Still working from home? How to keep your Neck and shoulders moving
Even though Melbourne will be thawing out of Lock down 4.0, we are aware that a lot of our clients will still be working from home again for a while.
If this is you, Its very important that you keep on top of your spinal health while you re adjust to working from home for the foreseeable future.
Fortunately, during Lockdown 2.0, Martin made this comprehensive video outlining everything you can do to keep yourself moving stay on top of your posture, and free up a lot of the tension you have felt building, especially over the last few weeks of lock downs.
Avid readers of this blog will note that we posted this video in September last year, but given recent events, I feel like Martin’s video couldn’t be more poignant so I am reposting for your convenience.
If you have a specific issue please do not hesitate to contact the practice so we can see how we can keep you going.
As usual with our videos, the transcript is available below, but I strongly recommend you have a watch as Martin runs through some excellent tips, stretches, exercises and muscle releases that will have you feeling a lot more yourself during this period.
The video has a few sections so if you REALLY felt like it you can skip to a section you find most relevant, however the way that Martin has filmed it the segments build on each other to get the most out of each one.
Enjoy!
2:00 Todays video is about...
3:52- Where to begin?
4:15 Rotational Movements of the Neck
5:32 Lateral Flexion of the Neck
7:12 Flexion/ Extension of the Neck
8:07 Shoulder Exercise
9:28- 3 exercises to open shoulders
13:48- Overhead position for shoulders
14:54- Focus on Alignment
17:23- Intro Spikey Ball Exercise
18:27 Beginning of Spikey Ball Exercise
23:27 Conclusion
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic. Today's video is a follow along video, meaning I'm going to be taking you through some things that you can do, and you can more or less just watch the video and follow on.
So, the purpose of this video, it's really about moving your upper spine, your neck, your shoulders, your middle back to get mobility in those areas but also to soothe those areas.
It's really based on the clinical model that we use in our practice where we see that there's a real benefit in looking at the spine in kind of a sequential way, that spinal problems generally what's happening is that segments of the spine rather than having the ability to move through their full range of motion and kind of jammed up from either trauma, or long periods of time in particular postures, or stress tightening up the muscles around it.
And then as the joints jam up that changes the way the nerves and muscles and all the other soft tissues work, which then changes the alignment of your spine, and this change in movement and alignment of the vertebra causes misfiring of nerves which has a whole range of effects on your body, but specifically it can affect your ability to kind of balance the whole system.
If you're not balancing the whole system then your spine's going to be less stable. It's much more common for you to have problems with your back, your neck and the rest of your body if things aren't stable. So, if we look at that it goes movement, then alignment, then balance, then stability and so a common thing that I’ll see is people talking about ‘I need to do stability work or core stability work’.
I actually think it's really important that we do the basics first we've got to get movement happening first, and then once we've got movement, then we want to have a proper alignment so that when we're stabilizing first of all it's more effective, but we're also locking in a good movement pattern and a good alignment pattern rather than locking in poor ones.
2:00 TODAYS VIDEO IS ABOUT...
So this one specifically, today's video is really about dealing with this upper part of the spine because many of us are locked into these postures working at a desk or the effect of stress tightens up our neck and shoulder muscles and pushes our head posture forward and so this is really about restoring movement to those areas and then getting our alignment back into that nice upright posture.
I'm also going to be combining some approaches that come from new research into the interplay between how we breathe and our stress response and in particular if you want to dive deeper into this, there's a neuroscientist called Andrew Hubermann who's based at University of California, sorry based at Stanford and we're going to be using a couple of different approaches to breathing that we're combining with the movement approach and using a ball- spikey ball, or a tennis ball, or a lacrosse ball that we'll be using to just release muscle tension and some of that will be just I'll be cueing you to breathe in through your nose, and then we'll also be using an approach called a physiological sigh, which is really where you just take in a deep breath through your nose and then another deep breath through your nose before
letting it out and the emerging evidence is that this is a really quick and easy way of us helping to unwind some of the neurological effects of stress which we know can have really significant impacts on how we feel and how healthy we are. So, let's dive straight into this follow along routine to help release tension in neck, shoulders, upper back, and get movement into those areas so that you can have a healthier, happier, more active body
3:52- WHERE TO BEGIN?
Well the first thing that we want to do is we want to encourage movement back into the neck, so with the postures that we've been in and the lack of movement and there's a tendency for our neck to kind of stiffen up, and there's a segmental part of that which is what wewould address in office with an adjustment, then there's kind of an overall regional movement that we can address with exercise.
4:15 ROTATIONAL MOVEMENTS OF THE NECK
So first movement we're going to do is we're going to be doing rotational movements. With this I just want you to be taking nice slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.
So first of all just turn your head all the way to the left, and then go all the way to the right. I'm going to go through this five times each way, and we're not pushing we're just holding at that end range- nice and gently.
