Bracing for Winter, Trusting Our Coats

What I've Been Into Lately...

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

A friend of mine moved from the deep south to the windy plains of central Minnesota for a teaching position at a small college. During that first winter she started to have back problems. She’d never had back issues before and so she started to pay attention to her daily activities for what might be putting extra strain on her joints. She began to notice that everytime she stepped outside she would hunch up her shoulders and tense her back to protect herself from the cold. Her response to the January chill was to physically tense up, close down and pull inward to protect herself. She related this observation to a colleague who was a native Minnesotan. Her colleague offered that perhaps her back and shoulder issues were a result of how she was tensing her body against the cold. The native Minnesotan then proposed an experiment, suggesting that for the next week my friend consciously trust in the warmth of her newly purchased down coat and super warm winter accessories, deliberately walking upright and more confidently. My friend decided to give her colleague’s advice a try and she began to straighten up and walk with her head higher, trusting that her thick warm coat, lined gloves, polar fleece scarf and hat would do their jobs. Very quickly her back problems went away.