3 September

If you’re somebody (and this is probably most of us) who experiences stiffness in your body, and even pain from that stiffness, here’s something I think very few will tell you. Your body is not a muscular system, it’s a *neuro*muscular system. Muscles themselves are rarely ‘tight’. They’re made tight by your nervous system and thus ultimately by your brain/you, instructing them to hold on tighter. In other words, your ‘body’ coordinates exactly to what YOU are doing and feeling and thinking. If you’re very ‘tight’ in your thinking and anxious in your feeling, that’s how your body will be too. If you’re sitting at a desk rigidly and emotionally fixated on what you’re typing, not paying attention to anything else, your body will become tight, to match that rigid, anxious attention. If you’re fixated on having ‘good posture’, that will ironically also tighten you up, because you’re narrowly and emotionally focused on that task. You’ll get a coordination of ‘trying to get good posture’. All trying is effort, and effort creates tightness. Physios and other physical therapists might give you stretches, to try to loosen up all of this tightness. Most of that is a waste of time, the muscles and fascia aren’t tight. You just want all of you to be calm and mindful of what you’re doing, in each moment, open to what’s around you, which will lead to you breathing smoothly and deeply. That will make your *neuro*muscular body relaxed and effortless. Be aware of tightness, don’t try to stretch it out, often just that awareness will fix it, it opens you back out gently to the world around you. Your body will automatically move a little, to restore a more open, poised you, able to move in any direction as needed.