5 Minute Yoga Fix with Peggy Cappy

PEGGY CAPPY: I am delighted to share with you the aspects and information about this new program I'm doing, the Five Minute Yoga Fix.

Even the title might be a little suspect.

I mean, five minutes-- what can you really do in five minutes?

You know, suppose you sleep eight hours a night, then that leaves us with 16 hours in our day.

Five minutes is only 1% of your waking time.

Isn't that amazing?

I mean, who doesn't have one percent of their waking hours to feel better?

You can just go ahead and stretch, stretch your arms up.

(groans) It's a different way of thinking about stretching.

It's a different way of thinking about strengthening the body.

(in-person): So when you're up, I'll ask you to tighten the buttocks.

(voiceover): And I put together some sequence of poses that begin to change the body at a fundamental level.

And what I mean by that is all of us are tight in pretty much the same places.

Over the years, as our bodies sit-- sit for everything; sit for work, sit for driving, sit for leisure activities-- exercise is imperative for feeling great.

I believe it's never too late.

It's never too late to start.

Even if you feel like there's no hope left for you, try it.

Just try it.

It's really the key to memory problems that people are having.

There's a neurologist who really has made it his... ...life's work to study how to keep our brains healthy.

And he said number one thing: exercise.

Number two, which really made me smile, number two, exercise.

(chuckles) And number three is, like, change your diet.

Eliminate a lot of the sugar.

It's so simple, but I really took it to heart.

The more we can be encouraged to exercise in a safe way.

Some people start exercise, and they just go for it, and they kind of stress themselves out because they do too much, and then they give up the whole practice.

What I love about the Five Minute Yoga Fix is that it's really gentle.

So you can lift the shoulders and then move the shoulders right up by your ears.

(voiceover): What the Five Minute Yoga Fix is, is some selected postures and strengthening for when you first wake up in the morning, and when you're seated and standing.

And when you get in bed at night.

That's beneficial to these bodies of ours.

You know, as I've aged, I've seen how imperative it is to really think about the body and take care of the body, because if you don't, if you don't stretch, if you don't strengthen, it's a slow decline.

And of course, as we age, the problems pick up speed.

(chuckles) One of the differences in doing the yoga work in this new way, in this Five Minute Yoga Fix, is that no longer we go to our max in the pose and hold a pose at our 100% maximum.

What we found is that's stressful and you can't hold the pose for very long.

And so back up and only do about 50% of your capability.

That's what I love to do.

You can do this work with your shoes on, but you can also do it with your shoes off in bed.

So whether you're lying down, whether you're sitting up in a chair, whether you're standing, there are poses and stretches that you can do that it's going to balance the body and just bring a sense of ease that didn't exist before.

That's what I'm after.

That's what I want.

That's what I want people to try.

This is work for people that don't want to get on a yoga mat.

And if you do like to get on a yoga mat, try this out as well, because there'll be poses that would be familiar, but maybe with subtle little changes.

When you become my age, a lot of my friends have significant problems with pain.

Did you know that pain is such a factor in so many people's lives that over 31 million people a year go to their doctors for back pain?

And it turns out we all have to deal with pain that arises in the back, or maybe in the hips, or in the knees.

CONNIE GRAY: I'm Connie Gray, and I'm in my senior years, somewhere around 80-plus.

My greatest health challenge is staying upright, moving around actively so I don't decay.

ANN DILLON: My name is Ann Dillon and I'm 79.

My biggest health challenge is my scoliosis, which is, sort of, constant back pain, and kind of throws off my balance a little bit.

CAROL BURDICK: My name is Carol, and I'm 75 years old.

I want to maintain flexibility in my body as I age some more.

CAPPY: Why are we out of balance?

It's because all of us do the same thing over and over, hours and hours a day.

And I think probably popping to people's minds is what the problem is: it's all of the sitting that we do.

We sit to drive to work.

We sit at the computer.

We sit for entertainment at a movie or in front of the TV.

We sit all the time.

And the reason that sitting is stressful, ultimately, for our bodies is that there are two natural curves in the spine.

One should be in the low back, and one should be in the neck, but when we sit, those curves disappear and we end up having a C-shape so that the lower back rounds out, and the neck rounds with the head coming forward, and that sets up a big problem for the body, because if the lower back is rounding out, what that's doing is putting a lot of pressure on the discs and I think everyone's heard of people with disc problems or the nerves that get pinched from that tightness.

So we got to find a way to release that tension that exists in the whole spinal column simply from sitting.

So many of us growing up, our mothers said, stand up straight, sit up.

