I let go of all the tension that is within me

People get ill on the first day of a holiday with suspicious regularity. Nothing mystical about it — a body under load postpones a great deal, and then the pressure comes off and everything that was deferred arrives at once.

Tension is largely deferral. It is the physical form of things not yet dealt with: the conversation being avoided, the decision that has been pending since March, all of it held in the shoulders as a kind of running credit.

Some of it goes with a bath and a long night's sleep. Some of it only goes when the pending item does. Worth knowing which sort you are carrying before deciding that stretching has failed you.