Somewhere around the age of 93, my father-in-law George, a robust Greek man, said the above words to me. He managed to continue living in his own two-story house (bedroom and bathroom upstairs, laundry in basement, living space in between) until most of his 97th year with only a few months seeking care after a fall. He’s been one of my mentors in several ways, including his ability to make conversation. But it’s the movement that has me interested. He really helped me see the benefit of continuing to move without pushing; to listen to the body and what it wants or doesn’t want. Eventually the movement battery of the body may just wind down and that rust on the battery is the pain that forces you to move less. Call it arthritis; call it tension, pain—to me, it’s the slowdown of energy caused by lack of movement.
Well, I’m 74 but I’ve been old since I was 37 and survived that plane wreck and have spent the years rehabilitating…so half of my life has been living in some degree of pain…and most of the time I’m reasonably good about staying on top of joy, energy and flexibility with healthy diet, exercise, energy expended and socialization. I’m falling down on those habits, picking up weight, and about two months ago did something that triggered an old ‘You’re got your left wrist stuck under a tree branch that you were trimming 20 feet in the air’ situation. It took some severe work to get that left arm and shoulder and wrist and elbow to decide they wanted to work again back in the day, and things have been great in that particular space until two months ago.
Was it little by little letting go of exercises, or did I let go of the exercises because the pain had gotten too great? Yes. And I have more sympathy for patrons from the past who have told me that once they were injured and couldn’t move, immediately they began gaining weight and it was the beginning of their lack of health. Believe me, I get it. I always got it, but now it’s come back to bite me in the shouders.
Two months ago, in addition to some stressful travels I was trying to swim what for me was quite a distance, in achievement mode instead of for the joy of moving. Wrong. I was sitting a lot and reading books or visiting my phone with terrible posture. Wrong. We took on several projects in our apartment involving sanding, priming and painting metal rails, lifting heavy pots of plants, keeping our street clean, dealing with sets of company…all, again, in achievement mode too much of the time. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I/we know better, and we both did it to ourselves. Aging gracefully includes staying moving, connected, etc. I aged poorly and quickly. My bad.
My biggest pain is a pain in the neck, physically and emotionally. I’ve had several severe traumas to that neck, including the tree incident, but a car wreck at age three when Grandpa rolled the car, and a great deal of fear around trying to learn to float and feeling fragile when my coach ‘let go’ and I thought I’d drown. So, I’m in a rehab phase to get both arms and shoulders to feel happy again. Most days between 20—45 minutes of stretching will give me a reasonable day; mornings are the worst. Each day I wake with pretty severe pain in both shoulders and an inability to lift them over my head.
I have sought medical help; scheduling with a physical therapist, a chiropractor, and a new primary care doc. But I continue to believe I’m going to be able to get these shoulders to decide to work with and for me again, with those helpers. If you’re realizing you have settled in to a more slow-moving lifestyle, I’d invite you to dig a bit, without overdoing and over achieving. Explore, but go inside, stretch it, move it, and breathe it.
These words are mostly for me, but I hope they will give others something to think about and perhaps act upon…good health to us all.