(peaceful music)
- We spend a lot of time standing
and don't necessarily pay attention to the alignment
of our bodies while we're doing so,
so I'm gonna demonstrate a way to find
a healthy alignment in your body
that you can use when you're standing in line
or when you're waiting, when you're standing around,
and when you're talking on the phone,
so that you can build an awareness
of how your body is aligned and move
toward having a healthier alignment more of the time.
So we'll start at the feet.
Oftentimes we don't have our weight
evenly distributed on our feet, so what you want to do
is find an even distribution where the balls of your feet
and the heels are taking an even amount of weight
so that your weight is really in the center of your foot.
You can lift the toes, spread them wide,
and sort of press them down into the floor
to widen your base of support
so that you're not gripping or holding
in the arch or the sole of the foot,
but let your feet relax as if they're
sort of melting into the floor.
Then bring your awareness up to your knees.
Sometimes we tend to lock in the knees
and put a lot of pressure in the knee.
You want a little bit of softness in the knee.
For those of you who are used to locking,
it might feel like a bend, and that's actually okay.
It's okay to have a little micro bend in the knees,
and actually you'll find that as you do that
you're engaging some muscles
that you might not be used to using.
And then we bring our awareness to the pelvis.
So again, this is a place where we might
tend to tip forward or back, and so you want to think
about letting the pelvis drop down into the legs,
and if you think about the pelvis as a bowl
that has soup in it, you want to make sure
that it's not tipping the soup forward
or tipping the soup back, but the soup is staying
in the bowl, is one way to think about it.
Then bring your awareness up to the shoulders,
which instead of being forward or back
should be lined up right over the hips.
And you have this little bump, this bone
at the top of the hip, and you also have a bone
at the top of the shoulder.
So you can think about these two bones
being lined up right on top of each other.
If your shoulders are forward of your hips,
that's not a healthy alignment.
If your shoulders are back behind your hips,
that's not a healthy alignment.
And if you're feeling any compression in your low back,
imagine that you're lifting the ribs
so that you're creating space between
the low ribs and the hips, and you can even use
your fingers here.
Put a finger on the hip and a finger on the low ribs
and imagine that those fingers are spreading
apart from each other.
When you lengthen the spine, you're actually
decompressing those spongy layers
that are between every vertebra.
So if we sink into the spine and collapse,
then we're putting a lot of pressure on the spine,
but if we use all of those core muscles
to create length, then we're actually
taking the compression out of the spine.
And then from here, notice what's happening
with the head and neck.
Is the chin forward or back?
Is it tilted up or down?
Especially as people spend more time on devices
they tend to have their head forward,
and sort of like this, so you want to think
about the shoulders coming back,
but also the chin coming back parallel to the floor
so that the head is aligned with the rest of the spine.
This is a whole lot to think about,
but it's a good practice to find an awareness
of the body, bring yourself into a healthy alignment
that's gonna serve you for years to come.
If you spend a lot of time sitting in a chair,
it's important to notice your alignment
while you're sitting.
A lot of the principles of standing
with healthy alignment also apply
to sitting with healthy alignment,
and there are two main ways to sit
with healthy alignment in a chair.
One is sitting away from the chair,
and the other is sitting with the back supported
by the chair.
So we'll talk through both of those.
If you're sitting away from the back of the chair,
one of the benefits is that you're able
to engage all of your core muscles
and maintain the strength of your torso.
However, that can get tiring,
and if you find that you're slouching
and unable to hold yourself upright,
then you want to take a break from that
and sit back and allow the back of the chair
to support you.
It's important that when you're sitting
against the back of the chair
that you not sink into the chair,
but find out the alignment of the spine
and let the back of the chair
take a little bit of the weight.
So it's important to have a chair
that has a firm enough back that it can help you
to sit upright in the chair.
When you're sitting away from the chair,
you have to find that healthy alignment on your own.
And again, we can start with the feet.
So here you want to think about your ankles
being lined up right underneath the knees,
so the feet shouldn't be too far together
or too far apart.
And again, making sure that the weight
is sort of evenly distributed through the feet,
that you're not leaning back or forward,
it's less critical while you're sitting
because there's a lot less weight in the feet,
but it's still a good practice to notice
how your weight is distributed on the feet,
and again, you can lift the toes,
spread them wide, sort of press them down into the floor.
Feel that connection of your feet with the floor.
Lining the knees up over the ankles
and also the hips lined up with the knees.
So you might otherwise have the knees splayed out
or knocked in, but thinking about that right angle
so that it goes from the ankles to the knees,
and then from the knees to the hips.
Depending on your leg length, you might need
to adjust the height of the chair seat
if you have a chair that's adjustable.
Otherwise, you might want to put something
underneath your feet if you're a little bit shorter,
or you might want to put something underneath your seat
if you're a little bit taller,
so that the knees aren't higher than the hips
or a lot lower than the hips.
From here, being sure that the pelvis is aligned
so that you're not rolling back on the pelvis
or rolling too far forward.
Drawing the shoulders back and down
instead of hunching forward, and you can do that
by rolling the shoulders back and down,
and imagine the shoulder blades are sliding in and down
the spine instead of holding the shoulders up
like you're wearing them as earrings.
So drop the shoulders away from the ears,
bring the shoulder blades in toward each other,
and if you're using a keyboard you want to think
about letting the forearms relax,
so having some support so that the shoulders
don't end up being held all of the time that you're typing.
Even a little bit of support
underneath the hands is helpful.
From here notice the alignment of the head
so that it's not jutting forward or too far back,
not down or up, but aligned with the rest of the spine,
and find the length in the spine
so that you're not experiencing compression
of the vertebrae, and you can even move with the breath
and as you inhale think about finding that length
and as you exhale letting any tension in the body soften.
This is something nice to think about a few times a day
while you're at your desk, and even get up
from the desk so that you're not sitting
for incredibly long stretches of time.
So you can practice standing and sitting
with healthy alignment.