Much Needed Self Care – Jan 26

It was a tough, challenging, and overall good week. With the second week of school (the first full week without ice days), my schedule has blown up. I love school. I love my work. I love being a father. These things fill my cup and keep me going. They also stress and strain me physically, mentally, and emotionally.

I haven’t filmed my movement as must this past week, which means I haven’t been moving as much as I’d like. Not only has my schedule become super busy (16+ hour days), but my knee has gotten worse. The irritation in the joint has been slowly increasing over the past few months. It’s bad enough that I made a trip to the doctor, got x-rays, and an ortho appointment scheduled for two weeks. I

Pain sucks. It sucks to hurt. It makes it hard to move. I feel a little down all over. There have been times when I would feel depressed. It sucks, and it’s a fact of life. A reality for this body that I inhabit. When I physically hurt, it doesn’t matter how great I’m feeling in life as a whole, a part of me is sad and frustrated.

I have taken a break from the balance challenge over the past four days and have reduced squats and split squats at repetition to give my knee a rest. I’m hoping the inflammation will go down. I’ve been moving at every little opportunity possible, but this is the first dedicated movement session I’ve had all week. I’m feeling stressed physically and emotionally. I needed a session to really be soft and check in with my body.

I focused on deep breathing and allowing myself to feel the week I’ve had. I felt my whole body open up physically and emotionally. It was just what I needed.

This is a really nice spinal mobilization Chair Yoga. I picked this up from one of my teachers, Joseph Schwartz of Applied Anatomy (you should totally check out his material).

I love this simple little routine. I express my spine pretty fully through flexion and extension, lateral flexion and extension, and rotation.
I think that anyone who spends any amount of time in a chair needs to actively move their spine in all three dimensions from the seated position. I can feel nice long connected stretches from my fingertips to my shoulders, thoracic and lumbar spine, hips, and knees. I have more of an instructional on this movement series on my client’s playlist.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Don’t miss out on any of our posts, subscribe to our newsletter!