Gentle rotation to unwind creaks
My friend in Boulder, Tom, is a big athlete. For fun, he’ll bike 50 miles, run up a mountain, run down, and bike home. He told me a joke once: “How do you know you’re over 50? You wake up injured.”
You don’t even have to do anything!
I can relate to the creaks and cracks of a middle-aged spine. But you don’t have to live that way.
I’ve been doing a lot of hiking recently and it’s easy to feel like everything creaks. I just did this rotation lesson and immediately I felt taller and longer.
When my spine is mobile, it’s easier to swing my legs, easier to sit upright, easier to let my arms hang, and easier to bend in any direction to pick up the dog leash.
The nice thing about a consistent Feldenkrais practice is that it reminds me how I don’t have to stay creaky. Just giving my system a little gentle feedback about possible movements is a lifesaver.
I’m off on a hike!
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Quote of the week:
“From now on, I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out.
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”