Self care and caring for ourselves

It’s self care day this week so perhaps a good time to consider how well we are looking after ourselves. The school summer holidays are upon us and a lot of us will be taking the opportunity to take time off work and spend it with our families. Perhaps you’ll have time to see how well our bodies do at playing football with the kids, manage the surfboard that we haven’t been on for a year or cope with the daily trampolining!

Maybe you’ll think that back ache is a bit more bothersome after a year of working from home and now a bit of fun time is not so fun. Here are a couple of tests to see how well you move!!

Can you balance on 1 leg…. for 20 secs or more? If you can, can you do this with your eyes closed for 10 seconds?

Can you touch your toes or the floor? Yes you are allowed to bend your knees a bit

A slightly tougher one now… can you get up from the floor without using your hands?

These involve the interactions of the brain and the body and responding to changes as you move as well as general mobility of getting a leg here and an arm there. Obviously these aren’t the be all and end all but if they are a bit of a struggle then it might be worth practising them to see how quickly you can improve. Being Physiotherapists we have put a physical bias on self care but we know how interactive the body systems are so addressing one aspect can often help another system – the body helping the mind and vice versa.

We’ve got quite a few videos on our blog page for lots of different conditions, aches and pains if you want to have a go at helping yourself or call 656340 if you think you’d rather book in with one of our expert Physiotherapists for a thorough examination and treatment programme.

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