Desk Yoga Break Part 1

Many of us spend A LOT of time sitting at our desks on our computers. If this includes you the chances are that you've started to feel the physical effects this: enter stiff hips, hamstrings, back pain, rounded shoulders, sore neck, sore wrists - the list goes on. Then you come to yoga class and you start to feel all of these things which are the result of all the sitting on chair with your arms out in front of you all day long.

So what's a yogi to do?! Well given that you may not be able to undergo a complete career change, over the next few weeks I'll be giving you some tips on how to incorporate some healthy movement into your day's work at your desk. Instead of taking a smoking break or a coffee break how about a yoga break? 

This week let's work on the tension in your wrists and hands. If we spend hours in a fixed position with our hands typing we tend to find that our hands become tense and we start to lose the range of motion in our wrists. When we come to our yoga mats we can suffer from wrist pain or the inability to spread our fingers and hands out flat on the mat. These exercises are a great way to prepare for any poses which involve putting a lot of weight on our hands and wrists (e.g. plank, crow pose, pendant pose etc.)

Notes: Take some deep grounding breaths in and out through your nose.

Pic 1. Keep the backs of your hands and wrists together. Don't let your shoulders round forward. Lower your hands until you feel the stretch.

Pic 2. Spread your fingers out and gently pull back on your hand until you feel a stretch.

Pics 3 + 4 Make a fist with your hand and then open your hand out stretching one finger at a time and then reverse this to make a fist again.

I hope you enjoy your Yoga Break! See you on the mat.

Laura x