Last week, I went on my first long backpacking trip since starting the MoveU program. As I hiked, I was conscious about pulling my shoulders down and back. When I pulled those shoulders down and back, I could feel how my backpack fit differently – and better. My pack is designed with an arc that maintains space between the back of the pack and my back. With my old habit of forward set shoulders, I would often feel the pack right against my back, only feeling a breeze when I would stick my butt out. With down and back shoulders, the pack sat so far from my back that I could feel sweat dripping from my neck down to my butt. Not sliding down, dripping down!
I still feel like there’s a bit of a “blockage” on my left shoulder. It feels like that shoulder blade has been protracted so much and for so long that it doesn’t want to slide back into full retraction. I do think the backpacking with shoulders down and back improved its condition though. I think it’s important that I can feel it now, name the issue and figure it out.
The other big thing from the backpacking trip has been my right toes. Many years ago, early in my backpacking career, I purchased a pair of backpacking boots under pressure from a salesperson, who insisted that they would fit me, I just needed to break them in. Well, what broke was not the boot. Instead, while squatting down to collect water from a stream, I felt a pop in my right toes. After that pop, I had loss of sensation in my three middle right toes, and a near constant pins and needles if I touched those toes. I got used to it, but since I’ve been doing barefoot shoes, I started to feel changes happening in that part of my foot.
For a while, I would be hiking or walking and feel an intense cold burning in those toes, and that sensation would come and go. But on this last trip, on the very first day, I started feeling that sensation, and I walked through it. I pushed through, because it seemed to me that the cold burning was like a limb waking up. If those nerves had been compressed for many years, then easing of that compression would surely feel just like that.
And as I continued to hike, the sensation faded, but I then felt some discomfort/sensation in my right ankle. It was as if the toes being “fixed” then made the accommodations that the ankle had made for the “broke” toes superfluous. I walked through that ankle pain and felt something in my knee. Then my left leg started having some of those sensations, first knee then ankle, which made sense in that if I altered the gait of my right foot, my left would have made some compensations as well.
It was as if I was unkinking an old fashioned telephone cord. The pain passed up the chain, from toes to ankle to knee, and then flowed to the other leg. On each day of the hike, I could feel these new patterns being ingrained in how I backpack. It’s been more than a week since those toes woke up again, and they show no signs of falling back asleep this time.
I started MoveU in November mainly because that’s when the Black Friday sale was, and I figured that was the only way I could afford it. But I also was glad to start it well before my backpacking season began, because backpacking is one hobby that I will not put on hold if I can help it (MoveU recommends stopping other activities so as not to continue to practice poor habits in your preferred activities).
Starting in November allowed me to get through all the level 1 programs by early May, and since then I’ve gotten through Back & Core 2 and started Shoulders & Arms 2.
By this point in my progress with the program, I can see how these small movements add up. I trust that continuing to work through the programs will continue to improve how I hold myself.
And I can’t believe more people I talk to don’t sign up. But this is the kind of program that you need to be ready for. Ready to make the commitment and ready to try something that may seem silly or remedial at first.
I’ve got a short backpack in early August, and then a longer one at the end of August, and I’m looking forward to being able to move more easily with my pack. That’s the big thing about this last trip. Not only did my back feel pretty darn happy through the whole trip, but despite being sore, tired, and dealing with a hot sun at times, it was a pure joy to move my body.
I want to be able to access that joy for as long as I can. There’s no better motivation for me to keep moving.