Let's see it just easing into it letting your shoulders drop, just letting that tension, that sort of habitual tension ease away. That's it. I think that's four, probably need a better way to count to be able to do this. Okay, I'm going to say that's five.
5:32 LATERAL FLEXION OF THE NECK
So next we're going be moving into lateral flexion so we just need to be cautious with this, if you get any pinching, any sort of sharp sensation that says you don't want to go that far, you want to stop before that point.
All of these mobility things are done within what feels just you're touching that point of tension or restriction. So sideways it's going all the way over there.
I'm just pausing at that end range, maybe a count of three. Just working our way into that range, just getting every vertebrae in our neck and even into our upper back starting to move.
This is our third one. Maybe just pause a little bit longer there, any sort of knotty points you can just almost sort of focus on it, just get that movement happening, just nodding a little bit back and forward. Okay that's four. So one more to go.
Last round for lateral flexion. Lateral flexion's actually a really important movement there's not many day-to-day activities that we do to encourage this range of motion, so it's often an exercise that we'll have people do because getting lateral flexion actually encourages movement in the other range.
7:12 FLEXION/ EXTENSION OF THE NECK
So now we're going to go flexion/ Extension. Flexion I'm going to get you to go nice and gently on, because we all tend to spend a lot more time in flexion than we do an extension. With extension which is the one going back, again just be really mindful that you don'twant to be getting any pinching sensation with that. With this one I'm doing it up against the wall. If you feel any dizziness with this then back off, maybe skip this part of it. This is our last one, our fifth repetition. Okay.
8:07 SHOULDER EXERCISE
Now functionally interlinked with your neck is your shoulders, and so again all this time spent like this, there's an alignment component of that, but before we can really address the alignment we've got to get the ability for these joints to move, so first up I’m going to do a stretch across the body, trying not to mess up my mic here.
So come all the way across, and we're just going to breathe in through the nose, and out. I'm going to do this one for three breaths. Just going to go a little bit further on this third one. Okay and then we're going to swap our arms. Bringing the arm across, the other arm just hooks in next to the elbow there. Breathe in, out. Breathe in, and out.
9:28- 3 EXERCISES TO OPEN SHOULDERS
So, it started to get some mobility, but really if we want to be able to bring our shoulders back which is what most of us need because so much of our activity is in front of us, we want to be opening up and restoring that movement that way.
So what we're going to do here is spend sort of three exercises bringing and opening up this in the front of our shoulder.
The first one what we're going to do here is we're going to put our hand up on the wall above horizontal, so if that's horizontal first one we want is up here, and then i've got my body sort of facing away there my elbow is straight, and then i'm turning out this way, and then i'm going to do three breaths there. So in through the nose, and out. That’s two. I can just rotate a little bit more, and three.
I'm just going to take that tension off, and now i'm going to that horizontal level, and it'll feel a little bit different, it's going to hit a slightly different part of the shoulder.
So again in through the nose, and out through the mouth. And three. Now we're just going to do just below horizontal to again getslightly different part of the shoulder.
We're going to come across. One, Two, that’s three. Okay, so now we're going to repeat exactly the same thing but on the opposite side. So first one, if that's horizontal we're going up maybe 30 degrees above horizontal, rotating away feeling the stretch at the front of the shoulder maybe a little bit into the arm. One, Two, That's three.
Then we're going to a horizontal point now, taking that stretch back up, and then in through the nose, out through the mouth. That's three. So, I'm going to get out just below horizontal one there, take that stretch up. And then in through the nose, and out. Then that's it, just move your shoulders around enjoy that extra mobility there.
13:48- OVERHEAD POSITION FOR SHOULDERS
So next what we're going to be working on is bringing up into flexion or sort of like an overhead position for our shoulders. So, with this I'm standing sort of basically like arm length away from a wall, and I reach out, I put my hands down keeping my elbows straight and then what i'm doing from here is keeping my arms straight and dropping my body all the way down.
I'm not rounding my back, I'm keeping my back quite straight, and then getting that movement back into the shoulders giving them that full range. We're just going to do three breaths here, so in through the nose and then out.
14:54- FOCUS ON ALIGNMENT
So next what we're going to do is move on from looking at movement and we're going to focus instead on alignment. What we're really wanting to do is to reverse that tendency that we all have to have this sort of position, and so what we're going to do is do an exercise called a W exercise, which is where you make your arms into a W shape with the thumbs facing backward.
I always like to sort of correct the head posture so pull your head back, and I also like to look up slightly because that helps just release the activation here. What we're really wanting to do is use these muscles down here in between our shoulder blades. So, make the W shape look up slightly and then what we're doing is trying to not use these muscles but use those ones in between your shoulder blades.
We're squeezing back one two three. Relaxing one, two, three. One, two, three. One two, three. We're going to go for ten so that's four, three. One, two, three, so I'm going to say that one's four, and five
Six. If it's getting uncomfortable, if things are starting to burn just take a little break, six and seven.
So it's kind of this back and down movement that we're after- just caught myself looking down too much. Nine and last one. Good.
