*Transcendental *Logic

I am in love! Thankfully, my husband, though a jealous man, is not yet so jealous that me falling for salves and potions is a problem. (It might eventually be, but he’ll just have to deal with the Flying Tiger Cub Balm.)

Then again, he fell for it himself last night. Mmm, competition.

This stuff is utterly amazing. Especially if, like me, you’ve found and tried the “Tiger balm” they sell sometimes in American hippy boutiques, which smells good but usually does little else. This stuff, not so; this has oomph. It’s made in India by “Rangoon Chemical Works”; a woman in my taiji class bought it at an Indian grocery and brought me some when she saw that I was having trouble doing our three sword-forms (after nine hours of typing at work–yowch).

Martial arts people are often already familiar with something like this balm, as a warm-up / cool-down massage oil (it basically is hardened oil; when it gets on your fingers it melts right away). However, you arthritis - tendonitis - carpal tunnel - back and neck pain - random soreness people out there, take note. Flying Tiger Cub Balm is sort of like Ben Gay or Biofreeze, except
a) it smells better, IMO
b) it works way faster
c) it actually soothes pain, rather than just numbing you with cold
d) it’s also great as a nasal decongestant…one good whiff and you are CLEARED OUT, wow. (This effect is listed in the instructions as a medicinal use, so it’s not just a fluke.)

Besides my ever-sore hands which now rock right through saber practice without a hitch, I can vouch for neck-pain: I put this on my boy’s neck last night, which he hurt sometime the day before; there was a big “knot” next to his spine that no amount of rubbing would help. By the time I’d finished rubbing the FTCB into his neck and moved onto his hands, he was already saying, “Hey….hey, that spot doesn’t hurt anymore!” It stayed good all night.

So, yaaay smelly stuff! I don’t know much about Ayurvedic medicine, but this and the few other things I’ve tried — a gut-cleansing concoction, and neti pot — have worked great, so there you are.

Make sure you get the brand/bottle that’s pictured with this post, or look here for another picture (that’s a blog entry by Steve, whose blog I thoroughly enjoyed after hunting it down just for the picture). You’ll know it’s the right one if you can’t read most of it (unless you read Sanskrit, or whatever alphabet that is), and if there’s a folded-up piece of newsprint under the label with instructions (about 1/8 of which are in English) and believe it or not, illustrated stretching exercises. And if the smell of it can nearly knock you over.

It has warnings about not putting it on “tender areas” which I would certainly heed if I were you; also don’t eat the stuff, it’s external-use-only. I couldn’t decipher the ingredients on a zillion-dollar bet, but the woman who tipped it to me says there’s cajeput oil in there — a known remedy for arthritis.

Live long and be less achy!

PD

This entry was posted 1 year, 9 months ago on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 10:13 am and is filed under cool thing, ditch medicine for suburbia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.