Posture Exercises (2-3 mins/day)

posture is incredibly important and many people are concerned today I'm going to

show you some simple exercises to improve your posture hey I'm Dr. Ekberg

with Wellness For Life and by subscribing to our videos you'll learn

everything that you need to know to master true health posture is so

important and we know that people have good posture they feel more confident

they feel better about themselves they perform better we also know that perfect

good posture improves movement and movement creates better signals and

better signals feed the brain so you could even have a depression that is

caused partially by poor posture and you could have relieved that depression by

improving a posture now that's not the only factor but it is worthwhile paying

attention to so let me show you some really really simple things that you can

do these are called three winged friends the first is the Eagle and then the

hummingbird and then the butterfly so the Eagle we stand straight we square up

our shoulders we move the head back so it's balancing on top of the spine we

move the arms straight out to the side and then we rotate the palms straight up

this is called external rotation and I'll explain in a little bit why that's

so important you go as far as you can and then you move straight up and if you

can keep your arms straight and have your palms meet in the middle that's

perfect if you can't don't worry grab your fingers clasp your hands and

stretch straight up you can add a little bit of stretch so you kind of push one

shoulder up toward the ceiling and then the other and then you take a deep

breath in and exhale

all right so just do that if you do it real slow you could do it once if you do

it a little faster you could do it a couple of times but it's not something

that you want to do four minutes at a time it's a very very brief exercise so

these exercises work the best if you do a little bit often don't try to do 10-15

minutes at a time do one minute but do it five six seven times a day the second

one is called the hummingbird and there's two ways to do this you stretch

straight out you move your shoulder blades back you pull back as if you're

trying to squeeze your shoulder blades together and then you make little

circles just like a two inch circle with your fingertips and you do a little bit

backwards and a little bit forwards and then you relax shake it loose if you

don't have so much space or if you want to try a variety of that then you do

this and you pull your shoulder blades back you move your hands back so you

have as much external rotation as possible and you make little circles and

you make little circles perfect the last one is called a butterfly I'll show it

first from the front and then from the side because this one's a little tricky

so put your hands behind your head and then stand up straight open up your arms

wide and then push your head straight back then you hold out for 10-15 seconds

and you can kind of pump your head back into your hands a little bit so let me

show you that one again straight from the side like this

and what you're trying to do is you're trying to get what's called a

translation you're not tilting back but you're moving it straight back it's like

you're giving yourself a little bit of a double chin

very good and you just hold that for 10-15 seconds and so the whole thing can

actually be done in about a minute no more than two but then you do this many

many times throughout the day so you make it a habit one reason why posture

is so important is that we have two basic divisions of our autonomic nervous

system one is called a stress response or fight/flight and one is called the

relaxation response or feed breed and these work kin opposite each other so

when we have a fight flight response we activate flexors and flexors tend to

have a default dominance by default we they tend to fire first if nothing else

happens their kind of fire just to make sure now

with sitting we tend to already go into a little bit of flexion we round the

shoulders out we tend to have anterior head carriage because when we sit down

we lose the arch the lumbar lordosis and as soon as we lose that then the head

follows through so these these curves depend on each other they work together

and when we reverse one curve in the low back we automatically reverse the one in

the neck as well and we end up with a reverse cervical curve now most of us

work spend a lot of hours at a computer and now it gets even worse

first we sit down we round out the back and then we're trying to see what's on

the screen so we sit like this for eight hours a day and then we type on the

keyboard so now we round all of these motions are involving flexion and

pronation internal rotation pronation flexion these motions all go together

and when we do something a lot then that becomes a habit

if these motions are already part of a stress response and we're stressed and

we do this a lot now that pathway that behavior that habit gets really really

strongly ingrained so what we can do to counteract this is to do the opposite

now when we stand up straight when we move the head back when we pull the

shoulders back when we turn the hands out

we are opposing all those we're doing extension and we're doing external

rotation and supination so all the exercises that I showed you involve

extension external rotation and supination so you're activating the

pathway that is opposite the stress response that's why it's so powerful

that's why you can actually feel better you can feel a change in your emotional

state you can notice a change in your physiology

almost immediately after doing a few stretches like that so I would suggest

that you give these stretches a try they're excellent for improving posture

during excellent for improving mood and they will improve your health in the

long run as well you can do them seated at your desk you can even sort of

disguise it a little bit if you want to don't want to be too obvious then as

you're sitting there you have a timer go off at your computer and you just kind

of roll your hands back a little bit and stretch and then you stick your hands

behind your head and you do this and you stretch your arms a little bit and no

one's gonna really think that looks too strange once you go to the bathroom if

you go up to the water cooler if you take an elevator I do this every time

that I pump gas for example so there's lots of opportunities for us we just

need to make it a little bit of a habit and over time these habits make a huge

change so an easy way that you can notice if you're making progress that

you can gauge your progress is if you just stand like this and you just shake

your hands loose you just see where your hands end up

then if your palms are facing back then you still have a lot of dominance of

internal rotation once you get a balance between external rotation and internal

rotation meaning your brain is also getting more balanced then your palms

are going to be ending up facing in toward your body this one you can check

pretty easy for yourself and you can also notice that you get less rounding

of the shoulders they start coming back something you have to ask someone else

about is if you stand straight from the side then the front of your ear is

supposed to line up with the center of your shoulder so that's another gauge to

see if you have anterior head carriage most people have at least an inch

usually two inches of anterior head carriage and this is not going to change

quickly but if you do these exercises regularly over a year or two you can

bring your posture back so you have a perfectly perfectly lined up posture let

me know how this works for you give it a try be consistent for a few weeks or a

few months and then let me know about your experiences ask me if you have any

questions and I'll be more than happy to clarify or answer any questions or maybe

do another video if there's some details that you have that you need more

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