0:01 - Intro

Hello again, I'm Shane from MATRIX. I'm back with day three of our Daily Tips videos to help you deal with the stress of what's going on in the world right now. You'll notice we have a little different camera angle today because today's video is going to be about movement. What I'm going to show you today is what I do for a warm-up before I exercise. Or if I have been sitting down at the computer or the TV for a while, and I need to get up and move. This is generally my go to. It's going to work the entire body. It's going to warm-up your brain. It's going to make you feel better. And it's going to help you move a little bit better. So, without further ado, we'll just jump right into it. Please feel free to stand up and follow along if you're watching this at home.

0:43 – Why Sensation First

In the brain -- literally the anatomy of it -- the sensory area comes before the motor area. So, we want to warm-up our sensory information first. Now, before we even start, just take a moment to notice how you feel. The sensation through your skin.

0:59 – Upper Body Sensation

Now, let's start with the movement. As we do this, we want to be pretty vigorous. Take your fingers and just start to run them through your scalp. Go over the entire part of your head. Sorry if it's messing up your hair a little bit. But it'll be okay, it'll be worth it. From there, we're going to circle on the cheeks, across the nose, the forehead, catch your ears. Take some time to get the back of the neck, base of the head. Come around and we'll move through the throat. And remember, we're trying to be vigorous. We are warming up the body. We're building some energy. So, imagine it's cold outside and trying to get warm as you move across the chest, the shoulders, and the upper back. Making sure you do both sides. From there, go down the arms. Go all the way up through the fingers. Come back up on both sides and switch sides. There's no right or wrong way to do this. No right or wrong order. Just so long as you're getting your entire body. Once you've gotten the arms, move on to the ribs. And then to the belly itself. Make sure you take some awareness into the low-back. A lot of people have pain there. And a lot of times it's because we don't feel well.

2:04 – Lower Body Sensation

From there, we're going to move on to the hips. And at this point, you should be starting to feel pretty warm. Here, we're going to add in two different options. We're going to get the legs. You can do the legs either just by bending at the waist. But again, if we're trying to warm up and move, it's even better if we do a squat. If that's something that you can comfortably do in your body, run your hands up and down both your legs and on both sides a few times. You'll notice at this point, I'm feeling pretty warm, even breathing a little bit heavier. We now want to bring some sensation to the feet. So, if you can balance, just take your thumbs into the bottom of your foot. If you have to hold on to a table or even take a seat, there's nothing wrong with that. And then do the other side. Just bring in some sensation. All right. Now take a breath or two. Notice your heart rate is elevated, your breathing is elevated. Try to slow that down again for a moment. And then also just feel how different you might feel in your body.

3:05 – Twists and Inner Ear

We're going to get into some larger movements, now. We're going to add a little bit of vision and vestibular -- which is your inner ear -- to it as well. Take your thumb out in front of you. Just softly look at your thumb. Just let your body starts to twist a little from side to side. I've got a soft gaze on the thumb, which means I can see the thumb, but I'm not really focused on it. I'm becoming aware of what's passing in the background. If this makes you dizzy, that's something else we should probably want to work on. But you can always skip it, or just go a lot slower, so that you don't get dizzy. After we've done that for a moment, we now want to add in another little bit of different stimulus, which is a gentle bounce. It helps release some of the tension through the body, wake up the feet, and also stimulates some other parts of our inner ear. Awesome.

3:56 – Foot & Ankle Mobility

Now from there you should be feeling pretty good. We're going to start to mobilize the body itself. I'm going to take a step back so you can see my feet. We're going to start by warming up the foot. Standing on the ball the foot, just think about drawing little circles around with your heel. This is going to create some movement through the foot itself. Maybe 3 or 4 one way, 3 or 4 the other. Then go ahead and switch to the other foot. Again, lifting the heel and as you're rolling through this, you want the arch of the foot coming down toward the ground. The heel skims the ground. And we lift up. Then reverse direction, going the other way. After that, we can move up to the ankle and just do some big ankle circles. Changing to the other side. There might be some pops and clicks, it's normal. If you find something that repetitively clicks every time, maybe try to avoid that.

