Yoga At Your Desk

Breathe in and stretch out between emails and online meetings. Your mind and body will thank you for it. Desk Yoga can help relieve discomfort, reduce stress, increase energy, create good posture and clear your mind. No music in video. Go at your own pace and do not work into any areas of pain. Suitable for all levels including beginners.

Transcript

Hi there and welcome. Today I'm going to share with you some movement for the upper body for if you're sitting at your desk. We'll focus a little bit on shoulders and neck. And we'll do a sequence where we allow ourselves to feel a little bit more centered, Grounded and a little bit more open and stretched into the upper body. So let's see, Here we go. I'm gonna take my glasses off. So first thing we're going to do is come to a comfortable seated position. I tend to, When I'm doing any movement at my desk, Either sit towards the centre of the chair or a little bit further. You want to make sure that your legs are nice and even that you're not kind of cross-legged feet are flat to the floor and your knees are just gently kind of over your ankles like they're not kind of too far So to begin with. . . Um i wanted to share these with you just so that you can even be doing these at the desk and without anyone even noticing that you're doing them so any of that kind of movement they might they might notice a little bit but not too much First thing we're going to do is center and ground ourselves. When we center and ground ourselves, It allows us to be a little bit more present, A little bit more mindful of what's going on around us and a little bit less chatter. It's like a little break for the chatter in the head. So if you like come and sit in your comfortable position. Hands can rest onto the lap. Your eyes can be open or closed for this practice. And first thing we're going to do is let our focus and awareness come to the body. So can you let your focus come down to your feet and become aware maybe of where your feet are resting? And this can take into account maybe the temperature of your feet, What the shoes feel like that you're wearing, Texture, Are they comfortable, Uncomfortable? Can you sense the ground, The floor underneath you? Take a moment or two here with our attention down at our feet. And then we bring our focus, Our awareness to where our hands rest. And again, Here, Sense, Feel, Or imagine what's happening in or in the hands. Can you pick out points of contact that the hands are making with other parts of the body? Where they rest on the lap. Can you notice the fingers? Space in between the fingers even. The back of the hand, The palms of the hands. If you've been using the computer a good bit, How do the hands feel from this? And then finally, The awareness coming to where we sit and the weight of the body into your seat. And if it helps, Even let your weight go from one sit bone or bum bone to the other. And lay your attention to rest here, Focusing on what that's like. And then move the awareness, If you like, To watching the breath. And when I say watching the breath, I mean you're kind of noticing or focusing on that movement in and out of the body. So it could be the movement in the chest of the belly. Noticing as you breathe in, There might be a slight expansion. And then as you breathe out, A little letting go, Moving down. It can help as well sometimes by placing the hand over the belly, Hand or hands over the belly. And letting your attention come to that space underneath the hand. And as you breathe in and out, Almost like you're trying to encourage that breath to come to that space underneath the hand. And this has a sneaky way of getting us to breathe in a little bit fuller as well. Do a couple more breaths here. And then if you've had the hands in the belly just let the hands come away We're gonna take three breaths where we breathe in through the nose. And then a nice gentle through the mouth. So just make sure as you're doing this that You're not going to be breathing on anyone else. If you think that might be a possibility. As you breathe out the next time, Just let the head come down a little. Do one more. And then let go of that practice. Let your breath come back to an everyday rhythm. When we do that little hoo breath, It has a nice way of activating our nervous system to calm down a little bit. So it works on that sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system thing that we do in our body. So it's quite a nice way to encourage a little bit of calming. And there's lots of research on that when our exhale is longer than our inhale. So from here we're going to move a little bit more I'm going to show you three movements that are really nice for our spine to do. The first one is, And I'll show you from this side, As we're breathing in, Lifting the chest, Letting the shoulders come down and the head will come up a little. And then we're going to round the bat so then the head hangs a little. The arms might move a little as you do this. My back is a little bit more rounded when I move out of it. So to do that with the breath, As we're breathing in, We're lifting the chest up. You can imagine you've got a little string of your puppet lifting up. And then as you exhale, Rounding the back leg in the hand. Let's do this three more times, Breathing in, Lifting up. Exhale, Rounding. Inhale. And ideally breathing in and out of the nose if that's comfortable for you. This is our last one now. And then as you breathe in, Come back to center so that you're sitting nice and tall. So that's our spine doing two movements where it likes a rounded movement and then I'm opening up like a little bit of a back bend. We're going to get our spine to do a little bit of side stretching. So if you want, Place one hand onto the chair, Lift the other arm up. If you find that you have shoulder issues, And this goes for anything that we're doing. Be mindful of any injuries any issues that may happen in the body that you've had like old injuries old issues that type of thing