Stretching

Stretching

One of my co-workers used to have a little Buddha-type doll on his desk. On the outside, it was covered with stretchy plastic that simulated skin. On the inside, it had some unknown material which felt like dough or silly putty. You could poke your finger into his belly and it would slowly pop out again. Over time, the inside contents of my coworker’s doll started to harden. After awhile, when someone squeezed him, he’d make a crunching sound and he wouldn’t bounce back.

As the doll lost elasticity, I remember thinking that this was how my muscles felt with fibromyalgia. They were once elastic, almost liquid in their flexibility. With the onset of fibromyalgia, they’d begun to feel like they had undergone some transformation similar to the doll.

I started stretching when I was working out in a gym, years before I had fibromyalgia. The common wisdom was to stretch before you exercised and maybe even to stretch afterwards.

The onset of fibromyalgia landed me in a physical therapist’s office, and he taught me stretches that were specific to my head, shoulders and neck area. It seems that is where all my problems started, and that is the area I have the most trouble with on an ongoing basis.

My stretching routine is a combination of the moves I learned from the physical therapist and the moves I learned in the gym.

I stretch every day, whether I do any other kind of exercise or not. It sounds so trite, I’m sure. It sounds like a commercial where they tell you that eating their brand of breakfast cereal every day can reduce your cholesterol. I’m thinking your brain has been so desensitized by the onslaught of commercials, that you are tempted to think, “Stretching, no big deal. Probably wouldn’t make much difference.”

This is your wake up call. Just as some minor little nuance of movement such as how I carry my dog’s dish can cause me considerable pain; some minor little positive motions like a stretching regimen can cause you considerable relief.

So what is stretching, exactly? Pick a muscle. Start with a leg. Sit on the floor (if you can) and bring it to its longest length and then hold it. I have a clock that makes an audible tick-tock. I count as follows, tick-tock equals one-and. So tick-tock, tick-tock equals one-and, two-and. I get into the position for the stretch without actually doing much to the muscle and count through five. I stretch out the length of the muscle and count to twenty. Then I push as far as I can and count to five. There should be no bouncing, just a steady stretch. Move to the next leg. Etc.

The whole routine only takes ten minutes. It started as stretching, and the purpose is physical, but it also seems to border on Zen. When I breathe slowly and concentrate on the counting, it relaxes & rejuvenates me. It makes my muscles feel elastic again, almost normal. If I wake up with a knot in my shoulder, often the stretching routine will banish it.

If you adopt only one item of advice from all of my writing, stretch every day.