Sore neck/shoulders? Of course, we all have them. Believe it or not, the beginning of having less pain there begins with your feet. This will take a bit of explaining, so I'll start here, and finish on the blog. The first part is this: stand up, or do this sometime you're doing something like washing dishes. First assess how you feel in your various parts: legs, hips, shoulders. Now, look down at your feet. Chances are one or both of your feet are rotated away from the mid-line of your body, the opposite of pigeon toed. Now bring both feet so they are pointing straight forward, (you'll have to look at them to make sure.) Take a deep breath, relax, and let your body regions readjust. What happened? For most folks there is a predictable sequence of events. I'll go through it on the blog if you want to follow the discussion there.
Continuing on with the exercise from today's Facebook posting, the first thing people say is that they now feel pigeon toed! Our muscles have proprioceptors in them that tell us where we are in space, but chronic muscle shortening can distort what they perceive to be the right place for us to be!
Next, your body weight should have shifted to your quadriceps, the muscle on the front of the thigh. And your shoulders should have descended, relaxing from where they usually reside up around your ears. Some of you may have felt your spine lengthen, as your tail bone tucked under.
The kids song about the "hip bone is connected to the thigh bone" is very literally true, and applies just as surely to the soft tissue. We are a collection of parts, but we are one; each member influencing the position and function of even its most distant neighbors.
Try to develop the habit of feet straight forward. This will involve some hip stretching to counterbalance the outward rotation of the hips, which is caused by contracted gluts. This will require some mindfulness, but will pay off in a happier body.
Peace
No comments:
Post a Comment