Working through the stress of Spring

A (completely non-stress inducing) sign of spring

              We are having one more winter blast here in Western MA. I have been dreaming of nothing but spring for the past two weeks and it seems like it is the same for my clients.  But, where I am having lazy thoughts of planting a flower box and hiking without a mountain of layers on, my clients are worrying about seedlings and hoop houses that where destroyed in the snow.  Other folks feel the weight of the winter lift as the snow melts, most farmers (and a majority of my farmy type clients) are gearing up for the stress-fest that is the start of the season.

 I have been told about an array of ways that stress is affecting my clients bodies. From small things like tighter feeling shoulders to the more frightening like early morning dry heaves.  Stress has real effects on your physical wellbeing and it can take a tole on you.  The flight or fight response is built to adjust what is happening inside your body so you don't say, get mauled by a wildebeest.  Your adrenaline goes up, your muscles tense, your blood vessels constrict and you can run from the wildebeest. But, if the wildebeest is really the fact that you are 3 days behind on your planting schedule and the order of plastic to patch a whole in the hoop house hasn't come in and you are worried its going to rain...your body remains in this state that was only ment to be for short bursts.  And so we come to the topic of todays post, how to beat that stress and not let it take over your body. Lets walk through a few ways you can calm yourself down when you say, walk out the door and find a crisis. (If you are looking for more every day changes to make look to previous posts for stretches and exercises.)

You wake up and the sun is just barley lighting your path. The list of things you need to do is tremendous and how you are going to make it through yet another spring is beyond you. You come to the barn to find a crisis, something broken, frozen or dead. Your whole body stiffens and you are about to......

Ok, first off lets talk about breathing, I know we have been over this one in past posts but it bears repeating. When you take a deep breath, and I mean a deep breath where your belly expands and your ribs part, you are pulling your diaphragm down.  This action is amazing, not only because a good inhale can seem to take forever but, also because it tricks you into calming down weather you realize it our not.  Heres why, your diaphragm is a "smooth muscle" this means it is a muscle that contracts and stretches subconsciously.  Smooth muscle, like your heart and your intestines, will work without you telling them too and in fact if your tried to think them into stopping they wouldn't.  Though these muscles work on there own they still need some guidance from the nervous system as to what is going on in the world of you so, they have a direct link and will respond to weather you are in fight or flight or in rest and digest. Your diaphragm is linked up to your central nervous system in the same way but, you can controle it. So, when you take that deep breath you are essentially overriding a small part of your CN. Telling it to switch from "Oh crap, a wildebeest!" to "What a lovely nap I am taking" and thus you calm yourself down on a deep neurological level.

Now, you are calmed down and you dont feel like you are going to explode all over the flats waiting to be seeded. It's time to boost your endorphins and burn off the cortizol that bubbled up.  The best way to do this is through some physical exertion. You've heard of the "runners high"? Well what that is is when the flood of endorphins that are released by exercise reaches a critical mass and it makes you feel extra euphoric and...well...high.  You don't have to run a marathon to get a little bit of extra endorphins, just moving about whatever task is at hand with a quickness or dropping down to do a few push-ups will do the trick. Keep your breath even and deep and get your blood flowing and you'll burn off the stress hormone cortizol and release a few extra endorphins that will help to pick your mood up.

The mighty beast of stress

Ok, does that crisis look so dire now? It might but, at least you are in a place that you can deal with it. And that brings up to the last tip, organizing your thoughts and dealing with the problem at hand.  This may sound like the most fru-fru of the tips so far but, hear me out. You have brought your central nervous system out of panic and gotten the good hormones flowing now you need to re-set your brain.  In a study on how stress effets rats one of the things sited was short term memory loss due to cortizol, the effect seemed to last until the rats where distracted. Managing your thoughts is a tool used by many who suffer from severe anxiety attacks and can really help to get your brain to stop sending "WIDEBEEST!" messages. So, organize your mental space into things you can do right now, things you can do later today and things that are beyond your control and you need to let go(oh, say that snow that is stating to come down). This way you give your brain a distraction and a way to cope with the stress all in one. And hey, if the things you can do list is super long remember you did this last year and you can do it again. Even better! Because this year you will know how to work though the stress of Spring.

I hope this helps you as we move into the 2013 growing season. As always feel free to contact me with questions at info@theflexiblefarmer.com or leave a comment here. 'Til next time, happy spring!




 

Winter body care!

The winter body-care workshop at NOFA

Hello out there to all my frosty farmer friends! As I sit down to write this post I can not believe it is the 24th of the month already. Not just of any month but the first month of the new year no less.  Wasn't I just  at the NOFA summer conference? No? That was months ago you say. Well, it must be true because as I look out my window all I see is snow.

