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I almost never give universal advice. It’s not my place, and quite frankly I recoil when other people do it to me. But today I’m going to abandon that rule and give you one piece of advice that applies to everyone reading this. Yes, everyone. I’m aware that makes me sound like an arrogant car salesman. The difference is that I have a purpose, a motivation, and – let’s be honest – rather more experience of the subject than I would like.
Stretch.
I don’t care what you call it. Yoga, tai chi, pilates, ten minutes on a mat before you make coffee. The name is irrelevant – and often counterproductive (it put me off for years). Strip away the branding, the philosophy, and the Instagram accounts contorting themselves at sunrise, and what you’re left with is this: use your body. Move your muscles. Refuse to let them seize up quietly while you sit there doing nothing.
I know about seizing up. At this point I’m something of a world authority on the subject.
This morning.
I woke up in acute pain. I went to bed also in real pain. My hands and feet were swollen, prickling with pins and needles, and hot (Yes – I know I went to the Doctor about it). My neck, shoulders, and back were so stiff that rigid doesn’t quite cover it. Stone‑walled is closer.
Pulling on socks (yes I almost always insist on doing that myself and without the carer helping). Each small movement its own small ordeal.
My body was doing what it does when I’ve been too still for too long: screaming. Why are you sitting all day doing nothing?
The honest answer is that I don’t have much of a choice. I have PSP – Progressive Supranuclear Palsy – a progressive neurological disease with no treatment and no reversal. My balance is gone. I fall at the slightest provocation and cannot self‑correct and I freeze as well which leads to falling, which means I spend most of my day in a wheelchair, an armchair, or a bed. I am not sitting by preference. I am sitting because standing now comes with gravity‑assisted consequences.
And yet the sitting does its own damage. Which brings me to three words.
Atrophy. Rigidity. Pain.
Those three things are happening to my body simultaneously, and together they explain why stretching is not optional for me – and shouldn’t be optional for you either, whatever stage of life you happen to be reading this from.
PSP causes extreme stiffness in the axial muscles – the neck, shoulders, back, spine, trunk. The scaffolding. In PSP these muscles don’t gradually stiffen. They turn to stone. My physiotherapist, who treats Parkinson’s patients but has no other PSP patient apart from me, said early on that I felt unlike anyone she had worked with. She knew it wasn’t the same as PD pretty much all along. Therapists in Dubai, Japan, Bucharest, and Boston, whom I saw over the years because of the severity of the stiffness when I was still travelling, all said versions of the same thing. One stopped mid‑session and told me they had simply never encountered back and shoulder muscles like mine.
On top of that rigidity sits atrophy. Sitting all day means muscles not being used begin to waste. The two compound each other without mercy: rigid muscles becoming weaker and tighter in the same direction at the same time. The arithmetic outcome is pain. Considerable, daily, unignorable stiffness and yes, pain too much of the time.
This is not only a PSP story.
Your version may be less dramatic. I sincerely hope it is. But the mechanism is identical.
As we age, muscle mass declines. Flexibility declines. The tissues that keep joints mobile shorten and stiffen. Sitting – at a desk, on a sofa, in a car – accelerates every part of that process. The body doesn’t distinguish between neurological disease and an ordinary sedentary modern life. It responds to immobility the same way every time: it tightens, weakens, and eventually starts to hurt.
The difference between my situation and yours is probably one of degree, not of kind. Which means what works for me also works for you. I believe that with a certainty that is difficult to overstate.
My history with this is not what you’d expect.
Six years ago, before the plot twist arrived, I was comprehensively unfit. I travelled constantly, walked minimally, had chronic back pain, talked about the gym with enthusiasm, and never went. Exercise was something I planned to do. I was excellent at planning.
When I was first diagnosed – initially with Parkinson’s – a hospital physiotherapist gave me one piece of advice. I’ve told this story before on this blog, more than once, and I know it. Forgive me.
She said: you must do yoga.
I said: no.
She said: then tai chi.
I said: no.
She said: then dance.
I said: fine. Yoga.
I was the least yoga person on the planet. I found a basic online routine and then a local teacher who gave me not just lessons but a daily practice. I linked to that original routine on this blog for anyone curious, sceptical, or simply wondering where to begin (see source below it worked for me and still forms the basis of my routine with lots of additions and a few replacements). It was designed with Parkinson’s patients in mind, but the principles reach well beyond that. And honestly, it is relatively easy – something I could not have said six years ago.
Thank G‑d I learned this early. Looking back, it was something of a miracle – because without it, I have no doubt I would be in far more serious trouble than I am today.
That routine has now broadly and adapted survived six years, a progressive neurological disease, and a transition from walking stick to wheelchair.
Before PSP took full hold, it took me from walking to running to completing a 10k. Now its purpose is different. Now it is a lifeline. Carefully monitored squats and mat stretches each morning. An exercise bike when possible, my carer close by. Physiotherapy twice a week. And I can hold a plank for one minute – which I’d like you to pause on, given that six years ago I didn’t know what a plank was and would have failed at five seconds.
I am not telling you this to impress you. I am telling you because if I can do it, the argument that you can’t find ten minutes on a mat is not one I’m willing to hear.
What I believe – and what my physiotherapist agrees with.
If the unfit, sedentary version of me had walked into PSP without that base – without the stretching, the strength, the daily habit – my pain, rigidity, and atrophy today would be far worse. I cannot prove it. But I believe it in my bones, which at this point are a fairly authoritative source.
Stretching doesn’t cure anything. It doesn’t slow PSP. It doesn’t return what the disease takes. What it does is hold the line. It stops muscles from surrendering entirely. It gives the body a daily argument against the forces trying to lock it down permanently.
That argument is worth having. At every age. At every baseline. Against whatever version of decline you’re currently negotiating with.
One more thing. Free of charge.
I woke up this morning in absolute agony. I could have stayed where I was and used it as an excuse to wallow a little bit. Instead, I stretched. That wasn’t a medical decision. It was an attitude decision – and the two are, in the end, the same thing in different clothing.
Stretching is attitude made physical. Showing up on the mat when you would rather not is what maintaining the fight looks like from the outside. Each person at their own level, against whatever they’re facing, on whatever morning they wake up and find it harder than yesterday.
And for those still on the way up – still healthy, still mobile, quietly assuming that stiffness and pain belong to someone else’s future – build the habit now. The body you invest in today is the one you’ll need later.
I wish someone had told me that before the plot twist.
I’m telling you now.
Two tips. Both free.
Stretch. And mean it.
Source
Original Parkinson’s‑focused yoga routine referenced above: https://yogainternational.com/article/view/yoga-therapy-and-parkinsons-disease/
