posture is incredibly important and many people are concerned today I'm going to
show you some simple exercises to improve your posture hey I'm Dr. Ekberg
with Wellness For Life and by subscribing to our videos you'll learn
everything that you need to know to master true health posture is so
important and we know that people have good posture they feel more confident
they feel better about themselves they perform better we also know that perfect
good posture improves movement and movement creates better signals and
better signals feed the brain so you could even have a depression that is
caused partially by poor posture and you could have relieved that depression by
improving a posture now that's not the only factor but it is worthwhile paying
attention to so let me show you some really really simple things that you can
do these are called three winged friends the first is the Eagle and then the
hummingbird and then the butterfly so the Eagle we stand straight we square up
our shoulders we move the head back so it's balancing on top of the spine we
move the arms straight out to the side and then we rotate the palms straight up
this is called external rotation and I'll explain in a little bit why that's
so important you go as far as you can and then you move straight up and if you
can keep your arms straight and have your palms meet in the middle that's
perfect if you can't don't worry grab your fingers clasp your hands and
stretch straight up you can add a little bit of stretch so you kind of push one
shoulder up toward the ceiling and then the other and then you take a deep
breath in and exhale
all right so just do that if you do it real slow you could do it once if you do
it a little faster you could do it a couple of times but it's not something
that you want to do four minutes at a time it's a very very brief exercise so
these exercises work the best if you do a little bit often don't try to do 10-15
minutes at a time do one minute but do it five six seven times a day the second
one is called the hummingbird and there's two ways to do this you stretch
straight out you move your shoulder blades back you pull back as if you're
trying to squeeze your shoulder blades together and then you make little
circles just like a two inch circle with your fingertips and you do a little bit
backwards and a little bit forwards and then you relax shake it loose if you
don't have so much space or if you want to try a variety of that then you do
this and you pull your shoulder blades back you move your hands back so you
have as much external rotation as possible and you make little circles and
you make little circles perfect the last one is called a butterfly I'll show it
first from the front and then from the side because this one's a little tricky
so put your hands behind your head and then stand up straight open up your arms
wide and then push your head straight back then you hold out for 10-15 seconds
and you can kind of pump your head back into your hands a little bit so let me
show you that one again straight from the side like this
and what you're trying to do is you're trying to get what's called a
translation you're not tilting back but you're moving it straight back it's like
you're giving yourself a little bit of a double chin
very good and you just hold that for 10-15 seconds and so the whole thing can
actually be done in about a minute no more than two but then you do this many
many times throughout the day so you make it a habit one reason why posture
is so important is that we have two basic divisions of our autonomic nervous
system one is called a stress response or fight/flight and one is called the
relaxation response or feed breed and these work kin opposite each other so
when we have a fight flight response we activate flexors and flexors tend to
have a default dominance by default we they tend to fire first if nothing else
happens their kind of fire just to make sure now
with sitting we tend to already go into a little bit of flexion we round the
shoulders out we tend to have anterior head carriage because when we sit down
we lose the arch the lumbar lordosis and as soon as we lose that then the head
follows through so these these curves depend on each other they work together
and when we reverse one curve in the low back we automatically reverse the one in
the neck as well and we end up with a reverse cervical curve now most of us
work spend a lot of hours at a computer and now it gets even worse
first we sit down we round out the back and then we're trying to see what's on
the screen so we sit like this for eight hours a day and then we type on the
keyboard so now we round all of these motions are involving flexion and
pronation internal rotation pronation flexion these motions all go together
and when we do something a lot then that becomes a habit
if these motions are already part of a stress response and we're stressed and
we do this a lot now that pathway that behavior that habit gets really really
strongly ingrained so what we can do to counteract this is to do the opposite
now when we stand up straight when we move the head back when we pull the
shoulders back when we turn the hands out
we are opposing all those we're doing extension and we're doing external
rotation and supination so all the exercises that I showed you involve
extension external rotation and supination so you're activating the
pathway that is opposite the stress response that's why it's so powerful
that's why you can actually feel better you can feel a change in your emotional
state you can notice a change in your physiology
almost immediately after doing a few stretches like that so I would suggest
that you give these stretches a try they're excellent for improving posture
during excellent for improving mood and they will improve your health in the
long run as well you can do them seated at your desk you can even sort of
disguise it a little bit if you want to don't want to be too obvious then as
you're sitting there you have a timer go off at your computer and you just kind
of roll your hands back a little bit and stretch and then you stick your hands
behind your head and you do this and you stretch your arms a little bit and no
one's gonna really think that looks too strange once you go to the bathroom if
you go up to the water cooler if you take an elevator I do this every time
that I pump gas for example so there's lots of opportunities for us we just
need to make it a little bit of a habit and over time these habits make a huge
change so an easy way that you can notice if you're making progress that
you can gauge your progress is if you just stand like this and you just shake
your hands loose you just see where your hands end up
then if your palms are facing back then you still have a lot of dominance of
internal rotation once you get a balance between external rotation and internal
rotation meaning your brain is also getting more balanced then your palms
are going to be ending up facing in toward your body this one you can check
pretty easy for yourself and you can also notice that you get less rounding
of the shoulders they start coming back something you have to ask someone else
about is if you stand straight from the side then the front of your ear is
supposed to line up with the center of your shoulder so that's another gauge to
see if you have anterior head carriage most people have at least an inch
usually two inches of anterior head carriage and this is not going to change
quickly but if you do these exercises regularly over a year or two you can
bring your posture back so you have a perfectly perfectly lined up posture let
me know how this works for you give it a try be consistent for a few weeks or a
few months and then let me know about your experiences ask me if you have any
questions and I'll be more than happy to clarify or answer any questions or maybe
do another video if there's some details that you have that you need more
information about thanks for watching hit that thumbs up and the subscribe
button if you liked the video and if you like more contents like this that's how
we know that you enjoyed it thanks so much