Everyday Ease: Gentle Joint Circles

This gentle and accessible mindful movement practice invites you to awaken and hydrate your wrists and ankles, while tuning into the felt sensations of your body.

Through small movements of the hands, fingers, and wrists, followed by the feet, toes, and ankles, you’re invited to practice the skill of interoception - perhaps noticing sensations like temperature, tingling, numbness, and subtle shifts as they unfold. We finish with a few shoulder shrugs to support release and integration.

You’re invited to move slowly, pause often, and adapt the practice in ways that feel supportive for you. It can be done standing, seated, lying down, or even from bed, and may be especially supportive if you’re feeling tender, unwell, or low on energy.

A gentle offering for days when you want to nourish the joints, and meet yourself with softness and care.

I’d love to hear how this practice supported your experience of sensation and connection to your body.

Background music by Piotr Witowski.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

This is a short movement practice to awaken our joints.

You can choose to be in any shape that feels most supportive for your body today.

You might be sitting down or lying down,

You might even be standing.

There is nothing to get right or achieve in this gentle movement practice.

As we begin,

What might it look like to allow yourself to arrive,

To land and settle into your shape?

Perhaps noticing how it is that you have arrived into this space and practice,

Without any need to change,

Edit,

Fix.

What is it like to truly allow yourself to land here together just as you are?

A gentle sway from side to side through your feet or your sit bones might be a way to notice the places where your body is in relationship to something underneath or behind you.

Grounding,

Melting,

Sinking just a fraction deeper into that support.

If you like,

Taking a gentle breath in with me,

Inhaling maybe through your nose and consciously exhaling letting that breath go.

You're welcome to take as many conscious breaths as feels useful and supportive.

When you feel ready to begin,

Letting your awareness trickle down to your hands and your fingers.

Perhaps they are resting on something.

There might be a temperature.

Perhaps your hands are feeling a little more difficult to notice.

Beginning to move your wrists,

Circling through the wrist joint,

Hydrating the wrist joints with synovial fluid.

What sensations can you detect through the wrists,

The forearms perhaps,

Particular fingers,

Skin across the hands,

Stretching as you move.

Choosing to pause to rest at any time.

Is there perhaps the possibility of slowing down the movement even just a little bit?

You might also explore with making a loose fist with the thumb on the outside,

Circling through the wrists.

Seeing if you can feel and sense any different sensations.

There could also be some little crackles as we wake up through the wrists,

The hands,

The fingers.

Letting the hands rest,

Find a place to pause.

How connected do you feel to each of your hands?

Is there a sense of aliveness,

Of tingling,

Temperature or some other sensation that might be here,

Inviting your attention?

Knowing that there might not be all that much to notice,

All that you feel and don't feel is welcome.

You might decide to re-invite that movement through the wrists,

Or perhaps joining me in letting your attention travel down to your feet.

Before we invite any movement,

What can you feel and sense through the feet?

The soles of your feet might be pressing into the surface underneath you,

Or it might just be the heels that are grounding,

Sinking down into the surface underneath.

You can choose here whether to press into the balls of your feet and roll back onto the heels,

Or you might like to create circling through the ankle joint.

Maybe one foot at a time,

Alternating both together,

There is no right or wrong.

What do you notice about the movement?

Is it smooth,

Or more staccato like?

Waking up the ankle joints,

Hydrating the ankle joints with fluid.

What sensations are here in the feet,

The toes,

Maybe even the calves and the shins?

What happens when you begin to slow down that movement?

Perhaps scrunching and squeezing through the toes,

Exploring a few ankle circles in this way.

I find that particularly challenging to smooth out the circle.

Pausing,

Taking a rest anytime you've had enough.

Continuing if you want.

What does your body need in this moment?

Whenever the time comes,

Letting the feet find a place of steadiness,

Letting the feet really ground into whatever support is there,

Inviting your feet to ground.

What do you notice?

Do you feel just a little bit more connected to your feet,

Your foundation?

Just waking up,

Enlivening through the hands and the feet.

As we begin to bring this movement practice to a close,

You might like to join me in a few shoulder shrugs.

So as you find an in-breath,

Gentle breath in,

Letting the shoulders float and glide up towards the lobes of your ears.

And then as you find an out-breath,

Let the shoulders drop down,

Melt down your back.

Inhaling,

Gathering in,

Shoulders lifting up towards the ears,

Maybe a little squeeze.

And exhale,

Let the shoulders soften,

Sink.

The shoulder blades gliding down your back,

Maybe noticing sensation through the neck,

The shoulders.

The option of one more,

Inhaling,

Shoulders traveling up towards the lobes of your ears,

Maybe a little squeeze.

And release.

If it feels right for you today,

Perhaps placing a hand over your chest as a gentle gesturing in towards yourself and your body.

Thanking your body for meeting this moment,

This practice in the way it could today.

Carrying this connection,

This embodied connection to your whole self.

Carrying that with you into the rest of your day.

Thank you so much for sharing this practice together.

I'm so grateful for your presence,

Your practice and your trust.

Take good,

Good care.