My friend, Ed used to refer to me as the most changed man in the community. I always took that as a compliment. It also made me think quite a bit about how I had changed and if those changes were for the better. In most cases, I believe the answer is yes, the changes were improvements of me or as my friend Robert once called me, Donny v. 2.1. This new, improved Donny is calmer and not quite as explosive all the time as I was only a decade or so ago. Also, I’d say more empathetic and more balanced.
What were other changes my friends were seeing in me and what did it take for those changes to come about? One change I’m keenly aware of is slowing down.
When I was 49, I had been working for IBM as a consultant. I was in Denver with my friend, Neill and I became aware of how short walks were causing me great discomfort. The way this was showing up, I felt as if I was taking in a breath laced with fire when I was walking. It was really making me crazy. I had lived in Colorado Springs when I was younger, and the altitude there is higher than Denver, so I was pretty sure this wasn’t an altitude related problem. Nonetheless, I was puzzled. I was also scared because I’d never experienced anything like this and had no clue what was causing this. A factor which ruled out altitude as the cause was a weekend workshop I did outside of Houston, TX where I was at sea level. The same symptoms of “breathing fire” on short walks happened there as well.
One morning, I turned to Neill in the elevator of the hotel we were staying at and I said, “Neill, this breathing thing is making me nuts. I have no idea what’s going on.” His answer was one I’ll never forget. He said, “We’re going to be off this project pretty soon. Go home, see your doctor and have him take a picture.” It was just a simple, direct way of answering my question and my fear. Additionally, what Neill said made sense because I had smoked a pipe since I was 17. And, I don’t care what you’ve heard or what pipe smokers you’ve known have told you, I inhaled my pipe every bit as much as a cigarette smoker inhales. I thought, even though my father had been a smoker since he was 12 and seemed to be doing alright (that was true at the time, it would later be the cause of his death) perhaps 32 years of inhaling a pipe was catching up to me.
When ultimately we did finish the project in Denver, I took Neill’s advise. I went to see my doctor and described what had been going on for me. He told me I was going to undergo several tests in order to determine what the problem might be. He set me up for an EKG, a blood test, a stress test on a treadmill and, yes, having a picture taken, a chest X-ray.
Most of the tests went well until I got to the treadmill stress test. I’d never done one before. The practitioner in charge described for me how the treadmill would start out slowly and get faster and more inclined as we went along. I thought, “OK, I’m in reasonably good shape.” But, that “breathing fire” thing had me a bit worried. As the test began, the practitioner began asking me how I was feeling. It was starting to hurt pretty quickly. She asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being mild and 10 being severe what my discomfort level was. And, she asked, would I be willing to tell her if the test needed to stop. Pride goeth before the fall, it is said. And, for me on that treadmill, this was no exception. I answered her I would likely die before I’d stop the test. She was wise enough to stop the test for me at 90 seconds when I answered my discomfort level was at about a 7.
When I went in to see my doctor, after the stress test, the first question he asked me was if he’d knew I had a history of heart disease in my family. I told him my father had his first heart attack at 54. That’s telltale, by the way. Heart disease in a direct family member under 55 poses a high risk factor for children in that family. He told me my condition was known as angina, a condition marked by severe pain in the chest or in my case, “breathing fire.” I asked, “What’s next, an angioplasty?” He nodded his head. I’d need to be referred to a cardiologist who would likely recommend that procedure for relief of the symptoms I was experiencing.
A few days later, I was seeing the cardiologist and a few days after that, I was admitted to the hospital for an angioplasty. It would be the first of three. On this first procedure, in the “cath lab” I was told I had two arteries which were blocked. One was 99% and the other was 90%. No wonder I’d had trouble breathing. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my lungs! An interesting aspect of all this came from a friend I did that training with in Houston. When I asked for support from the persons I’d done the training with, she wrote back, “Isn’t it interesting that while you are healing your heart (through meditation and learning about what made me so angrily impatient earlier in my life) your heart is also healing you?”
After that first angioplasty, I thought it also would be a good idea to go through a post cardio rehab training. This training was really about learning how diet & exercise could help me have a better lifestyle. And, as you might imagine, one of the first things on the agenda was giving up the pipe! Perhaps not as difficult as quitting cigarettes, but a habit and pleasure I’d had for 32 years was now off limits. I was told I needed to drop 35 pounds and start eating a more healthy diet. I have a tendency toward being OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) and this was no exception. I dropped 35 pounds pretty quickly and began eating a much more nutritious diet.
When I was first diagnosed with coronary artery disease, I contacted an old friend who is also a doctor. He asked me to send him any and all paperwork my doctors were producing. I did. A few weeks after the initial angioplasty, he called me one day and told me he’d studied it pretty thoroughly. “What did you find out, ” I asked. He said clearly it could be deduced I had a history of coronary disease in my family but that isn’t what would kill me. He said the single biggest risk factor for me was stress and if I didn’t get it under control it would. I began looking for ways to become less stressed. I believe I found it in the form of studying Tai Chi. I’d always wanted to learn this Chinese martial art/exercise and this seemed like a good time to do so. This is where the slowing down portion of the title comes from.
I began studying Tai Chi with Mike Proctor in October of 2001. Mike not only teaches Tai Chi, but has been a martial artist for more than 50 years. He holds some fairly impressive credentials in Karate and is also a master of Tai Chi. When we first started training together, Mike could tell I’d had some previous exposure to martial arts and indeed in my early 20s I’d done TaeKwon Do for a while. I remember clearly talking to him when I first began working with him, about my martial arts background. He told me I could join his Karate class, too, if I wanted but, “It isn’t what you need.” I believe he saw that angrily, impatient side of me pretty clearly and had concluded what I really needed was to slow down in many aspects of my life. He saw what I didn’t back then, that slowing down would likely keep me alive for however long I’m going to be on this Earth.
I liked Tai Chi right away and I was still impatient. There’s a beauty and elegance to the form, in this case the Yang short form which fascinated me, especially watching Mike do it. It was fairly difficult for me to learn the form, and after the first two years, frustrated I hadn’t mastered the form yet, I called Mike one Monday to tell him I was quitting. “You can quit,” I remember him saying. “I just want to ask you one question first.” I said he could and he asked, “What do you think about when you’re in my class?” I said I thought about where my feet and hands were while trying to learn the form. He said, “So let me ask you this. Where else do you have an hour in your life, where all you think about is your hands and your feet?” He might as well have hit me with a Karate punch. I said nowhere. And I clearly understood his meaning. Rarely, can I tell this story out loud without coming to a real sense of sadness around how this simple idea was to change my life. It’s now almost 11 years later, and I’m still doing Tai Chi, though hardly a master. More like an experienced novice.
Change and slowing down both have helped me to become a more centered being. I’m amazed when I catch myself knee jerking like in the ‘old days.’ And, it still happens. What’s new is my ability to see it. Either coming or right after it emerges. When the former, I shift gears, just like in Tai Chi and re-distribute my balance. When the latter, I acknowledge that it happened again, and if I don’t like how it presented, I again change the energy flow to be not only more harmonic for me, but for those around me as well.
How Am I Changing?: Just like other lessons I’ve learned, I’m realizing I don’t have to be perfect. I just have to take my time in much of what I do to think about where my hands and feet are and appreciate where I am in the moment.
As the tortoise said, “slow and steady wins the race.” 😉