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Jan. 28th, 2008 09:26 pmI finally figured out a way to make biofeedback work for me in warming my hands and feet. I had a little training in it years ago but had never managed to make it work because the imaging I was taught -- picturing warmth moving to my extremities as I exhaled -- got tangled up in my head. I could never stop the heat from retreating back into my torso when I inhaled, and it never reached my hands and feet on the exhale anyway. Hooking the flow to my breathing somehow couldn't be unidirectional for me. The successful method seems utterly bizarre to my rational brain, too, but it does seem to work.
A little background-- Years ago, before Scott and I got married and for a year or so afterward, we played in a table top superheroes game. The idea was that we played ourselves with randomly assigned superpowers, some concealable and some not. My character started out with elemental control of fire, an extraordinary stat that amounted to super-stubbornness, and heightened sense of smell. Later, she gained the ability to turn her body into flame and to fly (plus a bizarre power that let her cancel out anybody's powers within a small radius simply by force of will).
Within the game, the GM ruled that a character's powers worked in ways that made sense to him or her and that having a power implied having or having capacity to develop its opposite. My logic turned 'elemental control of fire' into 'ability to add or subtract heat,' even at a molecular level. (The GM letting me get away with this was one of the many signs that he wasn't used to players who really thought about things. He also gave Scott's character utterly frictionless forcefields and then was surprised when Scott used them... creatively.)
I called this character Hellspark.
So now, when my feet are cold, I start repeating to myself, "I am Hellspark," and thinking about controlling heat and having a body made out of fire. I'm completely floored by the fact that it works, but it does work. It's much better than lying in bed for two hours, wondering when my feet will warm up enough to stop hurting. (I don't let things get that bad very often. I know that my feet won't warm up if I let them get really cold, so I generally take steps to keep them warm.)
A little background-- Years ago, before Scott and I got married and for a year or so afterward, we played in a table top superheroes game. The idea was that we played ourselves with randomly assigned superpowers, some concealable and some not. My character started out with elemental control of fire, an extraordinary stat that amounted to super-stubbornness, and heightened sense of smell. Later, she gained the ability to turn her body into flame and to fly (plus a bizarre power that let her cancel out anybody's powers within a small radius simply by force of will).
Within the game, the GM ruled that a character's powers worked in ways that made sense to him or her and that having a power implied having or having capacity to develop its opposite. My logic turned 'elemental control of fire' into 'ability to add or subtract heat,' even at a molecular level. (The GM letting me get away with this was one of the many signs that he wasn't used to players who really thought about things. He also gave Scott's character utterly frictionless forcefields and then was surprised when Scott used them... creatively.)
I called this character Hellspark.
So now, when my feet are cold, I start repeating to myself, "I am Hellspark," and thinking about controlling heat and having a body made out of fire. I'm completely floored by the fact that it works, but it does work. It's much better than lying in bed for two hours, wondering when my feet will warm up enough to stop hurting. (I don't let things get that bad very often. I know that my feet won't warm up if I let them get really cold, so I generally take steps to keep them warm.)
