 and welcome to physical therapy for a better life. I'm your host, Christine Linders, physical therapy specialist. This lifestyle show is inspired by the past two years of changes during the pandemic. It's designed to bring you the best tips, strategies and movements to help achieve less pain, improve performance and have a better life all from the comfort of your own home. Today, I'd like to welcome yoga instructor, personal trainer and beach volleyball player, Laura Anderson to teach us all how a simple morning routine can start our bodies off feeling great, feeling better before we even leave the home. Welcome Laura and thanks for coming on the show. Great. Hi, Chris. Thank you guys so much for having me today. Yeah, so thanks for that nice introduction. You know, I think it's so interesting because I've been teaching yoga and being a personal trainer for about 10 years and prior to that, I played beach volleyball. And it's been very interesting, my journey of movement and trying to understand how to, we all wanna look good, we all wanna feel good and everybody really needs different routine, like a different routine for themselves in order to make that happen, right? Yeah. So I'm sure essentially if you're a professional athlete or just kind of an average Joe that loves athletic things, you need a specific routine, whether you are 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 years old, 50, 60, and it differentiates based on age. And I think one of the things that yoga brings to light is setting an intention for your movement, right? Now, realistically, we don't always have, every day where we're gonna go and do this 90 minute yoga class. I got to teach a lot of these types of classes in Los Angeles, California. And in fact, I still, I teach now here in Hawaii. And you know, as you guys have mentioned, the pandemic has changed everyone's life. So we're all sort of looking for that routine or something where we can just get out of bed and feel better. So I think that's what Chris asked me to come on and sort of talk about. Yeah, that's so great. Everything you just said is so great. I love how people can hear that regardless of your age, regardless of your athletic prowess or dreams or your goals, there is something that suits everybody. So it's important for here, like some of my patients are super stiff and they just wanna get up out of bed without pain or like my age range, like I get up okay, but I have pain throughout my day. And so as I move and do these little movements in the morning, all of a sudden I feel better and I have less pain or just I feel good during the day. And then the 20 year old that's about to go for their 10 mile run and then go swim and bike and yoga and acrobatics and everything, there's gonna be a different routine, right? For these people, but I love that. I love that you said the other day too that you need to do the simple things first before you go into complex. And I wanted everyone to hear that there is something for you to do, whether you are, like you said, the average Joe who likes to work out, the person that's taking care of their new baby, the one that's sitting at home for eight hours a day, although we now they know they need to get up and move, there's something for everyone. So that just inspired me. Thank you for saying all that. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's, as a yoga instructor or just a trainer, I get really sad when people are like, oh, I'm not good at yoga. And really, what it is is first of all, I was that person 20 years ago. I thought, oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed for, I was an athlete, but when it came to yoga movements, I was very shy and didn't want anyone to see me doing that. But let's just, you know, as a physical therapist, you know, what needs, I think we're all striving for is to find movement patterns that allow for both stability and mobility in our body and to not really rely on a lot of equipment. We obviously don't wanna hurt ourselves, but I just wanted to show a few tips I have because I noticed even for myself, yes, I'm a very active person, but, you know, not every day do I get up feeling great. So I thought, you know, what about just, what are some really nice simple preparatory, like morning movements that I really don't like to start my day without? So I thought I would maybe show a few of those for today. That sounds great. I can't wait. Awesome. So one thing is, you know, if you are doing this from home, which I'm gonna assume that most people are, you can actually see I'm here in a garage. Don't be shy about the space that you need. You know, people have dogs and kids. Utilize whatever space that you can do. Like I shut my garage so my dog doesn't attack me while I'm doing my movement in practice or kids crying or whatever it is. So maybe find just a nice quiet space. It doesn't have to be aesthetically beautiful. Just a space where you can have a soft surface. So maybe it's just a carpet, whatever you need. But if you're coming from laying down, then I'm gonna actually recommend that you might start on all fours. And this is very progressive. Again, if you have sensitive knees, put blankets or pillows underneath your knees. You know, I just have a yoga mat here, but my knees are not super sensitive. And