Fun Movements for Brain Health that Help ward off Dementia - Chair Yoga Class with Haze - Yoga Vista

Hi, my name's Hayes and today I'm going to take you through some chair yoga for helping to improve our brain health. Somebody once told me that we can liken our brain cells to the lights on a Christmas tree. Now you may wonder why that is. So we can usually tend to get our Christmas tree lights out once a year at Christmas and quite often they don't work do we? They plug them in and the lights don't come on. So that's because there's kind of three different lights on that Christmas tree. The lights are in three different states. So we've got the light that works really well, we've got the light that's never probably going to work again, and we've got that those few lights that just work when we twiddle them. We just turn them a few times and stimulate those lights and then they'll come back on. And that's just like our brain cells. We've got those brain cells that are working really well, those brain cells that are probably not going to work the way they used to, and then we've got those brain cells that just need some stimulation to get them going. And there's lots of research that tells us that by doing exercise, particularly exercise where we kind of cross over the body, we do different movements crossing over the body, or we use the brain patterns to create patterns of movement, it can really, really help to stimulate our brain health. So who's coming with me to stimulate our brain cells today? Yeah? Come on then, let's move on. So we're going to start off with a breath. So in yoga, we always think about our breathing. So it's a really good idea to try and slow our breathing down sometimes. So what we're going to do to start with, we're going to just pretend that we've got a nice mug of soup, nice hot soup. Okay, so we're going to smell that soup first of all. Oh, but it's a little bit hot, so we need to blow off the steam. Nice long breath. And again, that delicious smell. I will blow away the steam. Maybe it takes you back in your memory to a soup that your parents made, your mum made, or grandmother made. And then let's blow the steam off. And again, let's take a nice breath in, smelling that beautiful soup. And a long breath out. Good, let's take two more then. Inhale, just smelling that beautiful smell, all those vegetables. And then exhale as you blow the steam off. Last time, inhale and exhale, just cooling that soup down. I think it's almost ready to eat now. Well done. And let's open up our eyes. Okay, so let's do a little bit of movement for our necks. So we're going to just nod the head gently, keep it quite slow, and we'll just nod it up and down as if we're saying yes. No need to go too far or too fast, just nice and slowly. And then we're going to look all the way up now. Imagine we're looking up at the beautiful sunshine. Lovely. And then we're going to bring the chin all the way down. Let the chin tuck in as we look downwards, just giving the back of the neck a nice stretch. And then coming back to look straight ahead, looking back towards me. Okay guys, so let's take a little nod to the side now, just side to side, slowly and gently, a little bit like we're saying no this time. And then we're going to look all the way to one side now, just hold it there. And then let's come all the way back slowly, back to look at the other side. Very nice. And then back to centre. Okay guys, so let's think about the end of your nose. I'm going to imagine that there's a pen on the end of my nose. I'm going to draw some circles with the pen that's on the end of my nose. So I'm going to keep them quite small, these circles. And let's make the circles a little bit bigger. So you're just drawing circles with the end of your nose. Well done. And then can we take the circles back the other way? So we'll start off with a bigger circle and gradually the circles are going to get a bit smaller until we're back in the centre with some nice small circles. And then we'll release. Okay guys, so let's work on our shoulders then. Sometimes we get very tight in the shoulders, don't we? Especially if we've been sat around a lot, not using them very much. So let's see if we can shrug the shoulders up towards the ears and then let's drop them down carefully. And again, lifting them up, shoulders up towards the ears and then lower them down. And again, inhale to bring them up and then we'll exhale to take them down. So breathing in as we lift the shoulders, breathing out as you lower. Taking two more then. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in and breathing out. Okay, so let's bring our fingertips and place them on the shoulder on the same side. I'm going to take, think about the elbow now, just take it in some circles. So if it helps you, you can imagine you've got that pen on the end of the elbow. I'm just going to draw some nice big circles with the elbow and then draw the circles in the other direction. So we're going backwards now. Lovely, that feels really good, doesn't it? And then we'll release the hand down. Come on, let's change sides then. Bringing the fingertips over to the other shoulder and then just drawing some circles with the elbow. Don't worry which direction you're going in, if it's different to mine because we're doing both ways anyway. The whole point really is that we're keeping moving so don't worry