What we've done there is really kind of reset our alignment, and that'll mean that rather than when your heads forward everything through has to be working overtime just to stop your head from going forward with gravity. So we're going to use that we've gotmovement, we've got alignment.
SPIKEY BALL: 17:23
Now what I want to do is just kind of soothe this area. We're all doing a lot of this, let's just work through with some pressure on those areas, and for this i'm going to suggest that you use a ball, a spiky ball. In this case this is a lacrosse ball, and what we're going to start with is we're going to be doing three individual spots. We're going to be doing one right in between the spine and the shoulder blade here, then we're going to be doing one that's up, almost on the meaty bit above your shoulder blade, and then we're going to be doing this little corner in here where your arm joins onto your shoulder blade there.
We're going to do that on each side. We're going to use that slightly different breathing where rather than just breathing in through your nose and then out through your mouth, if you want to experiment with it, this is a really good place to use that physiological sigh, which just helps reset our nervous system from a stress sort of state, into what they call a parasympathetic state, which is putting your nervous system in a state to promote rest and relaxation and kind of de-stressing.
18:27 BEGINNING OF SPIKEY BALL EXERCISE
So let's start off. You put the ball against the wall, and then just drop it down a little bit so you can get into that spot and rather than rolling around, what I like to do for this is just find a tender spot, hold pressure there. And then we're going to go breathe in through the nose, and then second breath, and then out. So just moving into a slightly different spot there.
Breathe in, second breath, and out. Breathe in.
Now we're going to move to the top of the shoulder. So, for this one you almost need to angle back a little bit. I'm just going to find that fleshy bit there. All right so I’m going to breathe in. Okay, so that's our three breaths there. Now for this one, I've got a really a choice of going on the actual arm here, or for most people this area in the side of the shoulder blades the spot that you want to hit, so I'm going to hit that one.
If you're doing this by yourself you could maybe do an extra round where you go to the other one if you're feeling tender in both, but I'm on the side of the shoulder blade.
The easiest way of getting there is having your body sort of on a 45-degree angle there, just finding that tender spot- okay that's definitely it. And so I'm going to breathe in through my nose, that's number two, let's go for number three- that's a really tender one.
Okay, so now what we're going to do- oops dropped my ball. And i'm back. All right so same sequence, we're just going to do the opposite side. So again, ball against the wall, I'm just going to roll into that spot just next to my shoulder blade there. All right that's it, I've got the right spot, so I'm going to breathe in through my nose. Second breath.
So now I'm just going to reposition that ball. I'm getting ready from the top of that shoulder blade there. First breath, double breath. Second breath, that's our third breath there.
Now we're just going to move to the outside of the shoulder there. So again, looking for either on the shoulder blade or the back of the arm. So I'm going to keep it consistent that 45 degree angle here. I’m going for that spot on the shoulder blade just breathing in I'm just moving up a little bit, finding that real epicenter of tension there. All right that's it, so breathe in at that spot...really relax into it. One more, breathe in through the nose.
CONCLUSION: 23:27
So there we have it, we've got movement through shoulders, neck, sort of upper back as well, then we've reset our alignment so thatwe're in a nice upright position and then we've kind of reset the tension, reset the nervous system giving you the best chance of having ahealthier, happier more active body. Thanks for following along.
8 of our best stress busters!
This post is for anyone who feels they are holding onto the stress of 2020 or are struggling to feel up to speed in 2021, who could use a quick circuit breaker to manage their stress and feel more themselves.
As our live become “normal” again, with nearly everything being back at full capacity, very few places requiring face masks and your social lives (or at least your family’s social lives) picking up pace, many of our clients have been finding themselves more fatigued, worn out and just generally more stressed than they were back in the before times (aka pre March 2020).
It’s almost as if consciously we WANT to be back to normal, but our bodies haven’t decided to go along with us yet.
There are many possible reasons as to why this is, but the main themes I am hearing is that people are just waiting for the next round of lock downs to hit us at any moment, and the other is that a lot of people actually LOVED the slow down in the pace of their lives.
A lot of us are struggling to return to the glorification of being busy and the constant social demands on our attention and time.
Especially in Melbourne, we spent more of the last year being afraid of too much direct human contact than we did out in society. Now we are headed back to office and not only do we have to retrain our brain to be OK with having people around, but we have to be “on” all day, not just for the Zoom meetings we had!
It really takes a toll on us and has left a lot of our clients drained.
We know you don’t have time to research the best steps you can take to get back to feeling you, if only someone would accumulate years worth of stress related blogs in one easy to locate place and post it on their website amirite??
As always, we’ve got you covered!
May I present, here, for the first time in one place, the best of 6 years of stress specific blogs to get you back on track!
And No, one of the steps won’t be “Get adjusted”. If you’re on this blog you already know how relaxed and good you feel when you’re adjusted. This list is about what YOU can do, from the comfort of your own home to take control.