or any present medical conditions please be aware of that always exercise with caution so if you are minding your shoulder this is one way to bring it up okay and you can come into the movement that way Or if the shoulder feels okay, I'm going to just give myself a little bit more of a stretch here. You can bring the arm up all the way. And then come over. I realize my hand has disappeared a little. I've got my hand. Face down towards the floor. So I'm reaching into the fingertips and I have a little bend in that elbow here as well. And then come back and then release down We're going to do the same on the other side. So just let the hand come and rest on the side. You can lift the elbow and come over or lift the arm up. And come over. So we're trying to keep that arm in line with the ear if possible as well. Rather than letting the head hang, We have that at the same kind of angle as the arm. And just check in that you're breathing don't forget to breathe sometimes if i'm talking too much You might forget to breathe. And then when you're ready come back. And release the arm. Perfect so what can be nice here after doing that is a little shoulder roll so bring the shoulders up back and down and then up back and down and then up back and down. Okay so that's our spine going a little bit sideways it likes to do that so the next nice thing that our spine likes to do is a little bit of a twist So for the twist, You can place either both hands, Maybe one to the outside of the knee and one to the hip. Or if you want, Bring the other one behind. You may have an arm rest on your chair so you can let it rest on that as well. We take a breath in and just have a quick look as you keep breathing. Have a quick look. Make sure that the legs are still level and even. You want maybe a bit hip distance in between. And the feet are flat to the floor so here we're going to take a breath in and then as we breathe out we're going to slowly turn i'm going to bring my arm down here we're going to turn that rib cage to the direction that the hands are going in and see how it is to let the shoulders away from the ears. You can even keep the chin in line with the chest so we're not moving into the neck just yet. Take a couple of breaths here. Now if you know that your neck is okay, You don't have any neck injuries, Slowly turn your head. We'll take another breath or two here. And then when you're ready, Slowly, Gently coming back to center. Perfect. So that's one side. When you do one side, You have to do the other. So we're going to bring both hands over again. If you want to take behind, You can do that. If you've got space to do that, Take a breath in. You're breathing out turning the rib cage in that direction of the hands release the shoulders make sure you're not holding or gripping too much into the jaw area A breath or two here. Again if the neck feels okay you can turn the head Ever so slightly. Just welcoming in each breath. And letting go every exhale. Then when you're ready slowly gently come back to center and again if you feel like bringing the shoulders up maybe we could do this bring the shoulders up and then release them down you could do that with an inhale breathing in coming up exhale down we do one more breathing in coming up and then exhale down perfect so that's our spine doing lots of stuff we're going to come up to the shoulders placing the fingertips onto the shoulders. You can even pretend you have a little orange here. And we're going to do shoulder circles or elbow circles. If you want to even imagine you've got a paintbrush or a pencil coming out your elbow, And we're going to do a circle. So let's start small. I'm watching. I'm not going to bang my elbow off the desk. It might come this way. So I'm going to start small and then get a little bit bigger. And again, As is comfortable for you. So any of these sequences, Any of these movements you could just break them down. Do your spine work? And then do the shoulders at a later stage. Then we're going to go the opposite direction and again you can pretend that you're doing little circles and make them bigger. Got your paint brush, Your pencil coming at your elbow. Perfect. And then I always kind of like to finish on bringing the shoulder or the elbows up and back and then down. It makes me feel a little bit longer across here into the neck. So that's a really nice bit of movement. Now you could continue that. You could do 10 rounds of that one. If your shoulders and neck are feeling particularly tight, You could do 10 rounds of that and you could stop. And then you could do another 10. And then stop. See what feels or what works for you what is comfortable for you and then another little movement that is quite nice to complement this one is where we bring the elbows up. And then bring them behind. So you bring the elbows up. And then behind We're going to do this a few times. And in the past, I have often found that this has helped. Particularly with the upper traps, That area there. It's helped kind of loosen that out of sentence built up into that. So again, You could do 10. You can go fast or as slow as you like. And if you start to feel any pain, Don't go into that. We don't want to work into any pain. And then if you like, Bring the shoulders up and back. Perfect. I'm going to let the hands rest, Palms up. That has a nice little opening here across the shoulders. And we're going to take those three breaths again while we breathe in through the nose. And then slowly, Gently out through the mouth. We'll do that again, Breathing in. And if you feel that if you're breathing out through your mouth, You're in a space where there's other people around you, Just let your head come down. Do one more you can always breathe out through the nose if you prefer Perfect. So that is a short little sequence. For your spine, Just get a little bit of mobility into the spine and then a little bit of mobility and movement into the shoulders. I hope you enjoyed that. And stay tuned for another little bit of movement.