Hi it's Elissa Weinzimmer founder of Voice Body Connection
and it is time for another how to warm up video
how to warm up
In today's how to warm up video we
are going to release shoulder neck and jaw tension yes you are welcome
let's go ahead and dive in
so take your right hand and you can either do heel of your
hand and fingers to grab onto the top of your left shoulder or if it's better you
can do thumb and your fingers whatever feels right for you grab on to the top
of that trapezius muscle like you're really trying to give it a good squeeze
and then let your left hand hang by your side now circle that shoulder up and
around moving forward up back and down as you do it now why do we do it in this
direction because it is very common for us to go into some version of a slouch
or a forward head situation so it opens up the front of our chest to work in
this direction and to release the shoulders both back and down so do this
circling for about 30 seconds as you go around it might be a little bit painful
you might get a little bit of a critical crackle but just be continuous with your
pressure and gentle at the same time and then once you've spent about 30 seconds
let that go wiggle out both sides see how you feel on one side versus the
other any difference chances are there will be some difference it's working
let's do the other side so slightly lift up that left shoulder reach across I'm
sorry the right shoulder reach across with your left hand and then squeeze and
circle ah very nice now another important thing to say about this
exercise is that you don't want to squeeze so so hard or work so hard at
this exercise that you're trying to release tension with the quality of
tension that won't work that'll just perpetuate the tension after all so go
ahead and be gentle and easy as you do this exercise okay good let that go
wiggle it out how do you feel on both sides ah maybe let out a sigh and then
we will move up to the neck
so for this next part with the neck
we're going to interlace our hands with our thumbs hanging down and we're gonna
bring that around to the back of our head which is the sub occipital muscles
right underneath the occiput which is where we hold a lot of our neck tension
let me just spin around and show you exactly where I mean so I'm basically
right below the hairline digging my thumbs in right there underneath my skull
so dig your thumbs in on either side of
your spine there and then gently rest your head back into your hands and now
you're going to just very easily nod your head up and down you're moving your
head on the axis which is actually the second vertebra in your spine the axis
is like a bobble head vertebra it can move in all directions so you're not
actually moving in a full range of motion just gently up and down on the
access vertebra and you can go up and down gently as you dig your thumbs in
here and then you can also go side to side
oh and chances are that these muscles are relatively tight especially when we
start to crane our neck forward even slightly these muscles have to grab and
hang on for dear life to keep your very heavy head on top of your shoulders as
an extra bonus if you want to you can slowly move your thumbs about an inch
down one inch down at a time and work your way all the way down the back of
your neck doing this exercise
alright so we've gotten the back of the neck let's move on to the jaw
so something to know about your masseter muscle which is your
big jaw muscle is that it is the strongest muscle in your body in terms
of pounds per square inch so it is really really powerful it can exert a
lot of force and those of us who grind our teeth at night or have a lot of jaw
tension know this implicitly so let's go ahead and release that tension you're
going to bring your fingers to your jaw to the masseter muscle you can test
right where it would be most intense and the tightness would be intense and also
the strength by clenching your jaw seeing where it bulges right there do
little circles gentle on your jaw again I'm moving up and back
which is really really helpful for those fibers of the masseter muscle to release
so I'm circling forward up down and back on the muscle and something very
important as well is to let your jaw and your tongue be loose while you do this
so you can imagine having Novocain face as we'll call it okay good and then
after you do that spot I want to also bring you to a spot that isn't
intuitively related to the jaw but it is actually very related it is your
temporalis muscle which is a big clam shaped muscle up above your ears and if
you put the flats of your hands along your temples and along your hairline and
clench your jaw you can feel that that bulges too so that's actually very
involved those two muscles help you compress and open the jaw so bring your
fingers to that spot and do circles up and back in this spot as well oh my
goodness yes that's very good very nice and let your jaw and your tongue hang
loose as you do this now extra bonus points if you want to on these two jaw
exercises you can give continuous pressure in the spots and then gently
open and close your jaw and if you do that just really think about opening
your jaw down and back in a rotational movement no more than two finger widths
to open uh-huh gently gently reprogramming the movement of the jaw so
it can happen easily you can do the same thing on your temporalis
trying to make that motion really smooth
good and then just for extra good measure at the end
this is a way I like to finish that feels really nice take your hands in
between your hair to your scalp and move your scalp around on your skull ah this
is very nice I think that sometimes when we think too hard our scalp actually
adheres to our skull and this helps us just release that tension
huh shoulder neck and jaw release
now before we wrap up this
video I will say that I have this categorized as How to Warm Up as a sound
exercise because it really does release all the stuff right around the voice box
but that being said it's a body exercise too so do this towards the beginning or
in the middle of your exercise sequence and then start making sound as you do it
or right afterwards so even if you just want it to go huh and just let out some
really easy fluffy sound as we'll call it I talked about that in the "Sound That
Feels True to You" exercise so you can combine those two things make a little
bit of sound release the jaw release the neck release the shoulders enjoy I hope
this brings you freedom and ease it's very important I would say work it in
daily if you can and I will see you in a future how to warm-up video
how to warm up