How do You Twist?

Last month, I wrote about making excuses for myself and exchanging those excuses for small improvements. Today, as I was using the restroom, actually, I thought I would share my experience. No! It's not a TMI story (though, I honestly do love sharing and hearing about those stories, because that gets at the root of who a person truly is).

I have had severe thoracic spine pain for 21 years. It was sporadic for the first 9 years, and I didn't know why it was happening. It has been consistent for the past 12 years. I have worked with all sorts of professionals to get to the cause of this pain. Finally, this past summer, a student who was learning to become a physical therapist was able to palpate my spine, and felt that my vertibrea was shifted. She was able to show me that I was always twisting and working that right side of my body more, and it was pushing the bones in a painful way.

Since this summer, I have been mindful to keep a neutral alignment of my ribcage facing forward rather than constantly tilting and twisting to the right. The whole process is far more complicated than just that, but it's a good base-point to keep bringing my attention.

Now, I could just keep the excuse that my thoracic spine pain is caused by a shifting vertabrea, and I could let myself deteriorate around it, or I could find some small improvement to implement into my everyday life. Of course I chose the improvement over the deterioration.

I've started to notice how much time I spent twisting or leaning to the right, and I've been attempting to counter-balance that with strengthening the left side of myself. Here's where we get to the restroom part of my story. I realized that all of my home toilet paper holders are on the right side of me when I'm sitting. The tiniest little improvement that I've started implementing is twisting to the left to finish my restroom procedure.

See? Simple. Tiny. Not TMI.