Learn what the author discovered when she started incorporating primal movement exercises into her regular routine.
We have a pull-up bar attached to the frame of our doorway.
Experts in This Article
From there, I hang.
My feet are off the floor.
Sometimes I swing my legs back and forth.
Usually, I remain vertical.
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Always, I focus on maintaining a natural breath.
When I first began hanging about six months ago, 90 seconds would have felt like a marathon.
Dead hanging can help build shoulder strength and mobility.
It can improvegrip strengthand posture.
And it is one of the basic, primal movements that is often missing from contemporary life.
This was about three years ago, shortly after giving birth the second time.
Have you been crawling much with Charlie?
she asked, referring to my not-yet-walking son.
Its Amazing How Its All Connected.
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She listed other primal movements I should incorporate into my routine, like hanging.
My mom had suffered from pain herself.
In search of relief, she discovered the world ofprimal movementand has incorporated these exercises into her daily routine.
Think Paleonot in the kitchen, but in the way you move through each day.
Children still move like our ancestors, and can be excellent inspiration.
Primal movements have shaped human anatomy.
Only recently have many of them fallen away.
If we look at children a couple generations back, everyone was climbing trees and swinging and playing.
Thats what play was.
That was the movement that occurred naturally.
But today, many of us live in less natural environments.
Like me, for instance.
Though I follow a regular exercise routine, the majority of my day happens in front of a computer.
This shift away from the natural world has impacted the range of movement I practice each day.
Crawling doesnt have to look like the way a baby moves across the floor.
This could include gardening, inspecting a house, cleaning the baseboards.
And my afternoon hanging practice has helped with my back pain, too.
Yes, right now, I am free of pain entirely.
And it makes sense: Hanging contributes to spinal care.
One body part people often do not think about are the latissimus dorsi.
These are big muscles of the upper back, says Bowman.
They attach between the upper arm bones, and go all the way down to your lower back.
And hanging strengthens them from top to bottom.
Start with a vertical bar, like a subway pole.
Hold it and let your body fall away.
This introduces traction along your arms but without much physical load.
Once these activities feel good, you could move to a full-on dead hang.
One of the first difficulties I encountered with hanging was how much it hurt the skin of my hands.
Bowman affirms my experience: The weakest part of your body is your skin.
But just like our muscles, skin tissue will adapt to our activitiesin this case through callous formation.
Hang more frequently, but for shorter periods of time to allow that skin to adapt.
Living without back pain is clearly nice.
They make me feel strong and youthful.
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