Theme: I Am
Acknowledging our base level of existence
Chapter 1: Stability & Feet
Most of us have feet. Congrats. Some work or hurt more than others. One usually bears more weight than the other, and neither gets much love. Gross fun family story, my grandmother apparently had the bones removed from her pinky toes so she could wear smaller shoes. Ah the things we do to attain our goals.
Stretching, which is mostly what this series is about, can relax tense muscles (yes pls), restore muscle length following injury or immobility, improve flexibility, improve posture (which in turn improves oxygen flow through your body), warm you up before exercise, and it generally just feels nice. Stretching does not prevent injuries. But it does teach our muscles how we want them to behave, and trains them to play nice with their neighbor body parts. Having fatigued muscles that are overcompensating for their injured neighbor parts causes pain to both, and stretching is a good remedy for that.
Some people are naturally more or less flexible, there’s not much you can do about it, and there’s really no reason to worry or fight it. Just do what you can without hurting yourself, and shake whatchyer momma gave ya.
Stability
It is an odd combo this last year to feel overly enclosed and monotonous by months of stay-at-home orders and rules, and also completely unstable and adrift with never knowing what the next day will bring or what to expect. That high-energy back-and-forth agitation is exhausting, and we’ve all been feeling it in our minds and muscles for a long time now. For some people that instability may paralyze you in your bed, or make you want to block out all thoughts while eating or drinking on the couch watching months of netflix. Others have a knee-jerk reaction to fight back, skirt the rules, cause self-destruction, or yell at the rule makers in an attempt to feel some control over their own life when they feel otherwise helpless and can’t stand it. Some people work extra hours, or nest, shop, or surround themselves with objects, hobbies, clothes, decorations, and/or a full calendar of zoom calls and streaming games with friends as another way to fulfill something that feels missing. None of these things, these self-soothing coping mechanisms, is necessarily wrong, and we all do some combo of them from time to time. But we don’t want these knee-jerk habits to repeat, and build, and take over who we used to be. Who we want to be. Who we could be if we gave the real, scared, sad, frustrated “us” some stability.
I know it can feel impossible to add one more thing to your day in the name of that elusive “self-care” when all day you bounce between frozen, or drowning, or so frustrated and caged and angry you could just shake out of your own skin. So that’s why we’re starting with something small, like foot stretches. When you’re done reading this, set down your phone for 60 seconds, and just think about your feet. What did they do today? Are they clean? Do they hurt? What parts are sore or stiff? If your feet could pick everything you did tomorrow, what would it be like? What can you offer them to thank them for working so hard and never getting appreciation? Maybe we can’t control our own surroundings right now, but what can we do to improve the lives of just our feet?
Some day I’ll figure out how to post videos in here, but until then here are some links to different foot stretches to try out, which require almost no time or effort, so excuses are futile. Just stretch your feet. They’ll thank you for it.
Jet Tries 