Play Outside for Good Health and Good Mood

We are enjoying some warm weather in central Texas, which is a great time to get all the benefits of spending time outside. No matter your age or fitness level, you can find ways to play outside.

It is important to get sunlight into your eyes as soon as possible after waking up in the morning. This begins a cascade of good hormones that are released by your pituitary gland to set your circadian rhythm for the day. Getting outside in the morning is one of the first and most important things you can do to get a good night of sleep. If you are feeling tired, it is enough to simply sit on a chair and let the sun shine into your eyes, enjoying the feeling of the warmth and the light. This provides your body with an opportunity to enjoy meditation, simply by feeling the sunlight on your face and skin.

Here are some other fun outdoor activities for adults:

Skip stones by the lake, which involves squatting down to pick a stone and turning your waist to throw the stone.

Walking heel to toe along the edge of your yard, pretending it is a balance beam. This helps with balance and bilateral coordination.

Play hopscotch, or modified hopscotch, with feet apart and together, instead of jumping into a one footed hop.

Pick out some recyclables and fill a few bottles with water at the end of your driveway.Take a ball and play a home bowling game.

Whatever your favorite outdoor activities may be, find ways to play and enjoy time in nature.

Wake Up Shake Up Morning Routine

The days are getting colder and shorter as the seasons change. You may find that it is a little harder to spring out of bed this time of year. It just feels so good to be nestled under warm blankets!

This warm up morning routine is easy to do, and can be done while you are still in bed! It helps to circulate the cerebrospinal fluid and supports general mobility of the spine. To perform this movement, lie down on your back (you can still have your blankets over you) and start to wiggle your hips, as if you are trying to gently massage your sacrum (the large triangular shaped bone at the base of the spine). Next, see if you can relax your body until the movement of your hips and sacrum generate a lateral wavelike motion all the way up through your back and neck. You can check to see if you are holding any tension in your neck by noticing if your head is gently swaying in rhythm with the movement of the hips. You will also feel this wiggle running down both your legs.

If you have another person beside you, you can ask them to gently place their hands on either side of your hips. Then they can use alternating hands to push on the sides of the body until they feel a rhythm emerge up and down the spine. Then you can trade places and help them wake up their spine.

Finally, you can wake up your legs by dragging your feet against the mattress, up toward your body, until the knees are bent. Then simply push them away from your body, about ten times. This helps to wake up the lower body and is also activates the core muscles.

This mini routine can be done in just a few minutes, and you can start your day feeling invigorated and ready to face all the joys and challenges of the new day.

As with any exercise, please be careful, slow and gentle with your body. If anything does not feel good, refrain from doing the movement until you speak with me or another healthcare professional.

If you need further support in understanding how to do these movements, feel free to reach out to me by email at lonestarthealingarts@proton.me or text me at 808-278-8693.

I am also available for private consultations, 15 minutes for $20, if you want further support in developing a morning or evening routine that is personalized for your needs.

What Shoes Should I Wear?!

There is so much information about what we should or should not wear on our feet. Or should we wear anything at all? Let’s take a deep dive, feet first, and consider the options.

In my 30’s, I worked on a farm with a man who had not worn shoes for 10 years. He essentially developed hooves. His feet were thick and calloused, and he could walk over almost any surface, in almost any weather condition: rain, sleet, snow, and blistering heat. He had conditioned his feet over years, and endured bloody blisters and soreness to get those “natural” feet.

Most of us would not choose to tread this path, and most of us have had shoes on our feet almost our entire lives. Even baby pajamas come with footsies on them, which can impede a baby’s natural gait pattern. If you know a baby with footsies, encourage the parents to cut off those foot bottoms so the feet can experience true traction on the ground! This will help the strength and alignment of the ankles, knees and hips too.

As an occupational therapist, I recommend that my adult and pediatric clients have as much barefoot time as possible, on as many different surfaces as possible. If they are not yet able to walk barefoot, or if they live in central Texas, where there are lots of hard, sharp rocks on the land, then I suggest minimalist shoes with no heel. This means a shoe with a flexible bottom, and no wedge in the heel to raise up the back of the foot. This is the closest thing to barefoot, and allows the small muscles of the feet to activate during normal daily movements. When we wear stiff shoes, there are fewer opportunities for all those small foot bones and muscles to work. After being ignored for so long, many of them simply turn off. As you might imagine, this can cause other problems, including pain in the ankles, knees and hips. All those little muscles are necessary for the balance and well being of our bodies.