And I think they were doing it out of knowing it just looks better if your posture's lifted, you know, if you're upright, but in fact it's way more important than just looking good.

If your posture's good, it means that your body's in alignment.

That's not putting excess stress and strain on the muscles and the joints.

We have joints every time that bones come together and so there's joints in our whole spinal column.

And if we're upright, it's how we were designed to be.

If you look at an anatomy book, you know, the spine has those natural curves.

It's how we're supposed to be.

But because we do so much sitting, and you know, it may be more where we are today than maybe in 100 years ago when people worked their farms, they had their own gardens, they did physical work that allowed them to exercise just through the course of the day.

And now most of us are relegated to sitting down for our work.

There's three aspects that these stretches and strengthening moves help.

One is strength for our muscles to be strong.

Two is flexibility, and that's free movement in the joint, free-range of motion.

And the third is very important, and that's balance, because most people over time see a decay of balance; that they don't feel so stable on their feet.

GRAY: I need to keep moving as long as I can.

DILLON: I really would like to increase my, my um... (inhales deeply) ...balance, and keep the mobility that I have and possibly even make it better.

BURDICK: My body's telling me I can stretch, I can lean, I can bend down, I can do pretty much anything I want.

And that yoga has done that.

CAPPY: You know, as we age, there's something called sarcopenia and that is kind of a wasting of the muscle.

We are all the time losing, breaking down muscle, and rebuilding, but as we get older, our ability to make new muscle isn't as good as when we're young.

So people are losing muscle mass from the age of 30, you lose a significant amount of muscle mass each decade.

Maybe just 5%, but by the time you're up in your 70s, you've maybe lost 50% of your muscles.

And if you don't have the strength to lift things, if you don't have the strength to carry things, if you don't have the strength to just go about your life, it diminishes the quality of life.

And the same thing for flexibility.

We need strength for our muscles.

We need flexibility for our joints.

Because with that flexibility makes an ease of motion.

And if we're not flexible, guess what, we're so much more likely to stumble and fall.

And falls are the curse of old age, because when people fall, often the bones have become more brittle because that declines as well.

There's something called muscular imbalance, and what that means is that the opposing muscles that exist are out of whack.

So if there's a strong muscle and a weak muscle, what happens is, that stronger muscle will pull the weaker muscle, and it will make the strong muscles even more tight and contracted, but it'll overstretch the weak muscle.

And that's a problem, because when that exists, you no longer have the structure necessary to keep you upright in a healthy stance.

When we can rebalance our bodies, we are going to have a much healthier way of moving, a much healthier, more satisfying experience of the body.

When you first wake up in the morning, you can just stretch your whole body.

You know, many of us have cats and dogs.

If you watch when they wake up from a nap or a whole night's sleep, what do they do?

Universally, they stretch.

They don't stretch very long because they haven't been sitting.

They stretch their limbs, and it just looks like it feels so good, doesn't it?

That's just a natural movement that our pets do.

And why not copy them?

They're pretty smart.

They know how to get back in balance.

Stretch your arms up, stretch through, stretch both equally, and then let the arms come down.

And so take one of those stretches, maybe stretch the feet out, and then if you need to get up and go to the bathroom, come back, make the covers out of the way and just start with the feet.

So when you lie down, bend your knees and place your feet on the floor.

With the knees bent, can you feel how the lower back can relax?

We call this the neutral spine position because it allows the back to really relax.

So from here, go ahead and stretch out your legs now, flexing and points.

This is the start of the day and you're just waking up your ankle muscles.

And then stop and feel the effects.

You should be able to feel that you are increasing the circulation down to your ankles; very good for starting your day.

I love to start there because I'll do a couple minutes, and then I'll stop, and it's like, wow, what a lot of energy down there.

(in-person): You can feel the effect of the breathing on the leg and notice the difference between the side you just stretched and the other side.

The whole area starts to tingle and I know I've increased the blood supply, I've increased the circulation.

Pull both knees into the chest.

You can rock gently from side to side if it will feel good to massage the lower back.

This position for the legs really helps the hips and lower back.

(voiceover): And I can really feel, yeah, I'm ready to stand up on my two feet.

(exhaling in-person) BURDICK: Well, your hips are really important, and they can freeze up and lock up quickly, I find, especially for me.

So I need to do that, to do those exercises every day, to loosen them.

So I get onto my back, and I bring my knees up, and cross the knee and bring my other leg through and stretch the back, and do floor poses where I have to straighten my back.

GRAY: Coming back to yoga helped to clear my mind, which is getting foggier with age, so I can think better when I'm doing yoga.