then the first movements I'm gonna show, I call them diagonal hip rockers, but Chris might have a different name for them. And honestly, the names of things don't matter except to remind you. So I'm basically, just so that you can see, I have a mat space here. And I'm gonna walk my hands over towards, and I'm just gonna move so the camera can still see me, over towards the left side. Now I'm actually not gonna tuck or arch. My spine is more neutral. So you might have to kind of pull your lower belly up, but you're gonna rock your hips back and forward, back and forward. Now this is not about a number of reps or anything like that, but it's just essentially, maybe you tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna do this five to 10 times, right? And the point of it is to move in a few different planes of movement. So it's not just forward and backward. There's a little sense of a diagonal movement to it. So you might feel a little bit of a side stretch, little shoulders, little hips. It's not over complicated. So then you would switch and do the other side. And again, you can also add a little breath in, so an inhale when you shift forward, exhale when you shift back. So I'll just show you a few more on this side. And again, start nice and easy. I think one of the things that is not, makes it really hard if you tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna do a half an hour of yoga, or I'm gonna do an hour of this. No, tell yourself five minutes. And then come to center. Now you can also add in literally just turning your hands back. Honestly, we work on a computer a lot. Now this might seem extreme because remember that I teach yoga so I do stand on my hands quite a bit, but we're just gonna do straight hip rockers. And just rocking the hip gently back. Now, in this movement, I'm gonna tell you what to avoid. I'd like you to not round your spine. Okay, that's not wrong, it's not bad. But I want you to work on more of a neutral spine, which is sort of just having the natural curve of your spine and you're just moving forward and back. So you'll get a little wrist, little forearm and the hip. Okay, so let's say you did five of all of that. Then if you didn't wanna come and do a nice little cat cow, this is more of a movement a lot of people are familiar with. So when you inhale, you might soften the elbows a little bit, pull your shoulders back, pull your chest forward enough and you're kind of sticking your butt gently in the air. Exhale, round your back, push the ground or the floor away from you, tuck your chin and scoop out through the belly. And then again, maybe you just tell yourself, I'm gonna do five little cat and cows, inhaling when you're in the arch or this is the cow position, exhaling to round. Now, if you do have things with hands or wrists, to be honest, this can actually be done on the forearm. So I'll just show you that as well. You can just put your forearms down, inhale, arch and exhale to round. We'll just do two more of these. Now, Chris, do you have any questions for me as I'm going here? I feel like I'm loosening up just watching you do that. I wish that I could do it in my setup right here. I mean, that's the glorious thing. You honestly, just by some very simple moves, your spine and hips will start to open up your upper back. So I'm gonna show another couple moves here. Now, the other thing too is I really recommend utilizing props. And honestly, buying all of this stuff is very cheap on Amazon. It's not, you know, this is not an expensive, I don't, it's not a $400 weight package that I'm asking anyone to buy or anything like that. But just some yoga blocks, they can be cork, this is cork or they can be foam. And now this next, these next couple moves out. Now I would say, again, let's say we just, this is called a morning mobility routine. So you're going to step your left foot out to the left and you might just put your forearm on your knee. And then I'd like you to kind of push your hips forward and rock. And this, this gets into the ankle, the hip, a little inner thigh, I'm kind of out to the side. You'd be shocked. I mean, there's a lot of moves that cover various different body parts and just kind of tuning into what your body needs. And then you're going to stay leaned over, plant, this is my right hand down, but you'll plant your hand down and just do a nice little twist, opening up through the upper back and then sweep your left arm forward, bring it down to the inside. And again, I want you to keep your, this is my left hip, you're kind of pushing your hip forward and then you'll reach your right arm up and you can toggle between these two. So now I'm reaching the right arm forward, right hand comes down and turn and twist, reaching my left arm up, reach the left arm forward, you can tell yourself, okay, I'm going to do five rotations here. So this is kind of hip and spine mobility. We worked a little bit of the ankle on the inner thigh, right? And I'm also just kind of suggesting this number because, you know, it's, it gets overwhelming, right? It's, it's overwhelming the number of things that we could do. And then obviously you switch and do the other side, right? So just so you can see me, I'm going to give a little different view. I've got my right leg out to the right. And again, I