 Hello Earth citizens. Today we will have a 10-minute routine for Tai Chi for chest tension. We've invited our friend Jonathan from Body and Brain. He's from the Westchester Center. Are you ready? Hello everyone, my name is Jonathan. Today we're going to be doing a 10-minute Tai Chi routine. It's fairly simple. You can do it standing up and you can even do it sitting in a chair for whatever reason. It's difficult at any point. I will be explaining to you some of the basic adjustment that you will need to do while you're doing this practice. And in the future you can apply these adjustments and you can actually apply these adjustments whether you're standing or you're sitting or in your day-to-day life. So why don't we go ahead and get started. We're going to do a small warm-up. You're going to gently shake your body up and down like this. And I recommend this warm-up for almost everything. I've been an athlete all my life. I've practiced martial arts and many things. And this is one of the most basic warm-ups that you can do to loosen up your overall body tension. Gently balance your knees and gently shake your wrists. You can also shake your head side to side like this. You can also move your shoulders like this. It could be a little funny so if you want to play some music you can always do that as well. Take a lot of deep breaths into your chest. So mostly for this routine we're going to be doing chest breathing and diaphragmic breathing. So engaging the lungs directly, engaging the diaphragm directly. So take a deep breath in, pick your chest up and take a deep breath out. You can breathe out from your mouth. I highly recommend this during this short part here. We'll do it for about a minute. Take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out. Let's do it two more times. Take a deep breath in and hold it up top a little bit. Take a deep breath out. One more time. Take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out. Now we're going to slowly come to a stop. Close your eyes shortly, elongate your spine. Take a deep breath in. Remember to pick up your chest, pull in your abdomen, engage your posture, engage your lungs. Exhale out. Two more times. Breathe in. Pick up your chest, pull in your abdomen and breathe out. And just mentally assess the feeling in your chest. Where are you feeling tension and the weight, the density there. Hold the overall sensation of your chest. Breathe into that feeling. So you might have felt tension in the front of your chest or the upper parts of your shoulders or back. Just be mindful of that as you go through the routine. The first part we're going to do is called commencing. It's a very beginning part of our training. Inhale, your arms will come up. You're going to gently pull them back and drop your body down together. So your hands and your knees are moving together. Inhale, open chest, draw your chest out and pull your hands down. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. Now if you want to increase the range of motion of this, you can. Inhale, draw your hands all the way back, squeeze your shoulders and push down. It's a little bit more intensive. Sink your weight also lower. So for those of you who have more experience, you're going to apply a deeper motion. Inhale, exhale. Now two more times, but keep your hands at the front of your body. Just very gently release. Pull your hands back behind your thighs. Open chest. Inhale and exhale. Now from the bottom as if picking water from the ocean. Inhale into your chest. Exhale and press. We're going to do that two more times. Inhale. Remember into your chest. Exhale. One more time. Inhale and exhale. Very good. So follow me here. Your hands are going to wrap around your knees and come up the center line of your body as if tracing just a line up to about your rib cage height. Your chest will open. Your ribs will push out and open and you'll push down the center again as if you're just tracing down the front side of your body but you're not physically touching here. Inhale, come up. Your basic commence and then you come down. Very good. We'll do that two more times. Sink your body out. Your shoulders are kind of rounding here. Opening up your back. Inhale as you rise. Open up your ribs and chest and sink come down to the center. Commence. Inhale and exhale. Let's do that one more time. Inhale, wrap around the knee. Come up. Open your chest and ribs. Hold your breath gently and exhale out. Everything sinks down into your thighs. Commence. Inhale and exhale. Now place your hands on your abdomen and cross your hands and let's close our eyes for about three to five breaths. Inhale and exhale. Each breath will go for about three to six seconds, both in and out. Inhale. One, two, three. You can hold it up top. One, two, three. Exhale. One, two, three, four. One, five, six. Inhale and exhale. Now let's put all of that together in one simple flow. Inhale, exhale. From the bottom, inhale. Commence. Inhale, draw back. Push down. Sink your weight. Relax and sink two more times and one more time. Relax your hands. Let them come around your knees as you sink your weight down. Breathe in. Pull all the energy up to your chest and ribs. Expand your body. Open up your ribs wide and then exhale let everything sink including your chest and back. So we're contracting and expanding the chest and back. Commence. Inhale and exhale. Arms up. Inhale. Your ribs open your chest, open your back. Relax and sink. Feel all the weight sinking down into your abdomen and thighs. From the bottom up, exhale. One more time. Inhale. Relax and sink. Feel all the weight coming down into your abdomen, into your thighs. From the bottom up, the most important thing is that you're controlling your breathing here. Okay? And emphasize breathing into the lungs, expanding the rib cage, giving space to your diaphragmic muscles, releasing tension from your lungs, heart and organs. Place your hands right at your solar plexus and then the other hand can be placed right on your chest. Close your eyes for just three breaths. Inhale deeply. Three to six seconds you'll inhale and then you can hold your breath for one, two, three as long as you feel you can hold it but you shouldn't feel pressure. So if you're holding it and your heart starts to raise, that's doing too much. So reduce that. Exhale slowly. Two more times. Inhale and feel your heart. You can feel your lungs expanding. You can feel your ribs expanding. Exhale, release. If you feel comfortable at this point, you can breathe through your nose. One more time. Inhale and exhale. And very gently sweep down from your chest to your abdomen. Your chest should feel warm. Your shoulder should feel warm and it should feel a lot easier to breathe. So sit down from your chest to your arms. And sit down from your lower back to your heels. From your abdomen to your feet. And put your feet together. Take a deep breath in. Arms up. And exhale out. One more time. And last time. Palms together. Everyone did a great job to experience a full one-hour brain education-based class. Please check out a local body and brain center near you.