Let me paint you a picture:
I am sitting on my computer, studying or doing any other work related activity. Or perhaps it is evening and Facebook or games. Anyway, the fact remains- long time in one position, engrossed in an activity and not noticing the body’s signals to move. Can you relate?
After a time of being there my hips seem to have gotten stiff all of a sudden, even if I have been crawling on the floor an hour earlier. I certainly know that I at times ignore my body’s desire to move. It is almost as if it has a mind of it’s own. And in my head I don’t want to acknowledge that fact.
Do you go to ‘sleep’ to your body as well?
Hours later I get up and want to do some training/exercise/workout and expect my body to perform as if it is brand new.
If our nervous system doesn’t get enough input through movement, it doesn’t know where to allow the body to go, it puts it into ‘safe’ mode. That means something like: ‘don’t go too far, I don’t want to get hurt’. So this is only our body’s self protective mechanism in action.
If we understand and accept this fact, we can work with it.
This is where self care comes in. Some weird things happen when we have been unaware of what our body is trying to tell us.is Certain areas get tight, either broadly or more in a pinpointed fashion, and others don’t seem to want to work as quickly as we would like. Our self care journey begins with decoding these symptoms and addressing them in the most effective and appropriate manner.
That can be by asking someone else to do the job through massage, chiropractic, kinesiology or the like, or in the true fashion of self care take the job on yourself.
I find I will ask the wonderful people in these professions for help when I get stuck, but I also use my time with them as a learning experience, so that I can take on some of what arises as a result of training or just day to day living on my own. So education for the upkeep of my body is not only about the food that goes into it but also about what happens when we don’t move enough, in the wrong way or too much in one way as in the case of repetitive strain symptoms. The real goal then is to find out about as many methods of self treatment as possible so we can start doing some of this work on ourselves. This serves us twofold: firstly we develop a sense of ownership, and secondly we will respond better to the treatment any of the professionals provide.