Guide to Structuring Your Home Exercise Program

Throughout engagement in the process of physical therapy, many individuals struggle with parameters of their home program. How often should I do the exercises? How many sets and reps should I do? Should I feel pain or stay away from pain completely?

Notice what all of these questions have in common: “Should”

Traditional physical therapy tends to be very prescriptive. Pre-filled templates with “3 sets of 10” of this, “2 sets of 20” of that. For many individuals, this cut and dry prescription makes sense, and creates a clear structure for engagement with the exercises at home. However, consider what this rigid structure deprives you of.

By the therapist deciding on the exact parameters of your home program, agency may be removed from the individual. The performance of the home program becomes less about facilitating a positive engagement with one’s body, and more about what you should be doing- a task to check off the to-do list.

Okay, so… there shouldn’t be any structure to my home program?

Our lives are a constant dance between rigidity and chaos. Too much structure, we have rigidity, close-mindedness, decreased spontaneity, and limited options. Not enough structure, we have chaos, confusion, and a loss of direction. How do we find a healthy balance?

The structure of one’s home program is highly individualized based on person, environment, and goals. What works for one person may not work for another. What works for you today may not work for you tomorrow.

Sometimes life is busy. Sometimes our environment is not conducive to completing our home program. Sometimes we don’t feel good. Rather than seeing the completion of your home program as all or nothing, how can you modify it to fit into your day regardless of what is going on in your life?

Consider creating a loose structure, with room for adding and subtracting 

 Perhaps practicing the whole series of movements in your routine can only happen three times this week. However, what about five minutes here and five minutes there to engage with the movements in a way that fits in with the rhythms of your day?

• You find yourself lying in bed for a few extra minutes and you try bringing your knees to your chest, or rotating from side to side. 

• You are standing in the kitchen waiting for the water to boil, and you find your hips gliding. 

• You are getting up and down from a chair, and you decide to practice three additional sit to stands with awareness of your body mechanics.

Questions to ask yourself

Learning how to direct your own care is ultimately what we aim to teach you at the Wellness Station. Consider asking yourself the following questions to enhance this ability-

If I were my therapist, what might I want to know more information about?

Consider a situation in which you are engaging with physical therapy, but you feel that you “aren’t getting better”, or the exercises aren’t “working”. If you were your own therapist, what would you want to know more about?

How often do I spend time with the movements? 

When our home program is a to-do list item, it can be very easy to rush through it and let it slip through the cracks. If you are spending no more than 10 minutes total each day engaging with yourself through mindful movement, and wonder why the therapy is not more effective, then the answer may be that you are not spending enough time with it. If you want to learn the language of your body more fluently, you have to practice.

• It may be helpful to have a goal of how long you would like to engage in the movements, perhaps at a specific time each day. For example, 20 minutes in the morning before breakfast. 

• To further enhance the therapeutic effects, take 10 minutes here, five minutes there, two minutes here, five minutes there, to re-engage with the movements throughout the day. 

Am I working “on” my body, or working “with” my body?

We could spend all the time in the world on our home programs, but if we are not doing the movements as intended, they will have little therapeutic benefit. If the way you are engaging in your movements is to accomplish a task, push through pain, or to just do what you think you’re supposed to be doing, then the intention is missed. The completion of the movements is less important than the manner in which they are performed.

The intention of the movements are to be able to pick up on the signals from your body with greater sensitivity, bring stimulation and change into your tissues, and grant agency to know how to respond to pain and discomfort. Keep asking yourself as you perform the movements… “Am I working on my body, or learning how to work with my body?”

In addition to a designated time for my home program, how am I implementing what I’ve learned into what I’m already doing throughout the day?

We live in our bodies 24/7, and we are already moving our bodies throughout the day, whether we are mindful about that or not. This grants us the ability to be engaging mindfully with our bodies pretty much all the time.

• Getting out of bed or out of a chair- think about your body mechanics. 

• Standing in the kitchen- turn it into a dance. 

• Walking to and from rooms- what is that light from your chest doing? 

• Picking up a box from the floor- send your bottom back and tuck your pelvis when you come up.

By considering these concepts, your home program will likely become more rewarding, enjoyable, and instrumental in moving towards success in your therapeutic journey.

At the Wellness Station, we will guide you to creating an adaptable structuring that empowers you to direct your care and enhance your wellness, fitness and beyond.

Written by Jacob Tyson, DPT - Physical Therapist, Yoga Instructor and The Wellness Station Team

Solving the Pain Mystery: Movement Alleviates Chronic Pain

Do you experience musculoskeletal pain that diminishes spontaneity, peace of mind, and joyful living?

This post will help you begin to understand the factors contributing to chronic pain and how a movement awareness based approach can bring you relief.

