Monday, January 14, 2019

Hanging around - we are primates

Since I last blogged a lot has happened to my body, including a couple of surgeries and a car accident (whiplash).  After all of that I am grateful to be healthy and well.  I took these as "wake up calls" to better care for and heal my body.  It's meant (so far) transitioning to a keto lifestyle, which is HUGE if you have Mexican-Puerto Rican heritage, as we eat carbs as a way of life.  I am back in the gym lifting weights, and getting a lot of body work.

Since the car accident my neck, shoulder and wrists have been crunchy and tight, often painful, so I'm all about figuring out ways to address these issues without medication and using movement.

The body thinkers (I made that up just now) that I enjoy reading and listening to are Petra Fisher and Katy Bowman (great podcasts). 

Here's Petra's blog post on the value of hanging for our bodies; we are primates, after all.  So many amazing reasons to hang out from monkey bars or branches.  I've started to incorporate hanging when I do my walking in the park workout, since there are monkey bars.  Because she points out the value of starting where you are, I am hanging with my feet solidly on the ground. I know that my wrists cannot support anything harder right now. Can I say that it feels frigging awesome during and especially afterwards?  My arms, wrists and shoulders feel so good.  Like a yummy free Thai massage session. 

I just noticed that my blog photo is in a playground.  Well, it's kinda perfect.