Alleviate • Stretching – SRS

Light as a feather but strong as steel inside.
This is a good metaphor to describe the people who stretch regularly.

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For stretching, our goal is to aim for the lightness that we can feel in every part of our body and be stretchy.

But what does lightness mean?

It means we don’t generally feel the blockage or heaviness in any part of the body, and that we can easily do poses at any time, anywhere. A blockage is a flow of Qi being interrupted. When we feel somewhere is blocked, we feel the discomfort from the part of the body and it usually makes us moody.

Meanwhile, the heaviness generally comes from the overused muscles whether it’s by a prolonged issue or a new activity has been taken. Imagine a runner finishes his serious training session, his legs are now tired and sore. But the weary muscles aren’t limited to only the leg parts, so the next day he wakes up, he starts to feel the weight all over him and he might think of his body like a sail for a second. These kinds of situations are far from unheard of. They happen to ordinary people too.

*Notice that heaviness does not mean the weight of a person, but rather the cause from the muscles used and inflexibility that without proper relief.

When light exercises, like walking, or even holding the phone, happen repeatedly without alleviation, blockage, hidden pain, or heaviness will take forms and grow on us. But sometimes, problems develop too slowly we don’t realise, like the fable of the boiling frog.

So the feeling of lightness, if one can feel its state, can be a measurement for ourselves to determine our overall health, including mobility, flexibility, durability, and so on.

Though keep in mind that:
Feeling light does not equal to weak.
Feeling light should have a sense of strong inner power within, and that is the strength.
Feeling light is the whole body state, while the parts of the body should be smooth and painless.
Feeling light is ongoing, not being hold up by the daily tasks.
Feeling light means we’re always ready; be on the move if needed.
Feeling light takes efforts and times.

Stretching is a quick and resilient method to alleviate our stressed body and enhance the lightness over time.
Besides the physical improvement, Stretching also helps improve thinking. The more one stretches, the time of one will become slower to the personal perspective in his/her world. This directly reflects the inner world, so certain concepts will then be developed. The tolerance, the understanding of life, the joys of living, will merge when one starts to stretch.

Before we talk more about stretching, one thing to note is that stretching and Yoga are two different practices but they overlap.

For me, as I’ve mentioned in previous stretching articles, I incorporate Yoga techniques that I learnt from my Yogist friend into my usual stretching routine, as a dancer. Therefore, I’m referring stretching method but really, it has many other outside elements being added in, like Yin-yang and so on. Hope that makes sense!

One concept for where to begin with stretching is to think of Balance. Stretching is easy because whatever the habitual postures we have been doing, we stretch them with the opposite directions.

*As you can see here, if I spend a lot of time sitting, my back, core and areas around are going to be stiff and irregulate over time. So, I’ll practice “the wheel” to balance it out and ease the unwanted pain in it.

The more repetitive movement is being performed, the easier for one to master it.

Applying “the balance concept” to our body, we can correct and fix the “abused” area and relieve the pains from not being stretched enough.

Think of an imaginary axis and a curve around us as we stand, however the median line leaning front or back, left or right, up or down, we focus on the opposite direction to stretch, this way we can truly develop our personal stretching routine and balance the used parts, whilst improving elasticity and flexibility on our joints, muscles and anything in-between within our body.

See? How simple Stretching actually is, and fun.

As we now get the direction going, let’s talk about the power that makes the journey happens.
Many of us, who did not attend Yoga classes or have not been taught about stretching, might not know the key to improve the flexibility is to use power to stretch. While it’s not wrong to be relaxed to stretch, to further improve the range of flexibility of a muscular area, we need to give power to its area to stretch in a relaxed state.

It might sound confusing. A simpler way to put this is to flex the stretching muscles while doing it. When you flex the muscles, there will be a power given and that helps against the stretching action, acting as a sustainable balance for better improvement. Think of a rubber band being stretched, it always needs both sides that are being held to make the stretch happens.

Okay, so when to implement?
-Whenever you feel stiff, or anytime really. It’s recommended to stretch when the energy isn’t too low, as we don’t want counterproductive efforts.

For how long?

