people who injure themselves easily while doing sports, they should definitely take it easy. I am probably overly cautious and not pushing my body to its real limits. On the other hand, I am always totally sore the day after a climbing session, so I am not too easy on myself either. Being injury-free probably is a good thing, allowing me to climb more often. I do bang my knees and scrape my skin against holds on the wall too often though, due to carelessness. I hope I can get better at preventing such injuries.

I really enjoy how climbing challenges the nonthinking part of my brain. I feel pain in the head (probably imaginary, but it's the result of pushing it to its limits, given that it controls my body movement and seems to care about safety a whole lot) when I am struggling on the wall. I am unable to think about other things like what worries me in life. Climbing headspace can feel very peculiar. Rationally, I know I am "safe" because I am attached to a rope with a belayer holding on to me. But my perception is that I am in danger, because I haven't mastered stability, especially on walls with some cracks, some protrusions, or some corners.

Many people try climbing once and don't want to do it again. They believe they are just not strong enough to do this sport. But actually most of the fear comes from the brain not being used to operating in this funny vertical 3D space. Once the brain (the limbic system? Hippocampus?) forms a mental map (that the cognitive brain doesn't really understand at all) of vertical space, the inner car alarm will tone down. Then it's time to work on stronger fingers and techniques etc. to climb better.

Rock climbing and feet

For those of you not familiar with how climbing works, to keep yourself on the wall and to move upwards, you mostly stand on your toes (so you can rotate your feet and shift your body in all sorts of ways) and grip the wall with your fingers (could be as little as one finger for the advanced climbers). Hey, I didn't know how climbing worked when I started. I would use my whole hand and whole foot for maximum contact (= feeling of security) with the handholds and footholds.

So, what about the feet?

Well, one of the essential piece of climbing equipments is climbing shoes.  These shoes are made with a thick layer of sticky and relatively stiff rubber all around the shoe, encasing your foot such that all of the toes are squished together, acting as one unit, so you can push hard off of your big toe and generate a lot of force to propel yourself up the wall. The more advanced shoes also allows you you stand on tiny ledges on overhung terrain, and lets you heel hook or toe hook a ledge to balance yourself on the wall.

I have wide, flat feet; so called "fallen arches". I have bunions on both feet. Wearing climbing shoes feels a bit like Chinese foot binding. To be fair, even people with narrow feet don't feel great in climbing shoes, which are supposed to be worn pretty snug, with no deadspace in the shoes. I have purchased several pairs of climbing shoes. I blamed the first one for being too much of a beginner shoe (La Sportiva Tarantulace) that it didn't let me climb harder routes (though I have witness many other people climbing harder routes with the said shoe model). My second pair of climbing shoes, the Scarpa Vapor VS, is supposed to be "the most comfortable intermediate performance-based climbing shoe". It's true that this pair is made with stickier rubber and squeezes my toes more, so I did have more confidence standing on very small holds and climbing climbing harder routes. However, it also was super uncomfortable. It's partly that I have long toes that are weak and can't handle my body weight for very long. So I got another pair of shoes with a flatter profile but is not a total beginner shoe (La Sportiva Finale Women's). It squeezes my foot in a different way. I could keep the shoes on my feet for longer periods of time, but it also isn't as precise on small footholds as the Vapor VS. My toes would still hurt after a period of climbing. With my toes so long, I'm not sure how much stronger they will get, but I will keep trying.

To be honest, I think I'm a bit too heavy for my toes to handle, but I have never been good at losing weight. My feet cramp a lot, sometimes they cramp just from me trying to put the Vapor VS shoes on.  The cramming effect of the shoes can't be good for my feet. When I try to do yoga (feet flat on the ground), I can feel different parts of the foot clicking to try to clear the tension and cramps caused by rock climbing. But at the same time, climbing must strengthen parts of my feet somehow, as I do put a lot of body weight on the toes, and I do feel I can push off of each foot more than I did a year ago. I don't know what are the overall effects of climbing on my feet. Do they make the bunions worse? I'm not entirely sure. I think I should try to do other activities to balance out the effects of climbing shoes on my feet. I should also look into foot reflexology. Someone suggested that I get orthopedics foot inserts for my shoes. I think I would try barefoot footwear first actually, to try to strengthen my foot muscles and tendons.

