What steps are you taking?
Creating lasting change can be challenging. Often, we have a beautiful picture of what we want each day, our future, or life to look like and lack the path or steps needed to make it happen.
In his book, Tiny Habits, B.J. Fogg writes, "Tiny is mighty. At least when it comes to change."
When it comes to how you live and move in your body, the concept of tiny habits can be, as B.J. Fogg writes, tiny is mighty.
Habits seem so hard to change, yet if we marry the change with another task we do regularly, it helps remove the complication of remembering to do it.
Here is an example:
If I have a client who struggles with low back discomfort, especially when she sits and her job requires her to sit for 2-4 hours at a time, I will recommend each time she sits to go through a simple routine to sit optimally.
After she sits and before she starts working, she will be sure to pull her SITS bones out and back to ensure she supports her spine on the broadest part of her pelvis. She will take five three-dimensional breaths to help with proper core activation in the seated position.
I will encourage her to do this each time she sits, not just while working.
This plan is marrying something she does anyway, sitting, with something she needs to change her habit of poor posture, which causes her discomfort and makes working more challenging as she loses focus with the pain.
Another example would be:
I have a client who struggles with tightness in the front of his hip. He feels it when he sits for long periods and pinching in his hip when he sits in certain positions. He knows he squeezes his glutes most of the time (which can contribute to his tightness).
My recommendation to him is when he finds himself standing, while brushing his teeth, waiting for his coffee order, at a stoplight to check and see if he is squeezing his glutes and, if so, let them relax.
Along with using the correct exercises to create optimal health for your joints, you may need to change seemingly mundane daily habits that you may not even know you do.
Marrying tiny things with regular activities can eliminate the complication of habit change.
If you have a picture of how you would like your body to feel and move and are wondering if there are tiny habits you could be incorporating along the journey, the change you are seeking, reach out. We can help identify the best ways to add tiny habits to your day.
