Welcome to another year of finding some space for ourselves and our needs amidst the hustle and bustle of the end of the year.
Whether you are celebrating a holiday this month, whether it is the last month of the year, or whether it is just a string of ordinary days in an ordinary month, the ambient hurrying stressfulness of this month can get to us all.
In the face of all of that, my Making Space posts are not about giving us something ELSE to do.
Instead, I am hoping they can be a reminder that you deserve space in your own life, that you don’t need to dedicate every second of every day to everyone else’s needs and wants.
I want to encourage to take a break in whatever form works best for you whether that includes the exercise/meditation videos I share or something else entirely, I am wholeheartedly encouraging you to make more space for yourself in your own life.
That might mean saying no to some things.
It might mean choosing not to do some other things.
It might mean scaling some things back.
It will definitely mean being kind to yourself.
So, with all of that said, let’s get started on the Making Space 2025 project with some stretching and a short meditation…or with whatever makes you feel like yourself today.
Wishing you ease 💚
Your movement practice for today:
This video 5 minute Daily Stretch is from Kayleigh Cohen Strength. The still image shows the instructor in a black shirt and green leggings in their living room with their arms stretched over their head. There is a dog sleeping on a green couch in the back on the right and on the left is some wood paneling and some plants.
And here’s today’s meditation:
This Meditation for Deep Calm is from Sarah Beth Yoga and the still image shows the instructor from the waist up sitting with their head bowed and their hands in prayer position in the centre of the screen. In the background, which is slightly out of focus, is a yoga mat, a coffee table and some plants.
PS – Katy Bowman of Nutritious Movement is hosting an advent calendar of exercises again this year. Her 2025 focus addresses the stress that tech can put on our bodies.
Way back when, BTB (“Before The Blog”), I hurt my back pretty badly. First, there was a fall when skiing. Then, there was the Australian beach crash. I talk about the beach incident here. For years after those accidents I put my back out doing simple things like taking off my cycling shoes or sitting too long at my desk.
All of that prompted me to get a standing desk and I’ve used one at work for more than a dozen years.
So for the past bunch of years, since moving to Guelph, I haven’t had very many back issues. I figured I’d solved that problem.
Until last week.
After three days of bike riding, followed by hot yoga, and then weight training, I spent way too much time sitting at my desk. I was tired and somehow never moved my desk to the standing position.
I followed the very long sitting at my desk day with a night at the movie theatre. When I got up from the movie theatre seat, there was that horrible low back pain that I know so well from the past.
The next day I was okay sitting, and okay standing, but moving between those positions was very painful.
I thought, in that doomy and pessimistic way that gets us all sometime especially in this political climate, that that was it. My back would just hurt forever.
Sarah nagged me into stretching. And I ordered a new set of yoga balls to use on my back when I’m sitting.
Given that we’ve been having a stretch of good weather lately, I’ve been trying to do a bit of extra work in our yard.
I’ve tidied up a few slightly-neglected areas, I’ve dragged some stuff to the garbage, I’ve replanted a few things, and we’ve been scrubbing our deck and our siding a little bit at a time.
Basically, I’ve been sitting/standing/moving/bending/turning in all kinds of unfamiliar ways and I don’t really notice all the different muscles I’m using until much later in the evening.
I’ve been doing a few stretches here and there but I’m still a bit twitchy as I sit down to read or draw at night and my muscles are not thrilled with me when I lie down to sleep.
Obviously, I need to do more dedicated stretching than I’ve been doing and perhaps I may even need to do a bit of a warm-up before I get started on my next project in the yard.
I find it really hard to remember to do either/both because I just want to get to the task at hand.
Do you do warm-ups and stretches before yardwork?
How about a cool-down and stretches afterwards?
I can’t be the only one who forgets all about it until much later, can I?
Anyway, here are a few videos I’m going to use throughout the summer but if you have any suggestions, I’d like to hear them. 🙂
This YouTube Short from a channel called Garden Fit is called ‘Are You Experiencing Common Gardening Aches and Pains? Try These Stretches!’ and the still image shows a woman with short white hair, wearing jeans and a green tank top, standing in front of some large outdoor plants.
This video from Sunnybrook Hospital is called ‘How to avoid pain while gardening | stretches & warm-ups’ and the still image shows a gardening trowel with a green handle lying on some soil.
