Do Tai Chi to Improve Balance Every Day | Gentle Stretches

Hey there, April of Yes2Next here with my mom, Aiko. Hi. Today we have a gentle Tai Chi inspired stretching session for you. This can be done every day by itself, or as a warm up to workouts or exercise, or even as a cool down. Cool down. Okay? Yeah, so now, benefits of Tai Chi include improving your balance and flexibility, strengthening your muscles, these nice slow movements really engage the muscles, improving your coordination, you know, so the whole mind-body connection, and then also just, you know, relieving stress and anxiety, right? That's the important thing, yeah. Right. Can really help you even sleep better. Right. Right? All right. So for this session, you don't need anything other than your body. We're doing this, we're choosing to do this barefoot, you know, so we can really feel the floor. However, if you need more support for your feet, feel free to put on some shoes. And my mom's going to be doing this one seated, I'll be doing it standing to give you some options. And just make sure you clear the area, tape down any loose rugs, okay? Mom, any thoughts about stretching? Oh, stretching's good. I do it in the morning, I think it's good to do it at night before you go to sleep, helps you sleep, right? And it feels just good, yeah, stretch. Even throughout the day. Oh yeah, just feels good. Exactly. All right. So we'll take a quick pause here, and we'll get started with our session. All right, so we're just going to get started by just breathing, okay? So hopefully Mochi will breathe with us too. Okay, so mom, you want to have a seat? Absolutely. Have a seat. Maybe Mr. Mochi will join us here. Okay, good boy. All right, so all we're going to do is you can sit in your chair gently, I'm going to have my feet hip distance apart here, and just stand or sit tall. I want you to inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth, okay? Take a few breaths here, so inhale, and exhale. Very nice. Okay, now, raise your arms here, and we're going to do the same thing, but it's like we're going to be holding a ball, okay? So as we inhale, let's expand the ball. So inhale, and exhale. Good. Inhale, and exhale. And very nice, good boy. All right. We're going to keep breathing. Give me two more. Inhale, and exhale. And one more, inhale, and exhale. Very nice, everybody. Okay, next move, we're just going to do some nice little gentle exercises to stretch out the neck muscles. All right, young man, here we go, all right? So we're going to look to your right and center, and look to your left and center, and one more time, right, center, good. And left, and center, nice. Let's tilt that head ear to shoulder, okay, to the right. Feel that nice stretch, and center, and to the other side, and center, and one more time, right, and left. One more thing we're going to do here with the neck is just to look up gently, and then look down. Good boy. One more time, look up, and look down. Good job. All right. Let's move right into shoulder rolls. What we're going to do here, we're going to bring our palms up, and we're going to pull our shoulder blades together, everybody, okay, and arms down. So palms up, shoulder blades together, and down, good, and palms up. I'm making a fist, shoulder blades together, and down, and relax. Very, very good. Okay. So we're going to bring our arms up next, arms, nice little, yes, move here, Tai Chi move. Just give me some nice fists, fist, and then open. Get those hands moving, fist, and open, and fist, and open, and down, relax. Okay. Next move. We're going to put our hands on the back, our lower back here, okay, so if you're sitting or standing, just give me some nice little hip circles. You can do that in your chair as well, okay? Just lower back, support your back, yes, really engaging that torso, but also you're loosening up your hips and your knees, okay, very good. Hi there, young man. Okay, good. And let's reverse it. Reverse. Uh-oh. Reverse. Okay. You're ruining my meditation. Yes, my friend, and you need to just breathe and sit with us. Okay. Okay, Mochi man. And relax. Nice work, everybody. Okay, so we're ready to kind of get into this. We're going to do some nice gentle Tai Chi-inspired walking, and what this looks like, everybody, is we're going to step with our heel, press down with our toe, and just walk, heel, toe. So if you're sitting in the chair, same thing, okay? Give me some nice heel, toe action. Heel, toe. Heel, toe, okay? Just give me heel, toe, heel, toe, okay? So I just want you to walk around heel, toe. Get this motion. Heel, toe, weight forward. Press down and