Pain Means Change

It is widely accepted that pain is our body’s way of communicating a request for change, asking us to do less of certain stressful behaviors and more of stimulating, comforting, and nourishing activities.

At The Wellness Station, we see clientele who have often had prior therapy that has been unsuccessful. The key missing piece, the piece to solving the mystery of chronic pain, it’s not so much WHAT we do activity wise, but HOW we do it!

Here is an opportunity to experience a Feldenkrais-inspired movement lesson that will improve neuromuscular coordination, decrease tissue stressors and improve bio mechanical efficiency and comfort.

Try This At Home

1. Please come to standing, and preferably have some object - real or imaginary - that you might be reaching up to. For example, the molasses on the top cabinet shelf.

   Let’s assume you’re right handed. If otherwise, just transfer all the below instructions to the left.

   Which ever arm you are reaching with for the object is to that side above you.

2. Please take a moment to pay attention to easy breathing.

3. Have both feet making full contact with the floor and reach up with the right arm for an object that is a couple of inches beyond a simple overhead reach. In other words, your heels stay on the floor and you have only moved primarily from the shoulder complex.

4. Now explore how you would get your hand 2 inches higher to access that object. Do you lift a heel, one or both? If only one, which one?

   Any tipping of your head, change anything at all in your rib cage?

5. Lower your arm, and return to paying attention to relaxed breathing.

   Now explore doing the same with the left arm, reaching for an object that is to the left of the midline.

6. Leave that and sit towards the front edge on a relatively firm chair.

   Feel your feet making firm contact with the floor. Push with your right foot and feel your pelvis rolling to left; reverse that by pushing with the other foot, Your pelvis with now role to the right.

   Repeat that a few times. it’s a little bit like being on a rocking boat, Your pelvis like a ball rolling left and right.

7. Pause; interlace your fingers and place them on top of your head so that your elbows are out to the side like wings.

8. Resume rocking your pelvis left and right and tip your arms and your head the opposite direction.

   Your pelvis is like a ball going one direction and your head is another ball at the top of your spine going opposite. For example, as your pelvis roles to the left (you could slip a thin piece of paper under your right buttock), your arms are tipping with the right elbow going down and the left elbow going up. And then experience the reverse as your pelvis rolls to the right.

9. Rest for a few moments.

10. Resume your pelvis rolling left and right with the head and arms tipping the other way. Can you feel how your body is acting like an accordion, folding in on one side, expanding on the other?

11. Please come back to standing.

    Return to reaching for that imaginary or real object and whichever arm you reach with raise the heel of the opposite foot pushing with the ball of the foot and keeping that knee straight. Explore that for a while.

12. Can you feel how on the side of the lifting heel, your rib cage and torso are folding in. On the opposite reaching side your torso is expanding towards that object.

    For example, reaching with the right arm and pushing with the left foot, your left shoulder will drop and your right shoulder will go higher.

    Repeat that a few times.

13. You may want to shift to the other arm reaching.

    At some point go back to the original reaching and compare which reach feels easier and more accessible.

14. Let’s make this reach for that object that’s 2 inches beyond a simple reach, let’s make it even easier!

    Initiate with the opposite foot pushing, sense that the arm reaching is a result of the opposite foot pushing and your body shaping like an accordion-expanding on that reaching side to send that shoulder and hand higher.

15. AND, The next time you reach for that object allow your head to tip away from where your hand is reaching reaching with the right, slightly rotate your head to the left.

Clients who have participated in this Feldenkrais inspired lesson, especially shorter women, explain how grateful they are to reach higher — no longer experiencing strain on the neck and shoulders.

How would you describe the difference in effort and relative ease when you compare reaching after having done the lesson?

That lesson, “reaching with my foot,“ is an example of a task being done with optimal musculoskeletal organization.

When we move with more awareness and bio mechanical efficiency, the outcome is less stressful forces on our tissues and joints.

Please, again reach for a higher object. Can you feel your body thanking you for the absence of muscular strain and the experience of ease and flow?

The take away relative to chronic pain is that by using the Feldenkrais method to you are practicing preventative medicine and enhancing the healing of overstressed tissues.

If you pause and reflect on what happened with your reach after doing that lesson, you may realize that the missing link in resolving chronic pain is learning how to better coordinate and integrate all of the moving parts from the head to the toes.

In summary, by moving better, we feel better!

What is Mindful Movement?

What is mindful movement, and why do I need this in my life?

