Psyche truth: life wisdom. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Mira Hoffman and in this video we’re going to be talking about some easy stretches that you can do at your desk. These are great for and low back pain or if you have neck and shoulder pain and just take a brief moment to and just engage from your work, maybe turn the sound down or and so you’re not getting those little notifications from your email inbox and the Phone on do not disturb so you can have a moment and just a little window to yourself to take, give it some stretches and some time to tune into your body. So a lot of us when we’re sitting at a desk, it’s natural everyone wants to kind of lean over you’re typing on the keyboard, you’re driving the mouse, we’re trying to get all those emails and work done, but you’ll notice, as I’m sitting here all the muscles On my front, side of the body are collapsed and the muscles on the back side of my body they’re, extended and also straining so they’re straining to try and hold the shoulders up and hold the back up. So, as I come back into a more on neutral position in alignment, you can see that the spine is stacked a little bit more naturally, and the body is actually having to do less work to hold itself up and a couple recommendations. If you’re sitting at your computer, some small things that you can do to change to help your long term posture, one is your keyboard. If you have like a little keyboard tray that can come towards you, so instead of holding your arms out here, which creates a lot of tension on these muscles, if you can bring in a little bit closer to you and a little bit lower down, that will Really help and one of our colleagues had mentioned, possibly putting the keyboard tray in your laps or you’re, welcome to try that and see if that’s a good fit for you. The other thing – that’s really big, is the position of your monitor, so many people’s monitors sits directly on the desk or maybe just on top of their desktop computer with a couple inches of her lift. But if you look at your eyesight, what you want is when your pop it back is in when your back is in the most aligned position. You want your eyes to be level with the screen. So if your screen is too low or too high, you’re going to be straining your neck to try and compensate for looking hours and hours at a time at that computer screen, so an easy trick for that, is you don’t have to buy a fancy? Little computer monitor Stan just grab a couple reams of paper from the copier area and stack them underneath your monitor, so it becomes more level so you’re, looking straight out at the horizon and another suggestion to you is, if you have a chair either making sure it’s A good height, so you’re getting a 90 degree angle at the knees or another thing that you can try is one of those exercise balls and one of the cool things about the exercise. Balls is you’re, constantly engaging your core and moving around and shifting so you’re. Not sitting in the same position for eight hours a day, you’re kind of moving it can bounce and get a little workout while you’re sitting at the desk. So there’s a lot of options for you, just small changes that you can make that can make a big difference if you’re experiencing low back pain or neck pain. So with that being said, we’re actually going to go into a sequence of stretches that you can do to help relieve tension and those areas. So the first one that I like to do is just gently inhaling and take a nice deep breath rolling the shoulders. All the way up to the ears and then exhaling rolling them back and down, and you may feel a few few pops on the back. That’S totally. Okay, just means that area is starting to open and real, I’m probably already starting to feel a lot of good relief. If you want to close your eyes, I know I do go ahead. You see that three or four time just gets nice open movement until the shoulder is my shoulder great and the next stretch, so we’re going to do is we’re going to bring the arm across the body. This is really good for opening up the back of the shoulders. So if you have tension in between the shoulder blades or on the rhomboids – and this is a really good opener – I’m just going to take a couple breaths here, allowing the body to relax. Lowering that arm we’re going to switch to the other side and you’re just really pulling all the way across really trying to keep so you notice, my torso is still facing straight, and I’m just pulling the arm across the body here nice to breath again, and we Can lower the arm and now we’re going to open a little bit of the side body so reaching the right arm up. I’M going to lift and then just reach over here, so really feeling all the intercostal muscles starting to open the lats are starting to open a little bit coming back to the other side, you get some pops in the spine and no my back’s already starting to Open up as you do, is try and keep both of your sits bones to go through the bones in your and buttocks area on the chair firmly. So if you’re using an exercise ball, this may be a little challenging. So you might want to find a regular chair to sit in coming back out and then another great shoulder opener is you can take the arm and using the opposite hand, just pulling it back and down so really trying to reach the fingertips all the way down? The back this is really opening this back part of your arm into the shoulders and the shoulder girdle and then coming back to the other side same thing. Opening the arms here may notice you get a little bit of popping and the shoulder is. Is you open up totally fine and if you or shoulders are a little bit more open or if you want to make this a little bit more of an advanced stretch, you can have one arm going up and then, with the opposite arm, come back and behind Now, for a lot of you, you’re not going to be able to reach in and interlock your fingers, so what you can do is just take a pen from your desk, so this any pen will do if you have a ruler that might work too, and with Your top hand hold the pin and, with the bottom hand, try and find it ludos, and then you can just tug on it kind of create that