Hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, I'm just chilling out on my fireplace.
Who's at the door? Letitia. It's so good to see you.
I was hoping you could tell everybody a little bit about your channel.
Yeah well we met in New York, it was love at first site. It was. I have a fashion,
beauty, and DIY channel over on youtube.com/user/lookunderhere. And
it's awesome. Make sure you subscribe over there. So why are you here to see me today. Ah you know just
poor posture, so I end up causing it's kind of snowballing into some pain
stiffness, and I'm worried that it's going to carry over and it's just going
to get worse as I get older. So a lot of it's that scoliosis, you feel like
your spine's kind of curving a little bit, but it's a muscular thing because
of your posture. Yes. I'm always tilted you know, I'm trying to be conscious to
tilt back, but I still feel the stiffness in my shoulders, yeah. I think I
have some stretches and exercises for that. Yeah? Want to take a look? Yeah! Ok!
So scoliosis is basically an
abnormal curve of the spine. It can be something you're born with,
it can happen from an injury, or it can come from bad posture, and it sounds like
Letitia's is from bad posture. Her right side is tight, and so then that makes her
left shoulder sore, so we're going to work for the back, the shoulder, and the
neck a little bit. So we're just going to run the gamut of stretches. So to start
off with, we're going to lie down on the ground. So get nice and comfortable, use a
pillow so you don't have to stress out your neck, and start off by putting your
feet together with your knees propped up. You're going to just rotate your lower
trunk all together so the knees are going to stay together, and you're just
going to go until you feel a stretch. Try and keep the upper part
of your back down, and just rotate the lower part of your back. You can just hold
it for about three to five seconds, and then come back up, and then rotate to the
other side. So you should really feel kind of a stretch through there if your
right side is the side that's tight, you'll probably feel it more when you go
to the left side, but I recommend doing both sides no matter which side is tight
because then if I go this side it helps stretch my shoulder just a
little bit by going through that angle, so I think both angles are equally as
important. So I would just start off holding it three to five seconds, and doing five on each
side. So the next stretch is going to be rolling over on your side. Like Letitia,
if your right side is tight, you're going to lay on your left side and vice versa,
if your left sides tight you're going to lay on your right side. Go ahead and
move your pillow out of the way and if you have something, a little foam roll,
like a pool noodle, you want to start off small. You know the big foam rollers are
okay eventually, but you don't want anything too big to start off with, so
just even rolling up a beach towel just to make a little curve would be good, and
place it right underneath that curve so above your hips and below your chest
areas just to kind of, what this will do is help kind of push it back into the
neutral position. So you're going to lay over it bend the bottom knee up and
straighten the top leg out and then once you get kind of down like this, take the
top arm and stretch it over. So you might not be able to see it in the angle of
the camera, but I should have just a little bit of a curve going up this way.
Sow when you're lying down just flat on the floor, you're not going to have a big
curve, but if you have some tightness you're going to feel it and if you want
a little bit more of a stretch you can get on your bed and then take your foot
and then drop it off the edge of the bed. So you'll have much more of a curve
while you're lying there. So hold this stretch for about 30 seconds, and you're
going to do it three times. So then coming up taking a little break and then
stretching again and stay tuned because I'm going to do some sitting exercise
with stretches and some standing ones as well towards the end. Then you're going
to come up and get into a prayer position. So a prayer position
is kind of getting on your knees like this and then putting your arms out in
front of you, and this is a great stretch for your back, but it's also a really good
stretch for your shoulder. So you're getting kind of a combination stretch
with this one. Put your arms out in front of you and you're going to bring your
head down to the floor as far as you comfortably can, and just stretch your
arms all the way out. So just going into a stretch like this, again this is one
that you want to hold for about 30 seconds and the further out you can put
your arms, the more of a stretch from getting your shoulders, so if it's really
tight, you might want to come up just a little bit, but if you can go a little
bit more you'll get a really nice stretch, and then come back up and do that for 30
seconds. Now if my right side is tight what I can do is when I come back down, I can
take my hands and take them to the left just a little bit where I'm curving over
like this, and as you can see, then I'll get a little stretch on that side as
well as a stretch forward, and then if it's my left shoulders tight, then I want to
make sure and go towards the opposite side. So again, you're
doing both sides to stretch different things, so 30 seconds for each of those,
three times each. The next one is going to be a chin tuck. Chin tucks are great
they're one of my most favorite exercises to help correct posture, and
the reason for that is a lot of times if we're working on things, especially
Letitia being do-it-yourself kind of designer, fashionista, she's bent over a
lot doing stuff, and she gets this head forward posture. If you're on a computer
all day long, and you're tight and you get this head forward posture, and what
happens is these muscles become weak and these become over stretched because
you're leaning forward for so long. So if you can set a little alarm clock and
every 45 minutes to an hour, just do a couple chin tucks, that's really going to
help you get back into a proper position. So when I say chin tuck, I don't mean tucking
your chin in like that, I mean bringing your chin back so where you make a whole
lot of little chins. So what I like to do is use my finger as a target. So I
put my finger on my chin here like this, but I'm going to keep my finger in the
same spot so I can see that I'm actually bringing that chin back, so it's almost
like my hands here my fingers here, and I'm trying to take my head back to my hand,
and you can see that now there's a little gap, and I'm going to hold that
for about three to five seconds and then when I relax I should have a little bit
of space there, and that means that my neck muscles were pretty tight and over
stretch, and I'm redirecting myself so you can just see when I come back that's
kind of stretching and strengthening those muscles to bring it back into a
proper position. So just doing about five of those just you know every hour on the
hour will really help you get that posture back, so I really like that one.