if anything I do doesn't look quite like the same thing that you're doing, it doesn't matter. Okay and then we'll bring the elbow back in the other direction. So I'm taking mine backwards now but you could be bringing yours forwards as long as it's moving. Lovely, let's bring that hand back down. Now when I went to school, which was quite some time ago now, in the school hall there used to be a row of ropes along the back and when it was time for our exercise or our PE lessons we could climb up these ropes. So I thought we'd have a little imagination here about climbing the ropes. So I think what we'll do is we'll cross over the ankles, just imagine that we've got the rope hanging down from the ceiling now, so we're gripping hold of that imaginary rope with our ankles. We're going to squeeze the knees together, so we're gripping hold of the rope with the knees and then let's take our hands in front and start to walk one hand up in front of the other one, coming up as high as you can. Let's really make a strong fist, let's get stronger here. Lovely, until you get as far as you can and then clasping the hands, let's slide ourselves back down the rope and then bring those hands to the heart centre, so the centre of the chest and we're going to bring the palms together in a prayer shape which we call Namaste hands. Okay, so let's have a go at that again then, so let's climb up the rope. I want you to be really strong here, really energetic, strong hands, really make strong fists, feel it in the upper arms. Well done, let's clasp the hands, we're going to slide ourselves back down the rope, hands come back to the heart centre in our Namaste hands position and release. So I think we'll change over the cross of our ankles and have another go, shall we? So crossing over, gripping hold of that imaginary rope, bringing the knees together and then hands ready and walk one hand up on top of each other, really make a really strong fist all the way up to the top. Have we got to the very top of our rope yet? I think I'm at the top of mine, so let's clasp the hands and we'll slide all the way back down, hands coming into heart centre in our Namaste hands, releasing the hands down for a moment. Let's do that just one more time, so if like me I've forgotten to grip my knees, I've let them go, so let's really squeeze the knees together, bring the hands back up and then let's start our climb up. We use all the body, if I can go back in time, think about myself climbing up these ropes, it was a very strong thing to do and you had to grip with your feet and with your legs and I remember sometimes getting a bit of rope burn in my hands as I came back down, we don't want that though do we? So we're going to take a nice clasped hand position here, sliding carefully down, bring the hands to heart centre, bring them to Namaste and I think having our hands in Namaste we can just be grateful that we managed to climb that rope again. Okay so let's keep our hands here, release the ankles, place the feet back down onto the surface, so you might notice also that I have an orange block here with my feet on, that's because I have quite short legs so they don't reach the floor, so if that's the same for any of you, maybe you could find yourself a cushion or maybe not today, maybe next time you put the video on you might like to pop a big book or a cushion under your feet. Okay so let's bring the hands together, we're going to take a little turn to one side, a little twist to one side and just hold it there, coming back to centre. Good, let's inhale so take a breath in and then we'll twist to the other side and then inhale, exhale back to centre. Lovely, do that one more time on each side, so let's inhale and then as you exhale, as you breathe out we're turning to the side, inhale and as you breathe out let's come back to centre. Last time, so breath in, inhale and as you breathe out or exhale we're turning to the other side, inhale and exhale back to the centre. Now I'd like to invite you to see if we can just bring this elbow down to rest onto the knee, so we're just going to take a little bow forwards, not too far and just bring your elbow to rest on the knee and then can we lift the other elbow up, keeping the hands still attached together and just look up towards this top elbow. Lovely, let's inhale, take a breath in and come back up and exhale. Let's go again, let's do the other side, so we're going to inhale and lean slightly forwards, exhale bringing the elbow to rest on the leg, we're going to lift up the other elbow, just taking a little look at the elbow, take a breath in and inhale and come back up, releasing the hands back down to the lap. Okay, so I had another thought as well that when I was younger there used to be a TV programme on which was called the Strongest Man Contest and they used to have to pull or push big vehicles like a bus, so I thought today just to help us feel a bit stronger let's imagine that we've got a bus in front of us. So first of all I want you to think about just pressing your hands in front of you and we're going to push really strongly as if we're pushing that bus away from us. Imagine we are the strong person, let's bring the hands back and then we're going to press that bus away from us. Okay and then bring the arms back in, let's do that twice more, so really press hard with the hands, so you really imagine that