Cervical Disc Health: Yoga Tips for Vitality Over 50 w/ Sherry Zak Morris, Certified Yoga Therapist

So, does anyone ever get tingling in their arms or numbness in their arms? Anything going on with that? Anybody? Yeah, right. Because sometimes nerves can get pinched in that area, right? So, I want to talk a little bit about the spinal cord and how the nerves come in. I have a very dear friend, you guys have seen her. Tammy comes in the wheelchair sometimes, remember her? She got into an accident, that's how she got paralyzed, and she severed her spine from the C6-C7 connection down, okay? So, what happens, right, when that happens is you break the cord connection and all the nerves below it don't work anymore, right? So, you can understand how the back works and all the nerves work, because starting from your neck, it branches out and gives you all the functions of everything, gives you functions of breath and your heart and your arms and things like that. As you go down further, if those nerves get pinched or if they get severed, you're going to stop the energy flowing from the bottom, right? So, what I see a lot in people is the upper neck is a little bit compressed, right? As we get older, we get a little arthritis in there, it gets a little stiff, especially if we're moving our head side to side, it's all that stiffness, we can start to pinch and compress our nerves. That's when we're going to start to get tingling, and that's where we can even have a little bit of less functioning, even like a pinching, you guys. This pinching motion, everybody just do one finger and one finger like that. That requires the nerves from your neck to do that, right? So all of those little communications come through your C1 all the way down to the C7. So that's why the neck health is so important, and of course, you can imagine how much of that function needs to be in your brains too, right? So that's why I spend a lot of time on neck. So we're going to do one more neck one, and it's going to be the foot sliders, okay? So that's the before and after. It's a somatic movement, so that means it's kind of complicated a little bit. So we're going to start with our feet being parallel, flat, our spine being straight. We're going to take a breath, and when we exhale, we're going to look up at the ceiling and find a stopping point, and then bring it back. Now we're going to take the left foot, and it looks like this. We're going to slide until we want to lift up the toes. The knee will still be bent. The heel is down. Yeah. And then we're going to flex the foot like that. Then we're going to curl the toes. Justin calls those Barbie toes. And then we drop them, and we pull it back in, press the ball of the foot down, and then the toes come up, and then you flare the toes as well. Good. All right. So then we're going to slide. We're going to flex. We're going to curl, drop, pull back in, press the ball of the foot down, toes come up, and we flare the toes. And one more time. Did you get a cramp, Maria? If you get a cramp, then you need to ease up. Oh, it hurts. Yeah. Okay. So then gentle movements, not too extreme. Good. Okay. Three times the other side, you guys. Right foot slides, flex, curl, drop, pull back in, balls of the feet down and up. Two more. Slide, flex, curl, drop, pull back in, press down with a big toe mound, come up, and then last one. Slide, flex, curl, drop, pull back in, lift those toes, press down. Good. Hands on your laps. Beginning position. Take a breath. Exhale. Oh, freedom, huh? Freedom. Oh, that feels so good, you guys. And then nod your head up and down. Find that mobility in your neck. This is called extension and flexion of your neck. Good. And then look side to side like you're looking over your shoulder, and then we'll go lateral like this, side to side, ear to shoulder, and ear to shoulder, and one more, ear to shoulder, and ear to shoulder. Yeah, exactly. So what happens in there, you guys, is we're loosening up some of that binding there, right? It could be arthritis. Now my chiropractor said arthritis sometimes is the texture of toothpaste. So I thought that was cool because that means toothpaste can be a little bit malleable, isn't it? When we move, we can actually stretch it and make it a little bit more whatever, lubricant. Sometimes I think of arthritis as like a bone spur, like a calcified thing, and it could be that as well. So we want to get it to the point where it's like toothpaste so we can still get that mobility. So many people have neck arthritis, you guys. It's a very, very common arthritis as we age. And why is that? What do you think? Yes? Computers. Computers? But gravity. Gravity. Do we get shorter as we? Yeah. Right? Why do we get shorter? Because the space between the discs gets a little bit compressed. That's why everything we do in yoga is trying to stretch things, right? Go like this. This is stretching your spine totally long, from your tailbone all the way up to your shoulders, right? All the way up. Good. And then all the way down. Yeah. So that opens up the pathways. That helps the nerves have function. Good.