10 Stretches To Do At Your Desk

It’s likely that when you sit at a desk for a number of hours a week that once in a while you’ll have a few achy, uncomfortable joints or muscles. You may occasionally get an achy lower back, a tight neck or tight hamstrings from sitting at a desk. Even if you feel these don’t effect you now I would still recommend trying and incorporating them for many reasons - the maintenance of your spine, preventing future injury, preventing the rounding of shoulders/poor posture. In addition, taking a few minutes out to breathe and get your body moving, even sitting at a desk, will help you feel energised and more alert during your working day,

The following ten stretches should help you to ease these. Not all of them need to be done together but they all bring a different benefit and open up a different part of the body. Perhaps you find three that work well for you and try to integrate them into your daily routine.

Start sitting in the middle of your seat so that you can sit up tall without touching its back and complete the following sequence - it should take around ten minutes in total with sufficient pausing and breathing in each.

1 & 2. Seated Cat Cow
Take your hands to your knees, lift your chest and pull your shoulders back - take a deep inhale and as you exhale, round your spine, drop your chin to your chest, bring your thoracic (middle) spine towards the back of the chair.

3. Neck Stretch
Take your hands under your thighs and sit up as tall as you can. Let the right ear drop toward your right shoulder, hold here for 30 seconds until you feel a gentle release and repeat on the other side.

4. Reach Up
Take your hands together above your head, interlace them and pop out your first finger pointing to the sky. Stretch arms up as high as you can to lengthen your spine and let your self stretch right and left, staying on one side for a few moments.

5. Seated Twist
Take one hand behind you to the top of the chair and the other to the arm rest or the side of the seat. Lift up as tall as you can, take a breath in and twist as you breathe out. Hold it for at least 30 seconds, keeping long through your spine. Release and repeat on the other side.

6. Hip Opener
Take your right ankle over the top of the left thigh and flex the foot. Gently draw the right knee towards the ground, hold the knee and ankle and hinge forward. Hopefully you feel it in your outer right hip. Repeat on the other side.

7. Eagle Arms, Upper Back Stretch
Reach your arms to each side and then wrap the right under the left, bend your elbows, squeeze the arms together and wrap the hands until they touch. Shrug the shoulders down and draw your forearms and hands forwards and up. Hold for 20 seconds and repeat on the left side.

8. Calf Stretch
Come to stand, bend through one knee and place the other heel on the ground, flexing that foot. Hold on to the desk or the back of your chair and slowly fold forward.

9. Quad Stretch
Stand tall and take the weight into one foot, lift the other and bend that knee, catching the foot in your hand. Keep the knees together and draw your hips forward, bringing the heel towards your bottom.

10. Back body and neck
Interlace hands behind your lower back, draw the shoulders behind you, extend arms, lift hands away from body and drop chin to sternum. You can do this sitting or standing at any point of the day and it should release tension in the shoulders and neck.

Introduction to yoga

I won't assume that readers of little health bunny are keen yogis/yoginis, so let us start with the basics of what yoga is, what it's not, why people do it and also explain a few things I wish I knew when I first started practising.

The word yoga by definition means 'union', of body mind and spirit. Yoga intends to increase connection; perhaps this means connecting to ourselves, to connect our body with our mind, perhaps it means connecting to the world, surroundings, to others. Personally, time on the mat gives me time to check in with how I'm feeling physically, emotionally and sets me up for the day. In our busy lives we get swept from work to the gym to social occasions to bed, always looking forward to what's next or dwelling on what happened last week - it is so rare that we stop and take time to get/feel grounded. For an hour, an hour and a half, yoga and meditation give you the opportunity to let yourself off the hook; to shrug off your thoughts, frustrations, stories, worries, expectations and focus on the present moment. As a teacher, I hope to lift weight off students shoulders; to give them a space free of judgement, to get in touch with their breathing and themselves.

The word or sound OM. It is a mantra and is said to be the sound of the universe (like the noise and vibration you hear/feel when you put your ear to a seashell). You know how 'good vibes' is a popular saying? No matter what pitch or length it is, the vibrations you make with an OM gives out energy and lets energy flow through you. If that's all a little too hard to grasp - essentially it is just a hum. I find in a group environment it is a way to connect/unite us all and it is incredibly relaxing once you overcome the unfamiliarity/peculiarity/embarrassment.

Sanskrit. What are these odd words the teacher keeps repeating? I may be stating the obvious here, but yoga isn't a new fad, it has been practised for thousands of years. Sanskrit is the language of yoga that has been passed down generation to generation. Personally I was taught using sanskrit and feel it's only right to continue using this throughout my own teaching... plus, the vocabulary can be long, complicated, obscure and I've worked so hard to remember it so I think it's only right to share!

The term namaste. Generally it opens and closes the class and means 'I bow to the divine in you' - I have also heard 'the light in me bows to the light in you'; it's a way of showing respect and perhaps thanks.

Yoga is an umbrella term which encompasses thousands of traditions, philosophies and teachings. I practised and therefore learnt to teach hatha and vinyasa flow yoga. There are many other branches, including kundalini, ashtanga, iyengar, yin (the list goes on and I would only be able to name a handful anyway) and then within one type of yoga... many more branches. In addition, different teachers will teach in different styles; not one class can be the same as another - some more spiritual, some based on alignment, some focused on meditation or mantras... some are just very challenging sweaty workouts. So when someone claims that yoga 'isn't for them'... I tend to think they just haven't found the right teacher.

Unlike other forms of fitness, yoga encompasses so much more. Instead of working towards a goal, yoga is an ongoing practise. Yes, over time you will likely become physically stronger and more flexible... but hopefully so will your mind.

There is a whole world of yoga I will try to share with you, bit by bit, week by week. But for now, I will leave it at that and say namaste - have a happy hump day.

LHB