From the course: Better Wrist and Elbow Health

Yoga zombie arms

- Hi, I'm Baxter and today, I'd like to share with you something really fun that I call zombie arms. And this is really helpful for your elbows, it can be good for your wrist too. So to get into it, let's get our zombie arms on. So bring your arms up about parallel with the floor, shoulders stay relaxed, we're going to take the right wrist, we're going to drop it down a little bit, and we're going to take our other hand, we're going to grab onto the top of it with our thumb underneath the wrist. And then we're going to just very carefully with the shoulders relaxed, with the elbow strong, we're going to start to draw the hand back in toward the body. So I'm using my fingers to very carefully, I'm not being really aggressive with this, but I'm being steady with my pressure, and I'm making sure that I'm breathing comfortably. And then after I do that for, I don't know, six, seven breaths or so then I'm going to try and restrain my hand against the resistance of my left finger. So I'm going to slowly try to bring my zombie hand back up into the correct zombie position. So you're doing that very slowly. I'm noticing the forearm muscles working to help bring that hand back up to position. Good and then I'm I try to resist that a little bit as I press down. So I might try to keep the hand up against my left fingers pressing down, so I have to work a little bit harder to get the wrist down. And let's do that one more time. So I'm pushing down with my left fingers as I slowly try to get that right hand to come back up, beautiful. And then when you're done with that side, let the arms come down for a second and give them a little shake. So you get a sense that we're stretching and also strengthening the area around the forearms, you can probably feel that as you were doing that. Let's try it on the second side, so we're going to bring the arms back up. If you feel so inclined to moan at this point, you can. (moans gently) But then when you're ready to actually get into the action, you're going to take that left hand and drop it down, you're going to bring the right hand into position, same thing, fingers on the top, thumb underneath the wrist, shoulder stay relaxed, elbow stays nice and straight. And with the hand drop down already, we're going to encourage that a little bit more, so the right fingers will push into the left wrist a little bit, you're going to feel probably an increase. Well, you might feel something around the arm, but notice what you actually feel. I know that I'm feeling some stretch in my forearm, but I don't know what you're feeling. So check it out for yourself. And then you're going to start to bring that hand slowly up, so as the left hand comes up, try to resist that a little bit with those right fingers, so it makes it a little harder to come back up to neutral. And then once you're back to the neutral position, then you try to push down with your fingers, but resist with the left hand. So make it a little more challenging. So this creates a little extra work in the muscle contraction of the muscles that plug in around your elbow and again, keeps some resistance as you go back up to neutral. And then bring both of your zombie arms out to the center, twinkle your fingers, make some little easy movements in the wrist and let the arms come down. And then once the arms are to your side, it's not a bad idea to just give the whole arm and shoulder a little shake out. And you know, keeping the arms out like that, I don't know how the zombies do it because I know that I was getting pretty tired in the upper shoulder. So it's really nice to shake the shoulders out, maybe roll them a couple times before you move on to whatever you're doing next. So there you have it, zombie arms. Hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.

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