Learning to Take Care of Myself!

If you heard a huge sigh of relief yesterday that would have been me. I went for a massage -- one hour, just my legs! It wasn't one of the wimpy massages either. Oh, no, this was a "let's get rid of the decades-old knots" massage, with just the right amount of pressure. Okay, maybe decades-old is an exaggeration, but let's say at least around a year or two.

Not wearing the proper shoes for my flat feet seems to have just turned all my leg muscles into one solid mass and mess up my knees. Seven physio sessions later, plus one fully body massage and then the 1-hour leg massage, I'm finally, finally feeling better. It's amazing how you don't realize how much you're hurting till the pain goes away!

In two weeks, I go for 1 hour back massage -- years of hunching over a computer, bad posture (I just love to slouch in my computer chair!) have taken its toll, and I'm realizing my upper back is in constant pain/discomfort.

I feel like I'm finally getting my body back into a normal, relatively pain-free zone, and I'm determined to keep it that way. This can only give me a leg up on any exercise I do. (Get it? Leg up, exercise?? Warning: bad pun zone!) Stretching is going to become a bigger part of my routine. And I've decided: I'm going for monthly massages, even if I have to put it on my credit card. I just can't let my body get back to the way it was! I feel so much looser, lighter and ready to take on the world!

I've already been doing quad and ITB stretches because of my physiotherapy sessions, but yesterday I started adding in these back stretches geared towards those who sit in front of a computer all day. There's a part of me that envisions myself getting up from a good night's sleep and immediately going into some form of stretching routine that I've created myself. I don't know, a part of me thinks, "Yeah, right, like that's going to happen!" But I'd like to try...

Gotta learn to take care of myself and listen to whatever signals my body is giving me. Why do these lessons take years to sink in sometimes? LOL!

So, as you're reading this, take a moment and just listen to your body. What has it been telling you lately?