Flexibility, Resiliency, and Adaptation
In preparing for my trip to Mexico, where I’m spending a few weeks working remotely, my to do list was overflowing to the point that I had no time for physical activity for the entire week before I left. Physical activity is usually so high on my priority list that other things get booted, but alas, everything to prepare for this trip climbed higher.
When I don’t use my body fully (stretching it, running it, moving around on the floor, moving heavy things) AND I add emotional stress AND I add sitting most of the day for work with clients via Zoom, after a few days I start to feel stiff (and cranky). The primary physical sensation for me is a lower back ache, and in this instance, it set in about 3 or 4 days into my 8 day streak.
I was complaining about this to a friend of mine, and she warmly reminded me that this is the time to practice resiliency, doing the little things I could throughout the day to alleviate my body, find a little stretch here and there, and to learn to be able to manage with less activity than usual. Her intentions were on the right path, but what she was really challenging me to do was to be more flexible, or mentally agile. Could I be more willing to “go with the flow” with my current situation? How well could I temporarily change my expectations and long term needs to meet the demands of my week? Could I get by with my minimum requirements of movement to feel good enough till this short period was over? Could I emotionally find peace with this transience rather than be annoyed with it? (Full disclosure, flexibility is not my strong suit, which is exactly why my friend was offering the kind suggestion that she was. I’m a work in progress!)
The Saturday before I left, I spent several hours sitting in front of a computer working, an hour sitting for a pedicure, and a couple of hours sitting for dinner. The following Sunday morning I sat for 45 minutes to the airport, an hour waiting for my plane, 5 hours on the plane, and then an hour in a car to get to my final destination. I got up 4 times during the flight to relieve my achey back. (Mental note: always sit in the aisle seat.) On Monday, my first full day in Mexico, I went out for a run and did a significant amount of walking around town. On Tuesday, I did a short bodyweight strength circuit and by Tuesday afternoon, my back ache was gone. Within two days, I had bounced back, not only to my routine but to a body that felt supple, energetic, and used (in the best of ways). That is resiliency. It’s the bouncing back part. It’s about the recovery time of the physical state AND the mental state that goes along with it.
If flexibility is about the ease with which we can accommodate a disruption from the existing working order of things, and resiliency is about how quickly we bounce back from the disruption to the working order of things, then adaptability is the actual change that occurs to make a new working order of things sustainable longer term.
The moment the world shut down for what we all thought would be two weeks in mid March of 2020, I hunkered down immediately and got to work on my computer. This was the pause I’d been waiting for to finally work on my online platform. I’d been wanting to update my website and create online content for months and had been putting it off. What I thought was temporary life in front of a computer became much less temporary as I started to see clients and teach classes via Zoom. My workload continued to increase as everyone accepted that this was the new normal. I went from 5 hours of computer work a week before Covid to 40 in a matter of a month. Not only had I made a shift from moving my body around a room while teaching classes and clients in person, but I’d also been commuting 13 hours a week via walking or biking or subway (think stairs and standing). That was all gone. So now my workload increased which was exciting, but all of it took place sitting in front of a screen. I was so confused. I’m a movement coach that sits all day???
Initially, my body rejected these changes with full force. Everything felt stiff and achey but the worst part was that my arms were getting tingly and numb. It was not an ergonomic issue. It was a too-much-change-too-quickly issue. I hadn’t stopped my personal movement practices, but my entire lifestyle had changed so drastically and quickly that those practices weren’t enough to combat the lifestyle shift. The nerves in my neck and shoulders didn’t have time to adjust to the workload. Additionally, it was a rough transition emotionally. A desk job was something I avoided like the plague my entire life, and I had never had but one part-time desk job for less than a year up until this point. If you’ve been keeping up with these posts, you know that psychology is not separate from the rest of our physiology, so my mental state added to my physiological stress.
Eventually, things started to get better. I moved my arms around more than usual, changing up my shoulder positions regularly, but as my nerves began to desensitize, I found less and less discomfort in my arms. Other things got better too and back stiffness was reserved for the more extreme no-break days. My body still doesn’t like to sit for that many hours but it became accustomed to the workload and doesn’t scream at me at the end of the day. My attitude also adjusted to the idea the this was going to be a permanent shift. I slowly molded myself to the new lifestyle, making mental and physical changes to accommodate it in a way that felt more sustainable. I adapted. We all adapted. We had to.
I see adaptability as less of a choice than flexibility and resilience. Covid life became a 3 year-ish reality with some longer permanent changes. We had to adapt to it in order to continue functioning in society. If you start strength training, you don’t choose to adapt, your body just does it as a natural physiological response to dealing with stress. When a family member passes away, you have to adapt to your new life. The caveat, though, is how we adapt. How we adapt depends on each individual, and adaptations aren’t inherently positive. You can adapt to a trauma by becoming an alcoholic. You can adapt to a fear of flying by refusing to fly. You can adapt to chronic pain by limiting your mobility.
Flexibility makes positive adaptation easier and therefore improves resilience. The less rigid we are and more accepting of change we are, the more quickly the positive adaptation process will occur. Say your spouse gets relocated to a new city for her work which requires the whole family to move. The more easily you can accept the change, the quicker you’ll settle in to your new normal in your new city. The time it takes for the whole process to happen is the measure of your resiliency.
Let’s use a concrete example for pain. If I break my foot and end up in a cast with crutches for weeks, I will initially curse the world, throw a fit, and mope. But then I have a choice to either continue to mope or to just get on with it. The choice to get on with it is the flexibility part. It will allow me to make adaptive changes to my lifestyle quicker than if I continue to mope around. These adaptive changes might be things like allowing for double the time to get to places, adjusting my workouts instead of banishing them, delving into research on foot injuries and rehab. The quicker I can make these adaptive changes, the more resilient I am.
If you have chronic pain, how well do you bounce back from flare ups? How flexible are you to adjust your mental state and the logistics of your day when the flare ups happen? How have you adapted your entire life to deal with your chronic pain? Are these adaptations positively or negatively impacting your life?
keep moving.