Last week, my physical therapist was working on one of my “stress deposits” as he calls them. I carry severe tension in my neck and shoulders, and it’s been going on for so long that I don’t even have to be stressed to be tense there! It’s become just a part of how my body is used to moving and coping. Physical therapy and Pilates are teaching me how to retrain my body – tell it that my shoulders and neck don’t have to do all the work. It’s a constant conversation.
love in the mist bud | mississippi ave. | Portland
We joke around all the time during my sessions, and last week my head was in a particularly strange position but I needed to relax.
“Go to your happy place,” my PT said, somewhat sarcastically.
“Oh, good,” I said, “Fiji!”
“But you need an external place to put all this stress before you go,” he said.
“You mean like a storage unit?” I asked, chuckling.
“Precisely,” he said, “Just stop there and drop all this crap off. Then, off to Fiji.”
It sounds silly, but I’m such a visual person that it has been helping me a lot this week. Whenever I start to feel myself tensing up again, I picture my storage unit, drop off my stress and go on my way.
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