Birthday Monday!

Hello all! Today is my birthday! I am 39 and certain of very little! Lately I’ve been feeling just as lost as I recall being at 29 but thank goodness I have many more tools in my tool box for grounding a decade later. Here’s a quick little upper body mobility movement practice I did during my lunch break at my spa job.

I got helpful feedback from a subscriber that the self massage techniques with the towel were more accessible than past videos and thus much more helpful. Thank you again for your note, and I have in mind to do more towel exercises! I occasionally remember that while I want to provide more self massage techniques for my clients to make tending to oneself second nature, it’s actually not my go to self care method! After a day of providing massage to others, self massage as we typically think of it (well, as the phrase suggests, massaging oneself) is often not what I want to do. But, as I’m learning in my process of providing you all with ideas, there’s lots of ways we can access a sort of self massage without just manually doing petrissage with our (perhaps tired) fingers. That said, some of what I provide does feel and look more like stretching and strengthening … and today is one of those days again!

Also I am recommitting to consistency with these videos but making it more feasible, so my new goal is biweekly (twice a month!). October was busy with a cross country drive and more teaching shifts and now I’m looking for a place to live solo. If you’re in the bay and know of a cute lil pet friendly spot becoming available, lemme know!

Ok, here’s a couple muscles I mentioned in this video.

we’re aiming to strengthen the rhomboids with the arm raises → cactus arm motion. for most all of us, rhomboids are very commonly tight and weak. strengthening can actually help relieve tension!

platysma is being stretched when putting the top of the head on the wall behind you. this is the muscle that makes you go “EEK”. by which I mean, make this face 😬 and you’re flexing platysma. it’s nice to open up this large and lengthy superficial muscle because it can help make more room for deeper and smaller neck muscles that may be a source of more pesky head and neck tension.

and this one’s for the super anatomy nerds. most of the time, knowing about a muscle group is plenty for understanding our own movement practice. but for practitioners, it can help to review the super specifics, like WHICH extensor we’re talking about. sharing for my own review!

Ok and last thing to note is that I’m raffling off a couple of vases to raise money for food banks. I chose the Alameda County Community Food Bank and the Trans Income Project. Because I currently live in Alameda county and am always thinking about my queer and trans friends back home in New Orleans. Venmo me at meghanlizjo, one raffle ticket is $10, and add the note “food raffle” and your contact info. Or you can make a donation to those orgs directly and send me a screen shot of the receipt. $50 = 5 raffle tickets! Reshare this post for another entry.

Action is the antidote to despair. Small is all. These are reminders I tell myself when the overwhelm feels too great to do anything at all.

Good job tending to your body today.

Love,

Meghan