Move to Live Your Resource to Moving Well and Living Life
WHERE DO YOU “CARRY” YOUR STRESS?
(continued from outside) Before we go any further, take a BIG, deep breath in. What moved first and most? If you’re like many Americans your stomach moved inwards, your shoulders moved up towards your ears, and your chest puffed out a bit. That’s NOT how it should be! Every muscle in our body has “tone”. Tone is the resting level of stiffness that has to be in a muscle so that we don’t succumb to the effect of gravity. Where we tend to get into trouble is when certain muscles become “hypertonic” (too stiff) or “hypotonic” (not enough stiffness). Our nerves and nervous system control how much tone we have in our muscles. For the purpose of this conversation we’re going to divide the nervous system into two parts: sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight mode, adrenaline response, protective mode) and parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest, think parachute...it slows you down). As a society, we tend to be stressed out and when that happens, one of our first responses is to change our breathing pattern. Typically, we’d prefer you use your diaphragm primarily while breathing (large muscle under your rib cage, has connections to your pelvic floor and plays a key role as a part of your core). Muscles in your neck and chest also should be active during the breathing process but really should serve a secondary or complementary role. When your fight or flight response
takes over there’s a shift in the powers that be...your neck/chest muscles take over as the primary breathing muscles and your diaphragm takes a back seat. As humans, we average 16 breaths per minute; 960 breaths per hour; 23,040 breaths per day; 8,409,600 breaths in a year! Light bulb moment: maybe we don’t “carry our stress” in our necks. Likely, we’re over using our neck muscles while breathing to the tune of 8+ million times per year! Starts to explain why no matter how much you try and stretch those muscles, they continue to always feel “tight”. Awesome, so what’s the answer? We take a two part approach. First step is teaching new breathing patterns, utilizing the diaphragm as opposed to overusing the neck and chest muscles (when taking that deep breath in, your shoulders and chest should stay relaxed and your belly should inflate with air...like a balloon). Second step, uncover what situations or postures are stressing your body and put a plan in place to address those. Let me know if you’re interested in learning more or ready to get to the root of your annoying neck stiffness!
Have a relaxing June as we keep getting closer to normal! Joe
www.choiceptny.com
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