Stretching as a form of meditation
When my anxiety is high, I take deep breaths and reach for the sky.
On my one year anniversary at work, I finally scheduled a visit to the doctor. This routine check-up revealed three unsettling things:
- I gained 20 pounds in the past year.
- I have symptoms of anxiety.
- I was about to live with these untreated.
I’m of the belief that I don’t really need to do any self-improvement if I don’t feel sick. To be honest, I only scheduled the routine check-up because I felt like I wasn’t making full use of my employee benefits.
I didn’t think that I needed to do anything. I was just living life as usual. Nothing was wrong with that.
Finding out I have symptoms of anxiety worried me, but the results were essentially a confirmation of what I had started to guess about myself. What really terrified me was the realization that I was 20 pounds heavier. The heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and I really didn’t know.
My mind started spiraling down to the worst-case scenario: finding out this was happening to me when something really awful happens because my body couldn’t take it anymore.
Fortunately for me, my employee benefits included a membership to an app-based health coaching program.
I met with my coach the very next week and we established a goal to get down to a healthy body fat percentage by the end of the 6-month program. This meant working out consistently and being more mindful about the food I ate.
It’s been 3 and a half months since then. I found a morning exercise routine that fit me, and I’ve made great progress towards my fitness goals.
But not everyday goes according to plan: sometimes I’d wake up feeling like exercise was cruel and unusual punishment. On days like these, I used to turn off my alarm and burrow back into my sheets.
Over time, and especially when I started feeling the results of working out, I became a lot more consistent. When a bad day starts, instead of turning around and hitting snooze for 30 more minutes, I lie down and convince myself to at least stretch.
The first time I convinced myself that, I felt myself open a new chapter in my fitness journey.
I still changed into my sports bra and leggings as if I were doing my strength training routine. I rolled out my yoga mat and warmed up with a 30-second plank followed by 30 seconds of mountain climbers, and a 45-second plank.
Then, I slowly stood up — “one spine at a time” and “tall and proud”, as my trainers have told me before. I took three deep breaths, reaching for the sky every time I inhaled and lowering my hands slowly as I exhaled.
I thought back to previous cool-down workouts and picked out the bits that I liked. I sat down on the floor, legs stretched out in front of me, feet together, and slowly reached forward to my toes.
Every time I exhaled, I tried to reach even farther, closer down to my ankles.
That’s when the magic happened.
I became conscious of what muscles I was using, where I felt the stretch and where I wanted to go next. I followed up the toe-touches with a butterfly stretch.
Again, I breathed deeply and reached further and further in front of me with each exhale.
The more I stretched, the calmer and more at peace I felt with my body, with where I was in the world, and with the day ahead.
To be honest, I didn’t stretch for more than 10 minutes, but it felt like it was longer, like time stretched, too (forgive the pun). It felt like I finally found time to treat my body the way I should have from the beginning.
I felt like myself again.
I know that stretching is just the easier version of yoga, and that there are a lot of studies proving the benefits of meditation, but I’ve tried both of these before with little success.
When I went to yoga classes, I couldn’t stop fixating on my shaky form and inflexibility. Even with the kindness I felt from the instructor and my fellow classmates, I couldn’t bear the self-consciousness I felt in that room. I quit after a few sessions.
When I tried to meditate, I ended up watching a highlight reel of all my past regrets and fears for the future. What should have been a relaxing time ended up making my brain speed up to 100 miles per hour.
But when I stretched, I felt good. I didn’t feel insecure about my body because I was more focused on cooling down and lowering my heart rate post-run. And how could I feel bad, when the stretch I felt on my calves was just too damn good?
I’ve since discovered my version of mindfulness and calm whenever I identify where the stretch is.
I may not be able to slow my brain down, but I can at least slow my breath. I can hit pause on my thoughts and just focus on reaching just a little bit farther, going down a little further, until my fingertips touch my toes.
Thanks for reading! I hope you find some time in your day today to pause and stretch, too.
If you’d like to learn about my morning routine and how I wake up early, click here.
