Two-year window

It is now 500 days since I began this process of remembering every day that passes and so far, so good: no lost days.

How to extend this indefinitely is something that I am considering as the time taken in my daily reviews expands. I currently run a two-day window over each week since I began this process to refresh the images pinned to my mental calendar. Today being Tuesday, I recall every Monday and Tuesday, starting from Monday 19 December 2011 (first image: eating mince pies on the last day in my office before travelling for Christmas).

It now feels very arbitrary to begin the process with those first days in December, as if my life before then is somehow separate. It is also increasingly unnecessary as I have filled in some of the blanks on my mental calendar by spending odd moments in the day thinking back to the same day of the month as far back as I have time to go. So today being the 30 April, I recall images for every 30th day, scrollowing back through my memories, sometimes through recent years. A further extension is to go back to my childhood for the same date each year.

I was already thinking that a way to make this refreshing process sustainable is to allow the early dates to drop out of my two-day window review (in which the images are reviewed twice per week) after say two years and then only referesh them in the day per month review thereafter. This process is begin on 17 December 2013.

From then onwards my plan is to start the two-day window two years before, requiring a run through of just over 200 memory tags, which should easily fit within my 20-minute wake up routine (I now fit much of this review into the time I am doing my Global Postural Reeducation exercises).

I am nervous that blanks will start to appear when days move into the day per month review outside the two-year window.

Accordingly, to ease into this two-year window plan, I have started it now, making use of the many images I have found for the days before I began this process.

Any images I have recovered at the start of this period are already a bonus and I hope they will become firmly entrenched and attached to their dates by the time they drop out the two-year window, so building my confidence for when I risk letting these 500 days and counting fall from my reviews.

New perspective

One desired outcome of correcting my faulty posture through Global Postural Reeducation, is to move the position of my head back a few inches.

This is starting to happen, though there is still resistance for my head to sit in the position where it feels it should be.

One impact of the movement that has occured is it gives me a different perspective of the rest of my body: from my viewpoint my chest has expanded.

Of course, if anyone else does notice any difference it will not be to my chest, but the postion of my head.

All the same, it is a little disconcerting to find my chest ballooning.

Clicking gone

I had my first Global Postural Reeducation session on 22 March 2013 (it's my memory tag for that day).

I was motivated by the violent and recurring clicking in my neck, usually when moving my head while working with my laptop on my lap.

I am doing the exercises at home as instructed and am already noticing great changes in my posture - and my self-perception.

It struck me today that the clicking in my neck has just about gone.

I now most often work at a table, not least because it is no longer relaxing to do so slouched in the armchair, but uncomfortable.

Beyond this, my spine seems to be opening up, making me feel a little taller and lighter.

One useful visualisation in trying to adjust mentally to my new posture, is to imagine puppet strings attached to my head, holding it in the correct position, with my body hanging naturally below; the bones and joints of my skeleton falling into place.

The forces I apply to my body in the exercises to loosen up the muscles so this becomes reality, show me where the resistance remains. I am often applying these forces outside of the exercises, as I sit, drive, lean against a wall while waiting for the kettle to boil.

Often I find myself slipping into my chin forward slouch and have to correct it.

But I can see the day coming where forces are replaced by freedom and suppleness.

Having lost much of the violent clicking so soon is unexpected.

Postulating

Nearly a month after I began General Postural Reeducation (my memory tag for 22 March 2013), I have noticed three intriguing side effects.

My posture has definitely improved to the point that I am aware when I am standing or sitting correctly - or nearly so. I still have to stretch my spine out a little more through the various exercises I have been given. Sometimes though, when I am on a run and have loosened up, it feels like I am just about there. There is a sense of recognition. Which brings me to the first side effect.

Checking out in the mirror how I am standing when I clean my teeth, I have a feeling of recaptured youth.

In part this is because my body just sags less with my shoulders back and standing up straight. In part my neck does not seem so scrawny with my head no longer thrusting forward.

But I think the main reason is something much more subtle: a subconscious remembering that this is how I stood as a child, before the burden of my troubles and struggles. It is almost as if I have shaken off the weight of intervening years.

Which leads me to the second intriguing side effect.

Although I have changed my posture - and continue to change it against resisting, tight muscles - this new way of being seems familiar in another way. It is not just the memory of youth, but the discovery of the man within.