we've got that heavy vehicle in front of us, it just helps really charge up the muscles in the arms and one more time pressing that bus away. Okay and release the hands down. Now we're going to do the opposite, we're going to try and pull the bus towards us, so imagine there are a couple of ropes on the bus, so let's reach, make a fist and pull that rope, let's pull the other one and again, so really grip and pull and you'll start to notice the top of your arm feeling much stronger. Okay come on and let's keep pulling that bus, we're nearly there, a couple more times, well done, one more. Okay great, does that make you feel a little bit stronger? Doesn't it? Okay so let's take our legs wider, you might want to slide forwards on the chair a little bit and take the legs a little bit wider, just turning the toes out to the sides. So let's go back to that soup that we had in our hand at the beginning, let's imagine we've got a great big pot full of the soup now and we're going to take a big ladle in our hands, just clasping the hands around the ladle and we're going to just draw the ladle in circles now, just stirring our pot of soup. We can lean back a little bit, we can go to this side, we can lean forwards, we're just making a nice circle with the ladle but obviously with our body as well. Okay well done, well done and then we're going to go back in the other direction, so just drawing that big circle with the ladle in your hands, just stirring the soup and again maybe go back to some soup you've had in the past, maybe your grandma, your your mum made or maybe you're really good at making soups. Lovely, let's release the hands down. Okay guys so let's take a movement now which is called Cat and Cow. What we're going to do is add some arms into this one, so we're look up, looking back up at that lovely sunshine again, it's an amazing day and then as you breathe out, just hug yourself, so wrap the arms around and give yourself a hug. Let's open up the arms wide again, so the palms are facing up towards the sky or the ceiling, we're going to look upwards and then as you breathe out, we're going to hug yourself again and again inhale, open up, just welcoming that lovely day and then exhale, rounding the spine, just hugging the body. We'll take one more of each of those then, so looking up, wide arms, breathe out and giving yourself a nice hug, lovely and releasing down, so bringing the feet back in front of the body. So I was saying at the beginning that our brain benefits from repetitive patterns, so we're going to have a go at something that we do all the time in yoga, whether it's chair yoga or mat yoga and it's called a sun salutation, so it's a series of movements that are added together. So let me just show you first of all and then I'll take you through it, so we're going to raise the arms all the way up to the sky, bending the elbows out to the side and I'm just going to come forwards very slightly, leaning forwards, big breath in and then as I breathe out, I'm going to fold down and bring my hands to the ankles and then as I breathe in again, touching the knees and looking forwards, breathing out, sliding the hands back to the ankles and as I breathe in, I'm going to take my right arm up to the side and then exhale, bring it down, inhale, taking the other arm up and again, don't worry whether it's the right arm or the left arm, it really doesn't matter. Let's take a breath in, bring the hands up to the knees and we'll breathe out, taking the hands all the way back down to the ankles, press down through the feet and bring your arms up in a big circle now, draw them to touch at the top and then bringing those hands back to the heart centre, that namaste position that we did at the beginning, then release. We're going to do that a couple more times, so joining in with me now if you were just watching just now, so our feet are flat on the floor, we're going to inhale, sweeping up the arms, as you exhale or breathe out, bring the elbows to the side and just lean forwards slightly, breathe in again, as you breathe out, folding forwards, hands coming down to the ankles, breathe in again, hands coming onto your knees now and you're looking forwards, breathing out, fold back down. As you breathe in, we're going to take one arm out to the side, just look to the side and as you breathe out, bring the hand down. As you breathe in, taking the other arm up to the side and as you breathe out, float it back down. Lovely, let's breathe in, bring the hands to the knees, look forwards, as you breathe out, fold back down. Let's press through the feet into the floor and sweep the arms out to the side, you can make a big circle shape with the hands, take them all the way up, joining them at the top and bringing those namaste hands back to the heart centre and then we'll release them back to the lap. So we're going to do that one more time, inhale, sweep up the arms, exhale or breathe out, bring the elbows back, bowing halfway forwards, inhale again and as you exhale, fold forward, bring the hands down. Inhale, hands are coming to the knees, look forwards, as you exhale or breathe out, bring the hands back down to the ankles, breathing in, take one arm out to the side, breathing out, bring it back down. Let's breathe in, take the other arm up to the side, and breathing out, bring it back down. Let's breathe in, bring the hands to the knees, look