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the state of being aware of something in the present moment. In a state of mindfulness, one calmly and non-judgmentally acknowledges and accepts emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Applying mindfulness to movement allows us to feel more fully what is going on in our bodies in order to improve our quality of movement, steer clear of pain, strain, and injuries, and become immersed in the pleasurable sensations that accompany the motion of our bodies. A mindful movement practice has a different purpose from traditional exercise, which tends to be prescriptive, and focus on external outcomes such as weight loss and muscle building. While mindful movement practices can also lead to these outcomes, the focus is more so on the journey, rather than the destination. Mindful movement tends to be more exploratory and creative, and cultivates a state of self-kindness and self-compassion which has carryover into our daily life. Mindful movement tends to be performed in the parasympathetic state of our nervous system, which brings about a sense of calm and ease, rather than the sympathetic state which is associated with our fight-or-flight response, an elevated heart rate and blood pressure, and a sense of anxiety.

Yoga

Yoga is an excellent movement practice that can bring about powerful health benefits when performed in a mindful and consistent manner. A yoga practice can cultivate a powerful mind-body connection, instigate self-healing behavior, instill a love of movement and exercise, and grant us a sense of agency and control over our lives. We can go upstream of many chronic illnesses, pain and dysfunction by developing the tools we need to live active, healthy, and informed lives. The mindfulness cultivated in yoga may elucidate any destructive forces at play (e.g. self-destructive behavior, maladaptive movement patterns, over-eating, postural tendencies developed from staring at screens all day, sedentary lifestyle, overactive stress response, poor self-image), and consistent practice can grant us the tools and agency necessary to improve our health and the quality of our lives. Not to mention improve our overall performance, cognition, physique, mental health, and much more! This practice can benefit our minds, nervous systems, tissues, all the way down to every cell inside us. Yoga can change us; yoga can change the world.

PhysiYOGA Fluid Class

Our latest class series, PhysiYOGA Fluid, seeks to integrate all the positive benefits of a mindful movement practice, while also providing an energetic flow to help improve the strength, responsiveness, and suppleness of our musculoskeletal system. We will navigate through a wide variety of movement patterns, juicy stretches, and will end our practice with a mindfulness meditation. We will use the power of our breath to create lasting change in our bodies and minds. By remaining mindful of what we are doing and how we are feeling throughout the class, we seek to enter a parasympathetic flow in which we are learning more about our bodies and nourishing each and every cell within us. Take the time you need for yourself this year, and join us on the mat for PhysiYOGA Fluid!

The Sea Squirt: Lessons on Brains and Pains

Have you come up with any resolutions or intentions for 2021? We hope you’ll add this sea squirt inspired idea too: You can improve brain and body health with ONE activity! What’s the ONE activity? Read more to find out!

Brain Synapses

The human brain is incredibly complex and diverse. It contains 1 billion trillion synapses! (Yes, one billion trillion is grammatically correct!) The synapse is where neurons meet to send messages for communication.

Brain synapses contain approximately 1000 different proteins, and each and every synapse is diverse from any other.

What does this tell us about the purpose of the brain and the nervous system?

And, even more importantly, what does this tell us about how to keep our brain and ourselves healthy?

The Sea Squirt

Did you know that without one particular phenomenon occurring in any organism, there would be no brain present?

Let’s see if thinking about a tad pole like organism, the sea squirt, can give us a clue as to why we have brains…

The sea squirt has a brain and a spinal cord connected to a single eye and a tail for swimming. But once it attaches itself to something, it no longer moves. It then actually absorbs its own brain!

It no longer needs it because it is no longer moving!

Photo courtesy of Brittanica.com.

Brains are for Movement

Yes, movement is why we have brains!

And what of the quality of movement do you think keeps the brain active, engaged, and thriving?

You got it! —movements that stimulate curiosity, activities that engage in a variety of shapes and rhythms—three dimensional movements that keep us young and healthy!

If you will, please visualize the following:

• children who have just been let out for school recess

• the joy of participants in recreational sports and dance

• dogs romping at a dog park

• the sheer ecstasy of an infant discovering the ability to crawl and eventually walk and run!

The variety and pleasurable aspects of movement are what keep the brain flowing, maintaining the complex synapses as well as the simple ones.

Pain Prevention

Sadly, most of us decrease the complexity and variations of our movement experiences as we get older. The old “use it or lose it“ saying.

Our body and brain suffer—less variety of movement creates more tension in the tissues and pressure on the joints, and thus pain and diminished mobility result.

What can we do to prevent and even reverse these changes?

The good news is with what we know about neuroplasticity, we can always revitalize and create more functional brain tissue for greater mobility and pain-free well-being.

Movement Classes

And the key to that is movement…

…especially of the nature that you will experience in the Feldenkrais “Awareness Through Movement“ educational classes.

The movement class series “Superflow” begins in January and continues through March. Get more information about the classes, and sign up for one class…or sign up for a monthly series… or sign up for all three months!

Remember, “As the brain flows, so the pain goes!“

We look forward to joining you in 2021 as we achieve happier and healthier bodies and lives!