The big news story of the moment has been about the dangers of skinny jeans, along with how fur hooded coats are weighing us down (there goes my look!): jeans-and-hoodies-can-cause-a-bad-back. I wrote a while ago inspired by @nutritiousmovement blog about how compressive tight jeans can be: skinny-jean-and-compressive-garment-injury.
Biomechanically we have always been conscious of carrying heavy handbags on one shoulder. It means we are loading one side of the body more than the other. We then get sore muscles by shortening them and it can pull us out of alignment much further down the chain.
We get caught in patterns both in our brains and our bodies. Carrying everything on one side is an obvious example of this.
But what can you do about it?
1. Vary how you do things:
– Don’t always wear the same coat.
– Swap sides you have your bag on.
– Rotate what shoes you choose.
2. Move differently:
– Change what hand you brush your teeth, eat, and even text with.
– Avoid repetitive movement by cross training.
– We need to move out of rigidity. When we tighten up the body stops moving to avoid pain. Being loose in the pelvis means we don’t get stiff. I call it being ‘loosey goosey’.
The biggest lesson I ever learnt was realising I wasn’t using my hips and was effectively walking like a puppet. My body was remembering being stuck in a back brace from when it was broken. I was told, in a Somatics training, to walk like a hooker to move out of pain. Women can get stuck by trying to desexualise themselves, so they stop sticking out their chest and get stuck in the SI joints. By learning that we used to have a tail and we need to relearn how to wag it, movement changes.
3. Somatics is a great way to move without pain and learn to move the spine efficiently. Esther Eckhart’s somatics sequencing videos are great bite sized chunks that are easy to follow: Somatics movements Part 1
Because if you’re stuck in a routine and it’s not working then why wouldn’t you want to change something?
Namaste b*tches…
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