• Seconds to minutes or hour.

Tip(s) for during it:

• Be naked is the fastest way to improve your stretching, as you eliminate the limitation of clothing.
• If you don’t know what to aim for as a starter, aim for the flexible back( Upper, Middle, and Lower), and flexible hips and pelvis. *A flexible back a SUPER important!
  ^ Simultaneously, stretch the calves and shoulders.
• As you stretch more, you’ll encounter a period where more problems are coming out, which are good, because they’re the telling from the body that many areas are needed your attention.
  ^Don’t rush on doing them though, keep them in mind and do them one by one. Our body needs adjusting time for natural changes.
• Enjoy and happy stretching :)

The goal:
For the beginners: Set comfortable, realistic goals for yourself to approach learning moves.

For the advanced: Find some gymnastic moves to do. They have awesome consecutive movements that can push your limits.

All in all, be super light and super flexible. It’s for yourself, not for anyone else. You keep doing it because you love health and flexibility.

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*”Stretching helps improve thinking concept” comes from my best friend, Reflex, who is a visual artist, tagger(graffiti artist), and breakdancer. He is the perfect example of “weight and height do not define a person”, and that many of his dance movements come from very good flexibility, you can check it out more via his Instagram here.

Photo by Javardh from Unsplash

Alleviate • Rolling – SRS

It might sound a strange concept to you right now that we need to roll our body, but it’s an easy way to “warm and wake” our body up.

We need to rotate our body parts often to revitalise the areas, and the “rolling” method is for that.

Rolling is a way to isolate body parts and move around them. Have you seen some of the popping dancers who can isolate their head and you think they might be breaking it for a second?
Well, we’re using the fundamental aspect of that technique and apply it to our “Rolling”.

As we isolate the parts of our body, we can feel the part individually if they need improvement or help.

The benefits of Rolling are noteworthy. Besides the immediate relief of stiffness in parts as we roll, Rolling helps us move our internal organs around, as well as the Qi. As we’ve discussed a few articles back about Qi and organs, actively regulate our internal organs helps their inner intricate networks to do the jobs faster and better. Surely enough, stay hydrated is also important.

Here is a youtube video that suggests moving the organs by a similar rolling method. The concept is similar, so if you’re looking for a reference, this clip might give you an idea. However, instead of imagining the organs, I tend to feel the parts of muscles and roll them as if doing exercise.

The primary rotation is either vertically or horizontally circular.
Here is the example:

*The power level is about 2~3.5.

As you can see here, I was rolling vertically on the back of the left side of the shoulder, then switching it to the right. When I moved onto the back of my chest, it was then horizontally circular rolling.

You can also roll the wrist, and basically any other parts of the body you can think of. Waist, hips, pelvis, ankles and so on.

If applying “Rolling” to the warm-up routine; before the sport starts, it can avoid unnecessary injury from negligence, as you’re more connected with the body.

So the example above is Small Rolling. For Big Rolling, the .gif below, is more about limb rotation.

Other than rolling the arms, you can lay down and open the legs, as the toes pointing to the air, to roll the lower limbs.

It’s good for joints rotation and maintaining internal breathing while we do. Think about it, the sprinting day to day basis seems to forbidden such exercise to even come across our mind. But we do need to rotate ourselves.

Good rotations on our joints and muscles make differences in the long run. We revitalise the parts that are otherwise be sitting on.

So when to implement:

• Be part of your pre-training routine, or anytime you feel like somewhere is stiff.

For how long:

• Seconds to minutes

Tip(s) for during it:

• Speed control. Be sure to go over the edge of the rolling area slowly, to feel the range and power.
• Think of using your back muscles while you do.
• feeling it is important.
• if you can roll with the rhythm where music is provided, it is more fun! And who knows? You might be the next dancer. :)

Goal:

• To rotate your muscles and bones, and of course, to feel better as a whole.

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Photo by Luca Bravo, Markus Winkler, Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash 

Alleviate • Massaging – SRS

Do you have a sense of reluctance to bend over for lacing shoes? Or perhaps it’s just difficult to get up from a comfortable sofa after sitting down.