Looking at the people around me, I am aware that many of them have poor posture too, but many more have what I suppose I should call normal posture. I feel like I have joined that group. What might sum up the strangeness of this sensation is the feeling of empathy with the man in an advertising hoarding. It is me they have been trying to reach after all. There is a sense of recognition.

I don't know if anyone else notices anything that different. I showed my wife the picture of different postures from my last posting. Although I feel I was as contorted as one of the wrong postures, she didn't see it. So the changes are perhaps subtle, but at the same time I feel I am becoming normal, in the physical sense at least.

Although all the above is largely psychological - not to say anal - the third side effect is even more so.

It is a quiet feeling of peace and confidence. Although I don't really lack either, there is something new happening. Perhaps not just from postural changes, but the developments in my experiment in remembering every day that passes. I feel somehow more relaxed and grounded. Walking down the street with my centre of gravity balanced as it should be, rather than in a chin forward rush, taking on the world.

There have been several times over the past few days where, out and about, I have joked with strangers in a way I haven't done for ages.

Perhaps it comes from feeling more comfortable in my own skin.

Reeducated posture

I have had three sessions of Global Postural Reeducation and have been doing the exercises just about every morning.

It is already making a noticeable difference. Even though my spine isn't quite back into the position where it should be, it is on the way.

My head is now sitting further back and my shoulders are level and not scrunched forward.

I found this site by physiotherapist Susy Russell who suggests a simple test of standing against a wall and seeing how far off your head sits. Every inch adds leverage that your neck muscles have to counter.

I've linked to the image below from Susy's site as it shows my poor posture well.

Although I didn't take note of the terms my own physio used at my diagnosis session on 22 March, I see from this image that I have a tendency for the middle posture. The varioius exercises I have been given aim to loosen up the muscles around my spine to straighten my back. These tend to throw my head back, so I also have to work to bring that down by trying to point my chin towards my chest.

It is not just about stretching, but also reeducation and becoming accustomed to standing or sitting in the correct position. I now do so most of the time. At least, I catch myself in the right position much more often than in the wrong one. Sitting at a table, I have lost the tendency to hunch over it, with my legs crossed. I'm sitting up straight - something that used to feel uncomfortable and unnatural.

There are three intriguing side effects of this process, which I'll write about in the following posts.

Perspective

As I wrote recently, I have lost the surprise that sometimes came with realising an event was a whole year ago.

Now I know what a year feels like: 365 days of events, places, people, weather, changes and familiarity.

When I was a child, it seemed that a year was an eternity. Looking ahead to summer holidays or thinking of moving to the next school year. Contemplating turning 18 and suddenly becoming an adult, wondering if something would suddenly switch on and I would know what to do and never be afraid, like my parents.

I have now recaptured something of that childhood feeling of how big a year is.

Yesterday in an odd moment, I thought back through the 15th day of each month since I began this process. As I often do when I have the time, I went back even further, which brought me to 15 April 2011.

Remembering that day brought a smile to my face.

Not only at the memory, but at the thought: "Ah yes, this is what two years feels like."

The indelible past?

My review of past days was very different today.

My mental calendar has become a landscape with not only the images pinned to each date as memory tags, the surrounding rich context also calls for my attention when I think of a date.

Zooming in on a date brought up so many other memories of it and surrounding days. It felt almost a reversal to move from the vantage point of seeing the whole landscape to step, metaphorically speaking, onto a date to recall the image.

This gave me the breathless thought that maybe the time I need to do these daily reviews is passing.

Each morning I have been running a two-day window over every week (even a three-day window before that started to take too long). So today being Monday, I remember each Sunday and Monday since I began this process on 17 December 2011.

Except this morning I had the feeling that I was constraining myself to pick out the single images I use as tags when the whole landscape is there.

The scary, but exciting thought, which I do not yet believe, is the landscape is the past and so it is permanent and unchanging and will continue to be there. Set in stone. Indelible.

This is surely an illusion as I have constructed my mental calendar from the moments I have chosen to remember. If I stop the process of adding an image to the calendar at the end of the day or no longer review the images to entrench them, surely it will start to fall apart.

I will continue my daily reviews for now, but it seems this experiment has entered a new phase.