This quick and easy yoga practice will help you relieve your back pain and correct your posture on the desk.
It will be a 10-minute practice right at your own desk.
I'll meet you there nice and easy on your chair.
Let's begin seated down on the chair.
I'm gonna sit sideways so I can show you.
Bring the pelvis a little bit more forward so you can have space between you and the chair behind you.
Keep the hands onto the knees.
Maintain a nice upright position.
We will do something called cat cow from a seated position.
I'll demonstrate first.
On the inhale,
You puff up the chest.
You bring it forward.
On the exhale,
You tuck the chin in and you round the heart the opposite direction.
And as you inhale,
Grow forward chest and head tall.
Exhale,
Bring it in like an angry cat.
Round it.
Inhale,
Bring it up.
Maintain the hands on the knees.
Exhale,
Round it in.
One more flow.
Inhale,
Puff up the chest.
Head is high.
Exhale,
Round it in.
Perfect.
Sit up in a neutral position.
This time,
We're gonna bring ourselves through center.
We're gonna inhale our hands up to the sky.
Look up.
Extend the hands tall.
Exhale.
The arms in a cactus figure,
A cactus shape.
And again,
Inhale the hands up.
Exhale into cactus.
The chest puffs up a little bit high.
The shoulder blades behind you connect together.
Inhale,
Lift.
Exhale,
Bring it down.
I'll show this from the side.
Inhale,
The hands up.
Exhale,
Cactus.
One more.
Inhale,
Lift.
Exhale,
Cactus.
And release the arms down to your legs.
We're gonna float the hands up once again.
As we inhale,
We lift.
We're gonna fold over towards the right.
You bring the right hand onto the knee.
Then you slowly bend a bit sideways and bring it up through center.
Inhale,
The hands up.
Exhale,
The other direction.
Inhale,
It up through center.
Exhale again towards your right.
This time,
The hand goes to the opposite knee.
So you can have a little bit of a twisting motion.
Inhale,
It up through center.
Exhale,
Fold the other direction.
Left hand onto the left knee.
And bring it up.
Inhale,
Find lengthening.
Exhale,
Draw a wide circle around you.
Careful not to push your monitor down or your desk surroundings.
Sitting up tall.
We're gonna add seated twists.
First of all,
We're gonna place the right hand onto the knee,
The opposite knee.
The other hand can hold the chair behind you and you kind of pull and twist towards the back of the mat.
Releasing slowly.
Opposite hand on the knee.
Left on the right knee.
Twist it over towards your right.
And even if you don't have a backrest that's high enough,
You can just use the handle of your chairs.
So you can pull and twist it backwards.
And bring it back forward.
Excellent.
Now we're gonna work with the surface of our desk that you have right in front of you.
You want to bring the chair a little bit more back so you can have space on the chair so you can actually bring yourselves down.
What we're gonna do,
We're gonna bring our elbows one by one on the edge of the desk.
The hands will interlace together as one.
And as you can see here,
Now I need more space for me to drop.
So I'm gonna bring my chair a little bit more backwards.
My elbows remain onto the desk and you're gonna gently drop the head down.
Careful not to bang your head on the desk.
Just let it hang heavy between the arms.
And also here,
Careful,
Don't put the chair too far backwards,
Otherwise you you'll end up dropping down.
So be mindful,
Be safe.
Keeping it nice and easy with the breath.
Slowing down and allowing the chest to hang heavy downwards like a hammock.
With each exhale just melting deeper and deeper into the shoulders.
Now we're gonna lift up the head slowly.
Press down on the elbows as you lift.
Then press down on the arms.
We'll do the same one now with the palms down on the desk.
Grab hold of the desk nice and firm.
And then drop the chair a little bit more backwards to give you more space and drop the head.
As you can see here,
My elbows are bending.
It means I need more space with the chair behind me.
Find a distance that's comfortable with the length of your hands.
Maintain a nice straight hand position,
Straight elbows and then drop the chest back down.
Slowing down the breath and lift up the head.
Pull yourselves back thanks to the desk.
Nice and easy.
Hands on the desk.
We're going to rotate our hands so the fingers face down.
Thumbs face outside of you.
Fingers down on the desk and just press the heel of the hand forward.
And back,
Forward and back.
Just stretching the wrists a little bit.
That's it.
Return back next to your desk.
We're gonna inhale our hands up to the sky.
We're gonna grab hold of our elbows and we're gonna actually lean back now to sit on the chair.
Making sure that you have the secure thing on your chair so you don't fall over.
We just want to hang heavy with the elbows drawing away from the ears.
The head looks up.
If you do this without the chair secured,
There's a good chance that you might lean all the way back and fall over.
So please be mindful.
We want to practice safely and we don't want to make a fool of ourselves in the office,
In the desk,
In around our colleagues or in front of our colleagues.
Excellent.
Release it up.
Sit up tall.
Back away from the chair.
So drop a little bit in front of the chair.
Inhale the chest up.
We're going to bring it sideways.
So drop over towards your right.
Let me show you from the front.
Bend over towards your right.
Inhale up through center.
Bend over towards your left.
Inhale up through center.
Now we're going to twist to the right.
Just maintain a nice straight long spine and just rotate the chest towards the right as far as you can go.
Try to keep the legs and the chest straight looking forward.
Bring it and release it to the front.
Inhale.
Find height.
Exhale.
Twist towards the left.
And unwind.
Release towards the front of the mat.
Drop the hands down to the side and create a few nice circular movements with the shoulders.
Now go the opposite direction.
Just allowing tension to melt away from the neck,
From the shoulders.
We're going to close off our practice with a minute of just unwinding,
Slowing down.
Elbows onto the mat right in front of your keyboard or wherever you have comfortable space.
We're going to drop the head down on the arms.
Closing the eyes.
Bring yourselves to soft and gentle breathing.
Allowing all stress to melt away.
All tension to just wash off you.
To wash off your shoulders.
We're going to blink the eyes open and slowly lift it up.
Just sit up tall.
That's it.
10 minutes to relieve some back pain or discomfort that you might feel in your back.
I hope you enjoyed this practice.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
I wish you a beautiful lovely day at the office with much love.
Namaste.
