hey everybody it's doctor jo and my good friend and mentor trudy,
and today we're going to show you therapeutic yoga for stress. so let's get started.
so trudy is not only a physical therapist, but she is also a registered yoga teacher.
so she is my resident expert to do this. and you guys always ask me what kind of stuff do you do.
i always refer to her youtube channel or her website her online classes for yoga stuff because
they are awesome. they're real time, so they're really great. you want to tell a little bit about
your website? sure healwellnessandtherapy.com, there you have it. go to it and the youtube
channel is "heal wellness and therapy." nice and simple. all right, let's get to some stress
management. yeah. all right guys. so yes, i am Trudy form heal wellness and therapy, but
no you're not going to hear me saying "a" at the end of every sentence. because she's from Canada!
all right. so we're gonna talk about stress with therapeutic yoga today. now here's the thing i
need to tell you about the nervous system. if you're going to work on stress and yoga. so
i have the quickest easiest way to do it, and i call it the two by two by two
two two by two by two two. all right there we have it. so our nervous system has two parts. the
central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system. now the peripheral nerve nervous system,
two parts. it has our volitional control, what we do when we move our body,
and then it has the autonomic control, which means we don't have control about it. but in fact,
that's what we're going to hijack today is that autonomic nervous system. finally the autonomic
nervous system, guess what two more, two more you have it. parasympathetic, rest, relax, renew,
and sympathetic, flight, fight, freeze, those are the two parts of our nervous system that
control our stress centers in our brain, and all of our bodily functions when it comes to stress.
so did you know that you have nerves that come out of the back of your skull that are either
sympathetic nerves or parasympathetic nerves. so what we're going to do today with therapeutic yoga
is we're going to spice up, really stimulate two parasympathetic nerves, and then we're
gonna kind of calm down or de-stress a sympathetic nerve. so let's start with a
parasympathetic nerve. so cranial nerve comes out here number three. do you know what that's for?
no. all right. ocular motor nerve, so it controls all of the movements of your eyes.
so believe it or not, guys, if you're stressed, all you need to do is find a nice good posture
and work on eye movements. in fact there's, an entire part of psychotherapy that that's all they
do is eye movements to manage stress. so let's give it a try. sitting nice and tall shoulders
relaxed and neck nice and long, chin gently tucked, in tongue on the roof of your mouth,
resting position for your jaw, so we don't clench our jaws.
all right. gazing straight ahead for me, we're going to work on stimulating the oculomotor nerve.
so keeping your head still, don't let it move, take your eyes and turn your gaze to the right.
you've got it. keep your gaze to the right. now let's see how coordinated jo is. can you then
side bend your head to the right? oh she's got it, and she's even smiling at the same time.
stay right there keep the gaze down keep the head side bent, take a nice slow deep inhale
into your diaphragm. diaphragmatic breathing immediately calms you down as you exhale go
slower. you've got it. now keep the gaze to the right but unbend the head, come back upright,
all right. and then finally bring the eyes back to the center. it's as simple as that.
and that's. let's try the other side. you ready? okay, lengthen the neck, settle the chin,
relax the shoulders, tongue to the roof of the mouth, you got it. all right eyes to the left,
keep that head still there dr jo. i saw you move it. keep the head still, eyes to the left. okay
now keeping the eyes to the left, can you side bend the head to the left? she's got it. all
right maintain gaze down to the left head to the left, give me a nice slow deep inhale,
and slower exhale. you got it. slowly keep the eyes to that left, but bring the head back up to
the center. uh-huh, and then finally those eyes come back to the center. now you can do that
in any amount of different movements of your eyes. so let's just go over them all. we're not going
to do every one today, but let's go over them. so body nice and tall. shoulder blades back and down.
lengthen the neck. settle the chin. tongue to the roof the mouth. do you think i haven't said that a
thousand times in my life? all right, keeping your gaze and your eyes forward, your neck straight.
options are eyes to the left. got it. eyes to the center. eyes to the right.
got it. eyes to the center. don't move that head. eyes up. eyes down.
eyes to the center. all right now we're really going to get complicated. are you ready?
eyes up to the right. eyes down to the left. back to the center. eyes up to the left.