CAPPY: When you're standing up, there is a pose called mountain pose in yoga, and it's really standing so that the spine is erect, the feet are underneath the hips, the toes are turned in a little bit, so the outer edges of the feet are parallel, and you tighten the muscles of the legs, just squeezing the muscles against the bone, and you feel that all the way up.

You feel the lift of the spine.

You can open the arms out to the sides so that you can feel a broadening in the upper chest.

And as you press the feet downwards, you can imagine just the top of the head lifting up so that you're standing tall and straight.

Press the feet downward evenly as though you had four tires you were resting on, and then feel the bones of your legs, and let the muscles of your legs squeeze the bones, hug the bones.

And can you feel what a firm foundation that gives?

And then I add an open-hearted position with the hands so that I can get that beautiful stretch.

So someone that uses their hands a lot for handiwork, or through their job, or gardening needs that stretch to really reset the muscles in the hand.

So I do that.

I hold it until I feel like it's too much, I'm getting tired, and then I relax, take a little break, and then I do that again.

So just literally standing in mountain pose with the arms, I feel like I'm making a change in my whole countenance.

The first time I did this pose for two minutes, I woke up the next day, and I had no arthritis pain in my hands whatsoever.

So you better believe it's part of my daily work.

(voiceover): From there, bend one knee, bend a front knee.

It won't go too far.

Just step back a little ways with the other one and you'll begin to get the stretch.

As you tune into your body, it's amazing what you discover.

You'll feel where the stretch is happening.

You can begin to get the stretch in the front groin.

There's another one which I need every day.

You start with your feet parallel, and then you step one foot back, just one step back, and then you bring on the side that is stepping back, that's the side you're going to stretch the whole body.

(in-person): Oh, there's a sweet spot there.

Look for it.

Can you find it?

If you've gone too far, back up.

You might bring the arm overhead, and then bring that hip forward, and all of a sudden you've created a stretch down the whole body from the head to the foot and the foot to the head.

You can keep stretching the arm or rest the arm if it gets tired.

And again, you feel like you're really affecting one side of the body, and of course you do it on the other side.

And so we just want to hold this, and let the body stretch, let those muscles release.

For me, it's just a joy.

It's simply a joy to do that on both sides, and that's what the reward is for me.

I'm so happy.

BURDICK: So I'm always doing a little yoga all around my house.

I use whatever I can to... the counters in my kitchen.

I do the back stretches and leg stretches.

So it's just a part of my life, it's a part of my day-to-day living that I won't stop ever.

CAPPY: It also makes waiting for something pretty nice.

I mean, waiting in the grocery line with your cart, you can do these subtle stretches.

Once you know what to do, you can stretch right there, and get some amazing work in a time where you would've been doing nothing.

(in-person): It looks so simple what we're doing, it looks like it couldn't possibly be doing that much, but it's deceptive how easy the pose is and how powerful its effect is.

Also drop into your breathing, you'll become more present.

I found out the world around me is amazing, and most often we shut ourselves down, and we don't even notice what's in our surrounding unless we've been trained to really stay alert and there's people whose jobs is to stay really alert.

Most of us don't have that, and so it's wonderful to bring in a gentle pose, awareness, presence, and breathing is a very, very important component of our work, which I'll spend more time talking about later.

CAPPY: So thanks for joining me in class today.

What I want to do is show you easy moves that you can add to every day, whether they be sitting down like we are now, standing up or reclining.

So we want to, especially as we age, we want to keep an upright posture, and we especially want to balance the muscles in the hips because for most of us, due to sitting and other activities, our hips get out of balance.

So we want every day to include something that's going to make us stronger, our muscles stronger, because as we age, the muscles lose mass, lose strength.

Two, we want to maintain flexibility, because with flexibility, our balance is better, we're able to move with more ease, it affects our mobility.

Three, every day we want to do something to work on balance, because we don't want to lose what we have.

And four, we want our overall mobility to bring enjoyment to our life.

We don't want to feel stuck in bodies that aren't working so well anymore.

(voiceover): When you're sitting, what you want to do is to counter the rounding of the spine, the head forward, the lower back.

So you want to have the spine be upright.

So we're always looking for what are the simplest moves we can do that have a powerful effect on our body.

You can do some simple shoulder rolls.

Lift your shoulders up high, right by your ears, and then as you breathe out, relax the shoulders down and even push the shoulders down a little bit more.

Lift the heart center.

And when we do shoulder rolls, we may roll them forward, but we don't stay forward because we don't want to round the back.

We want to pull the shoulders back, spread the chest, pull the shoulder blades down.

And can you feel how much more open the chest is?

