Why Fall Is the Right Time to Reset Your Body in Colorado Springs

Summertime in Colorado Springs is active. From hiking trails, long days on your feet camping, traveling, kids home from school, or just handling everything happening at once. By the time September arrives, most people’s bodies are carrying significantly more accumulated tension than they started the summer with.

Fall is when you start bringing self-care back in as the kids are back in school. Hypertonicity catches up with you, before the cold and indoor season settles in, and the patterns that accumulated over the summer become the patterns you carry all winter. Let’s see what we can do to about it at Inspire Movements Massage Therapy!

What Changes Occur in the Body as Seasons Shift?

The transition from summer to fall isn’t just a calendar change. It produces real physiological shifts that impacts pain patterns. Did you know during that during the transition of the seasons everything in your body changes? From:

Constricted blood vessels

sleep

metabolism

immunity

mood

Not to mention the bone chill the cold brings to arthritic pain.

As the temperatures begin to drop, muscles lose some of the pliability they have during the warmer months. Circulation to the extremities reduces as the body prioritizes core temperature. Muscle tissue that was looser in the summer becomes denser and more reactive to strain as fall progresses.

Activity Pattern Changes

All the outdoor activities that kept us entertained during the warmer months begin to shift from outdoor activity to more sedentary indoor routines habits gradually change and almost without notice keep us locked indoors for longer. The hiker who was logging weekend miles in August is still sitting at their desk by October with no new routines, and the hip and low back pain patterns begin to reemerge as activity in no longer being mitigated by movement. Throughout the warmer months, it was managing through movement! As sedentary life begins to settle its way back in, it will start to resurface once again. This is why every 2-week massages matter.

Barometric Pressure Swings and Headaches

Colorado’s fall weather brings significant barometric pressure changes as weather systems move through. For migraine sufferers, this is one of the most reliable seasonal triggers. The shift from summer’s relatively stable high-pressure patterns to fall’s variable weather is a common driver of increased headache frequency in September and October.

Why September Specifically Is the Right Month

Now, lets get to the exciting part! September is the sweet spot between the accumulated strain of summer and the full onset of Colorado’s winter shift. Addressing what built up during the active season in September means:

Preventing Summer Patterns From Becoming Winter Patterns

The hip tightness from hiking, the low back load from travel, the neck tension from long drives and new sleeping arrangements – these patterns don’t resolve on their own. They consolidate. Getting them addressed before the sedentary winter months lock them in is significantly more effective than trying to unwind them in February.

The Fall Tandem Window

While we provide tandem massages every month of the year because we have accumulated so much support (thank you to all who continue to reach out to us!) September is also one of three months out of the year when tandem massage is available at Inspire Movements Massage Therapy. Exclusively offered on Wednesdays and Thursdays and by request only. We do have to vet you to ensure you are a good candidate to receive treatment. At Inspire Movements Massage Therapy, movement is in our name because it is the best medicine. If you are not keeping up with the changes the body provides, you are not going to be keeping up with tandems.

Tandem massages are a A 2-hour session with two therapists working simultaneously on you is the most efficient way to address a full summer’s worth of accumulated tension in a single session. We are resetting different extremities in unison. For the seasonal reset the tandem format is built for. At the end of each tandem session, we close it out on the red light machine to fully lock in the changes. If you’ve been thinking about trying tandem massage, September is the window. The next availability after this month is March. If you want to schedule a session, please feel free to send us a message. Jessica Deardorff and Patrick Moore are the therapists providing treatment, if you have any questions, feel free to send a message!

What a Fall Reset Session Looks Like

A fall reset isn’t a different type of massage. Still therapeutic ashiatsu massage with cupping therapy work, focused on the patterns that summer builds most reliably. Working through your low back, glutes, hamstrings, and calves that absorb all the hiking, running, and outdoor activity of summer tend to be the highest-priority areas heading into fall. Even travel commutes cause some impacts in the lower extremities over the summer that struggle to release. Addressing the posterior chain before winter reduces the likelihood of your low back seizing up when activity drops and muscles tighten with the cold.

The Neck and Upper Back

In most cases, the primary reason to come in for a massage is because of the upper extremities. “Between my shoulder blades,” is the most popular to be followed by “My neck hurts right here when I do this” or “my back never feels better.” is a very common one we hear. Summer travel, long hours driving, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, commute schedules shifting and the neck tension that builds from any significant change in routine all tend to settle in the upper trapezius and cervical spine. Fall is when headache frequency often increases for exactly this reason!

Hips and Hip Flexors

The transition from active summer movement to more sedentary fall routines shortens the hip flexors quickly. Addressing hip flexor tightness in September prevents the low back pain pattern that predictably builds through October and November as sitting time increases.

How to Book Your Fall Reset

Regular sessions are available Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday by appointment. Tandem sessions in September require coordination of two therapists’ schedules and are available by request only on Wednesdays and Thursdays – reach out directly to check availability before the month fills up.

The sooner in the season you address what summer built, the better positioned you are going into winter. Your body will notice the difference by January.

Ready to reset before fall gets away from you? Book your appointment online or call/text 719-459-0780. Inspire Movements Massage Therapy is located at 1295 Kelly Johnson Blvd, Suite 250 in Briargate, Colorado Springs 80920. Open Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday 9am-7:30pm.

By appointment only.