down to the right. and to the center. final one, convergence. that means
let's cross those eyes. how good is she at it? there she goes. cross those eyes for me. hold it
lengthen your neck. settle your chin. relax your shoulders. and take a deep inhale in,
and exhaling out. beautiful. relaxing. so believe it or not something as simple as working your eye
muscles taps into your relaxation response. all right. i feel more relaxed. do you feel
it? wonderful. okay guys, second exercise for therapeutic yoga to combat stress we are
going to tackle the facial nerve on top of something even way more fun. so your facial
nerve is another one of those cranial nerves that comes out of your skull and it is related to that
parasympathetic nervous system. so did you know that when you do as something simple as smiling,
it relaxes your body? so what we're going to do is we're going to fire up those facial muscles as
much as we can, and but wait there's more, we're going to do some laughter yoga. so here's the
thing about laughter yoga. you cannot laugh on the inhale. try it jo, can you laugh on the inhale?
you cannot laugh on the inhale. so when you're laughing you're exhaling,
and when you're exhaling longer than you're inhaling, you're relaxing your body. so let's
see if jo can do two things at once. here we go all right. big smile, smile through your eyes,
you got it. now i want you to give me the loudest strongest laugh you can possibly give me,
and here's it, we're gonna do it for 10 seconds. you ready? okay. three two one and go!
one and relax. are you stressed, or are you relaxed? i'm pretty relaxed.
got it. so guys you know what, we don't put enough into laughing and smiling,
but it combats stress. all right final thing we're going to do.
final thing we're going to do is, we've just tackled two nerves of our nervous system
that relax our body, now we're gonna do the opposite. so we're gonna tackle a nerve from our
skull, a cranial nerve called the accessory nerve. and that particular nerve supplies two muscles
of your neck. so when you think about yourself being stressed, where do you put your shoulders?
you got it. that's where they are. so what we're gonna do is we're gonna use a yoga strap.
you've got it, to really lengthen through these muscles of your neck. so here's what i want you
to do, jo. take the yoga strap place it up and over your right neck. let's un-loop it.
i guess i must have had a loop the last time i was practicing yoga. there we go. okay so the
yoga strap up and over the right neck. now where you want to place it on your neck is where you
would have like a necklace. okay then hold it in the front on the right, hold it on the back on
the left. you've got it. now what that is going to do is it's going to allow you to mobilize the
tissues and the muscles of your neck backwards. so jo, sit nice and tall. lengthen your neck,
settle your chin, relax your shoulder blades back, and down. hold the strap. now with the left strap,
pull all those neck muscles backwards. you've got it. now just doing that you're starting to create
relaxation in that muscle. so if all you did was that and take a nice deep inhale into the belly,
and exhaling out slowly. we're relaxing. but let's add to it very gentle with that neck thing,
in your into your throat, lightly side bend gently to the left now. no pain, no big stretch here,
this isn't about stretching upper trapezius, it's about creating length to calm the nervous system.
that's it. keep that chin tucked. give me a deep belly breath. yeah. and exhaling out. all right
keep the side bend, but now take that chin and look up. now we're getting nice good lengthen to
that sternocleidomastoid muscle, the second muscle innervated by that tight tight nerve. deep inhale
into the belly, and exhaling out. you've got it, jo. slowly relaxing the neck down. slowly relaxing
the tension on the strap, and let's do it all over on the opposite side. so as she brings the strap
up and over to the left side, again make sure it's where you would wear a necklace on your neck so
that you're getting right where those neck muscles are. holding the strap in the front on the same
side, holding it, behind on the opposite side now. shoulder blades back and down, and relax neck,
nice and long. chin settled into your throat, you've got it. now pull with the right hand.
take all of those neck muscle tissues and pull them back. your body is immediately saying, ahhh.
but let's add a bit of length to it. so lengthen your neck, settle your chin, did you see how she
smiled and added that facial nerve? i'm liking it dr jo. chin stays gently tucked and then side
bend your head over to the right. now just gentle tension into the muscle, not an aggressive
stretch, holding here nice deep inhale into the belly, and exhaling out. you've got it. now adding
sternocleidomastoid, that second muscle, turning that chin up getting that nice good length into
that sternocleidomas sternocleidomastoid muscle. deep inhale into the belly
and exhaling out. by george she's done it. relaxing the head back into the upright position,
and relaxing the strap. so there you have it. three nerves exercised with therapeutic yoga, body
relaxed, very relaxed, mind rested and renewed, relaxation response has happened. all right
awesome. well there you have it if you'd like to help support my channel, make sure and click on
the link over there, and don't for don't forget to subscribe by clicking down there. and remember be
safe, have fun, and i hope you feel better soon. and it's a yoga class, so let's end with a natural
salute to everyone. hands to your heart, smile on our face, hello facial nerve, nice deep inhale in,
exhaling out. namaste. namaste. the highest in me salutes the highest in you.