My husband is always after me to exercise. In Southern California it’s difficult to use weather as an excuse so I’ve been using fibromyalgia brain fog rather creatively:
- “What!? It’s midnight already!? I was just about ready to go for my walk”
- “Are you sure? I could swear I exercised today”
- “I couldn’t walk today. I locked myself in.”
- “What do you mean the doctor stressed exercise?! I swear she said not to stress over exercise.”
I really had a good reason not to exercise when I began to get light-headed on my walks and figured out it wasn’t the heat, lack of food or dehydration. I suspected my heart arrhythmia.
(It was heart arrhythmia that led to my getting Tullulah, my pacemaker.)
This is a series of pictures I did when I was first diagnosed with atrial tachycardia. I wasn’t focusing or even thinking about my heart when I was painting. I painted spontaneously and very quickly. The only reason I painted 3 was that I didn’t want to waste paint and throw away what I hadn’t used. About 6 months later as I was putting together a presentation it hit me that these paintings represented my heart.
It’s easy to identify which picture is my heart in normal rhythm and which paintings represent the various stages of arrythmia.
That is the wonder and power of Therapeutic Creative Expression.
Whether it’s painting on canvas, crayons on paper or magazine pictures in a collage we express our unconscious knowing and inner wisdom.
Now that my arrhythmia’s are under control the most exercise I’m getting is running out of excuses.
judy
