Tai Chi: Joint Rolling

Video Transcript

"In this segment we'll talk about rolling the joints. We begin with rolling the neck, now when you do this it's not about trying to use your muscles, trying to do a big movement. It could be a very, very small movement but what you want to do is to move from the perspective of the spine itself. So you have to really look inwardly and you go both directions. And then you do that a number to times and then you move into your shoulders. Now this idea is not do a big shoulder roll, it's just really very gentle, very small. And you want to be paying attention to the way your shoulder joint actually feels as you go in both directions. Then we move our way down into our hips. When you do the hip joint, you have to let your knees be a little bit soft, if you don't it will lock up your hips. Again this is very small, so when you roll your hips you can envision that you are standing in a pool of water. So you're just rolling your hips or rolling and swimming in that water without any stress or strain at all. Now when you go to your ankles what you can do is hold on to a chair and touch with your toe. Rolling your heel, drawing a circle with your heel in both directions. And then finally we work our way up to the wrists and we clasp our fingers together, making sure we touch the palms and letting the wrists roll to get a nice natural smooth motion of the wrists."