Wednesday, Day 13 - today I think I invented a new genre of exercise - Pyjam-o-lates?? Tent-o-lates?? I don’t know what it’s called but it’s basically wake up, have breakfast, find 5 minutes and even though you’ve still got your PJ’s on you carve out some time doing some beautiful movements that get you started in the right way… in your tent. Awesome!
I always find that sleeping on an airbed or camp mattress makes my back go all creaky and tight, I blame it on our mattress at home being so perfectly perfect that anything else gives me problems. I find I wake up with a tight back particularly if I lie on my side that night. My sister reminded me recently of how much better it is to lie on your back rather than on your side so that you don’t wreck your shoulder joints, she linked this article here. Weirdly when I was pregnant I started to need to lie only on my back - a time when it’s normally contraindicated to side lie - when my hips started hurting too much to have the pressure of the side lying position. By the time I got to 9 months I was reclining on a mass of pillows in various supportive positions with my poor husband shoved off to the side of the bed - our bed looked ridiculous! However since then I’ve always been much happier sleeping on my back and my shoulders have been much happier for it - how do you lie and do you think it serves your body well? 8 hours is a long time!
Today I managed a pilates session but nothing else and decided I would aim for both the strength and circuit sessions tomorrow when we would be spending the whole day at the campsite so I’d have more time to spare. Pilates today (week 6) emphasised exercises that have a twist or spiral to them which I find is a major strength of the Garuda style of pilates that I teach in comparison to the classical style. Spirals are completely essential to our movement patterning and almost all truly functional movements are spiral based - if you think of turning to talk to someone, carrying one sided, picking something or someone up, it’s very rare we do it completely straight on with no one side or the other working harder or leading. A spiral in the body starts from the outside of one foot and works through the joints of the knees and hips transferring across to the other side of the body and up through the shoulder ending at the opposite side of the head from where it started in the foot. The beautiful Garuda flow I did this morning combines a few standing and then kneeling and then seated movements which find twists and spirals in the body giving space between joints and encouraging us to move with ease. I felt so much better afterwards and really appreciated the more open breath and easier spine movements.
