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Travel Hacks

(mellow music) So we're here in the vehicle, and we're gonna talk a little bit about how to be more biomechanically effective during transportation. So a few things to think about. First thing would be tinkering with the same orientation that we had with our spine and our hips while we're working on a desk, sitting on the floor, or doing a deadlift or a squat or anything of the sort, similar thing. We wanna maintain a nice long, neutral spinal orientation. So something that you can do, oftentimes, seats in cars, they have this deep, concave bucket seat, which just exacerbates all these forward-folded postural positions. So what we're gonna do, is we're gonna take either a pillow or a small bottle. This bottle's a little wider than what I would typically do, but a small bottle, pillow, anything to kind of take some of that concavity out of the seat. So we can just bring that bottle back behind us like so. And then, we could bring the seat back, boop, like that. So now, I'm able to sta...

y in a nice, stacked up, well-oriented position. So same thing, my ribs slightly just resting down towards the hips. I'm playing with, I can bring my butt cheeks, reach my butt cheeks back to the corner of the seat and really feeling myself stacked. So if I were to have weight driven down from my shoulders down into my hips, it would be coming from this angle. Then I would feel that weight stack straight down through my spine. From this position, you can also bring the seat forward, backward, kind of play with what feels good for you. But from there, you can stay in that spinal orientation for a long time. And you're actually practicing functionality. You're practicing stacked alignment and structure. Next thing to tinker with would be implementing compression socks would be very valuable. Compression socks, you can get compression stockings, even if you're gonna go on like a long road trip, or if you're flying in an airplane, you're cooped up on a plane. Anything you can do to prevent that lymphatic fluid, all that blood, that old stagnant fluid from pooling up in your ankles. Cankles are not attractive to look at. They're also incredibly unhealthy. And so anything you can do to help compress that fluid, get it recirculated back into your lymphatic glands, back into your heart, to get recirculated through the body, that will be a healthier, happier, more vibrant version of yourself. So that's positioning. The most important thing that we can do with positioning is something that I've heard. I don't know the origin of this, but your next position is your best position, or your next move is your best move. So what that's suggesting is just, we gotta move. So there's a lot of different ways to do it. Whatever works for you, but just take breaks regularly. So you can maybe set a timer and you can take a break every hour or so, and take a little five-minute walk. Do a little lunge break, do a little squat break. We actually, I have a set of the align bands in my car when I travel. And so we can actually tie them to the door, shut the door on the door anchor, and go out and do some stretching and things of the sort. Looks a little weird, but feels very good. Whatever your version of movement is, just make sure you're getting as much movement as you can with some level of regularity. Something we can do, a little exercise technique that we can add into driving would be an isometric exercise. So what does isometric mean? It means you're contracting your muscles, but you're not actually going through a full range of motion. So we have a lot of different options on how to do that. I would recommend doing these exercises maybe at a red light or if you're on like a highway and there's nobody around, you're on cruise control and you have the availability to start to play with a little bit of pressure in your body. When you're driving, if you feel safe, I'm sure that's reasonable. But for the most part, I would recommend doing these exercises at a red light. Very simple. First thing you're gonna play with is using your steering wheel. And you can go through a pretty full range of motion with steering wheel. So you can start off, we can do a little external rotation. So as you're driving, imagine you are breaking the steering wheel. So your elbows are gonna go inwards like so, just like we did with the align band when we were working on unwinding tension in the wrists and the shoulders. So we were going, bope, like that. You're engaging those muscles on the posterior side of the shoulder girdle. Then you can play with protraction. So you can push the hands against the wheel. You can play with retraction. You can pull the hands backwards. You can play with flexion of the spine and the abdomen. So you could drive, boop, forward a little bit. You could do extension in the lumbar spine and thoracic spine. You could actually extend yourself back. So it's not just a pull with the shoulder girdle. It's actually an extension back with the spine. You could play with pressing your feet down to the ground. So you press with one foot down to the ground. So you're activating the glutes. You could press the the knees wide, and going outward like that, press 'em against the side walls or the side panels here in the car. You can press your knees in together. And just going through a general range of motion, pressing this isometric contraction, just to engage your neuromuscular system and to circulate fluid. It's the best way to circulate fluid, if you're not able to actually get up and take a walk, would just be general contraction. So you could also just contract muscles without actually having that tension against the floor, against the steering wheel. So you'd be driving and just squeeze your bicep, squeeze other bicep, squeeze your quad, squeeze