Lead climbing -- a beginner again

So I feel like a beginner again, climbing route with big, juggy holds. I panic when I can't figure out where to place my feet and one hand comfortably. The rope from below pulls me in funny/scary ways (partly because bf is belaying quite tightly).

When I first got to 6b, the biggest challenge was to be able to do the power moves to reach the next hold, which can be quite far away. Now that I am doing all easy routes (5b's and 5c's), I never imagined the simple act of clipping the rope into a metal draw could cause so much soreness in the shoulder of the hand holding a handhold on the wall for stabilizing the body. I also don't seem to trust my new shoes: La Sportiva Finale on artificial rock footholds. I thought my footwork have gotten a lot better, but turns out they could use a lot more work. It's going back to the foundations:

- Better foot placement needed, better body positioning, arms should hang rather than kept bent, better breathing, keep movements slow and smooth, don't panic (breath!!), and remind myself that I am strong enough to get through these "easy" routes.

Through climbing, I'm noticing I have a ton of self doubt and self-distrust. Even though I end up topping all the routes I have tried so far, I had a lot of negative self talks while doing it, such as "I'm not going to make it", " I'm going to fall", "This route I chose is way too hard for me", etc. I panic super easy the moment I come to a spot where I'm not totally sure what to do next. The thing is, I usually end up resolving the problem. It's my brain's default mode for everything that I do. I'm not a good cheerleader for myself. I need to start believing in myself more.

I really think climbing is a good way to examine how my thinking habits work and try to change it to a more positive tune, or at a minimum, recognize all the self doubts and negative talks I do normally. Hopefully I learn to nip the negative self talk in the butt and feel more confidence about my capabilities.

Rock climbing progress after 1 year

The activity of climbing is like being on a hamster wheel or an angled treadmill -- you have to keep doing it to just move up in levels, or even just to stay at the same level. The moment you stop doing it (for more than a week), you slide back down in the amount of power, strength and endurance.

First I went on vacation for 3 weeks and did zero climbing. When I came back, even the simplest route (5b/5c) felt difficult. I guess that was somewhat understandable, given I wasn't exercising my body (especially upper body) much for like 20 days. But then, when I spent a month only bouldering, which emphasizes short bursts power moves, I also felt weak on the rope climbing wall, which consists of a series of moves requiring less power but more endurance. My wrists were really feeling it after a few routes. Climbing at my highest level (6b/5.10c) felt impossible.

Then when I started training for lead climbing (bringing the rope up the wall as one climbs, instead of having it set up at the top anchor, known as top rope), I picked the easiest routes on the wall (4 to 5bs). It felt super awkward to have the rope in between my legs instead of hanging from above. I also did not know exactly where to place my body to minimize energy usage. As a total chicken about slipping and falling to my death, I gripped the handholds super hard. One year of climbing seems to have provided me enough endurance to do a lot of over-gripping (read: waste more energy than necessary to keep me on the wall) the holds while still completing several easy routes. I would be sore the next day, feeling like I have trained pretty hard. Unfortunately, when I went back to the bouldering wall, I could no longer boulder at my highest level at bouldering (6a+/6b). 

So the situation for the last 3 months is somewhat frustrating, but also kind of illuminating about this activity. Even though I have been climbing every single week, I have been slipping back because I haven't been consistently pushing my limits. It's not like I feel I climb worse every week. In fact, I have been feeling better about being in a lot of awkward body positions. It's just that, specifically, hand/wrist strengths and power moves require consistent training. I can already see that by starting so late in life, I will not get super far in this sport. However, I am still hoping to build a foundation such that I can still climb 6A-6B when I am 50-60 years old.

Basic understanding / beginning interest in neuromuscular recruitment

I have been very interested in how the body reacts to a new physical activity ever since I started yoga. When I was taking physical education classes in high school, we mainly did ball sports, which require a lot of quick hand-eye / arm-leg coordinations, running, quick bursts of sprinting, and a competitive mindset. Because I have never been great with quick coordinations, I often lose the ball, be it soccer, basketball, badminton, or frisbee. I also lack the strong desire to sprint faster than the next person for a few seconds in order catch that frisbee or dive hard for that volleyball. These sports require a ton of intuition and spontaneity.

For activities like hiking, snowboarding, yoga, and climbing, it is a totally different mindset. You are in less of a rush. The goal is kind of to keep the body moving, to be immersed in the experience and feel the movements. There is also coordination required, but you are more looking in a general direction rather than at a specific item outside of your body. Of course at a competition level these activities can be fast-paced, but when performed as leisurely activities, it is more enjoyable to focus on the breathing, whether or not the movements feel smooth and natural, in order to enter a flow. While learning the movement for these activities, one even has time to examine the body specifically from within: Am I using my leg muscles correctly for this lunge? Are my cores engaged adequately for this specific move? I find the whole internal inquiry journey quite enjoyable. Perhaps it's because I'm ultra nerdy.

I learned a lot about anatomy and breathing in general through learning yoga. However, I know very little about how the nervous system adapts to exercises. I mean, my nervous system tells me how I feel in the body before, during, and after a yoga or climbing session, but I'm not sure how to observe the nervous system itself. I know it's ramped up as my heart rate increases and my breathing becomes quicker and shallower. When the heart rates starts to calm down and I feel overall less panicky during cool down, that's the parasympathetic nervous system at work. After a yoga session, I usually feel a sense of electric pulses flowing up and down the body, but I'm not sure if that's the nervous system itself or more of the nadi channels / chi / elusive meridian system.

For yoga, from not being able to do an asana at all to feeling comfortable in an asana, there is of course neuromuscular recruitment. But it is not as apparent as climbing, when I started from not be able to do a single pull up (in fact, I could only hang on a bar for about 2-3 seconds before my shoulders and just the whole nervous system screaming at me to let go), to being able to hang for 5 seconds, with no more mental panicking; rather, just the nerves on the skin on my hands ask me to give my hands a break. Now I can do some pull ups (not great ones, since I do not specifically train for them), and can do some lock-offs (hold my arms in a tight bent position for 1-2 seconds). That is an obvious neuromuscular recruitment improvement.

I need to read up more on nervous systems in order to better describe how I feel in my journey of learning to climb.

Bouldering movements

I have been watching IFSC bouldering world cups on Youtube lately. I am very happy to discover this spectator sport. It is super exciting to watch, actually. This takes place in several cities in Asia, Europe, and North America each year. It is not televised, but is live streamed and can be played back later on Youtube. There is a qualifying round, a semi-final, and the final, where only the top 6 male and 6 female athletes are given 4 minutes to solve a boulder problem (4 boulder problems total).

Just what is a boulder problem? For competition climbing, it is a bunch of plastic handholds and footholds that one has to move through ("solve the sequence") to get to the top hold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HgkRwiNQQs

In this video you see many athletes not being able to complete the problem at all, and the last guy completing the sequence, thus winning the competition.

What the video edited out is his previous 6 attempts, which is what I have enjoyed watching in the live stream version. In the first attempt an athlete often fails at an early stage. With each attempt the athlete "learns" the movements with his or her body, and gains some muscle memory. A good athlete usually improves with each attempt. If one doesn't run out of energy or time, one can often solve the problem within 4 minutes. A tall person often has reach advantage, but a short person can have better control of the centre of gravity and has better control of the body for explosive power movements. I just love to see the 4 minute progression where these world class athletes can go from totally failing to mastering a particular boulder problem.

I normally enjoy watching Youtuber climbers ranging from pretty good to really awesome monkeying around in their home gyms. But right after watching a World cup, where 22 year olds dominate the podium, the Youtuber climbers' movements seem somewhat sluggish. I guess right after watching Usain Bolt win a race, your friend who just won the local sprinting competition would look a bit slow too.

Does watching athlete boulder help with my own bouldering progress? Well, my progressions has been as follows:

Stage 1: Not able to do anything except what looks like a straight ladder climb on the wall (with big juggy hand and footholds).

Stage 2: Trying V1 (French grade 5) climbs that require some shift in body weights. Not able to read routes at all. My hands would hurt after holding my body on the wall for >3 seconds so I would come off the wall right after starting a route.

Stage 3: Being able to shift my body weight a bit more so I could do the V1s.

Stage 4: Hands getting a bit stronger so I could get on the wall, stay there a bit while looking for the next hand/foothold.

Stage 5: Get on a boulder, imagine what a world class athlete would do for the next step (some power jump move to the next handhold), and then recognize I am not strong enough to do it myself.

So I went from not knowing how to solve boulder problems to mentally knowing what to do but physically not able to do it. Believe it or not, this is a major improvement. Climbing is always both physical and mental.

By the way I just moved to another city (yet again). The boulder problems here are quite a different style than in my previous gym. I was doing 6A+s/V3/V4s. But now apparently V3s are out of reach for me here because they put dynos in (jump to the next hand holds... I am unable to jump while on a wall right now). So I will work on my balances and core strengthening (on the wall, not working out at a gym), hoping by the end of the year I will see some improvements.

On writing, idea generation, and mental models

Today I came across Sam Harris's podcast with Shane Parrish about mental models. It's is also available in podcast format. This is a topic I am super interested in.

I'm sure my blog comes across as very scatterbrained. The thing is, I am trying to work on my writing. My writing skills has never been really good. When I was in Asia, the focus was on getting kids to produce standard essays. When I was about to start school, my mother bought me a set of books which contained standard essays written by children aged 6-10. Since I had amazing memory when I was a kid, I internalized the essays quickly. I then found out the teachers at school gave out essay assignments with the exact same topics as the ones in these books, so I just wrote my essays based on these internalized templates and got top marks. This practice was one of the single most horrific thing that was really detrimental to my creativity (if I had any creativity to begin with).

When I moved to North America, for unknown reasons I found it much more difficult to learn English well enough to write fluently. I actually majored in biology because the major only required me to regurgitate what I learned from lecture notes and textbooks and involved minimal essay writing. It took me until grad school with lots of practice on rewriting the same project proposal into many different lengths and formats (proposal, abstract summary, longer summary, Ph.D. thesis summary) to be able to become a little bit better at the generation writing that's somewhat coherent.

While the purpose of my blog is to practice writing, I have difficulties to focus on a single topic. Initially I did manage to focus on writing about yoga-related topics. I quickly found out I could only generate a blog post was right after a practice. A physical practice gives me a lot of experiential data that make me want to express in writing form. Since I have been doing more climbing than yoga, the blog has shifted into writing about climbing.

The act of meditation also generates ideas for me to write about. The practice allows me to realize the stuff that I ruminate about (eg. relationship issues with mother etc.), but it also gives space for more interesting (more rare) ideas to pop up in my head that warrants further expansion in writing form.

So what does this have to do with mental models?

I have known for sometime that how I think and operate is quite different from how majority of people think. This gives me great disadvantage at work and in relationships because of mismatched expectations and roadmaps to goals.

The podcast mentioned that while we would like to think we are rational beings, humans are deep down, ego-based thinking beings who make a ton of cognitive biases while making decisions. It doesn't matter how smart you are. Actually, the smarter you are, the more creative you are at coming up with convincing justifications of how you arrived at your (likely irrational) decisions. This is how most people operate. However, since I was brought up to follow templates and defer to teachers and elders, I have a bad habit of not taking responsibility for my decisions. I generate work, then I give my results to my boss, letting them judge the quality. Normal people would generate results, then defend the quality of their results when presenting it to the boss. Without the step of taking responsibility and defending/promoting my work, people don't think highly of it. My problem was that I assumed that all bosses knew better than I did and could make better decisions than I could. This is of course not true, and has been the source of my misery for many years of my life, since my work on its own, is not strong enough to speak for itself. I was also disappointed at the decision making processes I observed at the managerial and institutional levels. I was expecting people in charge of important positions to be responsible, rational thinkers who can take everything into account and can make the best decisions that can benefit everybody. Instead, the ones who get promoted to the highest positions are the ones who care the least about excellence, can speak in a way that makes the organization sound amazing and inspirational, and are best at doing incremental changes while maintain the status quo.

If I would like to get a few ideas out of my head into the world in interpretable form, I need to focus better, lower my expectations, and in the mean time continue to understand better my mental models and how it can fit better with other mental models in the world.

Soreness in the body from climbing

Climbing is an intense sport. The muscle soreness is so extreme I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night needing to stretch it out. It feels like the fascia is trembling and releasing energy sometime... it's a strange feeling.

The soreness occurs in different body parts every time: most often in the lower back (my core is still weak), the neck, the shoulders (different parts), the trapezius, the obliques, the biceps occasionally, the forearms, the wrists, the calves, the derrières, and the ankles sometimes.