“Am I getting old?” A sudden thought would creep on us when we start to pay attention to these little things.

We feel our body doesn’t catch up with what we want to do. But look it closer, it’s just the stiffness we have been neglecting for sometimes.

We’ve done tons of things every day, but these are the doer, not relievers. Without relieving the used parts of our body, soon they’ll be very stiff. And stiffness will cause our muscles to be less responsive, certain postures will then be formed. It’s the inflexibility that makes us think we’re old. Let’s take a look at posture again.

Posture is more than a collection of righting and stabilizing reflexes. It’s the way we live, a manifestation of our physical comfort zone. Posture can be happy or sad, active or passive, submissive or dominant, brave or fearful.

Changing posture isn’t only about musculoskeletal aspect though; the challenges and rewards are often a profound personal growth.

Often, when the habitual posture is formed we don’t realise, unless somebody tells us.

While sometimes are impossible to avoid poor posture during a time being, we need to know how to relieve them and when.

This is where “massaging” comes in. It’ll help one to reverse the muscle discomfort, so when we need to stretch, we can do it easily.

We all know there are almost countless massage methods out there for us to pick. For this article, we will be focusing on ways for “self-massage” as it’s a part of the self-regulating system. Though it’s encouraged to find massage therapists as they have much experience and able to solve the patient needs.

Before we dive into the self-massage methods, let’s take a look at the benefits of what massage can bring us first!

-Benefits of massage-

From the physiological and physical points of view, massage helps reduce muscle tension, increase joint mobility and flexibility, and improve muscle recovery.

While the right amounts of power for massage and targeting the right areas of a body are important for a better improvement of relieving tension and such, the relief of muscle tightness and tension from deep tissue massage helps to expand the elasticity of muscular tissues, which in turns improve the range of muscle movements that previously too tightened to reach.

*For example, try to raise the hands to the air and feel the infraspinatus muscle, after a massage. How good is that? It’s definitely easier to feel and rotate comparing to before massage.

For the long-term elasticity and flexibility though, we should stretch often rather than relying on massaging alone.

Massage also induces the relaxation response. Remember the fight-or-flight mode we have? During massaging, we have to switch it off for the full course of the massage. The stress response simply can’t co-exist with the comfortable massage session.

In detail, when we’re in the relaxation mode, aka (The Parasympathetic Nervous System), which is responsible for the balance and maintenance of the body’s systems, the body moves toward a state of physiological relaxation. Our blood will divert back towards the internal organs and skin for normal regulation from skeletal muscles, as we don’t need to fight or run.

Our blood pressure, heart rate, digestive functioning, and hormonal levels return to normal levels. All the adrenalin pumping, muscle contraction, pupils dilation are no longer needed!

Besides the physiological state, the mental benefits we get from massage also great. It helps reduce anxiety and depression. Regardless of getting somebody’s to massage for us or we do it ourselves, a GOOD massage will certainly help reduce the negativity and brighten our mood.

But one thing to keep in mind that:
After a workout or long exercise such as a long walk, don’t rush for a massage. Our body needs at least a little time to rest, and process “the work we just put in”. So even it’s sore, or fatigue we feel our muscles, it’s better to take rests rather than receiving a massage immediately. Until we feel better, then the massage session can go ahead.

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Now that we know the benefits, we shall look into the methods.

• Use hands
• Use yoga foam roller(s)
• Use massage gun

These methods are what I usually use to relieve my muscle pains regularly. They’re inexpensive and a good investment for getting better health. Here is my “toolkit“.

1: Using Hands

Although the skills of using hands to massage might be varied, like there are Thai massage, Swedish massage… etc, the principles of hand-on massage are similar nevertheless. Don’t skip the stretch, and massage on your hands too as they also get tired.

*The difference between massaging and rubbing and kneading which I’ve mentioned in the previous articles is that A) Rubbing and kneading are parts of the massage skill. There are many methods derived from massage. But being particular, like talking about rubbing, is to provide a specific way to target certain areas like knees or ankles that we might ignore them if we only mention massaging the knees. Like how, right?
So It’s easier to get across the message and being understood.

