Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40

Ep 25.2: Ways to help you avoid pain when you're sleeping

October 21, 2021 Courtney McManus
Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40
Ep 25.2: Ways to help you avoid pain when you're sleeping
Moving through Midlife
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Show Notes Transcript

Movement snack of the week 

This week, we are talking about movement. And we are going to practice a movement snack that actually is less about movement and more about keeping your body happy when you wake up in the morning. So thinking about how you are sleeping.

Are you a back sleeper, a side sleeper, a belly sleeper, and depending on what you are is going to depend on what you may need to do.

I'm going to post up a video in my form fit mom community for you, or I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that maybe show you some of the things that I'm talking about here not maybe I'm going to show you some of the things that I'm talking about here as well, to help give you a visual to go along with it. Again, that is at the form fit mom community where you will be able to find that video. 

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It is always my goal to help you and your family move more. So every Thursday, I am dropping a movement snack into your ears to help you and your family move more. This week, we are talking about movement. And we are going to practice a movement snack that actually is less about movement and more about keeping your body happy when you wake up in the morning. So thinking about how you are sleeping. Now you could be I don't want to say extreme, but you could take this very seriously, and do some of the things that are recommended by a favorite of mine, Katie Bowman. And she recommends one that you sleep on a soft pad on the floor rather than in an actual bed. Because it helps with posture and alignment. Or she also recommends if you sleep on a side, then you're going to sleep on maybe if you sleep on the left side and your partner sleeps on the right side, you all are going to switch and in my household, that's not going to work so well. So I don't know what your households like. But you know, we have our habits where we stay on the same side. So today I want to provide you with some ideas that may help you with your sleeping habits. So the first thing you need to think about is how do you sleep? Are you a back sleeper, a side sleeper, a belly sleeper, and depending on what you are is going to depend on what you may need to do. So belly sleepers. Oh goodness, that's probably I'm sorry, but it's probably the worst position to sleep in. It puts wreaks a lot of havoc on your low back. So what can we do because it's really difficult. I'm you know, if I could say Yeah, everybody needs to sleep on their back. That's great. But when we go to sleep, you know you're going to roll through the night. So let's work with what we have. And try to make Cognizant changes as we go along. So the first thing is for you belly sleepers, if you can find like a soft pillow, or a small little, I wouldn't even say a blanket, but like a towel or something. Just think a small little towel that when you lay down, you can place over what you think of as your hip bones, your asis, that area to kind of take some of the arch out of your low back. So you might want to be able to put something there kind of like think of it as the opposite of a lumbar support something there underneath your pelvis to kind of bring your pelvis back into neutral. So that's the first thing that I would recommend if you are a belly sleeper. My Side sleepers, I want you to think about making sure that you're flipping from either side to that if you deal with hip ache Enos or some low back ache Enos, you probably should get a body pillow, some sort of pillow that you can put between your hips so that they're more equal distance rather than you know, when you sleep on, say your left side, your right knee kind of falls in towards your left knee and creates this little torque in the hip. We want to try to take that out. So if you have a body pillow, then you might want to place it in between your knees. And the reason I recommend a body pillow is not only for your knees and your hip area, but also for your upper body. So one of the biggest complaints that I get from moms is shoulder pain. They deal with that scapular pain that pain on the upper back area, and a lot of it a lot of it has to do with my side sleepers. So if you're a side sleeper, what happens to that shoulder it rounds in toward your body and creates a lot of length through that back. So we need to work on trying to bring it back more into neutral. So if you have a body pillow when you wrap your arms around it, it's more neutral rather than that shoulder falling in to kind of help protect that shoulder area. So those are things that I recommend. That would be like the greatest thing so to speak in the way of my side sleepers, doing that with a pillow. If you don't have a body pillow, you may want to just try to practice moving from side to side. So sleep on your left side a little bit sleep on your right side a little bit just so that your evening things out as much as possible. And then another tip that I have that I try to practice myself, it's difficult. But you know, these are habits that we create over time. So when you're laying on your side, if you just kind of open your chest up a little bit while you're laying, rather than allowing your body to go into that forward position that we are in all the time, all the time, just kind of opening that shoulder up and out to see if you can create a little bit of extension while you're sleeping on your side. Not something that I have noticed that I can hold for very long, so to speak, maybe you get a pillow to kind of Prop behind you behind your back a little bit to help you lay on your side, but kind of open up that chest area that may help you as well. These are all things that you can just test out and see what happens. The third thing is pay attention when you're a side sleeper, pay attention to what your ribs are doing. So you might notice that when you are laying down your ribs kind of shift into the mattress. Here again, if you have a small towel, you can roll up to place under that rib area to bring it more back into a neutral position. That would be great. Obviously, these are things that you're going to have to play with a little bit. It's like the Princess and the Pea, so to speak, you might feel that towel underneath you and not like the way it feels. So just test it, see what feels good try to change up your positioning, I think that's the biggest key is try to change your positioning through the night, use different pillows to kind of help support you in different ways as you sleep so that you are creating different sleep patterns or creating movement, different sleep patterns in the night, so you're not stuck in one position every night. So hopefully that helps. Hopefully that gives you some ideas, something to think about maybe that you've never really thought about before. Another thing I'm going to recommend you do is lay down on your back at some point on the floor and see what your body feels like when you're laying there. I'm going to post up a video in my form fit mom community for you, or I'm going to talk to you a little bit about that maybe show you some of the things that I'm talking about here not maybe I'm going to show you some of the things that I'm talking about here as well, to help give you a visual to go along with it. Again, that is at the form fit mom community where you will be able to find that video. So make sure to join us. The link will also be in our show notes if you are interested. And I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor. If you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media. And make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy humans. Now go out and enjoy more movement throughout your day.