Larry's blog
Stabilizing Your Shoulders for Better Desk Posture
Sorry for not posting much lately. I've been really busy in my massage practice and working on another publishing venture.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to stabilize shoulders so that they can best serve you at your desk.
The rolled-forward posture that typically accompanies desk work leads to pain between the shoulder blades, sore necks, headaches, and other afflictions. Tucking your shoulders back and getting them to lie down on your torso is a first step to undoing this pattern and relieving your pain.
Forward-shoulder posture rotates the scapula forward and pulls the whole shoulder girdle up over the front of your torso. This stresses the muscles on your back, especially the muscles between and below the shoulder blades (primarily the rhomboids and the middle and lower parts of the trapezius).
"The Case for Working With Your Hands"
One way to deal with the vagaries of office work is to not deal with the vagaries of office work.
In The Case for Working With Your Hands, Matthew Crawford contrasts his work as a motorcycle mechanic with inane desk work. More generally, he talks about the differences between "real" work (like construction trades) and the "knowledge work" that anchors so many of us to our desks.
After a long section on the challenges and rewards of being an independent trades worker, Crawford offers this look at one of the hallmark office rat roles, the middle manager:
Office Rats Need Shiny Eyes, Too
Empowerment lessons from the factory floor
When Brian Utting held a ceremony to mark the closing of his massage school (my alma mater), among the many speakers was Hank Queen. I didn't know anything about Hank at the time, but I was very taken with a story he told about "shiny eyes."
The story went something like this. Hank was the director of a large manufacturing group at Boeing, which was struggling in the aftermath of 9/11. Orders were down as the airline industry reeled. Employee morale and productivity at Boeing were low and getting worse. Hank and his management team decide to bring in a high-powered business consultant from Japan to help address the issue. Boeing flew the consultant over at great expense, and Hank and his team immediately took him to the factory floor. After only a few minutes, the consultant turned to Hank and said, "I can't help these people. They don't have shiny eyes."
Seattle Shoulder Injury Epidemic?
What is going on with Seattle's shoulders? I received two calls this morning from patients with recent shoulder injuries, and I have treated at least four other people for similar conditions in the past week.
It's not unusual to have people lined up outside my office with shoulder pain around the holidays. Plane, train, and automobile travel takes its toll on shoulders and necks, and hide-a-beds and cots rough up holiday travelers even more. But I've never before seen a spate of shoulder problems like this in February.
I truly hope that you're not having any shoulder pain, but if you're in Seattle and your shoulder is bothering you, give me a shout. My clinical skills have been well honed by a couple hundred hours of orthopedic massage classes and hundreds of hours of clinical practice.
Vitamin D Deficiency? Heliotherapy to the Rescue
It's a sunny morning in Seattle, so I am sitting in front of a wide open window in nothing but running shorts, enjoying a nice blast of sunshine, appreciating its warmth and contemplating the natural Vitamin D that it's creating in my body.
Since I'm such a health nerd, I feel the need to label this, and luckily there's already a word for it - heliotherapy (helio means "sun").
This reminds me of a photo I saw years ago in National Geographic of residents of Moscow standing against a brick wall in sub-zero winter weather throwing open their heavy coats to reveal their shorts and swim suits underneath.
For you office rats in the Sunbelt, this may sound a little pathetic, but for the northern office rat, especially here in the Great Northwest (or, as my cousin calls it, the "Grey Northwet"), we have to grab our sunshine when we can.