What is Required for Avoiding Stiffness with Age?
Is your body getting stiff as you get older? Over decades, the gravitational effects of standing, walking and running causes fluids to pool in our legs, hips and low back. Sometimes our pumps, our muscles, are not being used consistently enough to keep our fluids moving. Over time these fluids, which are rich in connective tissue cells, begin sticking the muscles of the legs together fixating us in our use or misuse patterns. The muscles become increasingly inefficient at pumping fluids because they can’t move. The legs feel heavy; the feet muscles get weak; plantar fascitis, shin splints and ‘neuropathy’ develop. (I put this in quote marks because many times an ankle muscle that is not working is labeled neuropathy), often accompanied by swelling. Some of these situations are just dysfunctional muscle coordination patterns resulting from adhesions between the layers.
Poor circulation in our legs affects the conditioning of our feet and legs for walking. Muscles that aren’t being used become unable to move. We feel stiff and lose the grace of moving freely. We walk in stiff and stomp along ways, using our feet as platforms rather than functional movers.
Here are 3 things you can do to avoid stiffness as you age:
- Stretch and wring out your tissues. The yogis have always said “To stay young, keep your spine limber.” You can do this by holding the arms of your office or arm chair and twisting and breathing multiple times a day. Twisting your spine stimulates CerebroSpinal Fluid circulation.
- Hang over and dangle daily; maybe more than once. Let your hips and legs hold you up as you let your back sway and hang loose! Stiffness in your back affects your comprehension and produces cognitive confusion.
- Get bodywork! The older your tissues get the more dehydrated or waterlogged they become. Good bodywork and massage will keep those fluids moving and not sticking you together in ways that make you STIFF. Good bodywork will wake your feet up and get them working again.
If your feet and legs are feeling heavy and weak perhaps you would benefit from a session with our talented NeuroMuscular Reprogramming® Therapists at Healus Neuro Rehab Center. Give us a call at 415 388 9945 and make an appointment today. Don’t let rigor mortis set in early…!
If you’ve never been here before and don’t understand how we can help you, you can ask for a FREE NeuroMuscular Assessment where you will meet with Jocelyn Olivier, founder and clinical director at Healus and the creator of NeuroMuscular Reprogramming NMR®. She will assess your movement patterns and tissue quality and educate you to the best approach to correct those problems that are plaguing you.
Here is a great talk by British anatomist Gil Hedley on the facts about Fascial ‘Fuzz’ and how it sticks our layers together when we stop moving. With NMR we test all your muscles and make sure they are all moving and working, we release your adhesions and wake up your coordination, more of your muscles working will get the work done easier. As my last client today said going out the door: “I feel LIGHTER!” That’s because all the stuckness was gone!
Give us a call at (415) 388-9945 and make an appointment today…Feel better for the rest of your life.
