The Baseline State
Last week, I returned from a 10 day trip in Guatemala, one of the best vacations I’ve ever had. It was a mix of hiking, lounging, walking, and eating. While I did hike for 4 days, I didn’t do any additional mobility or stretching. The 6 weeks prior I’d been training handstands heavily, doing a lot of trail runs, and weight training. Normally, when I skip doing an intentional movement/strength practice, or in the very least, regular movement snacking, I feel stiff within a few days. However, I noticed during my trip, even after long days of hiking, and even when I was back in Brooklyn but enjoying four more days off before starting work again, that I didn’t feel stiff. I noticed that I could almost place my palms flat on the ground in a forward fold without feeling strained (tough for me usually), or when I did some shoulder and neck circles, nothing felt tight.
During my vacation, my sleep was actually not perfect — some days my sister and I were sleeping in a tent waking up to sounds of dogs, horses, and roosters. None of our beds were particularly comfortable. And my habitual way of eating was also out the window as we were eating a mix of some serious street food, fried plantains, and minimal vegetables. So, my point is, it’s not like I had a spa vacation where I was pampered to the nines. Actually, I even had a stomach bug the first two days of our trip. But, I was truly mentally stress and responsibility free, very detached from work, and was enjoying myself fully. And so, my nervous system responded accordingly, releasing my body of the need to hold itself with that mostly-undetectable-yet-always-present kind of physical tension that I experience at home.
What I felt from this travel experience in a very large and acute way is the impact of stress on my feelings of tightness and stiffness in my body. The fact that stress impacts the body is nothing new to me or likely to you. We all know it. But for the first time I can remember, I really felt it. Normally, I notice a spike in tension in my body that causes feelings of tightness and stiffness when I’m going through a particularly stressful period with work, a relationship or even Seasonal Affect symptoms. However, this time it was really noticeable as a shift in the baseline level of comfort in my body, the feeling of suppleness in my movements. I then had an additional realization: when I’m here at home and I don’t get a movement practice in for several days for whatever reason, the stiffness and tightness I feel as a result is probably less about the missed sessions and more about the baseline state of my body in my environment.
I had a client express the same thing to me last week. He’s incredibly busy and works within the school year calendar, so he enjoyed his Spring Break week while I was away. We normally work together twice a week, and he doesn’t get much movement in aside from our two weekly sessions. He feels very tight at every session and is always surprised that very little relief seems to carry over from one session to the next. I always make the same comment. “Well, you’re under a lot of stress at the moment and the body has its way of responding to that,” and he nods in agreement but with a knowing concession that there’s no way around it for the time being. We reconvened this week after both of our breaks and he was pleased to share that he discovered the baseline state of his body was not nearly as tight or stiff during spring break as it was when school was in session. He didn’t even get much movement during his spring break — it was purely a difference of work stress.
I share this not to shame anyone (or myself) about the work, city, and lifestyle choices we make. Western and American culture and the times we live in necessitate certain behaviors, environmental impacts, and responsibilities. There’s zero value for me to propose that we should all decrease our work and life stress — there are way too many people already making us feel bad about that. But I believe there IS value in suggesting that we don’t brush off the impact of those things on our physical capacity to move well. We (again myself included) get so accustomed to how our bodies operate within the status quo of daily life that we forget it’s not our true baseline.
What’s the benefit of keeping this in mind? Two things stand out to me. First, a reminder that we are not broken. If you’re stiff, tight, and achey all the time, you do not have an inherently dysfunctional body. You have a body that responds to the way you’ve chosen (or in some cases been forced) to live your life. This small shift in perspective allows us to have a little more compassion for ourselves when our bodies don’t operate the way we want them to. Second, knowing there is potential for us to feel differently. Knowing that our bodies are not fixed entities or carved of stone opens an opportunity for us to seek a state in which our baseline is more lenient with us. It may not happen today or next month, but in some future time — or at the very least, on the next vacation.
keep moving.