would pat up this knee, especially if your knee's more sensitive, put your forearm on your right knee and you're just going to lean and rock. So the, the other thing too is as you're going, whatever it is that you are feeling, tune into that. Because so often, one, you might be feeling nothing, okay? That's interesting. You want to, you do want to feel that you're creating some space. You're not seeking to feel pain, right? You know that, but you're seeking to, you're trying to feel space, right? Now I want you to hold in there. These are also considered what, I think Chris can help me out on this, they're considered more dynamic in and out of movement. So dynamic rather than just stagnant holds. I've been going through your routine. I've been writing down little notes of the rocking that you're doing. And one of them was dynamic and the triplanar and the neutral. And I love that people can see like, dynamic stretching helps you prepare for movement. It's a little bit easier on the body than a static hold. A lot of people hold that stretch and they're like, it hurts, it hurts. But when you, when you rock into it like that, you're easing into it and the muscle gets a chance to give and give and give. And I just, as you were doing that, I'm thinking this is beautiful because anybody that has had pain or stiffness, that rocking shows them like what you said, be in tune to what you feel and take note of that and you move into it. If one side is, you feel some discomfort on one side, but the other side, you're like, wow, I can stretch all day on this side, but I'm going to ease into it. I'm going to rock into it. And it's three dimensional. Like you're showing all these things that are three dimensional. We don't move on one direction. You walk forward, that's one dimension. You turn to the right to grab something that's another dimension. You bend over to get your purse, that's a third dimension. And so it's very important to prepare your joints and muscles in those three dimensions. I love what you're doing, Laura, this is great. Good, I'm so glad. So I'll just show a couple others and I think you brought up a really great point. So again, I'm using this, maybe you need blocks, maybe you don't, you can use any props that you might have at home, a chair, a couch, books, things that we all have. But I'm stepping my left foot to the outside of my left hand and then I will lift my back knee and then just nice and simple. Really typically the upper back kind of rounds a little bit more if you can try to elongate in the upper back, try to keep your arm just to the inside kind of maybe your tricep to the inside of that left thigh. You could do some simple knee taps to stretch your hip flexor but you'll kind of have to inch your stance back to feel that. So you could try that. And then if you wanna make this even bigger, I really like the idea of blocks because you're not here to try and strain and stress particularly in the morning but you can put your right hand down and then twist open to the left and then you'll sweep your left arm forward, bring your left hand to the inside of your left foot, spin the back foot down so you feel stable and grounded and then turn, open it up to the right and then sweep your right arm forward. So you're getting some side stretching, your hip is opening, right hand down, lift your back heel and come back to the twist. So I'm just gonna toggle between these, sweeping my left arm forward, left hand to the inside of my left thigh, spin and root the back heel down, reach your right arm up, sweep the right arm forward. And if you are a person that is more mobile, maybe you don't utilize the blocks, right? You just have your hands down. But one thing that I will say is, there's not really bad movements out there as much as there is, as Chris was mentioning, you have to be able to in your day move in all different directions. And unfortunately sometimes athletic stuff can be harmful, not intentionally, but because an athletic endeavor, you're utilizing whatever muscle you're just recruiting, whatever you can as fast as you can, as hard as you can and your body may or may not, it may or may not be healthy for your body, right? That's part of a sport, we're doing it to win, right? Now yoga is very different. So now I'm just stepping my right foot forward and you would just even yourself out, I can show you this without the blocks. You're just lifting the back knee, you wanna elongate through your stance and maybe just tap the back knee. And just tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna do that for five times. I just chose five today and every day, maybe you have a little bit more time. So you're like, I'm gonna try 10 of everything. And as Chris said, again, it's in and out because long holds particularly in the morning to prepare for your day, aren't you really the best type of movements? And then you would keep your left hand down and maybe twisting, opening to the right and then bringing your right hand to the inside and then reaching to the left. So I'm gonna go back to what I was speaking on before within yoga. One of the things I had to learn as a movement instructor, I went through a lot, a lot of injuries from repetitive stress of doing the same things over and over again and only working in the same