Deep Stretches

I realize now that for much of my life, I have taken my mind and body for granted. I didn’t study them for myself in a deep experimental way but rather just assumed things about how they worked, or went with conventional wisdom. The last few years however, I have been focused on trying to understand and experiment with both my mind and body. I first experimented with meditation and found some very significant connections between my facial expressions and my mental state. Next I resumed my quest to understand the golf swing. While this is a work in progress, I believe this is revealing some very surprising details related to athletic performance. Again, the face turns out to be surprisingly significant, as well as the hands.

I’ve always had tension and a dull ache in the deep muscles of my back, neck and glutes and I could never quite figure out how to stretch them. Stretching the muscles directly proximate to those areas would only stretch the superficial layers and leave the deeper layers unaffected. Yesterday, I finally found a way to reach them and it turns out that the mechanism is quite counter-intuitive. The common theme here is that the hands and face are again significant!

To stretch the deep muscles in my upper back between my shoulder blades, I focused on stretching my fingers. The main relief came from drastically pulling back my fingers into a semi-circular shape (make sure each segment of the finger is arched back as well as the whole hand). You can also stretch them the other way by curling and pressuring them into a fist or spreading them wide to stretch the webbing between the fingers. You might try working on each finger individually as well as the hand as a whole. Pressure them against a surface or pull the fingers back directly with your other hand. To stretch the deep muscles in my glutes, I focused on stretching my toes in a similar manner as my fingers. Now, I have of course stretched in this manner before (and some massage therapists will do this for you), but I never made the connection between these stretches and the deep muscles in my back and thus have underestimated their importance.

To reach the deep muscles in my neck, I focused on stretching my tongue by sticking it out of my mouth as far as humanly possible and in every direction. When you find a good spot, hold it for a while. It’s an incredible feeling to stretch a muscle for the first time in your life after 52 years on this planet. But these were facial expressions and stretches I had never performed before and the relief was out of this world! (You will look crazy though so maybe do these in private).

Who would have guessed that the deepest muscles in our body were accessible through these extremities. I’m sure I’m rediscovering some form of facial yoga or stretching that is practiced by some number of people. But I consider this again something that is profoundly important and useful but easy to pass on by and underestimate.

I am also beginning to appreciate the importance of stretching in general. A few years ago, I suffered from debilitating pain from a herniated disc. After trying all sorts of treatments (acupuncture, physical therapy included), the thing that ended up working miraculously was to stretch my hamstrings. I recently was also introduced to the story of David Goggins and Joe Hippensteel. Apparently Joe’s stretching techniques were a life changing remedy for David and Joe believes stretching is fundamental to health. Obviously, the yoga folks have been way ahead of the curve on this concept. I’m definitely a convert now!