After last week’s conundrums, this Tuesday finds me feeling a lot better overall.
Things are getting a bit easier in my brain and in my muscles and while it’s tempting to jump back into my regular routine, I am determined not to fall into that trap.
Instead, I am working bit by bit on creating more ease for myself in my day to day actions.
And, like the title says, creating ease isn’t easy.
Creating ease means doing gentle yoga and stretches, breathing deeply, relaxing when and how I can and, it means spending a lot of time and energy paying close attention to how I am moving, how I am sitting, how I work, and how I do a variety of tasks.
My ADHD brain is ok with the first few things but it is not a fan of the latter part of that list – in fact, even the thought of paying that kind of attention to those details is tiring.
But I do want to feel better. And I know that unless I make some adjustments, it’s going to be a) harder for my neck/back/shoulders to heal and b) I’m going to keep having some of the same issues over and over.
Right now, I am working on two things that I hope will prevent me from exacerbating my current issues AND will help me avoid some other issues in the future.
Here are my current practices:
1) Getting up and rolling my shoulders/doing a few neck stretches every 20 minutes or so.
I already like to use the repeat timer app throughout my work day so I have a better sense of time passing AND so I don’t feel like any given task is going to take forever. (I have given myself permission to change tasks whenever the timer goes off)
Now, I don’t just note that time is passing, I use the chime as a reminder to move and stretch. It’s not perfect – I sometimes inadvertently ignore the timer – but I definitely have a higher success rate than I would without it.
2) Practicing holding my head differently when I am drawing, writing, and using my phone.
Since a lot of my leisure time is spent doing one of those activities making this change will really help.
Instead of spending so much time with my head down and my neck jutting forward, I am taking Katy Bowman‘s advice about how to hold my neck:
Since I can’t necessarily put my drawing/reading/writing in the same place I would hold a phone, I am also using the same movement to take breaks during my drawing/reading/writing sessions – here’s a demo in this Facebook video of hers from a few years ago.
Between these two movement elements things, the yoga, the massage therapy, and all of the being-careful-but-not-coddling-myself, I am hoping to keep inching towards more ease in my body – especially the muscles of my neck and upper back.
Creating ease isn’t easy but it will be totally worth the effort, right?
Right?
Right?
(It had better be!)
Right!!!