I was chatting with a friend who was speaking about her greyhound. Every time he gets up from a nap he stretches, huge big full body stretches, down dog, up dog, several times. My cat too. When she moves from a sleep she arches right up into her back, moves her body backward and forward, her whole skin stretches, almost audibly... and it made me wonder why we as humans mostly don’t stretch like that. When we get up in the morning so often we are running into our heads, what needs to be done. Time constraints and routines and lists. What movements in our bodies become rusty, forgotten, lost by not stretching.
It made me think about the movements in our backs - twisting, side stretching - movements we rarely make. Twisting we really only do when we reverse a car, and with today’s modern parking sensors, even that movement is disappearing. So In class this week we focussed on twists. Opening the shoulders, opening the back, moving the spine in all different directions to remember the possibilities we have in our spine, the amazing strength it has to hold us upright for our whole lives, and how sometimes it’s nice to give something back to it, some focus and some love. Strengthen it, enable it for the rest of our lives to stay strong and supple. To keep us upright. Perhaps we can all look to remember our spines. When we first wake up in the morning, get out of bed and have a big yawning stretch, right through the fingers and toes, doesn’t that feel good?
