mobility

I actually am loving going to physical therapy. Seriously. I wish I could continue indefinitely. I want to go out every day and have this nice young lady run me through stretches and exercises. Actually, though, she showed me something today that felt so amazing... No, nothing like that, sheesh. They have these stiff foam pillar things, about four or five inches in diameter, and she had me put it under my ribs and fold myself backward over it (yes, like the opposite way of what you normally think of your spine ever being supposed to move - or at least what I normally think of), and then move it up a little, do it again, move it up a little, do it again... I suspect that the guy I had for pt before, Mike, had tried to get me to do that, but that I never really got his explanation of what I was supposed to be doing, and that he didn't ever catch me in what I was doing wrong and get me do it right, because I recall his version of this just being uncomfortable and unhappy for me. His instructions were more like, "put this under your shoulders and roll on it." I tensed all up, because I was envisioning moving against it, like one cog against another. The way she got me to do it was so relaxing that I felt just great all the drive home, and I'm seriously considering buying one of these foam things just based on that. But possibly I got it more this time because she pushing on my spine a few minutes before and explaining to a student the importance of increasing my mobility in that area, and I suddenly recalled a dance show I saw a long, long time ago, where I marveled at the incredible mobility this one dancer had in her spine, and how it gave her movements so much more life than the next dancer who was doing the same things. She said this kind of stiffness in the upper spine (ribs to neck) often occurs both with people who lift a lot and people who sit a lot, and I fit both categories. Oops. I'll bet that holding my arms in typing position is encouraging to that stiffness.

Now. Food. Tea. And wool socks. Damn my feet are cold.