Many people experience chronic back pain in today's world.
The majority of people,
The origin of this issue comes from lifestyle.
Sitting too long.
Poor posture while in chairs.
So what can we do to help?
Bring some relief and hopefully heal some of this chronic back pain.
Well there are four fundamental movements we can do for ourselves to empower health and healing for our backs.
And we're going to start that practice now.
In the standing position you want to come optimizing your standing posture you want to feel both feet planted in the ground about hip to shoulder width apart.
You want to try to get the feet as parallel as possible.
You want to just take the knees out of lock.
We don't need to do deep knee bends,
But just make sure you're not locking your knees.
Bring your attention to the bottom of the spine,
The pelvic bone.
Just relax it you're not trying to stick your buttocks out you're not tucking in and trying to flatten the back unnaturally just relax the tailbone as if there's a weight on it You want to connect to the feeling of the spine.
Becoming nice and tall,
Elongating through the spine as if the head also floats up.
The shoulders are down and loose and relaxed.
The chin is slightly tucked and the eyes look down about 10 degrees,
Yet the ears remain over the shoulders.
This is the optimal standing posture.
Now the four fundamental movements.
Movement number one is to loosen up the back.
We want to make the back supple,
Not stiff,
Not tight,
Not stuck.
So we're going to be bringing it from a rounded position to an arching position.
So what I mean by that is you're going to start off by tucking in the tailbone,
Tuck tuck in the chin,
And you round out the back as if there's a string pulling the middle part of your back.
You make fists.
Now as you inhale,
It's as if you push off the feet,
Power through the legs,
And there's a bit of a thrust through the hip.
Region.
And you open the chest,
Arch the back,
Let the head stay neutral.
Open the hands.
Then as you exhale,
You tuck in the tailbone,
Tuck in the chin,
And you round out the back.
Feel the movement start from the bottom of the spine and as if it opens up.
Almost like a snake-like feeling.
As we loosen up.
Through the spine.
Power through the legs.
Opening.
And just feeling this looseness through the whole torso.
Very loose and supple.
A feeling more through the back.
Whether it be a water-like quality or cotton-like quality.
One more and you could bring it down So now we've kind of loosened up the back.
We've gotten out of this feeling of being stuck,
Right?
What happens to us when we sit long period of time.
Nice and loose.
How about a twist?
We're going to be doing a dynamic twist movement.
We're just swinging the body side to side.
So what happens is I'm going to be swinging my left hand over to my right side.
The left hand is going to tap the obliques above the hip bones,
Below the ribs.
I swing over,
I tap.
The right hand is going to tap the left lower back,
The kidney region.
And as I swing,
I'm going to come off my left heel.
So I'm coming over to my right side.
Left hand.
Taps above the hip.
Right hand taps the left lower back.
Switch sides.
Exhale every tap.
You're just doing a gentle twist through the torso.
Just nice and loose,
Let the head just move with the body.
You don't want to overthink this.
You want to just let the body just move naturally,
Side to side.
And slow it up.
And relax.
Okay,
What else can we do?
Let's stretch through the sides,
Okay?
So with this one,
We're going to do is one hand goes up.
One hand goes down,
The upper hand will be palm up,
The lower hand palm down,
And we lean a bit to the low hand side,
Not letting the head drop.
So you want to have this feeling as if there's like a string on the crown of the head and this hand holding it,
And it's bringing that head up as well.
Exhale,
High hand comes low,
Palm down.
Bottom hand comes up,
Palm up.
They're going to meet around the sternum.
Switch sides,
Leaning to the low hand side.
Floating the head.
Exhale.
Hands meet.
Inhale and exhale.
We'll do one more.
And relax.
Finally.
We do just a full torso stretch.
Way we're going to do this is a two breath practice so you're going to be coming up Palms up.
Palms face you,
They face down,
They face out.
And when it comes to your forehead,
Interlace the fingers.
Come up above the head.
Then inhale again.
Open up.
You can even like swing a little side to side,
Palms facing each other,
Exhale,
Come down.
So the inhale.
Interlace the fingers,
Push up,
Exhale.
Separate the hands,
Reaching up.
Shake side to side exhale we'll do this three more times Last one.
And then to close off the practice,
Bring your feet together.
You're going to sink into the heels a bit,
Bend in the knees.
Take your hands.
Facing the ground,
You're gonna coil the wrists until the palms face out.
Sink and then pushing off the feet power through the legs rise rise becoming as tall as you can possibly be Hands reaching up,
Then the palms facing the head.
And as you bring it down,
Connect to this feeling that your spine is rising.
You feel as tall as you can possibly feel,
Yet at the same time,
Your body's soft like cotton.
And this is the optimal standing posture you want.
That you feel very tall,
Dignified,
This feeling of the spine elongating like a string of pearls,
Separating every vertebra.
Yet at the same time,
The body very relaxed.
We need both sides of that,
That yin-yang.
The Yang.
Very tall and dignified the yin soft and relaxed.
Okay,
So once again,
Just to summarize,
Four fundamental movements for back care.
Loosen up the back.
Twist,
Side stretch,
Full torso stretch and then a nice kind of closing down to optimize this closing.
Practice so thanks for joining me hope that was helpful
