The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I am 27 and work at a big box grocery store, so I stoop, crouch, and kneel a lot. I've slowly developed a shooting pain that begins in my right lower back and extends to my outer right thigh. There is no obvious activity that aggravates it, but today I woke up and it had graduated from "noticeable" to "annoying", so it's time to do something about it. I plan to start a yoga routine because I suspect it has to do with inflexibility. I also think my crappy desk chair is contributing. Any recommendations for better desk chairs? I typically sit cross legged. Beyond that, does anyone have advice for potential causes, fixes, or preventative measures?
I messed up my back in my late 20's, though it was honestly from sheer laziness and a careless sneeze. I thought I'd gotten through it then I spent the first year of the pandemic in a terrible chair from office depot which slowly undid 3/4 of my progress and I was in pain daily for a good while. Get a quality chair, definitely, which in my experience start new around $1k. I credit getting a new job that was on prem, and spending my workday in a decent chair (ergohuman), along with a fairly basic stretching and core workout routine with getting me back on track. These stretches seem like they are a secret sauce-- child's pose, downward dog, stretching lower back. Along with hip flexor stretching.
These stretches absolutely helped my lower back as well, but I think the post on the image you've linked to doesn't stretch it. It's a great stretch for the anterior chain, though, including hip flexors and abs that try to round your lower spine.
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