If you experience back, hip, or shoulder pain, you may want to become more conscious of how you perform your daily activities.
Here’s why: Your daily activities take up much more time than your specialized activities. Think of how much time you spend running, rowing, walking, biking, dancing, singing, playing the flute/violin/sax, fill in the blank, and compare that to the time spent on remaining activities on any given day.
Here is one estimate:
Time spent walking 4 miles at a 15-minute-per-mile pace. = 1-hour
Time spent practicing the piano = 2 hours. (Add 6 more for concert pianists!)
vs.
Time spent doing daily tasks (e.g. driving, brushing teeth, bathing, cleaning, sitting, shopping/preparing food/eating/cleaning up, reaching, bending, gardening, squatting, plugging in a lamp behind a desk, etc.) = 15 waking hours minus 1-2 hours for specialized exercises = 13–14 hours of non-exercise activity.
You are still moving your body most of the day, but how?
If you are shortening in stature and tightening your neck while you are cooking dinner or loading up the dishwasher, are you also doing that when you are exercising or practicing? Does that negate some advantages of exercise?
Back pain can be caused by too much sitting not being aware of our slump (compression) or alternatively bracing (also compression). When adding these habits to an activity that requires a higher degree of efficiency, we may feel stumped as to the outcome, especially when we are working ‘harder’.
Daily, non-competitive activities provide a framework for observing how you are doing something while you are doing it.
To sum up:
Be curious throughout your day about how you move when brushing your teeth, bending over to pick up your child, petting your dog, unloading the dishwasher, and, here is a big one – sitting at your computer. Are you compressing your spine starting with tightening your neck? Can you let go of unneeded muscular tension? Doing this allows your breathing to be freer.
Observing our daily activities sets the stage for learning how to approach our specialized exercises.
You may need some hands-on assistance. I offer a free 15-minute phone consultation. 973 432 5815.
Or you can fill out the contact form and I will get back to you within 24 hours.
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”
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