Hi. This is Dr. Sam Shay, founder of www.drsamshay.com, where I teach patients how to MacGyver their health using low-tech solutions with high impact. Today we’re going to cover the 3rd point of wellness: Body, also known as your structure.
Now I’m trained as a chiropractor and acupuncturist. In chiropractic we see a lot of bad posture and in today’s society it’s everywhere, mostly because we’re sitting and reading, less so reading, but more so we are at the computer or watching something or sitting in the car.
Sitting to the spine is like sugar for the teeth. Sitting is very damaging to the spine and to the brain because if you don’t have a good functioning spine, the signals to your brain coming from the organs, muscles, joints, glands, and skin are going to be more stress signals than movement signals. So the importance of this for your spine is not just so your back feels better, but so that you think better and your brain functions better.
Today I’ll teach you a very low-tech yet very effective method to help strengthen and straighten up your spine. These are called “Wall Angels”. Wall angels come from the term “snow angel”. Now if you grew up in a place with snow like me in New England, you would go out on a fresh day of snow and you jump on the big pile of fresh snow and you would raise your arms up and down and your legs up and down and you make a little angel in the snow. But here we are going to make our angel on the wall.
The way we are going to do that is to:
1) put our heels against the wall
2) our gluts against the wall
3) our shoulder blades against the wall
4) the back of our head against the wall with our chin slightly up, not tucked, but up. If it’s tucked and we do this exercise it will hurt our neck and make the neck stiff and straight line as opposed to having a natural curve. The neck chin slightly up.
5) We are going to put our hands out to the side and we are going to actively push our arms into the wall, our head into the wall as we squeeze our shoulder blades together and slowly raise our arms up and down.
And you do this for only about a minute. But you do this a couple times a day. What will happen is that over the course of the day you sit and sit and sit and sit, driving, commuting, whatever, watching TV, who knows. Your body needs a way to actually straighten up. If you do this a little a lot, just a couple times a day, you will have a better posture.
We will pretend there is a wall behind me. I’m putting my heels against the wall, my gluts, my shoulder blades, the back of my head, chin slightly up, my arms out to the side and my arms are going to be pressing actively into the wall, my head back into the wall, as I raise up and down. You do that just a couple times each day.
So these are called wall angels, is that after you do some wall angels for about a minute and then you step forward you will feel your posture straighten up by itself. The most common reaction is that people kind of tip backwards as they are standing up straighter.
So again, do this a couple times a day, take a minute or less each, and this will help strengthen your spine and straighten your spine so you not only stand taller and have better posture but that you think better and your brain functions better.
Thank you so much, this is Dr. Sam Shay, founder of www.drsamshay.com and be sure to go over to my website and opt-in to get my free ebook on other low-tech solutions with high-impact for better health. Thank you.
