Stretching

This week, I want to talk to you about stretching. As you may have noticed, I like to talk about how important stretching is to staying healthy. I stretch often due to having arthritis and fibromyalgia and have noticed a great improvement in my daily pain levels from the time I started stretching. When I was first diagnosed, I stopped stretching as often as I had before. When I realized I was getting worse, I began again and immediately noticed how much better I would feel throughout the day if I stretched for even ten minutes in the morning. Here are some of the stretches that I generally do.
1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and breathe deeply and evenly. Reach up towards the ceiling but don’t push yourself to go higher. Slowly bend over towards your feet so that your hands are hanging down. Take a deep breath and sigh. You will notice that your hands have now reached lower. Do this a couple of times until you feel like you cannot stretch any lower. Hold this for ten seconds, then slowly roll back up, as if you were building your spine up one vertebrae at a time until your head rests back where it should be.
2. Sit with your legs out in front of you together and reach towards your feet. If you cannot touch your toes, don’t worry. Keep reaching until you feel a stretch. Once you do, hold it for ten seconds and then crawl your hands back until you are sitting up again. Do this repeatedly. Over the time I spent stretching, I was able to get my hands from around my ankles until I could hook my wrists over the tops of my toes. It took me a couple of months, but it does work wonderfully.
3. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and breathe deeply and evenly. Pretend that there is a string attached to your head that is pulling you up. Bring your hands up and stretch as close to the sky as possible before pretending to grab a bar. Hold that for ten seconds and then slowly go back to your original stance
Stretching is one of the best tools that you can have to battle pain. Come into Wirth Chiropractic in Greenvile NC for an adjustment and see what other kinds of stretches may be able to help you.