So without further waffle from me….
8 of our best Stress Busters
Make Stress your friend.
As you know, just saying “don’t let it get to you” is about as useful as a passport in a pandemic, but did you know you possess a huge power over how your body FEELS like it responds to it?
There is no making stress disappear but as I discussed in 2015, there may be a simple way to have lasting impact on what your body physically DOES with the stress and therefore changes how you feel about it.
when you have 15 minutes, watch the video as Kelly McGonigal explains it much better than I can.
The importance of saying ‘NO’.
Not just for little kids to annoy your parents, ‘no’ can be a powerful stress reliever.
You’ll heave heard of FOMO, the Fear Of Missing Out?
Well let me introduce JOMO, the Joy Of Missing Out.
If you have ever had a social event coming up and been wishing that it would get cancelled, then you need to connect with JOMO and embrace saying ‘NO’ more often.
Look at your upcoming weekends and recognise, its OK if we don’t do multiple things every day, I won’t say yes to dinner with ‘X’ or breakfast at ‘Y’s house. It’s OK to have enjoyed a few quiet weekends over lock down, to not always be available to everyone. After all, if your friends and family needed down time, you’d understand…and I hate to sound like your mother but if they DON’T understand your need to have some time to yourself then maybe they weren’t very good friends in the first place.
Improve your sleep!
As discussed at length on many occasions on this blog (most recently HERE) getting a good night of sleep is potentially the most important thing you can do for yourself.
For an explanation as to what sleep DOES to us to keep us healthy and reduce sleep, read the blog here about an interview with a sleep expert, but for Martin’s hottest tips on how to GET good sleep, watch the video.
Exercise your demons.
“I really regret that exercise I did and now I feel more stressed out” - Literally no one. Ever
This might seem really obvious but it is worth remembering. Pick an exercise you love to do and give yourself time to do it.
(Foam) Roll your way to relaxation.
Again, this one will seem a little too simple, but as Martin explains in this post, using a foam roller to help get rid of your tight stress shoulders and gert your body breathing again isn’t only easy to do but hugely effective as well!
Screen your screen time.
Think about what you’re doing on your screens and when.
Research shows that if the very first thing you do when you wake up is check your email, subconsciously you’re starting your day on someone ELSE’S agenda, and this increases the stress chemicals in our blood from the beginning of your day, and things cascade from there.
Try getting out of bed, setting a routine, even if its a short one like “I will have a shower and then open my email once I have made breakfast”, that way you open them on YOUR terms.
Also, while thinking about screen time, your devices will all have night modes for their screens, TURN THEM ON. Have them come on as the sun sets and timed to come back to normal as your day starts.
Theres a lot to this but basically, the orange/red of a night mode screen doesn’t wake your brain up the same way the blue/white light of a normal screen does. You’’ll fall asleep faster and better.
Meditate.
This one is obvious and yet feels like it will be impossible to fit into your day and even harder to stick with. There is some good news though, research shows that meditation is like exercise, the more you do it the easier it gets and SOME IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN NONE.
In fact, research shows you can start to get the benefits of meditation even from very short periods of doing it, the song “Someone like you” by Adel or “Strawberry swing” by Coldplay have been shown to start you in the right direction (personally, I’m an Enya man).
Why not try challenging yourself to listening to a song that relaxes you quietly while you take a minute to yourself for a week? Then after you prove you have 3-4 minutes to do that, the jump to a 5 minute guided meditation in an app like ‘smiling mind’ doesn’t seem like such a giant leap!
Try, Try again
Read our 3 simple steps to help keep a healthy change going.
No one expects you to be perfect or to do all 8 of these recommendations at once! Give yourself a break, you deserve to find out which of these tips suit you and only YOU can find out how they fit into your life.
As always, if there is anything we can do to help, any extra info we can provide, then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us!
Sleep Better
If you or some one you love isn’t getting enough sleep, is struggling to get to sleep or you’re waking up feeling tired and worn out, this post is for you.
As stated in previous post on this blog: Sleep is super important.
So important that we really need to think of it as a pillar of health the same way we do diet, exercise and stress management.
What happens when we don’t get enough sleep?
One of the major areas impacted by sleep issues is our cardiovascular health.
Impacts of sleep on cardiovascular health include:
Increases chance of both developing and dying of CV disease by 45%
Heart attack - leading cause of death in Australia and stroke is a leading cause of disability.
Main mechanism - increases BP
Often people can think of sleep as wasting time, but the reality is that your brain doesn’t work as well without it.
in an Australian study, no sleep for 19 hours was shown to have equivalent impact on concentration as being over .05 blood alcohol
As well, less than 5 hours sleep can lead to a 500% increase in risk of car accident
Once again, Martin has come through with the goods with a video that will have you catching some of the best quality Z’s of your life in no time!
As always, the video is transcribed below. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to get you back on track!