The skin in the hands are usually pretty tortures. Calluses build up at the base of the fingers as well as in the lower 2 finger pads of each finger.

It is never the whole body at once, and usually one side is a lot more sore than the other side, which means this is a very uneven activity.

Today, while I was attempting to pull myself up while clenching hard on bad handholds while the body was in a funny position, I could feel weird pinching sensations in the shoulders, either in the nerves or in the tendon/ligament. Before I actually hurt myself I decided to take it easy. I went upstairs to the gym to lift some dumb bell weights instead to try to even out the force exerted on my shoulders (because the climbing movement was very asymmetrical, applying uneven forces on each  shoulder while the body was twisted). That felt like a good call at the time. We'll see how I feel tomorrow.

It seems like I really need to train my muscles antagonistic to my climbing (pulling) muscles. This feels like a lot of work for me :P . I can only do like 5 full push ups right now (with a lot of struggles to do the last one). I always feel like I need to stretch, but I'm not sure exactly which poses provide the most needed stretches. I'm usually sore for days after a climbing session.

I keep waiting for my body to get stronger so I will hopefully become less sore, but maybe that's wishful thinking. I think my core has improved somewhat, so the lower back soreness has been less severe than before. I have been climbing at the same level for awhile now, and will probably stay at this level for a least several more months. Hopefully the soreness will become less intense after awhile. 

Climbing and yoga for someone with mild hypermobility tendencies

When I warm up on the indoor climbing wall, climbing simple ladder-like structures, I always get a pretty intense feeling in the shoulders. I don't know if it's blood rushing to the area or if it's fascia slowly adapting to my body weight. I feel a stretch all along my side bodies. I try to hang a bit, let my body weight pull open up and warm up my side body. I can do that a bit with my back body as well, rounding my spine a bit to stretch the muscles and the fascia. I can actually simulate the feeling of stretching (not the intensity though) by simply reaching one arm above my head towards the ceiling.

I asked my boyfriend if he also got this intense feeling of stretching when he warms up on the wall, and he said no. The difference between us is that I have to warm up on very simple routes with next to no strains on my muscles; otherwise the first climb would feel extremely difficult. He on the other hand, already wants some difficulty in his warm up climb. It's like his muscles crave stress already while cold, and my muscles are not capable of fully engaging before the fascia are ready. After some stretching and warm up, then I can start to climb harder stuff -- routes that require more muscular activation.

When I practice yoga, there are a lot of moves where everyone else feel a lot: for example my boyfriend feels a lot in any asana that contains a spinal twist, whereas I barely feel anything in twists. In fact, I hate the lying down mild twists at the cool down phase of many yoga classes. I don't feel a stretching sensation at all along the body. I just feel like my vertebrae are crunched and I'm probably overstraining my connective tissues.

I was looking up hypermobility and climbing, and people describe pulley injuries in the hands. I guess I haven't reached high enough difficulty to strain my hands so much to start getting those injuries. My fingers also don't contort into the shapes that I see in the images I google online, so my hypermobility is not severe. I am also too chicken to dare to try as hard as many guys at the gym seem to do. The list below are typical characteristics for joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS), and how I match to these symptoms:

• pain and stiffness in the joints and muscles [sometimes]
• clicking joints [yes]
• joints that dislocate (come out of the correct position) easily . [luckily no]
• fatigue (extreme tiredness) [yes]
• recurrent injuries – such as sprains [luckily no]
• digestive problems – such as constipation and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)  [sort of]
• dizziness and fainting [dizziness yes, fainting no]
• thin or stretchy skin [no.... I think]

There was another list of symptoms that JHS can cause, many of which overlap with the above list. But there are some additional symptoms that I do experience:

• back and neck pain 
• night pains [not really a pain in my case; more like soreness and erratic energy currents flowing through the muscle/fasciae that I overworked during the day's climbing session] 

The fact that I need to strengthen my muscles to protect my joint is the obvious one. Given that I haven't severely injured my body that much given my age, I am probably too careful and never push my body to its limits, which is maybe a good thing for my body. I have a tendency to want to compare myself to others, but given my body composition is so different compared to most people I know, I really shouldn't do it. Currently, my boyfriend notices novel muscular definitions on his body pretty much every week, whereas I only notice muscle tone progressions on a monthly basis. He does not get neck pains nor does he wake up in the night from soreness.

