Get in touch with your body with check-ins: shoulders

If you’ve got pain, stiffness, or posture issues, your instinct is probably to DO something. Stretch it out, “correct” the position, shrug or wriggle.

Moving more is always a good strategy, but often fidgeting and exercising doesn’t do the trick on its own. You need reliable brain-to-body cues that eases tension and calms everything down.

This is where “check-ins” come in.

Often when we try to relax, we just shift the effort somewhere else. Or we tell ourselves to relax and… nothing happens. Most of us are unpractised at sending clear “untense” messages to our muscles, we end up DOing something instead – contracting somewhere else, rather than letting go.

Undoing vs doing is skill you can build, but it needs a sneaky approach to get past your habits…

Let’s start your first try of this skill – with the shoulders.

Even if its not your problem area you’ll get tense here sometimes.

Watch the video below – check-ins are not rocket surgery, but they are probably different to what you would normally do.  It’s this difference: ‘undoing’ vs ‘doing ‘ that means it works when all that other stuff you’ve tried hasn’t.

However, trying a check-in once is clearly going to make zero difference to anything. I want you to have had enough of a go to get a flavour of how this might work. I give some times and places to practice to get some reps in below.