As a matter of fact I just returned from the NOFA winter conferince where I presented a workshop on keeping your body strong through the winter. It is a fun workshop that I have presented before and it is very based in what the participants want to know.  The workshop centers around what tasks you find the most challenging when you start the season and how you can maintain the strength and/or flexibility you gain after you have done this task all summer long. One thing that was surprising about this group was that even though their farming background, ages and body types where drastically different than the folks in the same workshop that I presented for CISA a few months earlier the body issues where the same.  So, todays post I want to talk about the two things both groups came up with; keeping up their core strength through the winter and keeping the flexibility of a forward bend in their low backs and legs.

 Core strength is a big one and I feel like, for my body, it is the first thing to go if I am not out working. And it seems that this is true for a lot of farmers, not only did both groups think of and discuss core strength many folks struggle with it all season long. But, what exactly is your "core"?  The core of your body are the muscles that wrap around your mid-section like a cumber-bun(remember those?!) such as the abdominal  obliques and the muscles of the deep low back.  Taking it one step further your core also consists of the muscles that are deep within the workings of your body like the diaphragm   There are over 15 muscles involved in this group and they all work together to do tasks like lifting.

There where a few exercises that both groups came up with to keep their core muscles strong the first was intentional breathing. By taking a deep breath in and allowing your lungs to fill and your belly to expand you are pulling your diaphragm down. Then as you breathe out you tighten the muscles of your abs back to your spine, starting with the ones under your belly button and moving up to the ones under your ribs. This is a great way to gently ingage your core muscles as well as calm your central nervous system. The second exercise was more active. Starting on your hands and knees bring your back into a neutral position(not arched or sunken) bring one arm up and point it straight out like super man. Lower that arm back to the floor and then bring the opposite leg out behind you and strech it stright back, parallel to the floor.  Repeat this on the other side and then if you are feeling stable and would like more of a challenge bring up and stretch out the opposite leg and arm at the same time. The Mayo Clinic has a great description of this exercise with photos here. Both of these exercises can help to keep the core engaged enough through the winter that come spring your mid-body isn't so atrophied your poor back has to do all the work.

The other body issue that both groups have is that the back of the legs tighten up dramatically over the winter. For this both groups came up with stretches, as aposed to strengthening exercises, and they came up with a LOT of them! I have narrowed it down to the two that overlapped and remember to only stretch a warm muscle.  The first of the two is a modified lunge stretch that can very in the depth of the lunge.   Stand about 3 feet away from a wall, put both hands on the wall at shoulder hight and width. Then step one leg out behind you and put your heel down on the ground. Lean in toward the wall and push away to give the calf a great stretch, hod it for 45 seconds and then repeat on the other side.  The second was a seated stretch that lengthens the hamstrings.  Sit on the floor with your feet flexed flat(you can put your feet on a wall to help with this). Slowly lean forward from your hips with your back straight until you feel the stretch  Make sure not to round your back, hold for 30 seconds and come up slow.  This stretch directly mimics a the forward bend that so many in the workshops said was the hardest thing for them when the season started back up.

Both of these activities are simple and straight to the point. It seamed that one other thing both groups had in common was that they needed stretches and strengthening exercises that where simple enough that they where not time consuming and effective enough that they could feel good about doing them. All four of the activities above are both effective and straight forward. By just spending a few minutes each minutes in the morning or evening on keeping your body strong and flexible over the winter will make a world of difference when the season starts back up. I hope this helps you keep your working body strong through the rest of this cold cold winter!

Hello out there! 

A flexible farmer at the 2012 NOFA summer conference 

As you may have noticed I have been MIA for most of the month of August.  I have been very busy in the other two realms of my business: presenting body care and injury prevention workshops and being a massage therapist at my office in Hadley Massachusetts.  The biggest engagement this month was the NOFA Summer Conference in Amherst. Hundreds of farmers come for 3 days of workshops, vendors and networking. I had a blast at the conference and as a result of my chair massage booth I have been seeing more and more clients at my office.

Though this has caused me to miss quite a few Saturdays of posts, it has also been a great month of connecting with farmers and other trades people who had great questions, suggestions and stories about the physicality of their work.  Head over to my FaceBook page, http://www.facebook.com/theflexiblefarmer
for some great photos of my booth and some of the flexible farmers I met!

 In meeting, teaching and massaging farmers from all over New England I got to hear about the different aspects of farming that cause them to have aches and pains. This has given me lots of new ideas for what I can share with you so, I am glad to return to my blog.

The next few posts will be on a few areas of the body that I haven't covered such as, tips for the wrist, chest and the back of the legs.  I also will be posting on body care habits and helpful hints for different tasks on the farm like, how to make your morning on the tractor more bearable or what to do if it's hard on your knees to get up and down.  In this way I hope to address some of the common problems and mistakes that folks where asking about in my workshops.

If you have any ideas or questions you would like me to address in the up coming posts feel free to e-mail me at info@ theflexiblefarmer.com.
Hope your August was as great as mine and I look forward to a fall of wonderful posts!

NOFA Summer Conference!

