Wall Exercise

Hi Amy again, and I'm here again still actually in boulder, Colorado. I'm now with Rachel and Whitney and they have a little something they're gonna tell you about. We're going to show a really fabulous exercise for every body. Literally it's called the wall exercise. This is one of our teachers, a very favorite exercises for people to do as homework. It's great for people who sit all the time at desks and computers. Uh, it's great for people who aren't very mobile and they can take part of the exercise in and do it sitting in a chair, for example. Um, I'm going to give Whitney hand weights, but you don't need to have hand weights at home.

You could use soup cans in your hands. You could use rolls of quarters before you go and do your laundry. Um, something a little bit that gives you a understanding of where the end of your hand is, is nice to have, but you don't need to have it. What you do need to have as a wall, and even if you don't have a wall, then you can do it on a door or a door jam. Something that is slippery that you can slide up and down against. Okay? So you start by placing your back against the wall and you've take your feet up, 12 to 14 inches away from the wall.

This can be done hip width apart or we can do it in what's called [inaudible] v where the legs are together and heels touching and toes apart like Whitney's doing right now. You started with straight legs. If you can get most of your back and the back of your head to touch the wall, if that feels hard to you, then start with your legs apart and start with your knees bent so that it allows you to drop your butt a little bit and lets you put as much of your spine on the wall throughout the exercise as you can. All right, so when he's going to take these hand weights and hold them down facing her thighs and the fur and it's kind of in parts. So if you only did one part of it, that would be fine too. The first part is arm circles. So as you inhale, you're going to take your arms forward up above you, and as you exhale, you're going to open them out to the side and back down to your hips. And we do three of them. That's all in one direction. Inhale.

And as the arms rise, you take a really big breath, like maybe the breadth is even more important to you than the arms. You can go wherever you can go. So Whitney is potties teachers. She can get her arms up against the wall in the circle. If you can't do that, that's totally fine. And then reverse it. Big Inhale, breathe up, right? You can see her whole rib cage expand, her tummy pulls in and she feels her back against. So it's great for strengthening the Tummy, even though it doesn't look like a belly exercise at all. It's great for strengthening the shoulders and for stretching and easing the back as well. Okay, last one. Hail.

And as you exhale, Joe would say, squeeze every atom of air out of your lungs. So that's the first little section of the exercise. Then you might bring your feet to the wall and step away and that would be it. And you could do it a couple times a day. If you want to go on. What we'll do is we'll start with the back of her head, touching the wall like a piece of tape.

We're going to peel her off the wall from the top to the bottom. She's going to start with an inhale. Her arms are just going to dangle the little weights hanging and pulling gently on her arms. She goes off the wall, one vertebra at a time till she's wherever she feels comfortable with her hips remaining on the wall. Okay? So as you want that wall there for balance and for support, when she gets there, you should feel a nice stretch through your whole back. Your blades will be pulling apart and your arms will be dangling.

So at the bottom of that dangle, you're going to make circles, maybe eight circles in one direction, in opposition to each other, and you make them such that once they get started, they almost feel like momentum. So it's such an easy movement up through the upper back. You breathe in for a couple, you breathe out for a couple and then you reverse them. No more than eight of each. Always breathing, always staying firmly attached to the wall. Then the momentum stops in your arms.

Just happen to finish moving and then you roll your spine from the bottom vertebra all the way through the middle, up through the upper back and to the top of the head and she breeds in to start and she breathes out. Rest your shoulders to arrive. Good. And the whole top of the head comes there and you might be done there and you could bring your feet in against the wall and step away and maybe you could do it again. If you were in your office all day, you might find doing it two times to three times a day would be really great refreshes the brain, brings blood to your head, upside down, stretches, everything that's tied in in a chair sitting situation. But if you want to go on, we're going to take the feet hip width apart a little bit further away from the wall. And we're going to bring the arms out in front of the chest. And again, if you have nothing to hold onto, that's fine.

Or if this feels to a tension written for you and your neck, maybe you can leave your arms down by your side or you can cross them in front of you. So as she inhales, she's going to squat and her her back will slide and she slides on the inhale down. Her knees go straight forward over her toes and she doesn't go any deeper than as if she were in a chair. As she exhales, she pushes into her feet and you don't want to get stuck. So part of the working again, inhaled down part of what you're negotiating through your body as you do this is not getting stuck. How much pressure against the wall, where when all that is not a cortex thing, but kind of a feeling thing. And so it's very, uh, sensual gesture and it gets you in your body. Out of your head and when you're done with that, you can bring your arms down and you can be done with that little section. So that's third section. If you really want a challenge, you could do it on one leg and you have, you've tried, okay, so on one leg you're going to try and stay as much in the middle of what had been your two legged stance as possible, but you'll always move just slightly at least onto what will become your, your new standing leg so your arms not come up.

And in truth it's even to make it easier. Arms up in this one because it helps you balance. Okay, so she's going to bring one leg out in front of her. That's a big tummy exercise. She's trying to stay as centered as possible and then she's going to bend her standing leg. Inhale to go down. Maybe you don't go as far on this exercise. Exhale to come up. Nice. One more time. Only inhale Nigo.

Straight forward over. Exhale. Push your foot down into nice exhale and change feet. So you'll notice that this is really a full body exercise as is all polities. Let's go the other side. And all Polonius is meant for two things.

One, to teach the body. I'm helping to keep Whitney up, right, to teach the body how to work all together as a unit or one organic unit. Nicely done. And bring your one word. Okay, try one more time. Inhale. Hod. Exhale. Foot down. Good. Bring your foot underneath you. Bring your arms down, walk your feet back to the wall. And that helps set her up so she doesn't have to come out away from where her balance was. And then she can walk away. And it should make you feel taller.

It should make you feel warm and lively. It should have put you in contact with all the different parts of your body. It should make you feel, um, uh, more alive and enthusiastic about what you have to do next. So it's a really great antidote to whatever you've been doing, sitting with very little movement. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you Whitney.