Stress Induced Inflexibility

So, as you all noticed in class on Tuesday, I am incredibly inflexible.  One reason for this is obvious, I don’t stretch enough, but there’s another issue contributing to it.

When I was younger I’d get random illnesses out of no where, and almost all of them were things you’re not supposed to get until you reach your sixties (like shingles for example).  The doctor’s response was always the same, “It must be stress induced.”

One night while driving home after hearing this very phrase my mom said, “You’re just like your dad.”  She continued on to explain that she could never tell when something was going wrong at work or at home because my dad was capable of acting, and in fact felt, completely normal.  The only way she could ever tell he was stressed was when he got nosebleeds.  

I don’t feel stress.  I don’t get overwhelmed, I don’t get emotionally agitated, and I can easily run myself into the ground because it takes much longer to realize I’m mentally exhausted.  This attribute within itself is a blessing because it allows me handle many situations that would otherwise have a negative effect on my schoolwork or relationships.  However, it comes with a cost. 

My dad went to a physical therapist last year because the pain in his back was so severe, he was convinced he had hurt it.  It turns out all that stress has to go somewhere, and for him, it’s in his back.  The therapist was baffled at the amount and size of the knots in his back, and removing them was so painful for my dad that he never went back because he knew they would just come back again anyway. 

More than anything else so far, this class has showed me that I’m headed in the same direction.  Because these stretches have made me pay attention to my body, I often catch myself clenching different muscles during class to the point where they shake like a rusty gear when I try to loosen them. 

My hope is that I can make yoga a habit that continues on even after this class is over, both so I have a way of keeping my physical body healthy and loose and to have a better outlet for the my stress.