Hi All!
I am going to be MIA this weekend due to the amazing NOFA Summer Conference! I am super excited to be a part of this event for the third year running.  I will have a booth in the exhibitors area selling chair massage, stickers, posters and more. I will also be presenting a workshop on body care and injury prevention for farmers. Bellow are the details of the event. Its going to be a blast!!

August 10-12, 2012

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Keynote Speakers

Chellie Pingree, Congresswoman from Maine

Jeffrey Smith, Institute for Responsible Technology

Over 200 Workshops on Organic Gardening, Farming, Food Politics, Permaculture, Homesteading, Landscaping, Alternative Energy, Livestock, Cooking, and more! Hundreds of Vendors and Exhibitors

Live Entertainment

Children’s and Teen Conference

Country Fair

Featuring a pre-conference seminar on GMOs with Jeffrey Smith, and a pre-conference seminar on Natural Fruit with Lee Reich. 

To register: www.nofasummerconference.org

Email: info@nofasummerconference.org

Call: 413-362-2143

Get ready...for Saturday Stretches and Aches and Answers!

Hey all you working bodies out there!
This is just a quick post to let you know about two up coming series this blog will be featuring. As of now I am a "occasional" poster at best (the face I am making now is the one I'm sure you have seen on whoever forgot to take out the compost or close in the chickens...). But not for a lack of passion for the subject, more for a lack of structure and abundance of more in-my-face things to do.  So, I am giving myself that structure and putting the Body Care Blog on the top of my list.

The first series will be Saturday Stretches.  Pretty self explanatory, but allow me to elaborate. Every Saturday I will focus on a new area of the working body that deserves a little love. Starting with the areas most common to cause problems and pain (knees, low back and shoulders) and working my way to muscles some folks don't even know they have (like the piriformis, that I have a serious love/hate relationship with). I will talk stretches, strength, injury prevention and body care specific to that spot.

The next series will be based on questions from farmers (or anyone else with a hardworking body!) that I'm calling Aches and Answers. Think Car Talk but for your body (and with less wise cracks and Boston accents). So, if you are working away on fixing a fence and a weird pang happens in your neck write me a quick email.  Feel free to send questions, anecdotes or even things you have discovered about your working body that may help others. Send it over to info@theflexiblefarmer.com and I will do my best to address your aches and pains.

That's all for now, check back in tomorrow for the first of the Saturday posts...Knees!

Spring Workshop Deals and Finally Getting on the Twitter Train

Hello out there!
In today's post I would like to let every body know about some deals I am offering this spring.  As we had an early March thaw with steady warmth, it seams that plowing for spring is full speed ahead.  With that comes hours on the tractor, seeding in the greenhouse quickened to finish and all the countless stresses and strains of the season come early. So, in honor of all the farmers who have to risen to the occasion this weird weather has presented, I would like to offer a discounted/abbreviated workshop.

This beginning of the season special will be a 30 minute version of the injury prevention and body mechanics workshop. I have been working on rehashing my basic workshop so that it covers all the basis of good body mechanics and how to avoid injury in a efficient and speedy way.  This way the workshop can take less time out of the workday and leave more time for questions and demos of stretching/strengthening exercises. I am calling this workshop "Strong Roots" and am setting a price of $75 not including chair massage.  Visit my website www.theflexiblefarmer.com for more details!


In other news I have joined the world of Twitter and was delighted to find plenty of like minded farmy folks to "follow".  I am hoping this will be a good way to get my name out into the world and to make some friends. I also hope to start posting a tip or two on body mechanics for working bodies daily, so if you are a tweeter follow me @FlexibleFarmer.

All the best,
Lydia

Quickly into spring

Hello out there!
I am back to the Blog after a few months off and I have some great updates. But first, let me say it has been a strange winter here in New England.  Little in the way of freezing days and even fewer days of snow fall. It leaves me wondering how the spring seedings and plantings will go and if we are in for a summer of rain.  I have been hearing the birds singing spring songs and the trees are budding.  It looks to me that this years growing season will start early.

That said, I have sent out my first piece of advertising to Vally farms so they can book a workshop for their new crews!  I have been lucky to have an amazing graphic designer, Seth Gregory, helping me and the final product was amazing. Visit my website to see it, go to the Media Gallery page.
www.theflexiblefarmer.com 

The next update is that I will be presenting at the Northeast regional meeting of the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers in March.  This meeting will have a handful of workshops to for farmers who grow cut flowers. The topics range from; new tools just for their work, tractors, greenhouses, pest managent and injury prevention. I will be tailoring my Bodycare Workshop to the specific challenges that growing and harvesting flowers bring. I am so excited to be part of this meeting and also to be introduced to the folks that work so hard to make the bouquets that make our tables, parties and weddings beautiful!  

Last, but not least, I am working on an article on the importance of flexibility in overall health that I hope to get published.  I am looking at a verity of periodicals and magazines that are geared to the organic/small farmer.  If anyone has any ideas of publications that would be a good fit feel free to let me know!
All the best,
Lydia