This video from the Osteo & Physio channel is called ‘Full body stretch routine for gardeners to prevent injury | 12 minute routine’ and the still image features the title on the right hand side, a circle with an image of a woman in a sweater doing a neck stretch, and in the background is someone from the elbows down who is standing in a garden with a long-handled tool in their hands.
A social media friend does a class called MELT in the UK. I knew she used foam rollers but that was about it. So I did what everyone does these days and Googled it.
Apparently it’s a self-massage treatment that is designed to increase fluid flow through the fascia and reduce pain and tension. And apparently it’s available in several countries and there are courses available on line.
Cool. What’s not cool is our current weather. I am melting in this heat and won’t be exploring MELT until things cool off. In fact, this is a very good time to have a rest day or two. And hydrate.
Eating ice cream totally counts towards hydration!
Ok, so it wasn’t any fun but starting my week with two hours in the dentist’s chair sure makes the rest of my week seem very straightforward.
I know a lot of people get stressed about dental work but I’m not all that fazed by the procedure itself, I just hate the cursed chair.
Even though I know I am only leaning back a little, I always feel like I am practically upside down.
How I feel at the dentist. Image description: a black and white photo of a bat hanging upside down from a tree branch with its wings outstretched.
And, to make matters worse, once I am in the chair, I can never get my neck in a comfortable position for the procedure so I often end up getting a headache or a migraine after a trip to the dentist.
So, in the interests of migraine prevention, I made sure to take the day off yesterday so I could rest and take good care of my neck after I got home from the dentist.
And in the course of doing some (very gentle) neck stretches, it occurred to me that since I often have neck troubles, it might be helpful for me to do more preventative stretches on a regular basis.
That’s when I discovered the dilemma in my title.
Are my neck muscles tight because of how I use them (perhaps putting unnecessary strain on them) so they need to be stretched regularly?
Or perhaps my neck muscles are actually weak and they need to be strengthened instead?
Maybe it’s both?
Let’s be real here – it’s almost definitely both.
Luckily, a lot of the strengthening exercises I found are similar to stretches I already do but when you add reps, they magically become strength training instead.
And that makes them feel infinitely more doable.
So, let’s give it some time and see if combining the two will make some of my activities less of a pain in the neck.
I don’t know if it will help at the dentist though, I think that’s going to require a fancy neck support of some kind.
How do you think the dentist would feel about something like this? Image description: A GIF of a small light haired dog lying on her back holding a newspaper over her torso while her head is on a shiatsu massage pillow
PS – Have I talked about my neck before? Definitely!
Have I come to this same conclusion before? It is entirely possible.
My shoulders have been cranky again lately – tight and sore and really, really particular about how I sleep.*
When my shoulders especially unhappy with me earlier this week, I decided to take some stretching advice that I read recently and hang by my arms from our chin-up bar for a little while to see if it would help.
And since I’m trying to do three minutes of fun movement every day for the next few weeks, I hung there for a bit longer than I would have otherwise. It was really hard BUT it was also really helpful and I felt much better afterwards.
Some of my fun movement drawings – note my weird lengthy arms after my session of hanging around. Image description: My visual record of my exercises this week. On the left hand side of the image is text reading ‘Move Towards Fun’ with small dots and accent lines around it. Then there are 4 drawings 1) a circle with 4 wiggly lines coming from it, text next to it reads ‘wiggly dance’ 2) a stick figure balanced on one leg with the other high in front of it, text next to it reads ‘high kicks’ 3) a drawing of my closet doorway with the chin-up bar across it and me hanging by my hands from the bar. My arms are ridiculously long and bent oddly and my legs look really short because they are bent behind me. Text next to it reads ‘hanging stretch (hard!) I felt like I was on the rack!’ 4) a stick figure standing on one leg with the other leg bent out to the side. Text next to it reads ‘flippy knees’ – this refers to me pointing my knee inward and then outward while standing on one foot.
In case you were wondering, what I was doing is called a modified dead hang (a name which sorta skeeves me out) – I was lightly resting my toes on the floor behind me while I bent my knees toward the floor.
I was modifying because the bar is not high enough (and I am not strong enough…yet) to do a full dead hang and this approach puts most – but not all – of my body weight on my hands, arms, and shoulders and gives me a good stretch without being entirely too difficult.