This way of thinking about the foot and the body makes sense to me. However, I had not considered the impact of hard surfaces like concrete and cement floors, and the effects of feet that already have collapsed arches or bunions.

I was recently introduced to the idea of a sensory based approach to our gait pattern that I had not considered. When we walk on concrete, our joints and muscles typically need to brace against the hardness of this surface. If we are barefoot, or in minimalist shoes, this hard surface can transfer all the way up to the knees and hips, and cause other problems elsewhere in the body, even if the feet start to feel better. Another way to understand this perspective is that in order to walk well, we need to be able to relax, and feel our feet! If we are constantly hitting a hard surface with our feet, somewhere in the body is going to stiffen up, and this is going to affect the joints and muscles. If we wear a more cushioned shoe, the foot can then provide lots of rich information all the way up through the joints and muscles, allowing the body to move through space with greater ease and relaxation.

So what’s a person to do? There are good reasons for both types of shoe wear and no two people will have the same types of requirements. I would recommend experimenting on yourself. Try on different shoes, and see how you feel.

There are some basics that are true for both barefoot style shoes, and more cushioned shoes.

First: no heel. A heel on a shoe elevates the back of the foot and over time, causes the calf muscle to shorten. This affects the tension in the hamstrings, and the positioning of the pelvis. As a result of the shortening of these leg muscles, the pelvis shifts to an anterior tilt, with the gluts sticking out and the lower back overly arched. Over time, this can cause a cascade of problems, not the least of which is pelvic floor issues! If you must wear an elevated heel, be sure to spend a LOT of time making up for it by stretching your calf muscles and hamstrings.

Second: wide toe box. It is very important that the toes can spread out when we walk and stand. Our feet were made to keep our body in balance and alignment. If we try to do this with all our toes compressed into the space of just a couple toes, that is going to cause some problems over time.

Feel free to email me with any questions: lonestarhealingarts@proton.me.

I am available for treatments and consultations in person and on-line.

If you live in Hill or Bosque County, please check out one of my classes!

Wishing you vibrant health and well being,

Elizabeth

Rub Your Belly For Good Health!

Understanding and caring for the belly is a key to good health. Most of us are taught to do sit ups to keep our mid section healthy and firm. However, in many cases, this type of strengthening simply brings more stress and tension to this vital part of our body.

If you watch a child at play, sometimes the belly is rounded and relaxed, and sometimes it is firm, when they are engaged in playing in the sand, climbing a tree, or pulling a big toy truck across the floor. They are not thinking about what the belly should look like (unless they have an adult in their life, who has already started to make them feel self conscious about how their belly looks), but they do know how to use the core muscles when necessary, and to relax them when not in use.

Many people think they need to constantly engage their core muscles, especially if they have a back problem. They have been told by healthcare professionals, that they need to develop the muscles around the back to protect the back. This is not bad advice, but it is incomplete.

Take a moment to reflect on when the body is happiest and functions best. It is not in a state of constant tension. Rather, it is in a state of adaptive readiness in relationship to changes in the external and internal environment.

Imagine trying to rock hop, while keeping your legs constantly tight? It would be impossible. You would fall over and lose your balance. The body is able to maintain maximal strength, flexibility and adaptability when it finds a “just right” balance between relaxation and muscle engagement.

So what does the tummy have to do with all of this? Due to being told to sit up straight and suck in our tummies, from a young ago, many people are walking around with chronically tight tummies. When you think of something that is chronically tight, I want you to also think of this in another way, as chronically weak. When muscles are not given the opportunity to both relax and engage, they become weak. As a result, a lot of people end up doing sit ups or other abdominal exercises, on muscles that are already chronically tight. It would be like doing a bicep curl, with the elbow in flexion, and having someone yell at you to pull harder. You cannot pull harder, the muscle is already tight and fully engaged. Thankfully for the bicep, most of us have no problem extending our elbows so that the muscle can experience a full range of motion, that allows for it to be relaxed when not in use.

