This week’s Thrive in Five is part of our movement snaking month today we’re showing you A Qigong Twist.
As Leanne mentioned in our last post we’re challenging you to a month of movement snacking we’ll be sharing ideas over the next month on different movement snacks you can try. A question we get asked all the time is how can I get more energy and how can I get more movement into my day. With hybrid working becoming the norm, we’re more sedentary than ever before. So this month we’re giving you some energisers to do, some simple exercises that you can adopt in under five minutes, they’re super-fast so you can put it in at any time of your day.
We’ve talked about movement snacking a lot but in short, a movement snack is a little pocket of movement, just a minute or two of movement every hour.
Today our health coach Liz is showing you a spinning or twisting technique, stemming from the Qigong Twist. The Qigong movement gets the energy flow going, it gets the QI going. But more than that, it starts connecting your brain to your body. In the video above our health coach Liz demonstrates the technique.
How to do a Qigong Twist
A Qigong Twist is a great full-body movement, it gets your whole body moving and gets your breath going.
It’s a simple movement twisting the spine slightly, making sure to slightly bend the knees, perfect for waking up the joints. Giving the vertebrae some well needed movement after sitting or standing and staying in one position for most of the day, as some of us do. You can turn the head as well. Let the neck relax, take some deep breaths with it.
Tapping as you twist is also a great addition to the twisting movement. Tap our back where the kidneys are, the kidneys work with adrenaline and adrenal glands. So they do quite a lot of work when we’re stressed out. So give them a tap, and wake them up.
Opening the chest. You can tap the chest. Opening the chest and stretching out those muscles, which is great for activating the back muscles.
As we turn around and you can tap around your shoulder or your traps, if you want to.
Benefits of a Qigong Twist
This is meant to help with clear-headed thinking, and so better decision-making. So what we’re doing when we perform the Qigong Twist is we’re clearing our brain, clearing our mind. We’re moving our bodies. We’re reconnecting our mind with our body and we’re releasing some stress as well.
The movement gets fresh oxygenated blood around the body and up to the brain. It opens up our spines, back and shoulders gently.
To finish, you can do what they call, just touching the water. So imagine you’re in a pool and you’re just floating your hands across the top of the water, skimming it. Gently moving around your body. Imagine how it feels on your fingers, that really nice feeling of running your hands through water. Focus your attention on that and think about how that feels. Taking you back to the last time you were on holiday.
So there you have it, a Qigong Twist, it’s a really simple movement snack idea. It’s really good for the mind and our body is doing quite a bit of work as well.
Remember knees slightly bent, soft joints, and you’re getting that Qi going, all that energy that Qi flowing throughout the body. Hope you enjoy it. Let us know how you get on.
So join us in movement snacking every day this month, set a reminder, add an alert to your phone, pop a note in your diary. Whatever works for you but most importantly enjoy, and have fun.
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