4:48 – Knee & Hip Mobility

Now moving into the knee. Step about shoulder distance apart. Straighten the legs, think about turning your kneecaps to the side. They won't go very far until you start to bend them. Then it seems bigger. Circle around and come back up. This is creating some mobility through the hips, knees, and ankles. And we'll reverse direction. Now for the hips themselves. Stand a little bit wider, and to start to circle your hips around. Imagine there was a hula-hoop around your waist that you can trace.

5:22 – Spinal Mobility

Now, that we've got the hips nice and loose, we'll move into the low-back. Think about getting nice and tall. Taking a gentle little side bend, letting your top shoulder roll down so the crown of your head is going to hang toward your pinky toe. Slowly just circle your head around to the other side. Try to keep your hips as still as you can. Draw your shoulder back up on top of the other. You can stop there. But if you have done this before -- you might want to start small -- you can take it into a little bit of a back circle. Rolling the chest around. Restacking as we come out. Then we'll go the other way. Little side bend. Shoulder rolls down. Slowly start to bring the head toward the other pinky toe. Stack your shoulder back up on top. Getting long into the side bend. Letting it roll behind you. Again, be careful if you have any back issues. You may want to skip this or keep it small. Circling all the way around. Restacking. Rising up. From there, we'll move into the chest. If you've ever seen or done yoga before, cat-cow is a very common thing. That's what we'll do here. Some rounds of pulling the chest forward, pushing the chest back. If you're a little more mobile, you can turn that into a circle.

6:33 – Arm & Hand Mobility

Then from here, arms will extend out to the sides. We're going to move our shoulder blades. Slide your shoulders up to your ears. Roll them back. Pull them down. Push them forward. with your arms reaching toward the same point the whole time. And once you go a couple ways one way, come back and do the other. Then take one arm and draw a Figure-8 out in front. Reverse. Take it off to the side, a similar motion. And then maybe top and bottom. If you are brave, you could have done both arms at once, but we'll just switch sides. And again, the order that you go in doesn't matter. It's not important as long as you're catching all the different ranges of motion. You can do plain old circles if you prefer as well. It doesn't have to be the fancy Figure-8. For the elbows, we're just going to extend the arms like we did for the shoulder blade movement, but we're going to bend the elbows and open them up. And Reverse. And then try that coming underneath, with palms up into the armpits. And back under again. Moving into the wrists, we're just going to glide the hands up-and-down. Maybe a little bit side-to-side. The trick to these is keeping your elbows into at your side and trying to move your wrists apart. And then we'll just do some little hand circles. This motion can be a bit complicated -- I'm not going to go into the details -- but even if you're just twirling your own hand around, it will do the trick.

8:05 – Neck Mobility

Lastly, we'll come back up and do a little bit for the neck. Just turning the head. Tilting. Maybe looking up-and-down. And then lastly, if you can, hands come up to the sides. Try to bring your cheeks, back-and-forth to your hands. Catching all those different movements. Now from here, you should be feeling pretty good, pretty loose, and pretty mobile.

8:31 – Long Spine & Eyes

The last thing we'll end up with here is a long spine. Reaching up through the crown of the head, stretching tall. Then opening the arms out wide to the side. Again, staying long through the spine. And then finally, a little bit of mobility for the eyes. Just like we did before, have a look at your thumb, but this time the thumb rises up. Circle the hand around, following it just with your eyes. Try not to turn your head. I switch hands at the bottom of the circle. Come all the way around. And then reverse back again. You might do this each way, 2 or 3 times. You should be going fast enough that you can feel the eyes working, but slow enough that you can stay focused on the thumb. And there you go! One more time, little bounce and release. At this point, you should be feeling pretty good, pretty mobile, and ready to get back to work if you're just doing this as a little bit of a break. Or ready to go out and take a walk or do whatever exercises you wanted to do.

9:33 - Farewell

I hope you found this useful. Please give it a shot and I guarantee it'll make you feel good. There was a lot of information in this one today. So, if you're signed up for my mailing list, be sure to jump on the Q&A that'll be holding later. There you can ask any questions about these different movements. Hope to see you there!