Stretching

Tonight I was talking with a friend who said, “It seems like you’ve disappeared recently.”  She’s right – I’ve been outrageously busy and it has seemed like there’s been something going on every waking moment for the last couple of months.  That’s not a complaint – with the exception of Evie’s passing and the grief that came with it, this has been an exceptionally good time for me.

The spectacular Tamilee Webb. I read in an interview that even she has body image issues. Hard to believe, but it makes it clear that we're all working toward an unattainable image of perfection, doesn't it?

But with this sort of busy-ness, some things fall through the cracks.  One of those things has been my body.  I haven’t been hiking in the last several weeks (as I promised myself I would do on my birthday List of 37) and I haven’t been stretching (also a commitment I made on that list.)

Of those two, the bigger issue is stretching.  For the last few weeks I’ve felt like my muscles were tying themselves up in knots – especially my neck muscles.  I keep thinking about stretching, but then I get distracted (or more specifically, I distract myself).

Tonight I decided that enough was enough.  I pulled out my favorite stretching tape by Tamilee Webb and gave myself the gift of unwinding for a few minutes.  It felt SO GOOD!!!  Why, I ask myself, am I not doing this every day?  Goodness knows.  Something to do with inertia – once I stopped doing it, it became harder to start again.  Perhaps now inertia will start to move the other way – in doing it, it will become easier and easier to do it each day and it will feel unnatural not to.

But tonight I feel much happier for having done it.  Thanks, Tamilee!  And thanks to my body for not completely giving up on me even when I become unmindful for a while.  I’m grateful that all it takes is a few minutes to get back in sync.