And if you press the shoulder blades together, you can feel how it causes the back muscles to work a little bit more.

Just doing that gives a relief to an upright position.

Wow, can you feel a difference?

Yeah, so one of the easiest things you can do if you've been sitting for a while is to come forward in your chair.

By coming forward in your chair and having your sit bones there, you're asking your spinal muscles to hold you up.

You can simply move forward in the chair, reach back to the back of the chair, and gently pull the shoulders back, lift the heart center, squeeze the shoulder blades together, maybe pull in the belly button and lift the whole spine.

They're all subtle moves, they're all easy moves.

And then just make sure you're not in too far, that you could hold this for a minute, and you hold this pose for a minute, and then when you come back to sitting, all of a sudden there's an ease present.

And can you feel what a beautiful posture you now have?

Before you might've been tired.

So if you're working and you just feel tired and sluggish, change your posture, and it's as simple as that.

There's other exercises we do that are more active.

Just really pressing the shoulder blades together and the shoulders back, but all of them are very simple, can be done easily, can be learned easily, and they sure deserve to be in one's practice every day.

(insects chirping) If the day's been too busy, and you haven't found the time to stretch, either first thing in the morning, or at your desk, or in your kitchen, or any place else, then by all means when you get in bed at night, do a few stretches.

And so each time you stretch out, you can just kind of take an inventory.

How do the hips feel?

How does the lower back feel?

(voiceover): Sometimes our mind gets so busy, it's hard to shut off the thoughts of the day or the worries about tomorrow, and one of the best things you can do is to ask your body to relax.

(voiceover): You could actually go through your body from head to toe and you could close the eyes and say, "Okay, can I relax the area around my eyes?"

You let go and release the tension in the cheeks that have come from talking or whatever during the day.

Many people hold tension in the jaw.

Ask your jaw muscles to soften and relax.

You can move that relaxation to your chin and your lips.

You can imagine that the forehead muscles, the tiny muscles, that they soften and any lines of tiredness or tension or worry just melt away.

And you can send it to the top of the head.

Imagine all those scalp muscles relaxing, and you can bring it down into the neck.

You know, you can take that down the whole body, really imagining the shoulders releasing and resting on the bed.

Can take it down the arms.

So I think that's one of the reasons that I go to sleep so quickly is that I can run through my body pretty quickly and just ask those muscles to release and just sink into the bed.

You will find that you'll be able to relax much more quickly and much more easily so that it's going to be heading towards the direction of deeper relaxation and more complete ease as you drift off to sleep.

DILLON: I've been working with Peggy since probably 2017.

I would definitely encourage anyone and everyone to give yoga a try.

GRAY: Everybody should know about Peggy's classes.

They're wonderful and they keep us agile, and moving, and comfortable and limber.

Lots of good things.

Thank you.

DILLON: Yoga is a wonderful thing to be part of really.

Keeping oneself mobile is just, at any age and especially as you get older, is just so important.

BURDICK (voiceover): And I'm 75, and so I plan on being this way until I die, so that's how long I'm going to do yoga, because it keeps me right on track.

CAPPY: Part of what this program is about is that this is for people that might not ever want to get on a yoga mat, but they can do it in the kitchen or anywhere in the house.

Add a little bit and it makes a difference.

BURDICK: It does.

It all helps.

It's ingrained in me.

It's like something that is just automatic.

It's a natural reflex to do it.

If I'm in a certain position, I'll say, "Mm, well, maybe I should stretch here right now."

CAPPY: So let's start with breathing.

Just, first of all, be aware of your in breath and your out breath.

One of the most common forms of meditation now in the U.S. is practicing mindfulness.

And just maybe that breathing can drop you into a really calm, quiet, but powerful internal place.

And what mindfulness means is just awakening our senses to what's present in the moment.

We all breathe in and we all breathe out thousands and thousands of times a day, and you just have to be aware of the breath.

90% of us are stressed pretty much our whole day.

If we're in a stressed condition, it means that we are ready to fight, or flee, or freeze, and it means we are prepared to deal with some onslaught.

Many centuries ago, where we had dangerous situations to look out for, or you might have to run away from something or fight, that was necessary.

It kept us alive, but a whole lot of changes come into the body once fight or flight is triggered.

It means that we stop digesting our food.

There's no energy for that.

It means we are given the power to run faster.

It means if we get cut, there's less circulation to the periphery of the body so that you won't bleed out.

There's probably 500 different chemical responses that our brain sends out through our body when we are in a state of stress.

Now, that should be only occasionally, but we have stressors that we weren't designed for, and so we live in a charged up state due to disagreements with our coworkers or traffic that's just beyond what you want to deal with.