The website suggests that people with JHS should stick to low-impact exercises. Currently I don't feel like climbing is overstraining my joints. I really like how the activity improves my muscle tones. I don't love the imbalance I feel after each climbing session. I have tried doing online yoga classes on my rest days, but felt like it was not a good idea to follow a led class. Instead I should try to stretch and try different asanas on my own, be more mindful how each asana feels in the body, and back off on the asanas that really irritate the specific overworked muscle groups. It is not that easy. For example, back bends feel great after climbing, since climbing involves some haunch forward-type movements. However, urdhva dhanurasana (upward bow pose) can feel great and horrible at the same time). It provides much needed stretches for some parts of the body, but the shoulders and back muscles can feel really overworked. I probably should find some alternative backbends that can accomplish the deep stretching that I crave but not put so much strain on the back muscles.

There is also this electric current issue that is not really addressed by western physiology, not well defined by yoga teachings (in the west), and too esoteric for me to understand in Chinese energy exercise teachings. I really hope that one day I can find a teacher with minimal BS, who has sound knowledge of the body's energy system, who doesn't try to sound like he/she is superior to other people, and who doesn't try to put students down. This energy system is linked to the connective tissues, to mood, to how tired or energized I feel, to the mind, and to the physical health of the body of course. 

Yoga vs. Chinese energy practices

I felt triggered by an article written on Facebook by a Chinese osteopath master, shared by my cousin. He mentioned he is a practitioner of several Chinese kung fu / taichi / qigong practices, and he has treated many Chinese yoga teachers who got injured from over-stretching in yoga. He asked some of his yoga teacher patients why they hurt themselves over-stretching, and the yoga teachers replied that when they saw that some of their students could do certain asanas better than they can, they felt the pressure to "keep up with the students".  He explicitly declared he didn't know so much about yoga, but he felt that it is a dangerous practice, because the emphasis of the current yoga teachings seem to be on pushing students to get into the pretzel asanas whether their bodies are ready or not.

The osteopath went in-depth talking about the tendon, ligament, and fascia system, noting that a lot of his yoga practitioner patients had some body parts that are loose, say: hips, or hamstrings, but the ends of the bodies, such as attachment around the hands and feet, were very tight. This is because the whole connected fascia system needs some tension, so when we over-loosen some parts, other parts of the body would tighten up to compensate.

He feels yoga is a very advanced study, but not all students should practice the same asanas, because different bodies have different needs. He is also concerned that the teachers don't adequately teach how people should breath in each asana, for example, breathing from the chest or breathing from the abdomen. He feels that people could serious hurt themselves if they breath wrongly while going into these advanced asanas.

What he says about the connective tissues is fine, and his advice that people should not push to their absolute edge when they do an asana is also fine. What I have a problem is that he says "yoga is very dangerous" based on his patients. I guess his addressing women who turn off their common sense and decide to push their bodies to an extreme in order to look like "advanced yoga teachers".  Shouldn't it be that "lack of common sense" is dangerous? If you are hypermobile, please focus on the strengthening rather than the stretching aspects of asana. Even better, add some other exercises to your life, such as long walks, jogging, resistance exercises (lifting weights etc) or even dancing.

Secondly, a large part of his article is focused on his theories about connective tissues. This section sounded very complicated. I am not really sure if it applies to everyone or just "bendy people". As far as I know, my fellow yogis who constantly complain they feel stiff, even a decade later when their flexibility in the area they work on (say, hamstrings or hips) has gradually improved, still claim they are stiff. Having overly lax connective tissues just doesn't seem to be a problem for people whose bodies do not have hypermobile tendencies.  Even when they overstretch and pull a muscle, it seems to be quite local. However, this article was shared by hundreds of this master's fans, many of which are yoga teachers. I guess it's not a problem to tell everyone to be more careful when practicing yoga, but I just feel like people without hypermobile tendencies should have trouble truly understanding what he wrote, since they have never felt like their bodies are "too loose" while tight near the muscle attachments. But it seems like he got a ton of comments saying "So true!!" "Such a well written article!" "I learned so much from this article!" It left me seriously scratching my head.

