My Nana drank Sanka and talked with her hands. She loved to sit and “visit” with friends and serve them “Sanker” (as she said with her Massachusetts accent) in her lovely strawberry tea cups.
She could rest the cup and saucer in her hand and sip and talk and gesture without losing her stride.
Those strawberry cups and saucers are like the shoulder joint.
My Nana drove a racy red Mustang convertible. As they loaded her bags into the back seat, the grocery boys at the BPM gawked with envy. She didn’t drink Sanka (or anything else) in her Mustang. There were no cup holders back then and if she’d taken the strawberry tea cup in the car, she would have spilled it in her lap before she got out of the driveway. If she had wanted to drink Sanka on the way to the BPM, she would have needed a travel mug and a cup holder.
Travel mugs in cup holders are like the hip joints.
Like any sisters, the Sister Joints of hips and shoulders are similar but not the same. While they are both ball and socket joints so are designed to move in many directions, their structures are radically different.
The hip joint’s ball sits deeply in the hip socket of the pelvis. This bony container allows it to move all around while being fully supported by the structures of bone, connective tissue, and muscle.
To function properly, the pelvis and the thigh bones (called the femur bones which are the longest in the body) must be able to move in all directions – front, back, side, in, out and around. If you can move your pelvis while stabilizing your legs and move your thigh bone while stabilizing your pelvis, it is likely that your hip socket is open and healthy while also being strong and steady.
Your pelvis is a support structure that provides the body with a foundation for bearing and balancing weight. Like a travel mug in a cup holder, it both stabilizes and allows for free movement. Give your hips movement in all directions to align with their design. If the travel mug was Gorilla Glued into the cup holder, it would never spill … and you’d never be able to drink out of it. Give your hips movements of strength and balance to align with their design. Since like my Nana and the Sanka, if the cup was sitting freely on a saucer, it would spill every time.
The upper arm bone, the humerus, actually floats – it is not anchored into a ball and socket joint like the femur is to the hip. There is only a shallow indentation where the head of the arm bone rests. The support comes muscularly from underneath, around, and inside the shoulder, demonstrating that the shoulder is designed to support free movement in a wide range of directions but not to bear a lot of weight.
Like the tea cup and saucer, the shoulder has freedom to move and be lightly supported but it is simply not designed to drive to the store.
Both shoulders and hips are only as healthy as their ability to move freely with appropriate support. As you move today, consider the design of your hips and shoulders from the tea cup & saucer / travel mug & cup holder perspective. Allow your shoulders to move in all directions with the light support that the saucer offers. Move your hips with the freedom of the road and the stability of the cup holder.
Nana loved her strawberry cups for entertaining, and she would have loved a travel mug and cup holder for her Mustang. Lucky for us, we have both inside our bodies. So pour yourself some “Sanker” and enjoy the full range of movement of the Sisters of hips and shoulders.