bottom and traction so you’ll notice it’s kind of natural to want to either turn into the pose. Let that front shoulder collapse. You really want to bring it up and back and it’s really helping open the shoulders and then I’m going to switch arms again. So, switching arms right arm up – and you can see this arm – I don’t have as much flexibility so can grab hold of the pin here. Nice huge shoulder opener here. This is really good if you have neck pain, shoulder tension and we’re going to do a little bit of a spinal twist here so and taking your right arm come out to the left knee and you’re going to start to twist. Now, if you want to take this twist, even further, take your back arm and reach it to the other side of your chair. So as you’re doing this, try and keep the spine erect, keep the spine straight up and then coming out. I’M going to do the opposite, so left hand to right knee and if you can rein that right arm over the chair reaching around and then looking over that right, shoulder to really extend that twist through the length of the back and coming back to neutral. We’Re going to do some hip openers, so if you’re sitting at a desk, sometimes you may cross your legs, that’s great and with this you’re going to be opening the IT band and the outer part of the hips. So I’m sitting here if my legs crossed my ankle is kind of over my knee and then I’m just going to fold my body forward. Let it come to rest wherever feels good. So right now, I’m feeling a stretch starting through my hips, all the way out. The outside of my leg into the knee you can just let your arms rest on your leg or, if you want to dangle them down, to create a little bit more forward movement, just really listening to your body and stopping wherever feels good for you slowly. Coming back up we’re going to reverse legs, so left leg over the right. I’Ve been forward, I’m letting the head hang head heavy here! So let your head be really nice and heavy the neck relaxed. You can use your breath to take some nice deep, inhalations and exhalations I’m slowly coming back up to neutral, putting the legs back on the ground. Another forward fold that you can do from your chair is sitting a little bit closer to the edge you can interlace. The fingers behind the back, if you can’t interlace the fingers, let’s grab our handy little pin again and you can use that to grab wherever feels comfortable. So I’m going to interlace my fingers as I can again. If you can’t just use the pin and release the figures – and you notice already how open my chest just became so before you’re kind of like this, this is a great opposite counter movement to typing on the keyboard and we’re just going to bend forward IMing onto Our knees and if you want, depending on how flexible and what feels gets you, you can continue to move the arms up towards the ceiling and then back over the head. I’M taking a few deep breaths here, not in the head and neck, be heavy in the last and you last the face and close my eyes. You want to inhaling coming back up neutral and we can stretch up towards the ceiling, so interlacing the fingers and pushing up towards the sky. Creating a nice long spine here, slowly letting the arms drift back down we’re gon na do a couple of neck stretches just to get that area a little bit of extra attention, so we opened up the shoulders really nice. You got some low back and hip openers. Here and we’re going to open up the top of the neck and the cervical spine, so the first one and all of these are really basic, so just join us and enjoy the movement we’re going to slowly lower the left, ear down the left side and all These muscles on the right side of the neck are getting a nice long stretch here you want, you can close your eyes. Let the right shoulder be nice and heavy, come back to neutral and do the other thing, the left side and inhale back to Center and then we’re going to fold the chest in we’re going to fold the chin into the chest and inhaling back to Center and We’Ll exhale bringing the chin up to the ceiling so with this stretch really stopping wherever feels comfortable, you don’t want to really crank the neck back too fast or too far, and for me I like to go pretty far back. You can start to see my neck muscles are starting to get a nice stretch here and coming back to scenario, and if you want to finish out, we can do some gentle neck rolls so really just going a full extended length, opening up each side of the Neck and going clockwise right now find a spot that feels good. You can stay, there, hang out for a couple breaths and then reversing the flow when counterclockwise. Now then, again, just moving really gently, it’s not about how fast we can do these, though I did these stretches, and I did three neck rolls and I’m all done. That’S not what it’s about it’s about tuning into your body and moving really slow with awareness and really creating that attune that, where you’re listening to your body and feeling it even if you’re at the office and working on some projects – and sometimes I notice when I Set my desk, I realize what I’ve been sitting like this, for I don’t even know how long and you can see how close my shoulders are to my ears, but when you realize oh, if I can let go of that tension, there’s really a lot more space. There so, and if you enjoyed this video, go ahead and like it, let us know if you have any comments or feedback if you were trying something out, and maybe you got a little confused about how to do it, we’d love to help give you some more Pointers and guide you through that movement – and maybe you have some prior issues or injuries that you’re trying to work through, maybe need some modifications or anything special instructions. We’Re happy to provide this for you you’re, watching the psyche. Truth youtube channel so subscribe to our channel. We have thousands of videos on all sorts of natural healthcare, massage and yoga we’d love to let you know about upcoming videos, as they released and new information that you can find out about, and my name again is Mira Hoffman. You can find out more about me and my practice at Mara, Hoffman com. Thank you. You