Regarding breathing, he made it sound super complicated. People's natural reaction when they do a new, uncomfortable pose, is to hold their breaths. Or they can only do very shallow chest breathing initially. I feel like this naturally protects the body so people don't push past their range of joint motion on their first attempt. The solution is simply to back off from the full posture, and try to breath more deeply. Interestingly, he mentioned something about how good breathing should work based on his qigong knowledge, which basically describes mula bandha. I think what he means by yoga being very advanced, is when one grasps how mula and the other bandhas work, combined with correct methods of breathing, the nadis, the fascia system will be fully activated. Now, I have felt electricity running through my body sometimes during and after yoga practice, but sometimes I don't. I know some people who don't really feel the electricity at all. I'm not sure about other yoga styles, but for Ashtanga, the closing postures are quite important for containing all these activated prana/chi energy, so his worries are taken care of by the ancient wisdom of yoga.

I guess my annoyance comes from the fact that the Chinese way of teaching energy work is that "the body is very dangerous! Only move it in the way I, as a master, tell you to do so, and don't you dare to play with your body or your breath on your own! You will hurt yourself!" The thing is, in the beginning, the students feel nothing, because as beginners, we are not moving or breathing in the "right" way that facilitate the chi flow. The teacher then goes on and on about how powerful the practice is. While it is true when the students eventually do it correctly, it is sort of untrue for the first months, or even years. What ends up happening is a ton of people bragging about all the miracles of  Chinese energy practices before actually experiencing anything real. For the beginners, the movements are so mild that they don't really get a work out for the muscles.

With yoga, initially people only experience the superficial stretching, and balancing, and muscular work.  The movements are more dramatic. I sincerely believe that while most people get a workout while others increase their range of motion, many never experience the deeper work on the subtle body, at least not consciously. To them, yoga is an exercise routine. As for those who are hyper-focused on the human-pretzel aspect of yoga and who end up screwing up their connective tissues, well, I can only say I hope they realize one day that hyper-flexibility certainly does not equal health. I wouldn't say "yoga is dangerous!!" For me, that warning implies that everyone should stop practicing yoga immediately.

To summarize, I guess I have a problem with the Chinese way of viewing health and life. The west generally promotes that exercising is healthy (based on many many scientific studies). Yes, there are people who over do it and need joint replacement surgeries much too early in their lives. As long as  these people enjoy what their bodies can accomplish in marathons, skiing, cycling etc, I think the purpose is justified. This thinking of "don't breath or move the wrong way or you will hurt yourself" applies to people without basic fitness. The idea of training baseline cardiovascular and muscular fitness is good for you is just not fundamental in the Chinese culture. You can build some chi in the dan-tien (diaphragm) area, and/or you can also just build some core muscles. Both protects the body. I wish that in addition to warning which exercises or movements can hurt people, these kung fu / qigong masters could also warn people the danger of inactivity, which can be just as bad for people. The masters also need to realize that some people will claim they understand and can access the chi, but they never actually get it. Getting people to sweat and increase their heart rates are much more straightforward way of promoting health.

Sorry this post is so longwinded and scattered. I have many thoughts on different aspects of this issue that I just need to write them out on a page before re-organizing them.

Spiritual Teachering

Recently I have been watching Youtube videos of a self-proclaimed spiritual teacher. Her teachings are essentially a combination of pop psychology, spiritual teachings from various traditions, some chakra stuff, some aura stuff, some quantum mysticism New Age stuff, some yoga teachings, etc. A lot of her teachings make sense to me, since she rehashes existing sound teachings. The way she reinterprets these existing psychological theories / spiritual teachings and comes up with her own examples illustrating the theories are very relatable to people, which makes her very popular.

The problem that she claims her knowledge comes from communicating with higher dimensional beings, rather than through reading many books and attending counselling sessions herself.

It seems like she has built quite a following and people will pay big money to go to her retreats and attend her workshops. Her audience would prefer to obtain knowledge from mystical beings rather than from science (psychological research) or  ancient (human) sages. Or maybe they know she learned from books rather than from clairvoyance, but they want the knowledge to be presented to them in an entertaining and charismatic manner. I guess it's human nature. I just worry that when people idolize a teacher, they do not question anything he or she says, and no one person knows everything, so people might take in teachings that may or may not be totally accurate.

