BREATHING EXERCISES

While laying or sitting up comfortably start to focus your attention into your lungs and breath.  Take a quick notice as to your pattern of breathing…shallow, belly only, holding breath in our out… don’t judge it, just notice it and how you feel.  Begin to take slow, deep breaths from the base of your lungs up passed your shoulders.  Picture the Chakra’s running through the center of our bodies, starting with the root chakra and working upward to crown.  With each chakra, focus the breath to that area of the body and picture the color and symbol.  Quick trick, the chakra colors are the rainbow backwards.  Red is the base and violet/purple at the crown.  With each breath start at the base of your lungs and fill lungs completely, before you exhale think of the connection from the earth to the universe you are part of, then exhale slowly and picture a bright yellow, orange glow coming down around you.  Protecting and encouraging you. Before you start the next inhale, make sure you have exhaled completely.  Please stop if you feel light headed or weak and get into childs pose, or sit comfortably.

SIT CORRECTLY

Sitting correctly isn’t the easiest.  When you are uncomfortable notice how you are sitting and make the correct adjustments.   Standing up, feel for your “butt bones” your ishial tuberosities…directly where your hamstrings attach.  Pull your “extra loving” outward to the sides and if you had a tail, stick it out, and sit down now.  Your feet should be able to touch the ground with no problem.  This is the correct way to sit down.  Your vertebra will line up in the correct curvature, rather than a “slumped” or “smooshed” way.  This correction goes up through the neck to the skull, so in this one adjustment the sacrum and hips, entire back and ribs, neck and head are all sitting in a better way.  Take a few deep breaths and enjoy this new feeling in your body, especially low back and shoulders. 

IN THE CAR

First, please pay attention to driving and the road, these exercises shouldn’t be used in the car if you can’t pay attention to the road.  OK, so, I came up with this “driving workout” because I didn’t have enough time to get to the gym or yoga or anything at a certain point in nursing school.  Deep breathing in the car is always good.  Start with a rule, at every stop sign take a deep breath.  At every red light do 10 deep breaths.  Sit correctly, find your “butt bones” and sit directly on them… you may notice you were slumped over to the right?  That is very common and then a lot of people end up with Right sided SacroIlliac Joint pain.  Sitting up straight, distribute some of your weight back onto your left foot.  Shoulder rotations, turtle in for neck, neck stretches are great to do at red lights as well.