planes. So I don't know if, Chris, you wanna say something about that as well, but essentially learning movements that help prepare you in all different directions are really important. Like it's not about being good at yoga. You wanna do yoga and movements so that you're good at your life. Yes, yeah. And I have to constantly remind people of that including myself because oftentimes, especially if you're a little younger, sometimes you move with an ego. I don't know if that makes any sense. I'll let Chris toggle off that one. So I'm just kind of showing this movement. It's fairly simple, but I think it's gonna be a real, it's essentially a very feel-good kind of position. Well, I love the rotation in that rotation plane that you're doing because all day long, we do move predominantly to get somewhere forward and then you're moving, they call that the, we don't need to name names, but the sagittal plane, right? And so rotation is like the transverse plane and then when you go left and right, it's frontal plane. And one of the most underutilized muscles as we age are the lateral hip muscles. And I've told so many people, you need that to give you stability and every movement that you do with that rotation will, like you said, ignite or turn on those gluteal muscles, those powerful ones, not the big one in the back that you would use when you bridge, but the ones that you would use when you sidestep or when you rotate. And so I had this idea for a book like, Sidestep Your Way to No More Hip and Back Pain because a lot of people's gluteus medius gets weak as we age because we actually are not strengthening it in any sort of a way, it's just functioning to stabilize us. And all the moves that you have done with the rotation and the dynamic will fire your glutes. And I think that, what do you call it, the cocky walk or the walk like you're confident. I had in my, the book I didn't publish yet, it talks about like walking like you're, those confident people in the gym that walk with their knees locked, they're hyper extending your knees. And I always say, like I'm watching you bend your knee and move with such grace and softness that when you land with your knee locked, you don't set up the chain reaction below. So you don't actually get any of the leg muscles absorbing the shock, it goes straight to your spine because your spine's a coil, it's another shock absorber. And so having that non cocky walk, that soft knee, that ginger walk allows the chain reaction to go in your body and then your, your powerful legs absorb the shock and then your spine instead of your spine, your low back getting that shock. Absolutely. Maybe I can show a couple more simple things. And again, don't be afraid to use props. This is something, you know, I've been in a lot of clients homes and they're just so grateful that they had these props. And I'm so grateful. I actually wanted to invent bigger blocks because I literally felt that they are not tall enough or various, they were not big enough for me when I first started my practice. I really wanted to like have a block that was this tall. But I'm gonna show you guys, this is called a wide leg forward fold, but I am supported here. And to be honest, I'm not gonna move my mat, but I'm gonna show with my spine. So my spine is more, as Chris mentioned, this is more of a neutral in my spine. And then as I move down, this is considered a forward fold, right? And I'm actually not a hyper-global person, but I'm gonna show a couple of movements here again. This is just a nice little morning mobility routine. So you could sort of toggle, this could turn into like I turn my toes out and I kind of stick my butt back. So I'm doing a cow, but I'm also stretching and working my inner thighs. Exhale, you would go into a forward fold, kind of almost like you're doing a cat. Inhale. So these are very big and dynamic movement. I'm not holding. This is the cow with kind of a spider leg. And that spider leg, by the way, for anyone that has back pain, myself included, I just went through a back pain crisis before I moved. And that spider leg is so opening to the hips that when you have back pain, if you just do what the position Laura's in right now with blocks, with a bed, with a table, whatever, you will open up your back and relieve the tension. You will feel so much better. Absolutely. And then I'll show, so that one again, tell yourself five to 10 reps, just kind of inhale and exhale. Another one in yoga, it's called skandhasana. And this was a nemesis for me for a very long time. But you would turn your feet slightly out and I'm gonna show it in various different ways. I would go to yoga classes and yoga teachers would just plop down into this move. And I'm like, whoa, that's impossible for me. Wow. Now I did continue to work on it, so I am quite low here. But what I'm gonna show you is this is the same as what I just did for the majority of people. And it's not, you're not doing less. Cure muscles still doing what it can do. But the heel that is of the bent leg for this particular move is really important to keep the heel down so that you're getting the inner thigh stretch. So, you know, like I call it high skandhasana. I'm still sticking my butt back and resting my knee back. There's like a medium skandhasana and a low skandhasana, right? And