The overabundance of real and false information today has made us more anxious than ever. We want uncomplicated answers to our anxiety. We want somebody to have the answers to our general problems. Problems with relationships, with our health, with our womanhood (or manhood), with love, with our careers, with family, with our finance. Those who are charismatic enough to claim they have answers to it all have potential to make significant financial gains.

I'm just wondering if it's better for a spiritual teacher to be honest about their lineage of teaching, or is it okay to mix and match different teachings, but claim it's from one source. Or is it okay to claim psychic abilities.

I have a desire for people to be more truthful, useful spiritual teachings or not, but maybe that's too much to ask for in this world. 

Noticing my habitual thinking patterns

Meditation really is a brain training exercise that is so useful for life, but can be difficult to understand the process. I guess without brain training, the mind is kind of on autopilot mode. I have always assumed that anxiety, fear, anger, and general helplessness are part of my nature.  Mean people make me anxious. Unfairness and injustice make me angry. Recently I have realized that external situations are not what make me helpless and angry. It is a habit of mine to react this way to most unfamiliar and/or uncomfortable situations. It is a form of learned helplessness.

I grew up observing my mother solving every issue at home. My dad is a hardworking man. However, he only feels responsible for bringing home the pay check and nothing else. He is what you would today diagnose as autistic: he has trouble expressing his feelings and opinions; he cannot have a conversation with you if he is not interested in the topic, which includes politics, some history/geography, and not much else. He has near photographic memory. He does not participate in decision making processes at home. My mom, being a housewife much less educated than my dad, has to make all the major decisions, such as buying and selling our home, raising children, etc. She learned to put on this very tough, confident, brave, authoritarian front while she made these decisions without much prior knowledge or understanding of the world. She did this to hide her anxiety and low self-esteem.

While this behaviour helped her survive her anxiety, it also gave me a lot of anxiety. Since her husband never participated the decision making process, of course there is no place for her child to get a say in the decisions that she made, even though I really wanted a say in which schools I should go to, interior decorations in our home, which extra-curricular activities I should participate in, etc. I felt my opinions didn't matter, no matter how much I complained. In fact, I got into this pattern of always acting out, complaining I didn't want to do the activities my mother had arranged, be it ballet, or tennis, or go to the schools my mother had picked. My mother would just shout me down, not allowing her authority as a mother to be questioned.  In the end, I would grumpily attend these activities, full of resentment. My mother would triumph that her authority was maintained, strongly believing that it was all for my good, and that I would thank her when I grew up.

My habit of resentment never stopped. I resented everything. Whatever didn't go my way, I would blame my mother. As a child, my mother always forced me to do things her way. She also never got me to stop resenting her. We would just shout at each other. So when I became an adult, when a teacher or a boss wanted me to do something I didn't want to do, I would bite the bullet and do it while secretly resenting them. A better alternative would be to express my thoughts and perhaps offer an alternative solution. But because I have had zero practice at this growing, I didn't even realize that this was a possibility until much later in life, but still now, I am not good at this.

It didn't help that in academia, professors get next to zero training in people management. To be honest, all of my bosses sucked at management. They are more reasonable than my mother, but they needed their students and staff to be good communicators and good at gently pushing back and offering solutions, which can be quite difficult for me to do, since I have always worked on complex topics using bleeding-edge technologies, where knowledge about the topic/issues can be lacking. I often felt tongue-tied, which my bosses would interpret as I knew nothing, when I was merely being overly cautious.

Recently I had to deal with a salesperson who made me feel helpless and that I did something wrong. But since this is not a boss-employee relationship, I realized that this is just my default way of feeling when I am in an uncomfortable situation with another human being. I have had neither training nor  practice taking charge of a situation among a group of people.

What does meditation have to do with any of this? Well, without meditation, I link my anxiety and meekness directly to the situation. With meditation, where I sit daily to observe ongoing thought patterns, breathing patterns and feelings in the body, I am able to put some space between me and these habitual patterns. These patterns are not fundamentally who I am. They are just habits.

I have always wished I could have better training from my mother or from school. Now that I am old enough, I realize most people, including my mother, are mostly in self-preservation mode, despite their claims that they want to do what's good for me or for everyone. I have to train myself to get mentally stronger and to reprogram my brain. Recognizing the habitual thinking patterns is a first step towards making changes.