Hi , everyone .
This is Cole from Yoga TX and I'm here to share with you all today .
Some neck and shoulder and back stretches .
It seems to be the biggest complaint our culture were so in front of us , it causes everything to come forward .
So let's try to reset and move everything back to its proper alignment .
So let's start in a seated position if you would like to sit on top of a blanket , uh a pillow or a bolster .
So your hips are above are higher than your knees and you can do that as well and I can start like that as well to show you .
Let me just sit up a little bit , just find what's comfortable for you .
And while we start , let's go ahead and make sure we're not leaning forward to begin with .
Most of us will tend to lean forward .
So go ahead and feel if you can bring yourself back as if you were sitting up against a wall .
So you want your head over your shoulders , your shoulders , over your hips .
So for most of us , we'll have to come back a little bit .
It feels a little strange .
Because we're not used to doing it , go and take a few breaths here and try to get that the feeling of this posture in your body .
Let me just take a couple rounds of breath here .
You can get a much fuller deeper breath when you're sitting up and standing .
However you are , whenever you're straight , your lungs can expand and get the , get the full range of , of breath that you need .
I'm gonna go ahead and bring your hands to heart center and we'll go ahead and get started .
Let's start by rolling our shoulders and once again on our backs to bring your shoulder blades together and go ahead and bring your fingers in .
So we're gonna turn our hands out .
So palms coming forward and round with that .
So you're gonna exhale , drop your chin here , really round your back .
That should be stretching the muscles on either side of your spine as well in the back of your neck on an inhale .
Drive up , try to bring your chest through your shoulder blades .
We're gonna bring your arms back towards our ears and look up with this and then your next exhale will round again .
So push your spine towards the back wall , push your palms towards the front wall and tuck your chin .
I'm gonna get an inhale .
Try to come through your chest and look up .
I'm gonna take a couple with the breath cycle .
So exhale , come down and inhale , rise and expand my last time .
Exhale round and come in and inhale .
Rise and expand .
Go ahead and release the clasp of your hands and we'll take our right hand to our left knee and twist .
Bring your head around last to protect your neck .
And while you're twisted , take an inhale , I'm gonna exhale .
See if you can fold a little bit deeper one last time .
Inhale .
Hell , I come back to center .
I'm gonna take a breath and hands up and fall to the right .
So inhale , you can release your twist a little bit .
So on the exhale , you can twist even deeper .
I'm good and come back around to center .
Let's go ahead and drop our left ear to our left chin here to our left chin .
Let's drop our left ear to our left shoulder .
And if you want to intensify this stretch , go ahead and , and bring your arm out to the side , really get it screaming up in your traps here .
So you can move this arm that's extended , you can move it kind of up and down or forward and back and kind of feel where that really juicy tight spot is for you and hold it there .
Some rounds of breath here can also bring your hands all the way to the ground and start walking , finger , tipping them out , bring your chin towards your chest and feel if that's different .
It should be in a different area of your neck .
And go ahead and get both spots .
And if any time you don't feel something at a certain spot , just kind of find , find where you do where that spot is for you .
It will all be a little bit different and he'll go ahead and bring that arm up to the sky and we're gonna take our palms and bring back towards the back wall .
Do you have your elbow facing up ?
And you can take your left hand , grab the top elbow and just start to pull it back really good stretch all through right here .
If you tend to have a lot of flexibility here , you can grab , you can use your left hand and bring it back and round as well .
If you can see if you can bring , uh grab your fingertips , you can also use a towel or pillowcase or a strap as well .
But where are , what , whichever place look to you today ?
The stretch like makes you , makes you sit up straight .
It's nice and pull back and it brings , brings your chest up , go ahead and release and we'll take our ear to our right shoulder here .
You need to check your posture and make sure you're still feeling like you're almost lean back on a wall .
This is one of my favorite stretches .
I go ahead and start moving your left hand , either walking it out or swinging it forward and back to find that that's that not that spot .
That needs to be worked on today .
I have a lot of them , another inhale and exhale and with your exhale , let your chin drop to your , to your chest , another round of graph and exhale and inhale left arm up and we'll bring your left elbow up .
So the same stretch on this side , so you can take the top of your elbow and start to pull it back .
So your arm will be going down in between your shoulder blades and breathe into your left side body , right .
So let's take both of our arms out .
So reaching out to either side and let's take our right arm up , our left arm down and we'll meet here in the middle .
So cross over your elbows here and then we'll cross our hands one more time .
So we're here and we're just going to cross and cross .
So you can be here with the backs of your palms touching or if you have the , the ability to reach around and have both of your palms touching either way here .
What this is gonna do is it's gonna stretch the muscles on the sides of your spine .
So we want to arch that as we did before tuck your chin in your chest and bring your elbows down towards your belly .
On an inhale .
We're gonna rise up , so elbows up , chin up and then an exhale fold one last time and how I fold great shoulder stretch and we'll come back to center and unwind .