press down. This is a motion that we're going to see, the heel, toe, and weight forward action, okay? Heel, toe. Nice and slow. Real slow. Slow steps. That's right. And you'll find that, you know, in order to do it, it's very deliberate, and it takes some thought and also balance and coordination to do it this slow. Definitely. Okay? Heel, toe. You feel like speeding it up. You do, exactly. But by slowing it down, you're really engaging your muscles and also your brain and you're connecting to your muscles, okay? So heel, toe, and heel, toe. Keep it going. Heel, toe, and heel, toe, and rest. Okay. Nice work, everybody. I have a small area here, so I'm improvising, okay? All right. Very nice. Now, next Tai Chi-inspired move. This requires some coordination, all right? So remember, we are holding that beach ball. So we're going to hold the beach ball. We're holding it this way, and now we're going to hold it this way, right? It's a ball. Okay. So here's the motion. We're going to press down with the top hand and then press up with the bottom hand. Nice spinal stretch. Breathe. Okay? And then come back to center where we're holding the beach ball with the top hand. Just like that. Okay? All right. So we're pressing down and then pressing up. Very good. All right. And exhale. Hold the beach ball again and press down. Top hand. Press up. Bottom hand. Coordination. And come back to center. Top hand's always on top. Hold the beach ball. Good job. Press down with the top hand. Press up with the bottom. And breathe. Good job. Okay. Breathe. Hold the beach ball. Palms facing each other. Good job. Press down now. Top hand. Press up with the bottom hand. Take a breath. Good job. Really stretching that spine. Nice, gentle movement. And go back to the beach ball. Hold the beach ball. Let's do one more. Okay? Press down. Top hand. Press up with the bottom hand. Breathe. And hold the beach ball. And relax. Okay, everybody? Relax now. Okay. Relax. You put your hands down. Relax. Feel that, huh? So good. Okay. Right. Let's go back to that breathing technique that we did. Okay? So holding the beach ball in front of us, right? Mm-hmm. So expanding. Inhale. And exhale. Contract. Good. Inhale. Out. And exhale. Contract. Very nice. All right. Our next move. Remember that heel-toe motion, right? Yeah. Okay. So with our right foot, we're going to heel-toe. And then we're going to punch with our left arm. Forward. Hold. And back. Nice and slow, everybody. Heel-toe with the left. And then press. Punch with the right. And down. Nice, fluid, gentle motion. Heel-toe. Press. And down. Very nice. Heel-toe. And press. And down. Very nice. Give me one more each side. Nice and slow, everyone. Heel-toe. Weight forward. And press. And come back. Good. Inhale. Heel-toe. And press. Exhale. And down. And rest. Nice work. Are you feeling your muscles work doing this? Yeah. My coordination is a thing. My brain is working. That's right. Really nice job. Let's go. Let's go back to that gentle breathing. Let's hold our beach ball again. Hold. Let's inhale. And exhale. Contract. Inhale. And exhale. Very nice, everybody. Our next move, the last move, is basically like a protective move in martial arts. So, remember that heel-toe action, right? So, we're going to go heel-toe. arm up as if we're protecting and then we're guarding ourselves okay and come back and heel toe arm up and press and down very nice four more sets here heel toe arm up protect and come back down very nice heel toe and press good job got some coordination issues there huh okay it's always so always so whatever arm leg going forward is the same arm going okay heel toe arm up and press and notice my sequence here okay Center heel toe arm up and then press good and Center this is part of the coordination aspect of heel toe let's do one more set heel toe arm up and press and down good job and heel toe arm up and press and relax excellent work everybody all right give me three inhale exhales and up inhale up and exhale out giving that inhale through the nose and exhale out and just one more inhale up and exhale out nice work on this gentle tai chi inspired session now this can be done every day and in a sitting you can do it one to three times or more if you like to relax if you want more stretching videos feel free to check out our library thank you so much for joining us if you like this video please give it a like share comment and subscribe to our channel it helps us reach more friends around the world and we really appreciate your support so look forward to seeing you on a future workout and in the meantime keep stretching and moving see you soon