Intro: 0.00
Hi, Martin Harvey here from Align Chiropractic, and today’s video is all about sleep, why you need to get more of it, why it’s important for both your health, and also how easy it is to get the things you need to do done. So, timing this video, I’ve decided to do this video partly because I think sleep is super important, but also because this Saturday is when we go to daylight savings. Daylight savings is kind of like this mini experiment that we have each year where we all get like a tiny little bit of sleep deprivation and all feel mildly excited that it’s a step closer to summer. It’s interesting how many people are coming into the practice each year in this sort of period of time afterwards just not feeling as well as they normally will because they’ve missed out on one hour of sleep.
Impact of not enough sleep: 0.51
So, what I want to do is share with you a little bit of information about why health is super important, and then I want you share with you a couple if really simple things you can do to help yourself sleep better, and in the context of transitioning to daylight savings, what you can do to kind of get past that little hiccup as quickly as possible.
So, when we’re talking about sleep and impacts on health, there’s lots of things that it affects. It affects your risk of obesity, your risk of diabetes etc. One of the key things that I wanted to highlight was the impact of not enough sleep on cardiovascular health- your heart health, because the leading cause of death in Australia is cardiovascular issues, and also one of the leading causes of disability in Australia, Stroke, is also at an increased risk if you have sleep deprivation. So, interesting research in this area shows that you increase your risk of having cardiovascular disease by about 45% if you’re not getting enough sleep, and if you already have cardiovascular disease, increase the chance of dying from it by about 45% if you’re not getting enough sleep. So, it’s kind of important.
Now, how does it work? What’s the link between not enough sleep and this impact of cardiovascular health? It’s probably a bunch of mechanisms, but what the research suggests is a lot of it is because it increases your blood pressure. Even one night of not enough sleep can have a measurable impact in terms of increasing your blood pressure. So, it’s not a tiny thing- it’s a really important thing.
So, the information that I’m sharing with you is mainly from a really cool book by a neuroscientist called Matthew Walker. It’s kind of a world leader in the area of sleep and health. Another thing- and this is often one of the things that people notice, is that they just kind of feel a bit foggy and a bit out of it when they haven’t slept as much as they should, and the science in this area is really, really interesting. You see, if you haven’t slept enough, it impacts your concentration. That not only mean that it’s harder to get the work that you want done, it’s harder for you to be as present for your family and friends, it’s harder for you to do everything. It’ll measurably increase the chance of you having a car accident.
Experiment: 3:15
So, there was some research done in Australia where what they tried to quantify this. What they did was look at how well subjects in these studies did on a standardized concentration test, and the findings were really amazing where having the subjects be up for 19 hours- which isn’t a huge amount, like it’s not missing a complete night’s sleep, but just staying up a little bit later than you normally would. It meant that those subjects performed as badly on concentration tests as people who were over 0.05 blood alcohol level. So, not having enough sleep dulls down your brain to the level that you’re functioning almost as if you’re a little bit drunk.
Sleep better: 4:00
Now, what you can do to sleep better? If you’re one of those people who have trouble sleeping, or you just want to optimise your health and sleep better, there is a couple of really simple things to help yourself sleep better.
It feels bad to say this because I’m such a coffee fan, but avoiding caffeine late in the day is an obvious, but really important one. When Matthew Walker’s talking about this in his book, he talks about the half-life of caffeine. This means how long does it take for the amount of caffeine in your bloodstream to reduce by half- which is about 12 hours. So, what that means then is if you’re wanting to go to bed at 10 and you had a coffee at 10, you still have a significant portion of the caffeine in your blood. So making sure that if you are a coffee lover like I am, biasing that toward earlier in the day is going to help you sleep better later at night.
Interestingly, a lot of people will say that they sleep better if they have a glass or two of alcohol, but the science says there’s a pretty fine balance there. Yes, a glass or maybe two glasses can help people relax and be in a better state to sleep, but it often reduces your ability to go into the deeper levels of sleep which are the ones that we need to really rest, repair, and wake up rejuvenated. It also puts you into a shallower state of sleep. Often if we’re having more than a couple of drinks, there’s a mechanism which will often wake up once your liver has finished dealing with the alcohol- so, you’ll often find that after having had a few drinks that you’re then waking up at 3 in the morning finding it very, very difficult to sleep. So, minimising alcohol is a really important thing. So, looking forward to this Saturday when we lose an hour of sleep, it’s probably a good night to go easy in terms of how many drinks you have.
Exercise: 5:52
Exercise is a really powerful lever in terms of impacting our sleep. Exercising earlier in the day tends to create a biorhythm where we’re much more relaxed and drowsy for sleep later in the day. For a lot of people – particularly people who are in that night owl sort of group, exercising late in the day can often act as a stimulant, making it much harder to get to sleep.