I always liked that swing-by-my-arms kind of movement when I was a kid and I would like to be able to do more of it now but it is entangled in the whole ‘need to build upper body strength – gotta have pre-existing upper body strength in order to do the movements I enjoy’ conundrum that tends to plague me when it comes to exercise but I’m working with it.
Speaking of conundrums, after doing the modified hang I discovered that there are just as many people saying that activity is bad for your shoulders as there are people who are saying it is good for you.
I recognize that every person’s body is different and that it is hard to give all-purpose advice but it would be swell to have a little less fuss about every damn thing.
Anyway, all of this is to say that my fun movement challenge is going well and that I am one of the people who will benefit from hanging around like that.
How about you?
Any fun movement lately?
Done any hanging around?
*Sometime last year I learned that curling my arm under my pillow while I sleep (as I have done for as long as I can remember) is actually a terrible thing to do to my shoulder. (Apparently that position is one way that various physical therapists stress a shoulder joint to determine range of movement.) So I had to teach myself to sleep with my arms in a different position (not easy!) which took a lot of getting used to. And I still end up with cranky shoulders – just less cranky than they used to be.
Yes, it’s true. Given the chance, I will literally boss ANYTHING around.
To be clear though, I have been trying to boss my neck/shoulder/upper body muscles around for a while (Pain in the Neck, Pah Humbug) but I was less than completely successful. I found some ease but that knot in my neck/shoulder was just hanging around and causing trouble.
(If this is where you want to jump in and say that I might have had more success if I had invited them to relax instead of trying to order them around, please know that I ALSO did relaxation exercises and meditation and lay around on pillows, foam shapes and massage balls of various sizes. This has been a multi-faceted process.)
This weekend, though, I decided to put a lot of effort into bossing those muscles around. I really wanted them to remember that they LIKE moving with ease and that they would feel better if they went along with my plan instead of staying all tense and knotted.
I started with this video from Yoga with Adriene. I’ve found it helpful before and I thought it might help again.
It did.
A video from Yoga with Adriene entitled ‘Neck, Shoulders, & Upper Back’ The still image shows Adriene in exercise clothes sitting crossed legged on a yoga mat with one arm extended to the side and the other one resting on the side of her head as she stretches her neck. Her dog, Benji, is sleeping over to to the side.
When I finished, I felt better but I had time to do a bit more so I tried some Neck CARS (Controlled Articular Rotations).
A video from Tangelo entitled ‘Controlled Articular Rotations Neck’ that shows the instructor rotating leaning his head backwards as he completes a neck rotation.
This video helped A LOT and I could feel things loosening up as I repeated the rotations.
I then meant to try some shoulder CARs but happened upon this video for scapular rotations instead and I gave it a whirl. I mean, I gave it a controlled, careful attempt.
A video from Peter Attia, M.D. called ‘How and why to practice scapula controlled articular rotations. The still image shows black and white photos of the two instructors, one in each bottom corner, and text reading Scapula Training Exercise in the centre.
I only did the first type of scapula CARs from this video but they were extremely helpful. I could feel all kinds of places loosening up as I went through the movements.
So, I am so glad I decided to boss those muscles around on Saturday and follow that up with more bossing around on Sunday and Monday.
My upper body feels more relaxed than it has in a very long time, even before the knot appeared in my neck/shoulder, and I can tell that there is still a lot of muscle relaxing to do in that area.
So obviously, I will keep bossing my muscles into being good to themselves and, of course, into being good to me.
And, in return, the more they relax, the more I will be able to do the kind of exercises they like – more TKD practice, more time on the rowing machine, more yoga.
Hmm, now that I look at that sentence I realize that I am claiming that my brain outwitted itself so I guess I really mean that I consciously chose to override an automatic behaviour?
That is definitely not as fun, let’s go with the first sentence instead.
So yeah, I outwitted my brain.*
My best depiction of my brain doing its best to conserve energy and maintain the status quo. You can tell it’s my brain because of the sprinkling of gold stars. Oh, and the chatter, that gives it away too. Image description: a drawing of a human brain surrounded by things the brain is saying. ‘One set will do, right?’ ‘You don’t need to stretch, it’s fine!’ ‘No plan? Ok, but how about making a list?’ And in the bottom corner is my response ‘Nice try, brain! ❤️C’
The knot in my shoulder/neck has almost completely gone away so I had decided that I was going to do some upper body strength training on the weekend.