forwards, breathing out, slide the hands all the way down to the ankles, so press your feet nice and firmly into the floor. I'm going to come up slowly, bringing your arms in a big circle, hands joined together, I'm drawing them into the heart centre for namaste, releasing the hands here. Okay so if you find it a little bit difficult to to keep up, well keep trying, so keep replaying the video, maybe doing it a few times a week perhaps and just starting to get used to the movement, so our brain starts to get used to new patterns. Okay guys so let's imagine now that we've got a beach ball in our hand, I'm going to take that beach ball all the way up to the sky now, if your neck feels okay today, let's look up towards our beach ball, lovely, bringing it back down, we're going to take that beach ball over to the high corner and bring it back down. So let's breathe in now, we're going to take it up to the other high corner and bring it back down, lovely, we're going to take the beach ball to the low corner and then back to centre, take it to the other low corner and bring it back in. So we're going to take that beach ball now and place it down nice and low, let's breathe in as we bring it back up, let's take it all the way up to the top again and then we're going to bring it back to centre and can we use this ball to draw a big circle now? So let's draw a circle in front of the body, keep hold of your beach ball, don't let it go, we'll let it go in a moment and let's take that circle in the other direction, lovely and bring it back to centre, I'm just going to pop mine on my lamp a moment, if you'd like to throw me your ball now, lovely I've caught it, I'm going to throw you my ball, there you go, well caught, well done. Okay let's just push our beach ball out of the way, we're going to take a star shape with the body, so let's stretch the legs out, can we just come a little bit closer to the edge of the seat so that we can stretch the legs out, if that's tricky for us for any reason just stay further back on the seat but just bend the knees and take the feet as wide as you can, we're going to bring the arms out to the side and just wiggle the thumbs there on the top, just to check they're on the top here, so this is a star pose, five-pointed star pose, so let's breathe in and breathe out, and in yoga we often breathe in and out through our nose, so let's just try that in through the nose and out through the nose, sometimes if you have a cold or something then sometimes we would breathe out through the mouth, so I'll let you decide what you feel best, how you feel best doing that today, lovely let's change this now, bring the legs together and bring the arms up into a mountain, a high mountain pose, so let's imagine the back is really long now, we've got the top of the mountain up there, tips of the fingers and then release the hands back down to the lap, for the next one I suggest we do sit further back in the chair, and we're going to take the arms first of all, can we cross one arm over the top of the other one, make a like an x shape with your arms and then we'll undo them again, take them wide and then we'll cross them over the other way, so the other arm comes on the top this time and open wide, and again let's cross and open, so we're criss-crossing the arms, so a couple more times, lovely, now our brain cells, all the working parts of the brain really come together and help us to do all these sorts of things that we're doing now, so what we're going to do is just make it a little bit more tricky to just get our brain working a little bit harder, so we're going to cross the legs this time, but don't worry if you can only cross the ankles that's fine, if you can go a bit wider then go wider, so we're going to do the legs a few times, so our brain has gone from thinking oh we were moving the arms just now, to now we're moving the legs, and guess what, I'm going to see if we can do them both at the same time, so let's take both the arms and the legs wide and then cross them both over, taking them wide, crossing them back over, so our brain is working extra hard now trying to follow this criss-crossing pattern, lovely, one more time, well done and release down, okay so again let's wiggle a little bit further forward just so that we can make sure the feet are flat on the floor, we're going to take a slow march, so just let the the sole of the foot come into contact with the floor, nice and quite flat, so we're going to wake up the soles of the feet, we're going to get our brain cells jiggling around a little bit more, remember the purpose of this session was to just wake up some of our sleepy brain cells, so what we're going to do is, without stopping with our marching legs, going to see if we can add in the opposite arm, so we're going to raise up the opposite arm, okay when you're ready, so we're raising up the opposite arm and the opposite leg, just check it out and if you are what we call tick-tocking, so if you're bringing the same arm and the same leg up, it's still good exercise for the body but let's just change it and see if we can make the brain work just that a little bit extra, just trying to do the opposites, well done, let's release the hands there and just to finish off our with our legs, we're going to just do a little bit of jogging, so just running on the spot, a little jog, maybe imagine somewhere