Sleeping Strategies: 6:15
There are a couple of things that you can do in your environment to help you sleep better. One is having a hot bath later in the day because the heat and then the drop in temperature when you get out of the bath, that drop in temperature will make it easier, and sort of allow you to become dozy. We’re very strongly triggered by cool temperatures that will tend to stimulate an appropriate melatonin response, which is the sleep hormone
Related to that is having a cool room. They talk about wanting a room that’s under 20 degrees- ideally about 17/18 degrees Celsius, is sort of the sweet spot for most people to sleep better.
The last thing I want to share with you is the importance in terms of melatonin and getting sunlight into your eyes earlier in the day. So, getting outside and getting natural sunlight. Our melatonin production is stimulated by sunlight coming into our eyes, and then stimulating our pituitary to make melatonin. That production earlier in the day is what helps us feel sleepy later in the day. It sort of sets that biorhythm, but it’s strongly stimulated by light that’s coming in at that low angle that is present earlier in the day. So, getting outside without sunglasses early in the day, particularly going for a walk can be really powerful way of setting your biorhythm so you’re better able to sleep later on in the day.
Conclusion: 7:50
So, this is Martin Harvey from Align Chiropractic with a few tips to help you sleep better and get over the hump of the daylight savings.
Reduce your stress with a Foam Roller
Feeling like you’re sitting too much at the moment? Feel like the top of your back is more concrete than muscle? Worried you’re starting to develop a hunch back? Then this post is for you!
If you have been following this blog, you’ll know that we have been posting a lot about what you can be doing to keep your body moving well to stay healthy and more comfortable while you’re having this time at home.
In the video below, Martin talks us through how to use a foam roller to take hunch out of your back and help your nervous system calm down as well, because forward head posture has been linked with increased stress and tension as well as many other conditions.
Martin will show you some easy to follow exercises and stretches you can do easily and safely from your home to keep moving and give your body some breathing space.
As always, the video is transcribed below. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to get you back on track!
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic, and what I want to talk about in today’s video is a really simple, quick strategy that you can use to help de-stress, to unwind, to help loosen muscle tension that we often build up from stress in our neck and shoulder, and to also help reduce that sort of posture where your head and shoulders comes forward that we often get when we’re stressed.
So, what am I talking about with that posture? There’s a posture that we look for clinically which can come about from postural stress of long periods of time with our head forward and arms foward. It can also be part of our body’s response to stress. The normal stress response activates certain neural pathways that increases the tension in the muscles in our should and neck, which makes sense if we look at stress as a survival response that we need to fight or run away (flight) in response to a stressor that’s kind of the way we’re wired. The challenge is that in our modern lives, we tend to have stresses, rather than being something rustling in the bushes that we need to run away from which might have been a stress when we were hunter-gatherers. It’s more likely that deadlines, or family stresses or money stresses, or all the other reasons that we have to be stressed. So, what tends to happen rather than being a short period of stress and then physical activity to resolve the stress- which has a natural balancing, we have these periods of long-term, ongoing stress and we end up with these shoulders that are like concrete, head that pokes forward, and shoulders that round forward. It’s also then having that posture, we think also signals to your brain that look, there’s something that you should be stressed about, which then winds thing up. So often we’ll see people with neck pain, headaches, or even low back pain where a big part of what’s contributed to it is that ongoing stresses has just kind of wound everything up, altered their posture.
Foam Rollers: 2:12
So, what I want to show you today is a special use of a foam roller that you can use to help unwind and de-stress, as well as release the tension that you’ve got that tends to build up in your neck and shoulders when you are under ongoing stress.
So, the type of roller that we’re going to need to be able to do this exercise. You can’t have one of these shorter rollers because I’m going to show you a way where you’re lying on top of the roller this way. So, two types of rollers than can work are the sort of traditional, full, round, long roller, or a specific posture correction type roller which is a half roller, and then the diamond where you’re going to lie on this side. So, either of these two types will work. This one- the full roller tends to be a bit more of an advanced one- some people will find it a bit trickier to balance on, whereas this one tends to be a little bit more specialised for the job. If you want this sort of type, these are a bit harder to get. These ones you can kind of get from online or lots of different sporting goods place. These ones probably best to just come in and get one from our practice, we sell them.
Exercise 3:26
So, using the roller is as simple as this. I’m just sitting down one end and then my head is resting at the top. My hands are palm up so that I can get some external shoulder rotation, and the starting position is hands down by your side. The first time you do you do this. It’s natural to feel a little bit of stress or tension in the middle part of the back, but it should never cause any pinching or sharp pain. You just want to relax your shoulder back.
First day you do this, I’m going to suggest you do it for 2 minutes. I’ll show you how you go about getting up in a minute. As you progress, the way that you can increase the amount of stretch and the amount of release here is by bringing your arms up closer to this sort of 90 degrees to the body mark here- it tends to be easier with the hands down like this. So, increase the time until you’re doing it for about 10 minutes, and then you can start moving your arms out to the side. Most people find somewhere between 10-15 minutes gives them a really really good release, and they feel much less stressed afterwards. You can also increase the impact by doing meditation or the physiological sigh type exercises at the same time.