your glutes. All of those subtle contractions, squeeze your calves, all those subtle contractions are gonna be absolutely pertinent to circulating vital fluid through your body. In a more natural, in quotation, "setting", we would be walking and we would be gathering and we would be building shelter and we would be using our visual muscles and we'd go through a more natural range of motion with more regularity. Cars are fairly a new advent in our society. It's a little strange to be able to go such a far distance without moving at all. So we want to reintegrate some of that movement back into even this interesting car situation. Cars are amazing. Planes are amazing. Grateful to be able to travel, but we need that biological circulation to go as well. And one last technique that would be supportive to get the most out of your body, the mechanics of your body while you're driving, is get yourself in a stacked, aligned, elongated position. Imagine there's a little string reaching in your head up towards the ceiling, applying all those same principles we've talked about keeping the ribs slightly tucked. You're not flaring the ribs. Just get nice and big. Take up as much space in your vehicle as you can. And then from there, from that position, what you'll notice is you'll probably have to readjust your mirrors. So adjust your mirrors to that long-stacked position, that big version of yourself. And that will act as an amazing reminder for you to stay in that big open, expansive, elongated, aligned, strong, stable position of yourself. So adjust those mirrors to fit that big version of yourself, and then proceed from there. So essentially what all of this is suggesting is that just because we are seemingly confined into a chair or a seat in a car or in an airplane or a train or whatever your transportation is, that does not mean that we just need to collapse and lose all of our circulation and all of our health and wellbeing because of our circumstances. Because even without that much actual range of motion, movement, we can still create a lot of internal movement. So one more thing that we can start to explore while we're seemingly confined into a seated position is we have so much range of motion within our breath. So oftentimes, if you are a person, maybe you're sitting in traffic in Los Angeles or San Francisco or some place of the sort, you might be backed up in traffic. There might be people angry and aggressive and cutting you off and all these things that might cause your nervous systems to start to go into the more of like a fight/flight type state. So an opportunity for you is to start to use your breath to come into a more calmed down, regulated state. So you can check out the Align Method program in order to go deeper into nose breathing, different breathing practices specifically. I also have a ton of videos on YouTube about this on Instagram and the podcast. But this moment of sitting in the car, it's like an incredible opportunity to start to practice your breathing. So a beautiful thing that you could play with would just be emphasizing a long exhalation, especially if you're feeling stressed at all. So while you're driving emphasize, you can maybe do like eight-second exhalation. Four-second inhalation. Again, four-second inhalation. And keeping it very soft, very simple. Nothing that would challenge you in any way. Just noticing what it's like to have a little bit longer exhalation, and notice how that starts to calm your nervous system down. So just going through maybe three or four or five breaths of that, if you're ever feeling like you're in a heightened state, especially if you are backed up in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and you're starting to feel yourself start to clench the steering wheel. A beautiful opportunity to start to tap into that breathing practice. Another thing, if you are on a long road trip, then you're starting to feel like, oh man, my body's gonna feel claustrophobic. And I feel like, oh, I wanna drink more coffee or something of the sort, you can come back into the breathing practice that we shared in the Align Method program as well, which essentially goes into more of like an up regulatory breathing practice. So that would be doing breathing as though you were at a high level of exercise essentially, or respiratory exertion. So what that would be, would essentially be breathing in a way that would simulate, and this would be something, you would do this breathing practice not while you're driving. This would be like out of the car, in between when you would've gone to get a cup of coffee or something of the sort. Take a little walk and you could do a brief little breathing practice that would mimic the way that you would breathe if you were exerting yourself. So exercise obviously stimulates the brain, stimulates the body, makes you feel good. You can also mimic that with breathing. So what that would look like would be maybe 30 rounds of breath. You could do this through the nose or through the mouth, and it would be. Going through that breathing pattern 30 times. You could finish with an exhale, a breath hold. You could do some stretching and some movement with that. And that'd be a beautiful way to start to clear your mind, and also start to up regulate your nervous system to feel more stimulated. So the takeaway from all of this is that even though we may be confined into this sitting position on the car, train, whatever automobile that we may be in, we still have access to a lot of internal movement while we're in those scenarios. So I hope this is supportive. And yeah, I hope you enjoy your road trip. I hope you aren't stuck in too much traffic. And if you are, I hope you can tap into the calming down regulatory benefits of your breath. That is it. That is all. Let's go on to the next segment.