then again, we're not looking for big holds here. So if you have blocks or any set of support, this is a great way to do it. And unfortunately, you know, we go into, you know, public yoga classes or public classes where we're comparing ourselves to other people, never do that. So again, this would be the low, medium, maybe even a higher, but I'm kind of sticking my butt back. And you know, you can just kind of toggle between the two. It doesn't even have to be, we're not doing it for speed. We're not doing it for cardio. We're basically doing preparatory movements so that we feel good in our day and we feel good in our life. We're not trying to burn calories. We're not trying to breathe really hard. We're trying to be calm and, you know, tune into how our body's feeling. And I think I spoke on this a little earlier, but knowing your intention behind a movement practice is really helpful because sometimes we are out there trying to burn calories, right? And sometimes we are out there trying to build strength and, you know, endurance. But then other times we're actually trying to, wait a minute, I want to be able to pick up my kids and feel good and healthy in my spine and my hips and my legs. How do I get there? And, you know, that's where physical therapists and such come in, but these are sort of just moves that will help you move around your day better and kind of awaken or enliven you. There's a lot of good points you made and I hope people watch this over and over again. I like that you said, don't compare yourself to others. Like if you're in a class, like you showed the high version where you started and the low version that you ended up, a lot of messages there of practice makes perfect. If you have a goal, you need to take all those steps and be consistent to get there. I'm a dancer and my co-worker said to me yesterday, wow, you're so flexible. If I was that flexible, I would be so injured. But I was a dancer when I was younger and I didn't just stretch like that and be able to move like this. I've had to work on it and maintaining my flexibility through all of my injuries too. And one of the things that I used to say to people when they did yoga classes pre-pandemic was, hey, if you don't have time to go to a yoga class, go like once a month and find three stretches that you had a challenge doing from the left side to right side and go home and consistently work on those three moves until you become more symmetrical with your flexibility. And the other point too, Laura, that I wanna mention because we only have a couple minutes left is you mentioned the yoga blocks and the yoga mat and we talked earlier about like a timer and earbuds. And I think nowadays finding calm and finding just time for yourself and self-care is great. So buying a yoga mat or buying some yoga blocks or buying a timer that you can go shut the door in your room, in your garage and have those five minutes or 10 minutes or 30 minutes if you have it to do your routine not somebody else's comparing to them but your routine and you move left to right and you breathe and you touch your knee down and go back and forth and you breathe and you do your neutral spine all those wonderful moves in three dimensions that you showed us. I think it's important to invest a little bit. You said they're inexpensive, they're small. You can tuck them in a corner and then you can go have your mobility routine, your time. I love that you talked about that. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm happy to show one or two more moves. There's, the thing about it is is there's so many things that you can do. Since I am a yoga instructor I can't help but show down dog. Please show us down dog. We have one minute. Okay, perfect. So you wanna start with your hands actually in front of your shoulders and then you would lift your hips up. Now one thing that you won't hear often is it's okay to step your feet wide. It's okay for your heels to be very lifted but what you're gonna see is I'm just relaxing my head and my neck, my feet are nice and wide. I'm gonna try to reach my heels down so that I get a stretch in my calf. Essentially, however it is that you're doing a move, there's gonna be something stabilizing, something lengthening, hopefully something stretching, maybe something relaxing but there's gonna be certain muscles working. So what your purpose for doing them, let's say, maybe I'm just, again, I'm trying to get dynamic so I'm going down dog to plank but I'm keeping my spine neutral. I'm really, I'm actually more so mobilizing my shoulder. My shoulder's now overhead versus plank which would be more just straight out. My wrists are being mobilized, my hips are lifting, I'm trying to reach my heels down and there's just so many different ways that you can do different moves. There's not really right and wrong ways. It's what is the intention behind your purpose for the movement in that moment, right? Yeah, that is lovely. Oh my gosh, I'm so sad they were out of time. We'll have to do this again but thank you so much, Laura Anderson for coming out and helping us with our morning mobility routine and thank you to everyone for tuning in and to Think Tech Hawaii for allowing us to be here today. Remember, life is better when you listen to physical therapists. Aloha everyone.