What Is Self-Care?
In my class, or in my personal conversation with a friend, I always ask what self-care means to them. Here are some of their answers:
Naps, meditation, yoga, deep breathing, a good massage, walks in nature, sleeping, exercise, prayer, good book, good music, a great conversation, journaling, friends. pets.
Here’s my personal definition of self-care: “Empowering myself to intuitively and authoritatively address my needs as they arise. Reducing my mental stress, physical pain, or emotional suffering in a self-compassionate and long-lasting way.”
Whether your background is yoga, Pilates, massage therapy, personal training, sports, coaching, or none of the above, you have likely found your way to one of them to improve your overall-wellbeing because you recognized the importance of adding a self-care practice the revitalized your whole body and keeps you healthy and happy. Eating food that nourishes your organs and energy, getting enough rest, and exercising correctly are not enough to keep your body in balance. Self-care practice must also include a sense of relaxation and that actually takes some skill.
Intentionally entering into states of relaxation is critical to help regulate your parasympathetic nervous system. It is well known that meditation induces a relaxation response and ushers in clearer thinking. decreases stress hormones, boosts immunity and improves emotional resiliency. Massage has similar effects, with the added benefit of improving circulation and perfusion among the internal and external surfaces of your tissues. When yourr tissues are clear of the cellular debris that accompanies aches and pains, your muscle’s function and “breathe” better on the inside. You have the power to care for your insides in the simplest and most direct way.
How the Roll Model Therapy Balls Help with Your Self-Care Regimen
No one can walk a mile in your shoes. You earn your keep in your body with your dedication to maintaining yourself. Your movements can pound you down or lift you up. Thankfully you come biologically equipped for self-healing. The Roll Model Therapy ball is your new self-healing tool, and you are here to impower yourself for renewal and recovery. Reduce stress and treat your emotional and physical well-being in a way that restores you, and reset your body’s best ability to function.
They Relieve Aches and Pains
Muscle aches and pains can often be attributed to overuse, underuse, or misuse of a particular area of the body.
Overuse- Using one muscle group more than another can develop from a habit like being right-handed or from compensating on one side of the body while avoiding the other. For example- when standing, most people tend to lean to one side, cocking out one hip more than the other. This lean may seem insignificant, but that side of the body bears more weight, those muscles get stronger, and shorter and tighter, and over time, continuing to lean on that hip can cause massive imbalances from one side of the body to the other.
Underuse: underused body parts are perpetually ignored by your movement habits, whether in your daily life or in your expression of fitness. They are often bypassed or overlooked due to an old injury, a lack of training, a lack of sensing, or a never be awarded of that these tissues are needed for proper mechanics. For example, the diaphragm is your primary breathing muscle, but very few people are instructed in how to breathe so that their breath mechanics serve them in every aspect of life. Excessive tension from underusing the diaphragm not only leads to breathing, and emotional stress, but also is an underlying cause of back pain, acid reflux, certain heart conditions and more.
Misuse: So many muscles are used inappropriately. Misuse occurs when you use a certain muscle for a task and it becomes hard-wired for those movement patterns. For example, the shoulders often “shoulder” a bigger burden than necessary. Many people trap their phones between their ear and shoulder while speaking. This misuse taxes the upper trapezius and levator scapulae muscles and throws the rest of the head, shoulder, and upper back into a fury of compensation.
They Increase Your Mobility and Energy Level
The Roll Model therapy balls motion into tissues that are tired, underworked, achy and depressed on the inside. These moping muscles need to be refreshed, mobilized and revitalized with the grippy pressure that the balls provide. The balls compress and elongate dormant and tired tissues and introduce circulation back into the most recalcitrant areas. After a few minutes of rolling, these loosened areas will feel like moving and encourage you to use more of your body in everyday action, eventually catapulting you into a more formal exercise regimen.
When your body hurts and is tight, you don’t want to move. Being stagnant makes you feel sluggish, and when you feel sluggish and in pain on a daily basis, it becomes a vicious cycle that continues to weaken the body as it perpetuates poor circulation, muscle and joint stiffness, and make you feeling lack of motivation in work, or doing more to improve your life.
Stress wreaks havoc on every system of the body. A chronically stressed body is stuck in the fight-or-flight responses. This is a body whose nervous system is on sympathetic overload. Long-term exposure to high levels of the stress hormone cortisol creates inflammation, impedes circulation, and reduces muscle function by stiffening muscles. Stress taxes your heart and breath, and can even affect your sight and hearing! Over time, it weakens your system and sets you up for potential disease and general misery.
They Help Reduce Stress
The Roll Model Balls induce the relaxation response and take your body into the rest/digest/recover mode of the parasympathetic nervous system. This response is the exact opposite of everything that happens when your body is stressed out.
The balls help flip the stress switch “off” by increasing circulation and stretching wherever they are rolled. The rolling and kneading action unglues persistent myofascial restriction by unwinding knots, sticky lumps, and adhesions. A muscle stays contracted because the nervous system is telling it to do so. Deliberate ball work coupled with a mindset of being willing to let go can alter your nervous tone. The pressure of the balls offers a micro-stretch to the tissues they touch. This recalibrates the muscle’s resting length by switching off nerves that were maintaining unnecessary tension in that muscle. And finally, this muscular relaxation helps your body breathe better, which further reduces nervousness and anxiety.
They Improve Your Posture and Performance
Many of your pain issues are connected to other challenges you face because your musculoskeletal system is inextricable from the other system of your body. You are one big integrated organism. When you begin to address one issue, quite often you will see improvement in others. Similarly, when you neglect one area of your body, you will begin to see breakdowns in other areas and in your overall health. Posture issues are often caused by poor habits such as slouching, leaning, or a lack of awareness of proper alignment. They can also be caused by an accident or surgery that has left scar tissue in the body. Scars almost always lead to compensatory patterns in the way a body moves.
Posture issues can also be a form of emotional expression. For example, if you are depressed or sad, your head often droops making it harder for your back and neck muscles to support its weight. Eventually your Fascias, muscles, ligaments and bones adapt to your personality, and you become physically limited by your emotionally induced posture!
Roll Model Balls will help dramatically improve your posture by loosening up muscles and connective tissues that have become locked and tight because of either habit or a structural issue. This helps restore balance to the tissues and makes you feel better about living in your body and facilitates better alignment for the activities you pursue. When you stand and move with grace and poise, you are better positioned to take on the challenges that life presents to you.
This article is credited to Jill Miller. The co-founder of Tune Up and the Roll Model Method