B) The power level is different. Since massage is a combination of many methods, so the power range is varied. For instance, Thai massage can get to 6.5 to 7, but the max of rubbing is 1~3 as a more gentle approach for fixing the area around our joints.

2) Using yoga foam roller(s)
Let’s take a look at the example:

For illustration, my elbows are against the mat. But what I normally do at home, I’d completely let myself fall on the mat/floor, allowing the roller does the work, as my muscles are relaxed against it.

3) Using massage gun
This is my favorite one and I use it almost daily.

With the machine, you can adjust the power level so it’s nice for you to target more different areas like the calves, while you can also massage it hard on the bigger muscles like shoulder or thigh.

Do note that a massage gun has weight. So it’s better to consider that before getting one if you wish to buy it.

So when to implement?
Whenever you feel like. Better to do it in your free times so you don’t rush the process.

For how long:
– minutes to half an hour or longer

Tips for during it:
• If self-massaging: While letting your body sinking against the massage tool, other body parts (if not necessary) should remain relaxed to save energy.

^ Sometimes you need to actively move the designated area to massage it.

^ Please allow a certain amount of time for your body to do “the healing” (When the body is sinking against), meanwhile you can relax and feel the nothingness within you. And once you’ve done one side, remember to balance it up to do another side with the same time and same position.

^ So be patient is important. The time is not wasting when you’re healing yourself. And dare to enjoy the process, it’s even better if you get obsessed with it.

• If massaging by others: Relax and enjoy.

The goal?
– to ease tightened areas and make them be flexible, more connectable.

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A little off-topic but since we get on the “relaxation response”:
We should always be able to recognise the relaxation mode and get back to it. Meaning that some of us might get stressed even just being in the public. Therefore, knowing and feeling the relaxation mode helps one to get back to that relaxing state whenever is needed. The big principles of Yoga, meditation and else methods are ways to help one to enter to this state ultimately and be more healthful.

It’s good not always to be on a high alert state as our body needs internal energy to digest and regulate. But knowing when to switch back to fight-or-flight mode is also important. Happy living :)

Alleviate • Shaking – SRS

We have many things to do every day and to some of us they’ll constantly feel a sense of uncomfortable feeling coming from their body, but they just can’t describe it well. It’s the stiffness that constrains the person and it grows the impact gradually to affect his/her mood, health, and even their decision making.

The stiff areas of a body become less responsive when the routine develops into the usual routes. For example, there is a chef and certain positions he has to pose from the moment he punches in till his work is finished, like hours of standing to cook or arms have got to be to the front for placing dish or handling stocks. For the most part, these positions repeat daily will soon form this person the way he walks, sits, and other simple movements.

But don’t underestimate the changing in little details though. If we just pay attention to how people walk, we’ll be surprised that everybody walks differently. The walking movements are shaped by their daily basis doing, and they directly affect the body developing structures, from joint bones to muscles. The time will reveal and enlarge the changes.

Back to the chef scenario, he might think, as long as the body is capable of dealing with his work demands, things are fine right? For health?.. He thinks he can postpone a bit.

Constantly he feels his body somewhat heavy and even rigid, but going back home, the chef is tired and how can we expect him to do more energy-spending workloads, knowing that he has to work early in the morning again?

The worst thing about this is that the chef might be free of his mind, meaning that he has many things wanted to do inside his head, but the body simply can’t adapt. The spirit is weary due to the prolonged physical, physiological, and mental issues.

To get out of this loop and realise which parts of the body require his attention to work on, he needs to shake them up constantly to be able to reconnect his body better. With the commitment to getting better health, he’ll soon be able to fix his health. And more importantly, he can re-concentrate his energy so his spirit will come back stronger than ever was.

Shaking takes tiny bits of energy but it feels good to shake up our body. The more we shake, the sooner our body will tell us which parts we need to relieve, while loosening up the stiffening parts.

Here is an example of shaking with the lower part of the body.

It’s a self-explanatory method. you shake your body.

You can divide parts to shake. For example: a torso, an arm, both arms, or the lower body, one leg, it’s entirely up to you.

