Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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Hunching against the cold
With the onset of winter weather like this morning's severe frost and even the possibility of snow, it is easy for us to hunch up against the cold. We tighten up our shoulders and stiffen generally to protect us but actually this works against us as the tension we create restricts the blood supply to our hands so we feel even colder.
There are many causes of extremely cold hands....apart from the weather as I wrote about some time ago in 'Warm up cold hands'. I mentioned Raynaud's Syndrome which is a condition where some people's blood vessels go into spasm and contract in response to feeling cold, but do so to such a degree that they constrict the flow of blood to the extremities of the body, such as hands or feet. This can be very painful, resulting in white finger or wax finger. But this may not be the cause for many of us who just create unnecessary tension and constriction of blood vessels by postural habits.
When the weather is cold and although we may instinctively tense up against it, try to keep your neck free and your shoulders relaxed and wide. Putting our hands into our pockets may help keep them warm but this can tend to cause tension in the shoulders so beware. Use the Alexander Technique if you are familiar with the principles and you can 'send' your head upwards to lengthen and widen across your back and shoulders; think 'open' in front. If you're wearing gloves, let your arms swing and indeed, swing them around. Naturally we don't want to look like a windmill, but get your arms and shoulders moving to increase blood circulation. When we shiver, this is nature's way of speeding up blood circulation by putting our muscles into fast mini-spasms, so to shiver is 'good', but naturally we don't want to get so cold if we can help it.
You might like to try the exercise that Jashca Heifetz recommended to his violin pupils to warm their hands up before playing and you'll find it on the same blog entry I mentioned earlier.
