Yoga for Neck and Shoulder Stress

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about neck and shoulders, and some exercises that you can do to release the tension in your neck and shoulders, which will eventually help in through your arms. Again, I'm just going to talk about what we look like, and then this is kind of what we look like when we get out of our desk after eight hours, and so we want actually to counteract all of that. Your shoulders are going to be back and down, and bring your hands to your lap, and you can actually do all of this in a chair. You're going to drop your head, tuck in towards your chest. Be careful here, don't have your shoulders rolled up, you want your shoulders rolled up and back, and you want to be able to have your neck be nice and long, your spine nice and long in the back. So, when you drop your chin in towards your chest, you should feel the stretch in through your neck and your shoulders here. So you just take a few deep breaths, and as you inhale, you can even just slightly bring your shoulders up, just slightly, and as you exhale, you release and you really feel the stretch through your neck and your shoulders, and you take two more breaths, inhale and exhale and one more deep breath in exhaling. And then you want to go over to the side. So you want to drop your head across to one side, and here you're going to actually take your opposite hand, whatever hand that is and drop your fingers down towards the floor in the opposite direction. So here actually you should feel the stretch all the way from the base of your skull, all the way down through your neck and all the way to your shoulders. You may even feel it on to the outside of your shoulder here. So take in two more deep breaths, you inhale and you exhale. One more deep breath, and reach all the way through your fingertips here, so you should feel it almost halfway down your upper arm, inhale and exhale. Come across to the other side; drop your chin in towards your chest, coming across to the other side, opposite fingers out. Inhale, deep breathe in through your nose when you're breathing and exhale out through your nose when you're breathing. Here you're working, again, your shoulder away from your ear. You inhale, and exhale another deep breath, and release. Through your fingertips, stretching your fingers in the opposite direction, one more breath in, exhale. Then you roll your head just back to center, you drop your hand down towards your lap. You inhale your head up towards the ceiling, and rolling your shoulders up and back."