Ok, for a change, this is not referring to me taking charge of the meeting or the performance, this is a much more literal situation.
Not completely literal, of course. I am not actually reclaiming floorboards that I once owned. Anyway, let’s carry on!
Have you ever heard the quote, attributed to various writers, about how the goal of writing is to figure out what we already know?
Today’s post is a prime example of that.
I started out writing a post about my Monday morning exercise and then discovered something I hadn’t realized I knew:
I haven’t been spending enough time sitting close to the floor in the past few months and it is having a negative effect on my whole body.
Before our Christmas tree went up in December, my living room floor featured a huge blue exercise mat with a big, green, circular cushion (over 3ft in diameter) on top of it and a bolster cushion on top of that. (Yes, in case you couldn’t guess, my house is much more functional than pretty.)
And, in general, when spending time on the main floor of our house, I would either sit at the kitchen table or I would sit on on the big cushion, the mat, or on the bolster. (Our main floor is pretty open and the living room/kitchen are kind of in an L shape so it’s equally possible to watch tv, hang out, or do whatever in either location.)
I really liked having both options and I found the mat/cushion combo much more interesting than sitting on a couch or chair. (Yes, my ADHD insists that even sitting must be interesting to my brain.)
And when I chose the mat/cushion combo I was always sitting in different positions, at different heights, and either completely relaxing (i.e. lying limbs akimbo like a pile of goo) or doing some stretches/moving around a bit.
Having different resting positions as part of my routine was really good for me.
Not only did it tend to make me aware of which parts of my body needed some extra attention but it also made using a variety of muscles a much more automatic part of my day. It was a low-key use of those muscles but I was still using them.
However, when we put up all the decorations this past Christmas, I put the big cushion and the mat down into the basement hallway to keep the living room from feeling too crowded.
And, unfortunately, I really liked the way the room looked without those things in the middle of the floor so…
Both the mat and the cushion stayed downstairs for ages and I didn’t really think about the things I *wasn’t* doing because they weren’t in their usual spot.
A couple of weeks ago when I was having people over and I wanted an extra place to sit so I dragged the big cushion back to the living room. It didn’t seem to take up as much space without the mat under it so I left it there in the living room.
I quickly noticed that the living room felt more inviting to me and I was choosing to sit on that fairly low cushion instead of on the kitchen chair that I had been defaulting to over the last few months.
It was pretty good for a while, even without the mat, but then Khalee went from occasionally climbing on the cushion to deciding that this circular chummy was actually *hers* instead of mine. So, instead of lying on it for a few minutes here and there, it became her first choice of resting spots in the living room.
Now, as much as I love KP, I am allergic to her fur, even with an allergy pill. Thanks to the increased time she was spending on the cushion, my allergies would arise in a fury if I tried sitting on it.*
So, I went back to not using the cushion at all but the fact that it is in the living room keeps drawing my attention. (FYI, the fact that it was behind me when I was exercising this morning actually led to this post.)
And, now that I think of it, my body has been pretty cranky lately and some of that crankiness is definitely related to the fact that I am just not getting that same range of motion and variety of activities/sitting positions in my day-to-day over the past few months.
And that happened because I changed the seating ‘geography’ of my living room
When the cushions and the mat were there, it was an automatic thing for me to choose to sit low to the floor in a variety of ways for part of every day.
Sitting low meant that I was doing a lot of getting up and down from the floor, shifting into different positions, doing a bit of stretching, and just generally not staying in the same spot for a long time.
But, for a while now, I have been mostly staying on the kitchen chair and staying relatively still. (Why aren’t the living room chairs or couch interesting? No idea! It’s a mystery to me, too.)
Right now, in order to comfortably sit low to the floor, I would have to make a conscious choice and move things (and a dog) around and as someone with a busy brain who has trouble prioritizing, it’s pretty hard to choose to do that because there are extra steps involved.
It’s annoyingly easy to get out of the habit of doing things, isn’t it?
I had noticed that my body was cranky but I hadn’t noticed the change in my habits.
What if it had taken me longer to pay attention?
It seems like a really slippery slope to becoming the kind of person who doesn’t get down on the floor at all.
And that, in turn, could be a slippery slope to becoming a person who *can’t* get down on the floor.
I mean, I understand that our mobility changes as we age and that not all movements will continue to be available to me but I sure as hell don’t want to lose any everyday mobility options just because I left a mat in a different room.
So, I have to remove the obstacles between me and my plan to spend more time sitting close to the floor.
I have to move the mat back upstairs.
I have to put the bolster cushion back in the living room.
I have to wash the cover on the big cushion and once its clean, I need to put a blanket over it so most of the dog hair will be on that instead of the cushion cover.
I must retake the floor!
PS – I was singing Was (Not Was)’s Walk the Dinosaur in my head all while I was writing this post. I may open the door, I will get on the floor, but I will probably just walk the dog. I don’t have a harness for a dinosaur.
*And that doesn’t even address the fact that she now considers it her space and will stand there staring at me if I sit on it. Yes, I am a people and she is a dog so I can technically overrule her on the question of cushion ownership but it’s very hard to enjoy sitting cross-legged on the cushion with her staring woefully at me – or worse, poking her nose into my face – from the side. I’ll have to figure something out. 😉