However, the belly is not so easy to relax for many of us. In many cases, people have been taught, that it is correct to hold constant tension in this part of the body. This negatively affects the surrounding muscles and bones that support the abdomen, such as the hip bones, pelvic floor muscles, vertebra and back muscles, not to mention the impact this has on the abdominal organs themselves. In addition, this affects the movement that occurs during a natural breath, one that allows the diaphragm to expand and contract.

So what’s a person to do, to begin to rewire this maladaptive patterning in the tummy? Rub your belly!

This is a very gentle type of massage. Think about a cat resting on your tummy (as long as you are not allergic to cats, in which case, think of something else that is soft and fuzzy and gently kneads your tummy) and use the pads of your fingers to gently massage the area around your navel center. Then extend the radius all the way to the lower right quadrant where the large intestine connects to the small intestine, and slowly “paw” your way up the right side of the abdomen. See if you can begin to sense the large intestine, which can be easy to palpate if it is full. From the lower right side of the rib cage, it travels across the abdomen, often dipping down toward the belly button, before climbing back up toward an attachment to the left side of the rib cage, before making its descent down the left side of the abdomen and into the sigmoid colon and colon.

It’s always a good idea to look at an anatomy book and learn about your physiology. This increases your intuition about your body, and increases your capacity to heal yourself.

As always, if you have any questions, or if you would like to schedule a manual therapy session or wellness coaching session, reach out to me at lonestarhealingarts@protonmail.me.

Sending you wishes for a peaceful belly and robust health!

The Orthotics of Life

Most of us think of an orthotic as an insert used in a shoe to support the foot, usually a fallen arch. However, if we think of an orthotic as simply an external object that shapes our bodies, then we quickly see that there are orthotics everywhere: car seats, park benches, pews at church, couches, recliner chairs, beds, and airplane seats, just to name a few.

If you remember back, or look up images of old trucks, you will notice that the seats of cars used to create a 90 degree angle between your hips and back. Over the years, as people began to slouch more, and to move less, thus creating weaker postural muscles, the designers of our environment, began to make seats and chairs that matched the curved shape of our bodies, in these maladaptive postures.

If you sit in most seats, and lean with your back against the back of the seat, you will probably find that you are sitting in a position that places the majority of your weight on your lower back and sacrum, instead of on your sitz bones (bony protuberances at the base of the pelvis). The problem with this, is that the lower back and sacrum were not designed to hold all our weight while we sit, and this creates a host of back problems, pelvic floor issues. This position also reinforces poor postural stability and strength.

The worst offender is the classic couch, or a soft mattress. These items are designed to support the misalignment of the body, and to trick your body into feeling like this is a comfortable way to rest!

If you want to support the health of your body and your spine, consider placing a folded up towel under your pelvis when in your car, or sitting in a seat. This will help to elevate your hips, and places your body in a position to align your weight over those strong and stable sitz bones. Now the bones, muscles and nerves of the spine can do what they are meant to do, which is to support your body’s ability to move and respond in adaptive ways, to changes in your environment.

As for your bed, consider, sleeping on the floor once in a while, or napping on a thick yoga mat, to begin to train your body to structure itself to the alignment provided by the floor.

Think Above and Below for Pain Relief

I just completed Week 6 of Back Ability Zero from The Athletic Truth Group. I have been learning a lot about my own body and about how to help my clients with back pain and other conditions. In this program, the focus is on training the area above the lower back and below the lower back, in order to build strength and flexibility. One exercise works with the lower trapezius muscles that have origins as low as the 12th thoracic vertebra, at the base of the rib cage in the back. The idea is to build dynamic strength and flexibility in the area above the lower back and then in the area below the lower back. This includes the hip flexor muscles and pelvic floor muscles.

Another part of the body where this idea applies is for foot pain. Many people struggle plantar fasciitis and only focus on the area of pain. However, by training the calf muscles (above the injured site) and the toes at the distal end of the foot, the entire foot and lower leg creates an optimal environment for the plantar fascia (connective tissue that supports the arch of the foot and heel) to heal and return to homeostasis.

By thinking about low back pain, or any pain issues in the body, as part of a dynamic system of interconnected tissues and muscles, we can approach rehabilitation and strength training in a more holistic way.

Please contact me if you are interested in working with me via video call platforms or if you live in Texas, consider attending a class at our wellness center in Whitney, Texas.