How to Fold Laundry (and Work Your Hamstrings)

It's no surprise that I've been less active than usual. As I blogged about last week, I recently had a miscarriage, during which I lost a lot of blood, rendering me anemic and tired. That has meant A LOT of downtime.

While I've been lying around, I've done plenty of psoas releasing, cobblers poses, legs on the wall, the occasional twist. But my favorite position that I keep coming back to? I call it Lying Down Chair Pose With Computer Arms. You might know it as reading novels in the fetal position. My whole body is taking a bit of beating as a result.

So yesterday, feeling rather spritely, I decided that I would re-enter domestic life a little bit more and fold the bushels of laundry my husband had washed. I also figured this would be a good time to begin unwinding at least some of the tension my resting habits have wrought.

So here it is. If you have an obscene amount of laundry to fold and want to get in close to an hour's workout, this will fit the bill.

How to Fold Laundry (and Work Your Hamstrings) in 11 Easy Steps

1. Lug three huge bags of laundry up from the basement, walking around the cat vomit that seems oddly ground into the basement carpet and dump it all on your (unvacuumed) living room floor).

2. Set your kid up with a balance beam on an angle so he and his stuffed creatures have something to play with for three minutes before your attention is required again.

3. Keeping your feet pelvis width and pointing straight ahead, fold forward to pick up laundry. Keep the knee-caps dropped and focus on allowing the movement to come from the back of the legs (pelvis moving relative to leg) as opposed to the spine (back moving relative to pelvis). Focus on using your hamstrings to get back up.

4. Fight the urge to pick up 12 pieces of laundry at once so you won't have to bend over as many times. Only overcome this urge because you have already decided that you will be blogging about this and now your pride is at stake.

5. Repeat 327 times.

6. (Barely) squat to place (that single piece of) laundry on the couch-ish thing. Keep a vertical shin and a (mostly, in my case) untucked pelvis.

7. Wrestle in the big laundry pile with your three year old.

8. Occasionally - and just because you're feeling crazy - do a single leg forward bend to get the (single piece of) folded laundry to the couch-ish thing. Square the pelvis off.

9. Pause to take selfies with your kid and his creatures and his truck. Spend 10 minutes looking through all the pictures on your phone with your kid.

10. Do a heel-supported squat while matching socks, only to realize THERE ARE NO MATCHES.

11. When all the laundry has been folded, unwind your upper body a bit with some gentle hanging.

The next day, when you can hardly walk because your hammies are so sore, do some more stretching. And maybe some foam rolling. Or maybe just head back to Lying Down Chair Pose With Computer Arms.