There are a ton of reasons why I’ve always appreciated Mondays. A Monday is a new start, it’s fresh energy akin to splashing in cold, numbing water in the summer and hot, steamy showers in the winter.
But it’s more than that. My brain tends to feel fresher on Mondays, assuming I don’t work much the previous weekend. I think it’s true that — for me, anyway — Monday is my most creative day. My schedule is pretty open on Mondays. We do twenty minutes of stretching, three days a week (MWF), with our older daughter and her two kids (my first two grandkids)! They’ve been in Anchorage the past nearly three years — that’s a four hour time difference. So if we do it right after lunch, like say 1pm EST, that’s 9am for them out west, and that fits their schedule pretty well.
The other thing that happens on Mondays is I have a Tai Chi class for an hour Monday evenings. There will always be naysayers out there who say it doesn’t do anything for Parkinson’s, but I’ve found that it helps me quite a bit.
- It has helped me balance. If I do the “put shoes on while standing” thing by lifting one leg at a time, I still can’t balance on the other leg. I’ve never been able to do that. But I’ve found that if I’m leaning too much one direction, my body can sense it and respond, e.g., shifting body weight to compensate.
- Center of gravity / center of balance: keeping that in your core is vital for balance and stability. Our instructor calls it something that sounds like Dante-Em (that’s don-tay-em). I don’t remember Dante having a character named Em. But anyway, the Dante-Em is two inches below your belly button (well, my belly button. I don’t know about yours) and two inches IN toward your stomach.
- When I’m mindful, Tai Chai helps med get back under control when I start shuffling. My shuffle these days is basically a gait that drags my feet, never stepping out further than maybe six inches forward, and because my feet can’t keep pace with my upper body, I lean more and more forward, which makes my feet shuffle faster, and eventually I fall over. (Except for that one recent bad fall I had (said fall being written about in these pages a couple weeks back), I”ve always been able to catch myself. I’ve got strong wrists, apparently. Anyway, so Tai Chi is helping me be much more intentional in my movement. I find myself whispering, “Tai Chi …. think Chi walking.” Tai Chi has the concept of legs being empty or full (I picture water, but it could be amost anything. When your weight is on one leg, it’s full. When you lift the other leg to take a step, that leg is empty. As you shift your weight back and forth from leg to leg, being aware of which leg is empty and which is full — and the process of getting there — is helpful for me. I slow down. When I whisper, “Tai Chi,” I can bring myself to slow to a halt and then start again.
Anyway, it’s good stuff.
I was talking about Mondays. But every day is a good day because of the One Who made it. To Him give the glory.