Continuation of the Troopie Yoga series – firstly looking at the types of Remote Workers who visit my practice.
Remote work can take many guises and affect the body in many different ways. Let me start by presenting some examples of what I have seen in the massage clinic.
One of my clients works with cattle and has done so all his life. When he first came in for a massage, he told me that he did a lot of running so needed extra work on his legs. I asked more about the running – assuming he ran around a track, or along the road or he played a sport. But, no, he runs after cattle. Or he runs away from cattle. He catches bulls by the tail and brings them down. I laughed when he started to describe how he uses his body for work. How many of us can say we run for any meaningful purpose? Have you ever actually run for any good reason? Think about that city folk.
So body work for this guy involves fixing him up from all the falls and stumbles. He drives extraordinarily long distances, often in a truck or 4WD on dirt roads. He passionately loves his work and said to me today, ‘no matter how old you get, you never stop learning in this job. Every day presents new things.‘ This was after I accidentally grabbed his shin on a spot recently kicked (twice!) by a bull. This was also during a massage to fix some injuries from a motorbike fall 🙂
The stress with this lifestyle is that it’s seasonal, managing a family and children’s education can be challenging, your body needs to function well and you need to be able to think clearly, rural roads can be badly maintained yet you need to use them often.
Another client who owns a station comes in with stories about broken bones that he couldn’t get into town to have set (so he did it himself), the joy of mustering, camping where you finish for the day, the stars, preserving his local echidna population and maintaining an agreed two-way code of conduct with local aboriginal populations.
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