Out of all the many ways, we can hurt our bodies there are two ways in which bodies are injured. Bodies can be damaged suddenly. We can slip on a banana peel while we are roller-skating through a mousetrap factory. Or our bodies can be broken down over time, in what is often classified as repetitive stress injuries. Each of these has its challenges that need to be dealt with. This week I want to talk a bit about slow onset injuries.

With injuries that occur over time, we don’t have the benefit of pinpointing a precise moment when our bodies changed. For some of us, these injuries started in childhood leaving us little understanding of what it's like not to have it. When this happens it is easy to internalize whatever pain or limitation we may have to endure as just the way we are. Sometimes we go so far as to accredit our disposition as some sort of genetic determinism. We somehow think after thousands of generations of evolution we have somehow received a gene that causes our back to go out.

While this may be silly thinking it is an easy cognitive trap to fall into. These injuries slowly build over time and it easy to ignore them until they are screaming at us. When we register finally pain we may not be in the state of mind to process how we been misusing our bodies for the last decade or so.

To avoid these types of injuries, I would say if something doesn't feel right we should be cautious in making it a habit. Of course, our lives are not perfectly planned out as to avoid all discomfort. We may have to from time to time contort ourselves into airline seats or lift the unwieldy object. When we have to do these tasks we should be vigilant. If we can't avoid these task we should strategize how to perform these tasks with minimum impact on our bodies.

Spending an hour trying to figure out how to set up a workstation that we will spend 40 hours a week is a great time investment. How ergonomically friendly is our keyboard? Can you use a touchpad instead of a hand hobbling mouse? Can you do your work in a variety of positions? Standing desks are great but I don’t want to be standing in place for 5 hours straight any more than I want to be sitting for 5 hours straight. Figuring out these types of questions can save us much physical strain and make our lives easier.

The word torture derives from the Latin word torque meaning to twist. I would be guilty of word inflation If I said most modern work stations constitute a form of torture. If we take in how many hours over a lifetime some of us are twisting ourselves into uncomfortable positions though we can see the diluted truth in that line of thinking. Over time how much stress is put on our body by frequent low-level strain?

When we have pain accumulated over time we have to ask what our bodies need to work out the stress we put them under. Whatever answers we come up with will be personal as they have to account for both our intrinsic properties and our situational reality. Spending some time with these thoughts can be a great way to liberate ourselves from pain and allow us greater freedom of mobility.

Anthony Bruni