Range of motion

(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Sky Yogi. For this flight, we are going to work on joint range of motion. We know when you're sitting on a flight for a really long time, your joints get really stiff and creaky and cranky and all of that. And so the really simple things that you can do to just keep your joints lubricated while you're on the plane. We're going to start from the bottom and work our way all the way up, starting with ankle mobility. I want you to sit up nice and tall in your seat. Pull yourself away from the back rest of your chair, but have your legs fully supported by the seat. And what we're going to do, is put your feet right underneath, your ankles should be right underneath your knees. And we're just going to go up on our toes and down on our heels, flex the feet, flat feet, up on the heels and down, flex. We're just working the ankle mobility right now, keeping those joints nice and lubricated. Up and down. And we're going to do three more of those. So, one. As you press up onto your toes, you'll feel your calves contracting a little bit. That should actually feel good. And when you pull your toes up, you'll feel the front of your shins contracting a little bit. That also should feel good after sitting in a seat for a while. Now we've got our ankles all loosened up. We can shake them around a little bit. And from here, we're going to to go onto the knees. Here we're just going to extend one leg and lower it down. Extend the other leg, lower it down. You're not focusing on contracting any muscles, really. You're just moving through your joints. And we're going to do two more on each side. And then we're going to add a little bit more ankle mobility to this one. Right here, we're going to extend, point the toe, flex the foot. When you flex, you have to drop your foot down a little bit, otherwise you're going to hit the seat in front of you. You're going to point, flex, bring it down. Other side, point, flex, bring it down. Point, flex, and down. Point, flex. You should feel some nice motion in your ankle and your knee all at the same time. And last one each side. Point, flex and lower it down. Point, flex and lower it down. Now we've got the knees involved a little bit. We're going to do a multi-joint motion right now, where we're going to lift one leg off the seat. You're going to feel a motion at your hip joint and your knee will bend a little bit more as you lift. We're lifting. You're trying to keep your pelvis nice and stable in the seat. You're just moving your legs up and down so that you have a nice motion right inside your hip joint, keeping those hips from getting too creaky. And just lifting and lowering. Tummy's always engaged, sitting up nice and tall. As you lift, your tendency might be to kind of tip back in your seat. Don't let that happen. Just keep the chest nice and high. Keep the nice natural curve in your low back and just lift. And lift. And one more each side. And last one, there we go. Now I want you to reposition yourself, sit back into your seat a little bit so that your upper back is supported and we're just going to do a pelvic tilt. From here, what I want you to do is pull your belly button into your spine, press your tailbone down into the seat and contract your abdominal muscles and then release. And you'll actually pull your back away from, your lower back, away from the seat. And then you're going to pull your belly button into your spine, twisting, tailbone pressing into the seat and come back up. And three. And as you press, you can exhale. Now you are going to feel some muscular contraction here in your abdominals. You have to do that in order to get that pelvic tilt to happen. This should feel like a little bit of a release in your low back and a little bit of work for your core. It's a very small motion. You can't get a big range of motion sitting in an airplane seat. And your neighbor might not be too happy if you're bouncing around too much. Let's do three more. Pull that belly button inside, really press that tailbone into the bottom of the seat and curl and press. And last one right here. Beautiful. Now come back away from the seat, sit up nice and tall, and you can rest your hands on the armrest if you want, or just on your lap. You're not pressing with your hands at all, but what you're going to do is you're just going to lift your shoulders up towards your ears and then pull them down. It's not a dropping them down. You're going to actually engage and pull them down and up and pull it down. And up and down. Lifting as high as you can each time and dropping them down as far as you can each time. It's up and down. And last one right here, and lower. And now I'm going to add some spinal rotation. What we're going to do is you're going to turn, grab the handle and twist your upper body, keeping your pelvis square in your seat. Turn the other direction, sorry to take my face away from you, but look at how my back is, is straight to the, perpendicular to the back of your seat as you can get it. And keep twisting. Pull with your hands on that handle. So you get a nice rotation in your spine. You want your spine to be rotating all the way around. This actually should feel really, really good. And twist. And we're going to do one more on each side. So twist, pull the shoulders around as far as you can, and twist and pull and relax. And now from here, we went to up and down with your shoulders and now we're going to go forward and back. So what I want you to feel is your humerus roll-- Well, your upper arm bone rolling forward in that joint and then rolling backwards. You're coming together and apart. Really working the joint mobility again. It's not as much muscular as it is a range of motion in your joints. Keeping them nice and lubricated. Let's do three more of those. Always keeping your upper body away from the back of your seat. Nice tall spine. Shake those shoulders out a little bit. And we're just going to do some neck mobility now. I'm going to have you just drop one ear to your shoulder and then to the other side and just back and forth like this. You're not pressing too hard because you don't want to strain anything in your neck, but you really want to get as much range of motion as you can just tipping from side to side. And let's do one more each direction. There's one and two. Very nice. And now we're just going to go tuck the chin to the chest and come back. When you're tucking your chin to your chest, I don't want you to reach your head forward. Keep your spine nice and tall and just tuck so that you're going to feel a nice stretch all the way up the back of your neck, but you're not encouraging your head to come forward because that's not good posture. Let's do three more of these. One and two and three. And now let's go up. Chin to the ceiling. Make sure you're not compressing. You're reaching your chin to the ceiling while you're extending your spine. Shoulders are nice and tall. Let's do one more of these. And now I'm going to have you drop your ear to your shoulder, roll it around the other side and roll it around. And again. Last two right here. One side. And the other. Now just roll your shoulders, shake it out a little bit. Sit back, relax and see if you don't feel better. I hope you do. (mid-tempo music)