Now, let’s come back to the power level chart again.
Although the above-given example is going for about 6 power level for an apparent demonstration, normally you can go for 1~3 (light shake), it’ll still help you to feel and reconnect. But do increase if you feel like it’s not doing anything.

So when to implement?
Whenever a part of the body tightens for a long time, which is needed to loosen up, for better agile, you should shake.

For how long?
– It can be seconds to minute(s).
^ I do it with minutes sometimes as I apply it to be a part of my dancing training with the rhythm. ;)

Tip(s) for during it:
– Notice that the trick about shaking is that you have to be in a relaxed state. Therefore, it’s a great way to test if you’re relaxed or tense at that moment in time.

– Think of shaking your back muscles. Use the back muscles as the starting power point to locate, shake it, and then move along within the designated areas you wish to shake. For example: You start from the back of your chest, and then you suddenly feel around the back of the hips needs some work, so you move the power to shake the hips.

The goal:
– To make it loosen, so it’s easy to reconnect with your body for later stretching, or “regular moving”.

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Photos by Karim Manjra, Lily Banse from Unsplash

Alleviate • Rubbing – SRS

If beating is a stern father, then rubbing is the loving mother who gives us a soft hug and kiss before leaving our room. They both love us but in a different way.

To describe it in this way because as the name suggested, rubbing is the movement we do on our body, especially in those more sensitive areas, like wrists, elbows, knees, ankles, etc.

We cannot forget our joints. They connect our bones so we can leap the stairs, pass the ball. Although they’re tough, they still require our attention and love. Indeed, these joints areas play an important part on our mobility, now and more crucial in the future when we age.

*The difference between Massaging and Rubbing, for me, is that rubbing is a more gentle, less power approach, although they overlap a lot.

But sometimes rubbing isn’t enough for a larger part, so we need to knead.

**Unlike Rubbing concentrates on a smaller part, like the first two pictures have shown, kneading, is a good way to target a larger area, like a whole forearm for instance. That’s their difference in my opinion.

We don’t want that sudden-hidden-sharp-painful feeling emerges every now and then when we age, just because right now we don’t pay attention to them.

All we need to do is to rub/knead around the designated area, to feel what’s happening in there.

Have you ever wonder why some people look so young?
Rubbing is one of their secret weapons! They rub around their eyes, their head, in front of the mirror consistently, for example.

Besides rubbing and kneading though, we should touch ourselves more often. Letting our hands wandering on our skin, so we can discover more about our body ( Best to do it during shower time!), finding out where the pains are. This way, we can be well-connected with the body.

So how much power?
Soft. But you can gradually increase the power as you feel more comfortable. Let’s take a look at the power chart:

Normally, 1~4 is good enough. For the later numbers, 5~7 depends on how much your body can take and if it’s effective for yourself. Normally we’ll use tools like yoga foam roller to reach higher power so we don’t waste our energy. (For example, we lay down with the roller under us so it’ll do the job itself, with the appropriate power we use against to. This’ll be discussed in Massage article.)

When to implement?
Better in the morning or before bed. But whenever you feel the sudden urge, do it.

For how long?
1 ~ 10 mins. ( on single or multiple areas)

Tips for during it:
– Use breathing when you do deeper parts of sensitive areas. A calmer state is needed to feel better and tickle the fear in the process.

– And give a few seconds to pause after you’ve done, so your body can recoil back from “the efforts you just put in”.

– Make sure that’s the real target area. Sometimes they might be deceptive, so keep looking for the origin of the hidden pain. Then rub them.

– These methods can be accompanied by a towel, oil or other materials as long as you think is needed.

The goal? 
– To rub it till it gradually subsides the painful feeling.

– To simulate/revitalise the area to a point where it can respond to you by you feeling them. Like you sit down and want to feel about your knees, without touching it. How does it feel? That’s what I mean by feeling them. So you can constantly engage with your body.

A quick re-cap on the methods of this article:
There are rubbing, kneading and touching we’re looking at.

Before you leave…:
** Obviously if the pain level is different, which is “pain pain” rather than “nice, healing pain”, like real pain, please stop it. Any doubt, consult your doctor before taken any action. Happy rubbing :D