eek how scary (info from chemgoddess)... ugh, but it feels SO GOOD to be upside down! what's up with THAT?
you know, I wonder how this phenomenon might vary from person to person based on their individual makeup/design? Where I'm going with this is that I, for instance, am one who since my teen years have had a bit of circulation issues in my legs (started getting mild varicose veins early on, exacerbated by birth control in later years, then pregnancies, etc)... In *spite* of always being VERY active and fit, and just generally having a pretty great metabolism & general state of health. But it's such that in college I started having to really be careful about how much high-impact excercise I engaged in (too much would result in some scary big red and HOT swelling)... Anyhow, what I found with pole (and yet one more reason why it is so up my alley), as with activities I naturally gravitated to since I was a small child, like playing on the monkey bars, skating, biking, swimming, and dancing... is that the "lift" I'd get off the ground from pole dancing (hence the low or even NO impact), especially when that lift was getting those heavy (and problematic) legs either at the same height as or even above my head, is just such a comfortable thing for me! In fact I now wonder how much has to do with me forcing more blood to pump to muscles in the more upper zones of my body vs the lower half -- perhaps this is a bit of relief for my system, circulation-wise? I swear hanging upside down (which I can happily do for quite a long period of time) is such a relaxing state for me, I even get some nice "adjustments" (read: major clicking!) in my spine out of some positions/moves, so much that I feel like it was an instant visit to the chiropractor! (oh that blessed brass monkey! especially weaving into it from a Gemini!)
ok, well sorry for the TMI all, as I guess I am maybe just a weirdo this way... but was just inspired to share and maybe see if anyone else had any further insight or experience related to the whole "hanging upside down is great for me" angle...
I *can* see though how that is probably NOT the norm, and it's good to have read all the above and have it in my consciousness. I now get how when I teach pole conditioning classes and realize after a while of having students do exercises in upside-down positions, why most of them start struggling to sustain that... and I'll be like "c'mon! what's the problem? keep going!" oops... guess the problem is most other (normal) humans are not designed to hang out like that (unlike strange vampire-me) for long...