Confino:

Major points:

1. Small Yoga pauses during the working day can refresh and relieve discomfort.
2. Carol has developed a series of minute movements, breathing and meditation to bring the body, mind and emotions into a healthier state during the workday.
3. Carol is helping people develop sustainable habits that are beneficial and easy to do.

00:41                                      This is episode one hundred twelve of changing face of yoga. And my guest today is Carol Confino. Carol has been a nurse for over 20 years and she's now shifted to preventing illness and disease becoming a yoga teacher, a yoga health coach and a certified yoga therapist. She's found ways of dealing with depression, self doubt and anxiety. The simple prompts process of noticing when these issues come up begins the process of overcoming. Welcome. Carol. Is there anything else you'd like to add to that particular introduction?

01:38                                      Just to clarify, I was an RN way back. I was an RN 14 years, but it's been 20 years since I've actually been a practicing nurse. But, I've been teaching yoga since 2006. Transition.

01:55                                      We all are doing that, aren't we?. I was very interested in what you were talking about doing desk yoga classes at a health fair. And you said it's a really different format from just doing office yoga or corporate yoga or whatever you want to call it.

02:23                                      It was interesting because I hadn't really thought about doing much corporate, but I was offered this job to do a health fair. Not so much in handing out flyers about my business or anything, but to teach office yoga. first time I had done hour long workshops at offices in the past, but I wasn't sure how this is going to work in a health fair. And I hit on what I call pause practices. I had done a workshop at my studio, Sun and Moon Yoga Studio here in Fairfax, Virginia. I did practices to pause during the day where you just take a minute or less and do some kind of practice that's going to either change your mind or your body in some way. So I used some of that and some of the things that I did with the desk yoga and there were a few practices that when I did them really resonated with people who didn't usually do yoga. So that's when it hit me that there's a whole population cause I've gone in offices and I've done a yoga class before or after work. But actually having it as part of their work day. Because yoga is more about mindfulness, being aware and when you start to become aware of when your posture is getting out of whack, what can you do?

04:04                                      And you know, you can go through all the alignment cues and things and sit up and you can bring your shoulders back. But I found that just bringing your arms out to a tee position brings in all the alignment cues and then you can add some practices that bring some strength up into your shoulders so you don't round forward so much. And if you incorporate that during your day, like as you're typing away on the computer, you notice you're rounding and you're in the middle of a thought, bring your arms out to a t, you've just broken up the muscles that were tight rounding you forward. And then you go back to typing and you roll down again. When you get to a breaking point where you've come to the end of the thought or the paragraph, you can do some stretches that will keep your shoulders up and keep you in better alignment because it's not so much the rounding forward that's bad. It's staying there. So if you can a couple of times an hour come in and out of it and to get them to sit and listen cause everybody's in a hurry.

                                                All these practices take a minute or less and I have about 20 different ones: minute meditations, eye exercises, shoulders and the arms. And they all fit into a nice little format and I give them a little handout they can take back to their desks that goes through all the practices, some breathing practices, some energy medicine practices and I go over the ones that are more unusual and then I say you can look everybody can round and arch their back and roll the shoulders. But explaining some of the things that I do that can keep you in better alignment and gets you through your day a little more comfortably.

06:13                                      Oh, how clever. That's really interesting. I'm sitting here doing the T thing.

06:22                                      If you do that t and then bring your arms in a cactus position. So you bend your elbows.

06:27                                      I am.

06:30                                      So if you turn your palms towards your head, okay, your upper back muscles are getting a little stretch and so your shoulders and the chest is contracting but they're not moving any bone. Really turn your palms away. And now the upper back muscles contract and the chest muscles stretch. So you go back and forth between those two. And then bring your arms down without moving your shoulders. I found this out from doing it over and over again. By at the end of the day, when I go to round my shoulders, I would feel a little more resistance than I did before I did cactus arms, which is different than if you bring your arms behind your back and squeeze your shoulders together. Your shoulders can come immediately come forward because you haven't gotten the stabilizing muscles to stay there. So that's like a revelation for a lot of very tight men particularly. But even women, they come and they do this and they notice it right away. And there's other ones, a couple of other ones that I do, and I talk about how to fit that practically into your day. Just like I said you're middle of something and then when you get to a stopping point, you do the stabilizing things and before you go on break, you can do some eye exercises. There are lots of different ones, there's even more than that. I didn't even go into the wrist with the ones that I do with the office. The wrist is much more subtle to work with.

08:06                                      I saw you had a a youtube video on it.

08:09                                      I had some on there and I'm going to have a little course. I'm doing the health fairs. Then I started making up the whole little handout that I have is going to come out as a course where all 20 practices are done. And the minute meditations I have recorded about a minute and a little longer because I just startto welcome them and then do about a minute. I've had people ask me when I've done this in offices, do you have any videos with this? And I said I have a few on youtube but this is going to be an actual little course package.

08:58                                      It's interesting.I think it's hard for people when they're working, but to take that time to take an hour or so for a yoga class, but just to get that habit in of really noticing where your shoulders are or whatever is, it's quite clever really. Because they can do that without really taking away from there their time at work.

09:21                                      And it makes them aware because actually if you do it over and over again, it actually becomes more comfortable to sit upright. You're really working your body very hard rounding your shoulders forward. It's not a bad position but the strongest position for your spine is when your head is balanced on top of the spine. Once you get your muscles used to that agai