Motion is Lotion for your back

I have suffered from back problems for some years, since my daughter was in a stroller. She’s about to turn 21. It’s been way too long and quite frankly, I’m over it!

The last bout of pain sent me off to the physio and once again I asked her what I could do to try and prevent this happening, rather than playing catch up and fix me when it does. Her words have stuck with me – "motion is lotion".

The last six years particularly have greatly challenged my ability to move, mainly because so much of my time was taken up with work and study, both of which involve way too much time sitting on my rear end. It is not surprising therefore that said rear end (and the rest of me) simply became bigger, weightier. Now free of my study load, my heart was that this year, I could get me some of that motion lotion. I started to look at what I could do to move more.

I have detailed in a previous post my first steps towards this – pardon the pun - which was to get some movement to music happening in the privacy of my own home. This led me to Body Groove. 

The second step was to pursue the acquisition of a stand up desk.

Often when my back was at its most troublesome, the only comfortable position was standing, so a stand-up desk seemed a logical solution to so much sitting at work. In the past I had tried standing at my desk and chocking up my keyboard with boxes to see if it made a difference - but it wasn’t a permanent solution. Once we identified the best desk for me – one that involved a simple push button to change the height (with some of these types of desks you need to physically crank them up and the bending required seemed dodgy if my back was sore) – we went ahead and it’s been the best investment I could have made.

Part of my job role involves transcribing from recordings, and such a lot of typing at a time can be a struggle when sitting. But typing whilst standing? It’s a breeze! So many in my workplace now have desk-envy after seeing mine in action, most of them way younger in years than me. Hindsight is annoyingly 20/20 and I should have been more proactive about my back – but better late than ever I say!

Something else to encourage motion is a great little time management technique I came across in my final year at uni: the Pomodoro. The word Pomodoro is Italian for tomato, which inventor Frances Cirillo used as his visual cue for what he believed was a productive interval of time to work on a task before having a break – 25 minutes. 

Each Pomodoro - 25 minutes of work - would be followed by a short break of five minutes. When returning to the task, you’d set a timer for another Pomodoro – 25 minutes – and away you’d go. At the completion of every fourth Pomodoro, a longer break is taken, anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Cirillo’s concept came to be known by a tomato shaped kitchen-style timer, but of course in this day and age there are apps to achieve these things, and I utilised one on my laptop. There are many out there to choose from. Not only did my study time fly and my productivity increase, but the discipline involved in that five minute break was the key foil against sitting as I would use it to get up, stretch, walk and keep moving in any way I could. It was a huge help, and something I would certainly recommend. It’s as cheap as a kitchen timer or the myriad of free apps out there, and if it keeps you moving it has to be a good thing!

When I think about tomatoes and music, my memory goes back to seeing the Australian film Looking for Alibrandi. The main character, Josie Alibrandi is a teenager from an Italian background, trying to discover her true self. She is seen bucking against the family traditions depicted in the film, one of which is the coming together of the family to harvest and cook their tomato crops, a basis for so many of their wonderful Italian dishes. The film charts the revelations Josie uncovers, and when the family are once again assembled to enjoy the fruits of their labours at the film's conclusion, it is Josie, now comfortable within her own skin that brings them together to dance to Tintarella di Luna - a song that forever makes me think of tomatoes, celebration - and family.

And dance is motion, right?

Yours in motion,

Tracey 🕗

With thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the Pomodoro pic 🍅
and https://www.dailymotion.com/au for Looking for Alibrandi.