Is your body trying to tell you something? If you think it is, you might want to ask it to speak up louder and sooner.

Health and fitness experts are fond of sayings like “make the mind-body connection” and “listen to your body.” The problem I have is that my body doesn’t speak up until it’s way too late.

Take, for example, last summer when I hauled around twenty 40 lb bags of landscaping stones to spruce up our yard. As I recall, my body made only one good-natured remark when I loaded the bags into my hatchback at Home Depot: “Waddaya got in these bags, rocks?”

When I unloaded back home, the body talk was still low-key and playful: “So, this is what it’s like to work on a chain gang.” Again, just light-hearted ribbing, nothing ominous like stop or I’ll shoot pain through your shoulder that will make it feel like you got sacked by a 300 lb linebacker who fell on your arm at the bottom of a pileup.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up the next morning and my shoulder felt (how can I best describe this?) like I was sacked by a 300 lb linebacker who fell on my arm at the bottom of a pileup.

From then on, my body and my left shoulder, in particular, were talking up a storm in a language that I would best describe as “Painglish.” I couldn’t always make out every word, but aaaaaeeeeiiiiiiiiii! was a recurring phrase.

Look, my threshold for pain is fairly high. I’ve endured plantar fasciitis (an inflammation of tissue at the bottom of the foot), Achilles tendonitis (inflammation of the Achilles tendon) and migraine stimulitis (a sudden inflammation of the brain’s sensitivity to cold caused by eating ice cream too fast). This pain was different.

This pain made me whimper and squirm. It made me forget my mother’s maiden name or who played Bob Newhart on The Bob Newhart Show. If there’s such a thing as plain pain, this, my friends, was pain in the new “Extra Piercing” formula.

So, what did I do to ease my suffering? What any self-respecting, self-reliant man would do: I moaned and wailed like a wounded animal for days and refused to seek medical help. When that didn’t work, I embarked on an inspired regimen of my own creation, which included:
1) Ice massages with a bag of frozen peas.
2) Heat therapy courtesy of an electric heating pad that provided vast, soothing relief for approximately one-and-a-half minutes.
3) Anti-inflammatory pills that transformed the pain from a relentless throbbing ache to a relentless aching throb.

I also made my virgin voyage to a chiropractor. It’s well-known that many chiropractors feel like the Rodney Dangerfield of the medical community: they don’t get no respect. This is an occupational byproduct of choosing a profession where you spend the better part of your work day asking people to turn around so you can start whacking them on the back and shoulders. It strikes me as something you could learn how to do by watching a Three Stooges movie.

After 15 minutes of whacking, poking, thumping and fondling, I wasn’t sure if my shoulder felt better or if other parts of my upper body had now reached the same plateau of pain, making the sore shoulder seem less irritated by comparison. At the end of my session, I was introduced to the therapeutic delights of Swedish massage by a 240 lb Irish guy named Pat. Now, I don’t mean to sound sexist, but where was that young Scandinavian masseuse named Inga I had pictured? As I rested my stomach on the table with Pat skillfully pummelling my back, I fixed my gaze on his striped sweat socks and Nike athletic shoes.

“So, how ‘bout those Canucks?” I ventured, hoping that some sports talk would settle me into more of a comfort zone.
“I don’t follow hockey much,” Pat responded. “That’s Inga’s thing.”
“Who’s Inga?” I asked.
“She’s the hot, young Scandinavian masseuse that used to work here, but she left to teach yoga classes. Don’t worry, dude, you’re in good hands with me.”

Just my luck, I thought. Instead of a soothing, sensual massage with Inga, I get a blind date gone horribly wrong with a high school gym teacher from Westminster.

By the time I finally got around to making an appointment with an orthopedist and waited the six weeks they grant you when you say “can I get in today?’ the pain had almost completely faded. My yoga classes with Inga strengthened and realigned my damaged shoulder, not to mention restored my inner calm. X-rays revealed rotator cuff tendonitis that had almost completely healed.

The moral of the story (as far as I can tell) is that whether you try to avoid injury or recover from it, learn to speak Painglish and listen to what your body says. If you can’t make out anything at first, surrender to the silence of a meditative state and listen closer. You might hear a faint but vaguely familiar voice say, “Yo, captain crash test, you better reread the owner’s manual.”