Getting up 4:52
Now, getting off. When getting off it’s really important that you don’t come up like this- that can feel really uncomfortable. What I’d suggest is you roll to the side and then slowly sit, come up. Just take your time because you can feel a little bit dizzy.
Conclusion: 5:12
So, there we have it- the way to use the posture correction roller, or the sympathetic dominance rock roller as a way of reducing stress, and unwinding tension.
Simple strategies to reduce stress and sleep better
Feeling fatigued, a little bit over it all or just in need of a few strategies to wake up feeling a bit more energised? Then this post is for you.
For those of you who have been following this blog, you’ll know that we have been posting a lot about what you can be doing to keep your body moving well to stay healthy and more comfortable while you’re having this time at home, but what about the other things our body has to do well to keep us going?
One of the first casualties during periods of stress, especially prolonged stress is the quality of our sleep. We find it harder to nod off, we wake more easily through the night or sometimes we just notice the quality of our sleep has dropped off and we are waking feeling tired despite having gotten our normal amount of sleep.
It makes sense, when under “threat” your body doesn’t want to let it’s guard down completely so that you can remain alert to danger. Its the reason you never sleep as well in a hotel as you do at home no matter how many stars it has because its a new environment so your mind never fully shuts off.
Now think about how we find ourselves living in a new environment, a new routine, changes in the amount of exercise we can do in a day and dealing with stressed people all day every day.
Is it any wonder that our clients are contacting us complaining of fatigue more than ever before? Of course not.
Please enjoy this little video Martin has filmed to help you get your sleep back on track, as always the transcript is below.
Hi, Martin Harvey from Align Chiropractic. So, today’s video is a really simple routine that I think will help you in terms of managing stress and improving your sleep. I’m recording this during the whole COVID-19 lockdown here in Melbourne, and one of the things that I’ve become super aware of when talking to people is that stress is having a bigger impact than ever because of the current circumstance. There’s not always a lot we can do about the circumstances- that applies right now, but it also applies to life generally. Often the things that are stressing us are not the things that we can immediately resolve. So, it’s really useful to have tools that you can use to reduce the physiological impact, reduce the health impact of stress and or issues with sleep so that they’re less likely to cause your immune system to work more poorly, less likely to cause a buildup of tension that is often a driver of spinal problems, and all the other things like headaches and so on that we know are very strongly stress related.
So, when we talk about stress from a physiological perspective, there’s a whole lot of hormones that are involved. The number one hormone is a hormone called cortisol, but all of our hormones are sort of interlinked. When we talk about sleep and stress, the hormone that also becomes really important for us to consider is melatonin. This is the hormone that really triggers us to feel sleepy at the time we want to go to sleep, and so there’s often a very strong-tie between higher than normal levels of stress and having more difficulty sleeping. So, I sort of wanted to combine a routine that allows you to essentially use really easy triggers to try and normalize your melatonin levels and your cortisol levels.
Melatonin 2:00
So, the first thing that I’m going to suggest that you do is to wherever possible get outside early in the morning- whatever is early for you, but get outside because we get unfiltered light- even if it’s cloudy, and that goes through our eyes and stimulates in our brain the production of melatonin. So, if we do that early in the morning, it’s much more likely that it sets our circadian rhythm in a way that we’re going to feel nice and sleepy when it’s time to go to bed later that night. The advantage of doing a walk is, one- it’s one of the things we are able to do with our current stage 4 code lockdown, but it also triggers a thing called optic flow.
Optic flow: 2:49
An optic flow is essentially a stimulation of certain brain circuits by having things going past us, by having things going through our visual field. So, it triggers a series of changes in our brain that also helps to kind of relax us and reset cortisol levels in a way that’s really healthy. If it’s raining outside and you can’t get that, the next best way of doing it is to move around the house a bit. If we’re restricted to our homes, we’re not moving as much as we might normally, so make a conscious effort to sort of almost do laps of the house.
You also want to get near a window. Now, the window will have light slightly filtered- some of the UV radiation doesn’t come through the window, so it’s not quite as good as the melatonin effect that you get being out in direct sunlight (but almost as good). One little thing to add to the getting out for your morning walk, is that it’s important that you don’t wear sunglasses unless it’s so bright that you almost have to squint, because the light coming in gets filtered and altered by the sunglasses. So, particularly in the morning, you’re generally not going to need it unless you’re walking directly into the sun.
Physiological sigh- 4:07
The other thing that I’ve mentioned on other videos but I just want to go into a little bit more detail is the power of the physiological sigh. So, when we talk about cortisol and stress, often the strategy that comes up is learning and developing a meditation practice, and it’s very well established, evidence-based way of improving our health, improving our cognitive function, and reducing stress levels. It is a bit time consuming, and for a lot of people it’s a tough habit to get into.
