i found some effective new stretches for the upper body. there have been immediate consequences. i'm eager to see what happens in a week or so.
to be clear, this is important. far more important than any stretching i've been doing so far. the lower back/lower body stretching simply gave me more stamina throughout the day. well, that, and it gave me an understanding of how the stretching process would work, meaning, what i could expect in terms of progress, what pain limit was most effective to hold etc. and it got me simply into the habit of stretching. but all the while the upper-body loomed. the sides, the chest, the shoulders, the neck. this is where my real muscle pain lies.
my mother grabbed some book a few weeks ago about how to heal yourself through exercise. i finally looked through it two days ago. every symptom or problem i thought that related to me seems to be able to be cured by either running or stretching. and for a few things it mentioned the healing powers of weightlifting. (this is all obvious, but...) running topped most mental problem categories, from depression to creative blocks. and it's true, physical activity has cured me of any problems of anxiety. stretching was listed as the cure to muscle pain.
i know how to run, and i've never felt any discomfort from the waist down, so i checked out the diagrams for stretches to help shoulder and neck pain. i've tried stretching my upper body before but one part of me said that it was less important because the muscles weren't as big and so the effect would be less pleasing. but another part of me felt like it was too hard, physically and mentally.
the tension in my neck and shoulders goes hand in hand with my daily ruts and habits. stretching my lower body allowed me to enjoy those things more fully. but those things all involve holding still, whether it's watching tv or a video game or reading and writing on the computer. those things aren't so bad in themselves, but i've attached other, worse vices to them - smoking, drinking, chewing, eating.
maybe i'm naively ambitious, but the part of me that didn't want to stretch my upper body was, i believe, the part of me that didn't want to let go of habits that i'd come to rely on.
it's been a fairly long path to recovery (from what ever it is that i feel now the urge to say that i recovered from it) and i've come in small steps. it's the way i wanted to. i think that i could have gotten to this point much more swiftly had i begun stretching my upper body a while ago. i had seen that book for a while now. but not until two days ago did i finally feel like it was time to see what it said and then, what's more, go ahead and try out some of the diagrams.
i'm slow to motivate.
anyway, it's not like after a few weeks of these stretches that i'll be unrecognizable, it's just, this is a step that i've been meaning to take for years. i get to feel like, while i'm still going up and down, overall, i'm on an upswing.
quick note: the pain in my chest that i used to be able to crack, yet haven't been able to for nearly a year (a year i spent weightlifting), is now, finally, able to guide me into raising my shoulders off my chest by activating my upper back.
doing something productive with that pain has been a very long term goal for me.
i've had problems with tension since i was young. the way i played video games and read books on my stomach kept my neck very stiff. i remember my family making fun of me when i would start to complain and then panic because i couldn't yawn. i have the same problem sitting here today. i can't quite get the release i want to feel - can't quite yawn the whole way. i envy dogs when i see them do it. i feel like i'm closer to being able to detach my jaw than to stretch it out.
so, the pain, what i now recognize as stiffness, is very evident while doing these stretches, especially evident when compared to how it felt when i started stretching my lower body. but it's also more fun, and contrary to what that one part of me had felt, more pleasing than the bigger muscles. this, counter-intuitive, because of an over-looked factor: there was much more stiffness in my upper-body. it's i've saved up the pain in my back, made it ripe.
(i wonder how many of my true beliefs i don't relay here because i can't write well enough to get them across, and so what i write is always behind how i truly feel.)
i used to think (vaguely) that the pain and tension (and power) i was building up in my back and neck would be able to be released with the action-equal-opposite-reaction principle. like i was storing up energy. and maybe that could have been the case. but i feel now more like i don't want an explosion. maybe now i'd rather have a long and steady increase. and the more that i come to believe that, the easier it is for me to let the pain and stress go - not like letting a nearly filled up balloon slip from your grasp, letting it take off in a frenzied scream, but like letting it float for a while until it slowly seeps away. the latter feels much more healthy to me. however the former held promise or the possibility of doing something...surprising, uncontrolled and great.
but more, i think that thoughts like the last one were just traps. perspectives change.
so, anyway, let's see what happens. i mean, shit, i'm even getting excited about the idea of starting one of these stores down at the beach. you couldn't have made me think about it two years ago. (thus noting the main point of recovery as the last, un-parentheses-ed sentence of a post about recovery)