Saturday was a jumbled sort of day and I never got to my weights so I picked a specific time (8:30PM) on Sunday to get started. (That’s Step 1 in the outwitting. I didn’t leave it for an ambiguous ‘later.’)
For the rest of Sunday, one part of my brain kept reminding me to make a plan for the specific exercises I was going to do. I tried to make a list but then another part of my brain started telling me that there was no point in making a one day list, it had to be part of a long-term plan. I felt complete resistance to that idea so I shelved the whole plan to plan. (Step 2 – I didn’t let my brain get all ‘shouldy’ – you know how I feel about the word should. Ick. Ick. Ick.)
Since I didn’t want to make a plan, I reminded myself that any exercises I do are going to be helpful – any repeated exercises will make my arm muscles stronger. So, while making a plan can be helpful and would let me see my progress over time, actually doing the exercises is far more important than planning or tracking them. (Step 3 – I found the most direct path.)
So, planless and with a specific time to start, I did my best to put aside any other thoughts about my exercises and went on with my day until 8:30.
Then I had another small disagreement with my brain – this time it tried to tell me that I needed specific exercise clothes. Luckily, seeing as I was wearing leggings, a tank top, and a cardigan, I managed to bring it around to the idea that I could probably just take off my cardigan and swing my weights around. (This is a joke, of course. I lifted them in a controlled manner, worry not.) (Step 4 – I recognized yet another form of resistance and sidestepped it.)
So, I went to the living room and picked up my weights (I put them in the corner on Friday so they’d be right there when I needed them – a very preemptive outwitting, that’s Step .5) and did one set of a series of exercises. I almost stopped there because my brain claimed that I had done what I set out to do.
I disagreed.
If I was tired, if my time was limited, or if I just wasn’t feeling it, then one set would be completely acceptable. However, none of those things was a factor, and my shoulder felt ok, so I did another set. (Step 5 – I questioned my automatic thoughts.)
After two sets though, it was definitely time to stop and my brain tossed up the idea that I didn’t need to do any stretching because, and I quote, ‘You didn’t work that hard.’ (brains can be such jerks!) BUT, luckily, in that moment, I remembered a fact that often eludes me – Sunday night me is the same person as Monday morning me.
So, while Sunday-night-me might not feel the need to stretch, Monday-morning-me is going to wish that I had. (Step 6 – Today’s self doesn’t always know best.)
So, I stretched.
And even Sunday-night-me felt good about it.
So, as Monday-morning-me writes this post that will go up on Tuesday morning, I am happy that I outwitted my brain, I’m happy to have done the strength training I had planned, and I am a little bit sore but only ‘I did a workout’ sore, not ‘I can’t move’ sore.
And I have this post to prove to my future self that the effort to outwit my brain is totally worth it.
*I read somewhere that referring to your brain as separate from yourself is a neurodivergent thing. Is it? I certainly wouldn’t know.
No, don’t worry, I’m not referring to any of my friends, family, or coworkers, I literally have a pain in my neck.
Ok, so it’s more of a muscle knot than anything else and it’s right where my neck meets my shoulder so it could technically be a pain in my shoulder but that doesn’t make for a fun title.
Anyway, one day last week, I managed to crunch up my shoulder in exactly the wrong way and I deeply offended one part of my trapezius muscle on my left side.
It’s putting a serious cramp (ha!) in some of my ‘Feb 5’ plans since I can’t do my core exercises or any rowing.
And during my patterns class at Taekwondo last week I had to tuck my left hand into my belt and only do the right-side hand movements of each pattern. (Just so you know, that makes it REALLY hard to let muscle memory take you through the movements.) Also, I’m pretty sure it looked as funny as it sounds.
I’ve tried heat, cold, muscle relaxants, leaning on a massage ball, and complaining about it and none of those things have really worked. Although that last one made me feel better for a few minutes. 😉
And, of course, I have been doing some gentle stretches and some yoga to try and get the knot to release.
I’ve found some relief that way but mostly this feels like one of those things that just has to work itself out.
Hopefully next week I’ll be able to report that my neck is less grumpy and the Feb 5 plan is going marvellously.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking good care of myself, doing some stretching, and enacting this protocol:
I have a tank top with this saying on it but it’s stored with my summer clothes so I had fun making myself a little drawing. Image description: a small square sign that with gold and black letters that read ‘Maybe Swearing Will Help’