Breathing in, lift.

(voiceover): And the way that I've found is to really work with my breathing.

That's an immediate thing we can do to relax.

Take a long, slow, deep breath in.

DILLON (voiceover): I do remember my breathing.

My breathing is really something that I pretty much do every morning.

Just before I get out bed, I do a few little exercises, and focus on the breathing and also to help me go to sleep.

CAPPY: And then see if you can double the length of that exhale.

BURDICK (voiceover): Well, I start out with taking deep inhales and exhales, and then I start to slow that down to that I'm almost in a meditative breathing.

You just slow down the breathing, and I sigh each time it's done.

I can't help it.

And so I'll breathe in again, and hold it a little bit, and then breathe out.

And next thing I know, I'm ready to go to bed.

CAPPY: If you become aware of tension in your neck or your shoulders, on the exhalation, you can actually give yourself the command or the suggestion, to release and relax.

One of my yoga students said she was involved in a car accident where her door jammed.

DILLON: I was coming home from a friend's house after having dinner, and I came down this little road onto a two-lane main road.

And by the time I was out there far enough, I'd realized somebody was coming, and ended up getting T-boned.

CAPPY: And she couldn't get out of the car, and she had to sit there and wait in this stressful condition.

DILLON: I called 9-1-1 and then realized that, well, yoga helped me learn about breathing, and so I started just using my breath as a calming mechanism and it helped.

CAPPY: They were astonished when they got to her and they said, "You're not freaked out, like, how are you doing this?"

And she said, "I'm just doing my breathing."

DILLON: Nobody was hurt, just the cars, and got home safely, but the breathing really helped.

CAPPY: Feel that stretch in the throat and then return the head.

Wow, can you feel a difference?

Yeah.

It's really, really powerful.

I think it's something that should be taught in all schools, is how to relax yourself at will, how to relax your muscles, how to relax your mind, how do you relax the breathing?

BURDICK: I had to have an MRI.

And you know how that is.

You lie down, and you go into this tube, and it's like this far from your nose.

And I've had that in the past, and have panicked, and had to be taken out.

Well, because of breathing exercises, this last time I had an MRI, all I did was start doing my breathing and I was as calm as a cucumber.

And when the lady said, "Okay, that's it."

And I went, "Really?"

I said, "Well, that was fast."

She said, "Not really."

(chuckles) But that's what I got from it.

I was so relaxed and comfortable, and that's all from breathing.

CAPPY: We were never designed to be living in stress.

If you watch an animal, an animal maybe run away fast until it's safe, and then it will calm down, and that's what we're missing.

We're missing the calm down part, because in the state of calm, there's all kinds of chemicals that are released in the body that we need for health and healing.

Go ahead and stretch out your feet, pull your toes forward, stretch through your heels, push your heels away, and what does that do to the legs?

It strengthens these muscles.

(voiceover): Healing can't take place unless you're relaxed.

And so we want to invite a sense of calm and ease into our bodies, into our mind.

And then when the muscles' stretched, go ahead and release them.

The importance of learning to calm ourselves down, both mentally and physically, is essential to leading a happy life.

For some reason, I just knew that early on, and so at a very young age, I started both meditation and yoga the same year, when I was 21.

And then when you're tired, just stop.

But notice the effects.

DILLON (voiceover): The breathing is wonderful, and just the stretches, yes, definitely your body needs them, even if it's just sitting at your desk and just doing some stretches to keep yourself together, and just to get up and move around, just all the time, it really helps.

I definitely encourage anyone to try.

CAPPY: Frankly, I can't imagine not meditating, not being able to access that beautiful place inside that is complete calm, that is serenity.

It's not that the mind has to find that.

It's the mind has to get out of the way momentarily for you to contact this center inside, that is a source of absolute peace, absolute quiet, absolute serenity.

I'm in the last quarter of my life, and so it's really important for me to share my wisdom and knowledge that I've accumulated over time.

And I want to tell you that it is possible to feel better.

It is possible to get out of pain.

It is possible to kind of restructure yourself.

The bad news is it's not one and done.

You can't just do it once.

In fact, you will see changes pretty quickly, but it may take a few days or a week of doing these stretches.

And what happens then?

Well, as long as we keep sitting, we got to keep doing the work.

But I'm hoping to simplify things so much that you can take five minutes standing.

You can take five minutes seated.

You can take five minutes in bed and do those stretches to make a difference in how you feel and how you go about the world.

So thank you so much for joining me.

With folded palms, I salute you.

Namaste.

PARTICIPANTS: Namaste.

CAPPY: Namaste.