Every Night, I Do Something Called The Turtle

Ana with 1 N Author

Twice a month, someone asks me to lift my shoulders to my ears and let go. She calls it the turtle.

Twice a month, my speech therapist asks me to pull my shoulders up towards my ears, hold them there, and let go. Five reps, five seconds each. She calls it the turtle.

She told me to do it every day. Now it's the first thing I let go of, before anything else.

The first two times, there's a click. Then it releases, and the rest of my face goes with it.

Physio comes right after the fortnightly check-in. Then the rest of it, at home, daily: lateral neck stretches, lip press, cheek slides against my own knuckles, a kiss that isn't a kiss, held and released, held and released.

None of it looks like exercise. It looks like nothing, from the outside, like someone talking to themselves in the mirror.

I went quiet for a month because of this, and the heat, and the ordinary business of life getting busier than expected. Not because nothing was happening, because everything was, in small unglamorous increments.

I started aerial last month too, ropes and silks. Half of it is stretch that ends up loosening the whole body, not just whatever you were working on that day. The other half is strength, and I can feel my body getting stronger because of it. My mouth has been easier since, less effort to speak, less to hold. I don't know yet if the two things are related. I suspect they are.

What surprised me is how much of the turtle overlaps with what I already teach. This is Face Dance with a clinical name and someone else counting the reps, twice a month, while the rest of the days are mine.

I still don't fully know what my speech therapist is training me toward. I know my mouth is less stuck than it was, the sounds that used to trip me up, the Z especially, come easier now. I know what my jaw feels like after, looser, more mine.

If your face is holding onto something too, that's what the 1:1 sessions are for.

More coming, once the heat lifts.

Categories: : Daily Rituals