nice that you could be jogging to, maybe you've got a beach nearby or a park or somewhere that you used to go when you were younger, a beautiful beach or just somewhere nice that you can remember having a walk or a jog and let's add in some arms, bending the elbows, just helping us go a little bit quicker, well done, we're nearly there, we're nearly there, and release down, okay guys, so let's just bring one hand to your heart centre, the centre of your chest and we're going to bring the other hand and rest over the top of the other hand, just taking a calm breath, just a fast jog, so we just want to calm down a little bit, can you feel your heart beating, lovely, some slow breaths here, you can try breathing out through the mouth again like we did at the beginning, so breathing in through the nose, blowing, exhale through the mouth, so inhale, remember we had some soup, some imaginary soup that was very hot, so we have to blow the steam off, lovely, releasing the hands, okay so we're nearly done, just do a few calmer exercises just to finish off, so I'm going to pretend that I've got a dishcloth in my hand, I'm going to take hold of either end of the dishcloth and squeeze it out, it's a little bit wet so I'm just squeezing out the dishcloth, just working the fingers now, working the wrists and we'll all be doing this in the way that comes naturally to us, so if we picked up our dishcloth at home now, we will all be just taking one hand in one direction and one in the other naturally, so what we want to do now, again just to challenge the brain a little bit, is let's wring it out the other way, the unnatural way, so just see if you can squeeze out the dishcloth the other way around, good and then we'll release the hand down, so bringing up our hands, going to take hold of your thumb and just give it a little wiggle in its socket, I'm going to work along each finger, we'll count them as we go along, so one, two, three, four, five, you could count along with me perhaps, six, seven and eight, nine and ten and then let's go backwards, so ten, nine, just give them a wiggle, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one, now just pop the hands down, two, rest on your thighs, I'm going to just circle just to finish off and then circle the other way and then popping that foot down, let's just circle the other ankle, well done and circle back the other way and we'll pop the foot back down and just making sure you've got some support from the chair, I'm going to just take a little bit of relaxation, so just allow the hands to rest on the thighs, let the shoulders relax down the back, I'm going to close the eyes and just tilt the chin down a little bit and I'm going to invite you to think about a beach and this may be a beach that you visited when you were younger or when you were older, it doesn't really matter, just a beach or it may be a beach that you've seen in a photograph or on television, you just imagine yourself on the beach now, it's a beautiful hot sunny day, the sand is beautifully soft and the water is nice and blue and nice and calm and you're just taking a little walk along the beach now with your bare feet, the sand is lovely and soft beneath your feet, just imagine feeling grains of sand between your toes, just imagine what it feels like, just walking now a little bit closer to the water's edge and the sand is changing texture, the sand is getting more firm and more damp, just imagine what that feels like on the soles of your feet and as you get near to the water's edge, just noticing that little bit of foam on the edge of the water where the tide has come in and then receded and just dip your toe into that little bit of foam on the edge of the sea, what does this feel like? I mean if you would like to, you could dip your toes into the sea, so just walking a couple more paces ahead of you just so that you can dip your toes into the tide as it comes in and just relax over your feet, it's not too hot, it's not too cold, just right, just enjoy the feeling of the water of the sea swirling around your feet and just looking ahead of you, you can see a couple of ships, it's a little bit more breezy further out to sea, you can see the ship's sails just moving gently in the wind, in the breeze and just watch those ships as they gently move across the horizon in front of you, it's making you feel lovely and calm and now it's time to start to walk back up the beach, back to your deck chair, so just turning away from the sea, walking over that damp hard sand and just walking onto that lovely dry sand and just noticing how it feels, bits of the sand just sticking to your feet and just walking a little bit further and the further you go, your feet become more clear of sand as the sand is drying out now, just walking back to your deck chair in your mind and just taking a seat enjoying the rest of your day in the sunshine, so we're going to bring awareness back to the room now, I'm going to just wiggle the fingers and toes a little bit and just bringing the hands together in that prayer shake that we call namaste, bringing the hands to rest at the heart centre, let's take a nice breath in through the nose and we'll breath out through the nose and again in through the nose, out through the nose, one more time and as you breathe out just bow the head and we'll begin to flutter open the eyes and I wish everybody a lovely day.