We'll see that on the other side .
So this time , left arm up , right arm down , we'll meet in the middle and then cross to wherever it's comfortable for you today .
We'll go ahead and inhale here and exhale coming in .
So bring your elbows in , shin down , inhale , rise , chin up , arch your back , elbows up and exhale , fold in , in her eyes .
Next , I'll fold in and go ahead and unwind .
So let's take the pillow out if you have a pillow .
If not , go ahead and just roll forward into a cat cat cow .
So table top , shoulders , under shoulders , over your palms , hips over your knees .
And it's the same action here that we've been doing with the chin up belly towards the floor .
Then we exhale chin in towards your chest spine up towards the sky and how really feel like you're pulling your chest through here and exhale belly towards your spine , spine towards the sky one last time next round .
Go ahead and just come to table top here .
I'm just swing our neck so slowly and with mindfulness , swing your neck from side to side .
So your chin will be going from pass over one shoulder over to the other .
I shake a few rounds of this , let the weight of your head and gravity give you a little stretch here .
Ok ?
I'm gonna come back to center here and we'll push our heels back .
Our um hips back to our heels and just take a child's pose .
So drop your head to your mat or to the floor .
Why ?
Go ahead and not have to pull your be holding your neck up .
So this is the posture you just released .
So we'll take a few rounds of breath and child's pose .
So just let go , go ahead and lift back up here .
We're gonna take a pose .
It's kind of like a modified , well , it is a modified uh child's pose .
So we're gonna bring our hands up about a foot and your hoops are going to be over your knees , they're gonna stay over your knee .
So instead of bringing our hips down , we're gonna keep that up and bring our palms forward .
This is actually called puppy pose .
So we're gonna bring your , bring your chest towards the ground here .
You can rest your chin on the floor or also your forehead .
So you're just going to start to open your shoulders .
So this might , you might be much higher up .
It might be more like this .
It's just gonna start opening this area .
You can also have a pillow or something if you want to rest , rest yourself here .
And another option for this , if you would like to have your hands in prayer pose , so have your elbows coming out from your shoulders .
You can also rest this way .
Go ahead and come up whenever you're ready , we're gonna go ahead and walk forward onto our bellies .
I'll go ahead and release down all the way here , bring both of your arms out and we're going to tint our fingers up so your palm will be off the floor and then lift your elbows up .
So it'll look a little funny , but you can push your chest up here and both of your elbows are up .
And what we're gonna do is we're going to bring our left shoulder down to the ground and people are right from the up , we inhale , lift back up , we'll drop the right shoulder and come up up the left shoulder .
This is a really deep , this is a really deep stretch .
So go , go slow here .
I'm going rise up to center .
Let's take our hands out to the side here .
So we'll be chin on the floor and our hands teed out with the palms towards the ground .
We're going to bring our right hand and place it towards your chest here and lift up your right foot as well .
And we're going to just roll over to the left side .
This is gonna be opening up your left shoulder so you can stay right here .
You actually don't even have to bring your leg up if you don't want , if you don't want to .
But if you want more of a stretch , you can start to kind of roll over here .
You can just let your head hang .
I'm gonna come back to center by opening up these peck muscles .
These chest muscles , this is where a lot of the pain , the back pain and neck pain come from are tight muscles right here .
So , this is a wonderful stretch .
So now we'll plant our right palm down and we'll place our left palm by our , um , underneath our shoulder .
We'll go ahead and start to turn to the right side and let your head hang a , a rest on the floor .
I'm sorry , don't hold it up another inhale , exhale .
I'm gonna roll back center here .
Now , let's take both hands and let's clasp them like you're holding your own hand here so you can keep your palms together if you can't , that's fine .
But if you can go ahead and try to uh connect those , we're gonna roll your shoulder blades onto your back here next to inhale .
We're gonna lift up into this modified cobra .
So you want to feel like you're pulling the classes of your hands towards your feet .
That's the action that's really gonna open up the key to this right , open up um your pet muscles and oh , how are you here ?
That everything you can put your head , your cheek on the mat , you can leave your chin here .
I'm gonna take that one more time .
So press the feet top of your feet into the mat , squeeze your inner thighs together .
Let's roll our shoulders onto our back .
Me , you best towards New beat , play your best to get .
I live up in grief to the max .
I lower you can rest your opposite cheek on the ground .
Here .
Take a cycle of breath and plant your palms underneath your shoulders and will push back .
I'm gonna just come back sitting on your knees .
These are several stretches .
Some , um , the whole series is great .
Some , you might want to take a few of them and leave out the other few .
Just do what you know , really resonates with your body and hopefully this will help you out and give you all a little more freedom in your upper body .
Thank you all for joining me again .
I'm Cole at Yoga TX and look forward to practice practicing with you .
Again .
We all come forward , chin up , exhale , push back and bring your chin in .
Should feel really flowy .
You wanna be matching your breath with the movement .
So it should kind of like you're riding a wave .