How Often Are You Stretching?

When I went in to the chiropractor this week for my chronic back pain, the first thing she asked, as I was face down on the table, was “How often are you stretching?” Oops. That seems to be one more thing that has been squeezed out of my life. Oh, I do an hour of yoga every couple of weeks, but obviously that is not keeping me anywhere near flexible.

Later in the week, I went to visit my massage therapist. The first thing he asked, as I was face down on the table waiting for his myofascial release massage to begin, was “How often are you stretching?” Oh, no… that same question again.

It seems that as we age, our connective muscle tissue shortens and if we do not stretch our muscles, we become stiff, sore and inflexible. As I’ve been researching, it seems that we need to be stretching every single day, not just a couple of times a month.

Yesterday as I was stretching to my yoga tape, I realized how stiff I was.  A few years ago I could do most of those routines without much trouble at all, but now they were "suddenly" hard to do.  Guess I need to figure out how to get "stretching" squeezed back into my life on a daily basis. Any ideas?