The beauty of the physiological sigh is that it’s very neurologically triggered. You don’t have to develop a skill, it’s just using your breathing in a very specific way. You get the effect immediately, whereas meditation is a skill and a practice that you have to develop over a period of time. So, physiological sigh essentially is a way of breathing where you take one deep breath, which expands the little alveoli in your lungs and triggers certain neural pathways, then you take a second breath over the top of that, and then you relax as you let your breath out. So, it’s a really powerful way of triggering a direct neural pathway that changes you from being into what you might think of as a nervous system that’s all wound up and ready to go- which is called a sympathetic state, to a parasympathetic state- which is the neurological way that our bodies get us into the right state to rest, relax and repair any damage that’s happened to our body.
So, physiological sigh in terms of routine, I’d be suggesting go for your walk to get the optic flow and get the melatonin. After that, sit down and do 5 of these physiological sigh breaths. Really really simple, you just breathe in through the nose. Just relax your shoulders as you’re doing it.
Conclusion: 6:59
So, there we have it. A really simple routine to help manage sleep and to help improve stress or lower stress levels. It’s based on research that’s done by Dr. Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford in the US. He’s doing some really exciting work that I think can really help us live a healthier, happier, more active life.
A quick way to move and soothe your neck
This post is for anyone missing their normal routine and would like some tips on getting rid of the tension and restriction they are starting to feel in their neck, upper back and shoulders, but don’t have the time to watch or go through the whole sequence as described by Martin in an earlier video.
As most of you are aware, during the stage 4 restrictions in Melbourne allied health are only allowed to practice on a more urgent basis, meaning that a lot of our regular clients are missing out on getting their regular adjustments as well as maintaining themselves while living in lock down.
Never fear however as Martin and I are still in practice!
If you have a specific issue please do not hesitate to contact the practice so we can see how we can keep you going.
Below is the next instalment of our “Move and Soothe” series of posts.
Many of you expressed that although the original video was very helpful, it was a fairly long run time, so…you asked for it and we have delivered!
Martin has whipped together a quick video about how to keep yourself moving at home, helping your neck keep moving, free up a lot of the tension you have felt building, especially over the last few weeks of stage 4 lock downs.
As usual with our videos, the transcript is available below.
Enjoy!
0:00- intro
Hi, Martin here from Align Chiropractic. This is another follow along, move and soothe video. This one is designed to be a quick routine that you can do maybe in the middle of the day, or when you don’t have as much time. It’s really oriented at releasing tension, improving movement through your neck, and then extending out into the shoulder area.
So the idea here is that we use a sequence that we would use when we’re providing chiropractic care to deal with problems, which is we’ve got to create movement in the system first before we can then change alignment. Improving movement and alignment are the key to then creating changes in the way all the soft tissues work, so releasing tension, allowing nerves to function better. The nerves functioning better is what then translates into muscles functioning better because nerves control muscles, then that’s what creates an environment where you can create a spine that’s both more balances and more stable. So we look at is as movement, alignment, and then balance and stability come as a result of that. If we try and create stability without having movement and alignment- much less effective.
1:17- description
So let’s get into it. With this one you can do it either sitting at your desk, so if you’ve been spending hours doing this and you’re starting to notice that tension building up, or you can do it standing.
The first thing we are going to do is we’re going to double up and do our move and soothe together. So, we’re going to be moving our spine through ranges of motion, getting it to that end range of motion to encourage full range of motion in our neck, And we’re going to be applying a little bit of a release to the muscles that most commonly tighten up as a result of stress, or as a result of postural stress. With this one, you don’t need any equipment- in some of the other move and soothes will use a spiky ball, a tennis ball, or a lacrosse ball, but for today we are just going to be using our hands so that it’s super easy to do wherever you are
2:11- breathing
I’m going to be incorporating the physiological ‘sigh’ breathing that you might have seen on other videos. It’s an approach that I came across through the research of a neuroscientist called Dr Andrew Hubermann. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, but basically it is where you take a deep breath in through your nose, and then when you get to that point where it’s tight, you just take a little breath over the top- so it’s a double breath. And then relax.
2:47- Lateral Flexion
So, to start off we’re going to be doing lateral flexion- probably the most important movement for us to have. To incorporate a soothe, what I’m going to get you to do is just reach across with the opposite hand and apply some pressure to this muscle up here and apply some pressure to this muscle up here in your upper trapezius or levator scap muscle. So just feel in there and find a point that’s feeling a bit tight- it’s right there for me, and then we are going to incorporate breathing in through our nose. Then we’re going to the other side, and then we’re going to breathe back over this side. Just letting that relax. I’m going to go one more time- breathing over to this side. Now just swap hands, and one more. That’s it, now we go to rotation
Rotation 4:20
So, hand across and this time, we’re going to be focusing on rotation away from the side that our hand is. So, breathing in. Swapping over. Breathing in, breathing in. Last one. Shrug your shoulders up and let them relax.
Conclusion: 5:38
There we have it. Just a quick follow along to help you release some tension, improve the movement, and have a much healthier, happier spine.