Day 16- Ergonomics of Juicing

I was kind of excited because a few people contacted me by text asking how I was doing.  Shortly afterward, I realized that the friends who had contacted me had noticed my absence from blogging and  were really worried about me and this fast, and they were making sure I hadn't fallen into the toilet and drown or something.  And it was then that it hit me that not everyone who reads this might think I'm doing something that is good for me.  There are some of you who may actually be concerned or fearful for my health.  It is to you worry warts that I dedicate this post.

How to Make Sure You Dont Get Hurt While Juicing:

When you embark upon something like a fast, be it long or short, you prepare, at least I do.  You can read endless amounts of information from all kinds of people with various ideas of what's right, and eventually you find a few patterns that stand out and you can use this as the frame work with which you mix your own intuition and jagged ideas.  You'll find advice is about how much juice to drink per day, what kind of juice, what kinds of veggies to use more of, what combinations to avoid and what combinations are optimal- half of it is bull shit, half of it is good, but how to tell the difference?  People talk about the cleansing experience, making sure you get plenty of rest, making sure you get time to yourself, external cleansing processes like dry brushing or oiling of the body, and of course cleaning the holes like using a neti pot for your sinuses or cleansing the colon using salt water flushes or my favorite, enemas.  There are countless reports of people experiencing detoxifying symtoms such as acne like breakouts all over the skin, coated tongues, extra stinky breath and body odor, strange dreams, moodiness, excessive fatigue etc. You'll also find a lot of conversation about what to expect emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  I know these are really personal and specific things, but the basic concept here is that you're going to be challenged mentally, strapped on a non stop roller coaster emotionally, and well excercised spiritually.  It's nice to know all of this stuff as you head into a fast, it kind of helps you be prepared for....well, something significant anyway.  What no one tells you is that your juicer can hurt you.

For a couple of days, my arm hurt so bad it kept me awake at night.  I couldn't straighten it all the way up, I couldn't bend it all the way, and I couldn't do anything with it that required any bearing of weight.  I developed tennis elbow from my juicer.  Yes, I know, who wuddathunkit?  I mean, fer real tennis elbow.  Like- ouch, I can't use my right arm tennis elbow.  And it's funny, because I've never had tennis elbow before but I have no doubt it's from repeatedly shoving things down the juice cylinder and pushing too hard on the plunger with my right arm with my sloppy elbow tilted up toward the ceiling and no connection between my arm and the core of my body.  I was using bad form (gasp) yes, it's true.  Here comes the blame part.    No one in the whole world of juicing has written about the importance of form when juicing! (I could be wrong but whatever)  I guess I could write about the importance of form for my fellow juicers, but right now, I just want to bitch about it.

What makes this funny to me is that with all the worrying anyone has ever done about me or anyone else on a fast, and all the worrying I did in order to prepare as much as possible for this crazy journey into my tissues and all of my issues, the injury that popped up had nothing to do with any of the concerns that might have been brought to mind.  I mean, I don't recall anyone saying, "becareful with all that repetitive movment, keep your elbow low and only apply moderate pressure to the plunger"  or "make sure you're alternating the right and left arms on the plunger, you don't want to get tendonitis in those elbows."   And isn't that always the way things go?  It's not Murphys Law, it's natural law.  Embark on a large journey and obstacles will arise.  It's how you handle the obstacles that lay the foundation for how your journey will continue.

In response to my elbow injury, I am now plunging with my left hand, and feeding with my right. I am also paying good attention to my form- now when I'm juicing I've got good posture, I'm keeping everything gently pulled in and engaging my core, my elbows aren't all flopping around, they are neat and I'm mindful of the sensitivity of the fragile elbow joint.  I guess this is good.

Spoiler alert:  I've decided to shorten my fast to 21 days instead of 30- this is just another nugget of info that should help calm the nerves of some of the worriers out there.

And oh man was yoga teacher training hard. But I'm going to cover that in the next post.

Sorry, I've been forgetting to take pictures lately.  I'll try and get back on that.

For now, the stars of the show- the juices!

JUICE

Juice #1
21 oz apple- 315
6 oz pear- 112
13 oz plum- 260
13 oz grapes- 260

53 oz- 947

Juice #2
16 oz carrot- 188
13 oz apple- 195
9 oz beet- 48
6 oz beet greens- 32
10 oz pear- 188
2 oz tomoato- 10
1 oz parsley- 5.5
ginger

57 oz at 667 calories

110 ounces at 1614 calories