Foam Rolling Making you a Better Mother or Father?

There’s nothing worse than not being able to run around errand-to-errand, to pick up your kids from daycare or school, to drive in traffic to and from work, to go to and from extracurricular activities and not being able to catch your breath. You know why these activities are important as a parent, right? It’s important for you to spend that extra attention on your kids, make them feel loved, to feel special and to feel like they know that you’re the best parent because you pay so much special attention to them, to know that they know you love them.

Being in this state of constantly doing these activities without taking a proper foam rolling break can take a toll on a parent’s health, which can hurt your opportunity to be the best mother or father you can be to your child (or children).

Let’s start by talking about a major result of constantly running around completing tasks and errands and how this can affect your ability to be the best parent you can be.

The SNS is the “fight-or-flight” part of your central nervous system that can help you produce the “juice” to get through your day. Think of this “juice” as the thing helping you complete these errands and tasks. Day-in and day-out, this juice gets produced and over time, it can stop producing this juice due to fatigue due to the SNS not “shutting off” over time. After a prolonged period of time, this process can take a toll on the quality of parenting to your children due to fatigue of your endocrine and/or cardiovascular system. This fatigue can cause you to miss out on important events in your children’s lives, make you feel withdrawn or disengaged from your children or simply just an overall sense of fogginess causing you to be forgetful. From a biological and chemical level, your cardiovascular system (blood, heart) is continually working with your endocrine system (adrenals, kidneys, bladder) to help produce that “juice” to get you through your day of activities and errands. “What distinguishes the SNS is the emerging evidence that overactivity is strongly associated with a variety of cardiovascular diseases.” (Sympathetic Nervous System Overactivity and Its Role in the Development of Cardiovascular Disease https://www.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/physrev.00007.2009).

Diseases in the body can lead to decreased quality of life where you would need to focus on health issues instead of being there for your children when they need you. As you may have seen from your parents or grandparents lives, this decreased quality of life can affect your livelihood, so you can only see the inevitability that it can affect your children’s lives.

There is a need to balance this overactivity of the SNS with utilizing the opposing side of your central nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS response, when activated, produces a calm and relaxed state in the body. This in return can deactivate your SNS which can help you to ensure a proper balance between your SNS and PNS. This part of the body is always attempting to be in balance, a term you may have heard called “homeostasis”. Foam rolling and massage are great ways to achieve homeostasis!

There’s something fantastic that happens when your body responds from the effects of homeostatic balancing after foam rolling. 1) You have less negative emotional stress. 2) You have an overall sense of “well-being”. 3) You don’t have time to focus on negative mental patterns because you’re to busy living your best life. 4) You are actually doing things you want to be doing and not just errands! 5) You’re able to have the freedom to go where you want with ease, accomplishing goals of yours whether it’s going to a yoga or spin class to dropping your kids off at school and getting to work on time without pain or negative mental or emotional stress. Those are just a few of the major benefits foam rolling can do for you to be a better parent! You get to live longer and be able to spend more time with your kids without pain. This is a major plus because as a parent, you are continually observed and watched by your children. They do as you do, not necessarily do as you say, but they will follow in your footsteps. Foam rolling and massage makes sure you don’t take out any negative stress out on the ones you love most, your children. How amazing is that?

Foam rolling is one of the most cost-efficient ways to get the most fulfillment, helping you be the best mother or father you can be. Start by spending as little as ten minutes a couple days of the week can help you start recognizing areas of your body that are too stiff, tense or need to be strengthened. After all, tense muscles are stressed muscles! The goal is to elongate those muscles by foam rolling. After you recognize which areas are tense, you can learn how to effectively release tension stored in your body so that you can really enjoy being the best mother and father to your child or children, tension-free! Being healthier is going to help support you and your family’s goals by helping you get in touch and releasing that stress. Building a resilience that can help carry you on to your later years with grace. These benefits will help you set the right example! One of these ways to learn is by joining the Foam Rolling Secrets group on Facebook to watch free How-To videos with Brenden. Feel free to send him your email address for a free e-book, a 7 day course workbook that will help you design your own session called the “Ultimate Spa Experience”. How much fun you’ll have helping discover your own inner zen and using pain to your advantage!