How You Move Matters
We move all day long. And if you’re like me, you have 802 things to do on any given day. As a mother to young children, I’m constantly multi-tasking, using my limbs as if I were an octopus at times, and have physical demands that involve a whole lot of bending, twisting and sometime unpredictable movements! We all do. We don’t walk and move around in life like robots - or at least we shouldn’t! We have to be able to move in all directions and we shouldn’t be fearful of movement. We were designed to move!
How You Move Matters.
How we learn to engage with our body and our surroundings is the difference sometimes in life-as-usual or an injury that takes weeks to subside. We’ve all likely tweaked our back or necks doing something seemingly simple. We’ve all had shoulder tension and those pesky muscle knots from repetitive tasks or just too much stress. We sit for hours on end and then often spend hours lounging with screens. In a normal day, we have to load/unload the dishes, reach up to the top cabinet, find that toy hiding under the sofa, access the bottomless pit of the laundry machine, climb stairs with things in our hands, etc. The list goes on and on. It’s not a surprise. BUT - how we move matters.
Once you start to develop an awareness about your body you’ll notice small but powerful changes in your life! I’ve had clients improve their back pain after only one session because they finally just started to turn on supporting muscles and paid attention to it when they worked, moved and did daily tasks. Can you find your posture seated for work, standing at the sink, reading for pleasure, or driving your car? Can you remember that you only need what I like to call a “little hug” of effort to those deep abdominal muscles? How do you bend over to get something? Do you sit favoring one hip or slumped at rest?
How you move matters. Here are some things I think about daily.
Bend smart! Keep your back relatively straight and supported. Bend from your HIPS and your KNEES. I often have my children come to me when I’m in a squat so I can stand up using my legs, not my back. If I’m at the top of the stairs, I often start 2-3 steps down and then can lift my child to me without bending. Same thing for the laundry basket or things I need to haul up/down!
Fold Laundry at a table height - sit to fold at a table or stand at a kitchen counter height.
Rinse and have dishes ready to load so you can do more at each movement. If you have a cutlery basket, lift it out so it can come with you to put away!
Sit without a knee crossed over the other - or at least try and alternate every so often. I like to sit crosslegged in chairs.
Bring your reading book or tablet up to your eye level when reading. Use pillows as props but keep your chin lifted and your head over your shoulders.
Check your ergonomics at your workstation. You can often find a big book to prop your screen up to eye level. You can always add a bluetooth keyboard as well.
Use a split stance to squat down to pick up things from the floor. Or once on the ground, use hand/knees to grab a few things within an area.
Pick a show with commercials (wait what!?) and make that a movement break!
Avoid standing hyperextended for long periods. I check in with my pelvis posture and my knees regularly - it’s such second nature now I don’t even really have to think about it.
Release neck and jaw tension. Again, this takes practice to become regular but I try and do shoulder shrugs, tiny head bobbles and jaw wiggles to reset when I’m feeling tense or locked up. It’s about a 2 second thing :)