The next one is going to be a stretch just to kind of get these side muscles
up in your neck and kind of in that trunk area, so take your hands and just
place them on top like this, and what you're gonna do is rotate your elbow a little bit
downward and towards the opposite knee. So you're just going to come over like
this and hold it for about three to five seconds, come up, and then rotate towards
the other side, and again if you're tight all up in that chest,
thoracic upper back area, you're really going to feel this stretch, and it usually
feels really good. This also helps with the shoulders a little bit as well, so
three to five seconds probably just five on each side, really to get it moving and
get it going. So the next stretch is going to be for your upper trap muscles.
The upper traps are these ones that kind of go into the neck and the upper back,
so a lot of times these muscles get really kind of tight when you're when
you're focusing on something, you're kind of hunched up a little bit, so it's nice
to help stretch those out and get everything loosened up in the neck area,
in the shoulder area, so what I like to do is just kind of sit on your hand, and
what that does is that helps keep that shoulder down. And then you're going to
take your other hand and just pull gently over to the other side, but you
want to keep your head in that neutral position, so you're not turning and then
going over, you're keeping your head this way and you're taking your
ear down to your shoulder. So you're just pulling gently over this way. You
should feel a nice stretch through here, so again this one's going to be a 30
second hold, so holding that stretch for 30 seconds,
coming up, switching sides. Make sure you're doing both sides to keep yourself
even, and then doing three of these on each side. So just really getting that
loosened up in there. So then the next one sitting down is going to be scapular
squeezes or shoulder squeezes. And don't worry, we've got some standing up coming. So
with the scapular squeezes, you want to imagine that somebody has their hand
placed on the middle of your back along your spine, and what you want to do is
try and squeeze both of those shoulder blades in to pinch that hand. So it's
really just squeezing back like this. You can use your elbows to kind of push back
almost like you're rowing a boat, so you're just going and squeezing, but you
really want to go in a downward position, so it's not coming up like this, but it's
rolling downwards, and again you're just going to hold that for about three to
five seconds. That will help open up your chest and that will work those upper
back muscles in the back, so holding it three to five seconds, doing that five
times. All right let's do some standing up. So now you're going to do a chest
stretch. This really helps open up the chest area especially if you're working
on a lot of stuff and you've got that kind of forward posture again, your
shoulders tend to roll forward, and that tightens up that chest and those PEC
areas right there. So a good way to stretch those out is take your hands and
clasp behind you, you're going to push down and out, and then push your chest
out until you feel a stretch right up in here. So down and out and push outwards,
and so again you're going to hold this stretch for about thirty seconds and
then do that three times, and pushing out and chest out.
So this is going to be the grand finale stretch, it really stretches a little bit
of everything. It gets your hips, gets your back, and gets your shoulders, so I really
like this one, and I call it the ballerina move. So if your right side is
tight, you're going to do it one way, and if your left side tight you're going to
do it the other way. So if it's your right side, you're going to take your
right foot and place it kind of back and across. After you get that done, you're
going to take your right hand and come up and over while you take your left
hand and pull this way. So you're just going to bend almost like you're pushing
your hip out that way, so just stretching and holding, so this one again if you can
is going to be a 30 second stretch and after you stretch for 30 seconds, you're gonna
come back, shake it all out a little bit, and then put that arm up and over,
hand down, and across, and then take that hip out for that stretch, and you should
really feel it stretch all the way through there, and again holding that for
30 seconds, doing a total of 3 times. so there you have it those are your stretches and
exercise. Thank you so much. Feeling better? Feeling Loose? Yeah! Cool. Well don't forget to click
subscribe if you haven't already to lookunderhere, and don't forget to subscribe
to AskDoctorJo, and remember be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon!