#bodywork

I am sharing this with all you good people on the dash because I am so fucking mad it took so long for me to learn it and if I can spare one (1) person the agony it will be worth it.

So for like...oh, 8 or 9 months, I've been struggling with pain/inflammation/tendinitis in my left Achilles tendon. I don't know what caused it. It just started up (welcome to middle age, this shit happens). It wasn't severe enough to be debilitating, but it was annoying and limiting. It was also intermittent, in that some days it would be very painful and other days hardly at all. The kind of shoe I was wearing affected it a lot.

Now, I have bone spurs on both heels (it's just a thing that happens as you get older sometimes). I'm also aware that heel pain is usually the result of tight calf muscles that pull and irritate the tendon. I tried stretching that calf muscle. You know the stretch, this bitch right here:

I did it all the time. I also iced the ankle after walking for awhile, hoping to avoid inflammation. Results were...unsatisfying.

I went to:

A chiropractor

A podiatrist

A physical therapist

A bodywork coach

They all gave me some variation on the "strengthen your calf muscle, stretch your calf muscle" advice. I continued doing this without results.

I was getting frustrated, and a little afraid that this was just my life now. Finally, I thought...maybe some targeted massage might help. I asked for rec on a local FB site and was pointed to a woman who specializes in therapeutic massage including cupping, etc.

I went to her a week ago.

She spent over half our first session working on my left lower leg. Within about 10 minutes of making my eyes water, she uttered the sentence I did not know I had been waiting to hear:

"Oh, it's your soleus."

Excuse me, what?

"It's your soleus that's the culprit. It's all tied up and stiff." She started digging into it and I felt literal sparks run up my leg as she released adhesions and got the muscle moving a little. When she finally put the leg down, it felt like it was on fire with all the blood rushing into it.

She said, "You'll need to stretch your soleus. It'll clear up, but it'll take a bit of time - tendons take ages to heal."

But I HAVE been stretching.

"No, you haven't. The usual straight-leg calf stretch only stretches the gastrocnemius, that's the big belly muscle in your calf. That's not your problem. That stretch doesn't stretch the soleus. Don't worry, I'll show you how to stretch it."

My mind is spinning.

So here are the muscles in question:

The gastroc (as the pros call it) just attaches down the back but the soleus runs underneath it from the knee around the side to the heel. The lower part above the ankle is where it typically gets tight and forms adhesions.

To stretch it, you do the same calf thing where you put your foot back and press your heel to the ground, but you have to do it with your KNEE BENT:

The bent knee keeps the gastroc from engaging. It's one of those selfish muscles (like traps) - if you give it an inch, it'll just take over and prevent other muscles from working or stretching. There are other ways to stretch the soleus but this is the easiest and you can literally do it anywhere. I've been doing it while standing and waiting for things (the elevator to come, the toast to toast). You just put the heel back and bend the knee. It's kind of like curtseying.

The minute I did this stretch, I could FEEL where it was pulling on my tendon. I knew that THIS had been the problem.

The massage therapist also told me to stop icing my heel. She said icing is for an acute injury, but a more chronic aggravation needs heat, to increase blood flow for healing. She recommended elevation with heat every day (I've been doing it in bed during "phone before bed" time).

I have been doing the soleus stretch at least half a dozen times a day for almost a week, and the ankle is at least 70% better. It is still a little tight and tender, but the improvement is significant. I think a few more weeks will have it feeling normal.

The carotid arteries are vital pathways that deliver blood from the heart to the brain. When forward head posture is present, this alignment can interfere with optimal blood flow, creating a constant traffic jam that reduces circulation to the brain and places ongoing stress on the nervous system and the body as a whole. Improving this begins with simple, consistent strategies such as regular walking to restore natural movement patterns, strengthening and mobilising the neck to support better posture, and identifying and addressing any underlying jaw dysfunctions that may be reinforcing the forward head position.

A simple but effective exercise to help correct forward head posture is the chin tuck: Sit or stand tall with your shoulders relaxed. Gently draw your chin straight back, as if making a double chin, keeping your eyes level and not tilting your head up or down. Hold for 5–10 seconds, then relax. Repeat 10–15 times, 2–3 times per day. This exercise strengthens the deep neck flexors, helps realign the head over the spine, and supports better blood flow through the carotid arteries.

"When you encounter difficulties, the feelings and stories that arise in reaction are just that, feelings and stories. They are whirlwinds of confusion, based not in what is happening now but in deeply held beliefs about you and your relationship to the world. Let them swirl- leaves in the wind. Sometimes you fall back into them and lose touch with the present, but a moment of recognition always comes. Right then, come back to your body, come back to your breath, and rest. The confusion, the stories and the feelings are still there. They continue to swirl, but you are not lost in them."

Porsche 356 woodframe !

Porsche's first sports cars had aluminum body panels, but it was nature's own lightweight material that made their iconic shape possible.

The Porsche 356 had bodywork that where the panels were hammered and hand rolled into shape, and a wooden frame model was used to ensure everything lined up.

That frame still exists, and is in relatively good condition. It's at the Porsche Automuseum in Gmünd, Austria, where the first Porsche production cars were completed before manufacturing moved to Stuttgart, Germany.

The frame is sometimes called Holzklopfmodell, which is German for "hammered wooden frame," but the frame itself wasn't hammered. Rather, it served as a model the factory workers used for shaping and fitting of the aluminum body panels. It was a time-consuming process that sometimes required multiple attempts to get a door or fender to perfectly fit the frame, which was the exact shape of a 356 body. The process took at least 90 hours, according to Porsche.

Handmade bodywork was primarily a feature of the earliest Austrian-built Porsches. Starting in 1948, Porsche built 52 cars in Gmünd, including 44 coupes and eight convertibles, plus between eight and 10 super light (SL) bodies that were completed by Porsche's racing department in Stuttgart between 1951 and 1952.

When production shifted to Germany in 1949, Porsche switched to steel bodies and mechanized manufacturing processes, leaving hand-formed aluminum for specials like the 16 lightweight 356 America Roadsters. A new wooden frame eventually replaced the original.

Because steel is much harder than aluminum, Porsche started using presses to manufacture body panels, which also allowed it to produce cars at a faster rate. Today, the 356 wood frame remains as a reminder of the automaker's early days.