Why pay someone else to do your housework? When in fact it is a method for you to practice Yoga; or for completing purposeful exercises in a manner that is useful to your body and provides you with a clean home!
Your excuse may like mine use to be - I don't have the time for the cleaning! Or just thinking of getting down on you hands and knees to scrub the bathtub is not all that appealing!
There are many things in life that we all hate doing, but they have to be done. You are not alone! Hated tasks will never change!
What you need to do is take a more constructive approach and think of using your body to do the tasks that will help your body to learn to move, stretch and balance at the same time.
If you suffer chronic pain in any of your skeletal joints being used, then it is important to respect your pain and only move as far as your tolerance of the pain will allow. It is important that you keep your muscles and joints active with purposeful daily activity, but it not to be suffering in severe pain.
Sometimes it is worth putting an ice pack or a heating pad on any painful area, before performing any household cleaning, so that any pain is easier to handle.
This is how Physiotherapists treat patients, usually offering ice or heat before any exercises. In this way the joint relaxes using heat, or is numbed with the ice, so that movement becomes easier.
However, my advice does replace Physiotherapy, as they have knowledge that you do not have about your painful area. This is more for readers who have minor bruises or strains, or maybe chronic pain from arthritis; where pain is a constant battle to continue functional mobility.
Pain is a warning sign that something is wrong, so it is always worth working within the pain threshold until your body informs you that it is safe to move that joint a little more.
Housecleaning is a repetitive productive activity that can be therapeutic, because it can be graded in terms of making it tougher of easier; such as using one or both hands to do the tasks.
Lowering you arms to wipe or dust a table means you have gravity assisting the movements, but the minute you move farther out and elevated; you will be working against gravity, so that your arm muscles are now being used, plus the joint range is being stretched more than usual.
All these activities can be graduated as you gain more movement in the therapeutic process of the activity. Using the heat or steam from hot water in the bathroom will make the movements easier, so you could clean out your bath or shower after you have taken a shower and make use of the penetrating heat to your joints.
There are no magic movements in cleaning. They are simple relaxed movements that come through repetition, balance and stability. Your body has to understand where the foundation of your balance is positioned, which is in you pelvic girdle. From there, you will be able to move your body safely in a purposeful manner while your core is balanced.
The author Gail McGonigal is a qualified Occupational Therapist, who now owns a website called Active Living Solutions Ltd. http://www.activelivingsolutions.net/ - Gail has experience of chronic pain through osteoarthritis in both hands, plus sciatic pain in her spine due to a leg length discrepancy. Gail has also learn to deal with balance problems from a brain insult called viral encephalitis. She uses yoga moves through the productive activity of housecleaning to improve her balance and stretch her so that her balance is maintained. Gail also rides her bicycle that has overcomes sciatica in her spine. Gail now leads an active and participatory life and wants to show you how you can reduce back pain through ergonomic sitting and hand pain through drinking and has overcome all of her own functional problems herself, in order to live a normal and healthy quality of alkaline water. http://www.activelivingsolutions.net/healing-water
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