71.2: MS | Stretch for Sciatic Pain

Here is a stretch if you are dealing with Sciatic Pain.  

You can also watch the video here:  https://youtu.be/RbMZOVUMD_g

Transcript

Unknown: 0:05

It is always my goal to help you and your family move more. So every Thursday, I am dropping a movement snack into your ears to help you and your family move more. Our movement snack for today is going to be one, that is a stretch that you can do if you tend to sit a lot during the day. Or if you notice you're in your car a lot throughout the day, then this stretch is for you. Also, for those of you who might deal with sciatic or low back pain, this stretch is going to be where I would always begin. And it is the figure for stretch. So when you are sitting down in a chair, you're going to bring one foot up on to your knee like you're getting ready to cross your leg. But you're going to then drop your knee down to the side so that your ankle is right above your knee on the opposite knee. And you are just going to kind of sit there. Now usually, people will get into this position and hold that and you'll feel the stretch. The problem with this position is you're not sitting up straight. And you might not be able to get into the full position. So there's two things that I need you to work on. The first one is getting your pelvis to sit upright. So most of us are many of us, when we're in this position, we tend to tuck our tailbone under with that rounded low back. So what you need to do is you want to think about pressing down through your sits bones, those two bony protuberances on the bottom of like on your bottom where your chair is, you're going to try to press those into the chair, and that is going to pull your pelvis back more into a neutral state. The next thing I want you to think about doing is thinking about pulling then you'll always hear me say this, this is always one of those key things that you need to work on practicing. Pretend someone is pulling a string from the back. So that string is attached to your spine, all the way up through the back of your head to the crown of your head, you're pretending someone is pulling that string to lengthen you up and you've now grown like an inch, then you're going to think about bringing your chest down towards your shin. I don't want you to round up. Okay, we're not rounding so the nose is not going to go to the shin, we're going to think about the chest going to the shin. And you're going to hold here. Now, for some of you, your knee is going to be like way up near your chest, you're not going to bring it be able to bring it down. So if you were to look at it, you should have a fit for it's figure four. So think of your leg like a four. Although that one leg is not straight, you can make it straight, but it doesn't have to be you can be sitting in a chair 9090. But you may notice that one knee, you can't drop it down. So here's the thing with that many of us tend to after having children, we kind of sit into our hips. So it's the lazy mom posture that you've probably heard me talk about before. And it's just kind of you might be standing tall, but you still may have this sinking into your hips. And what that tends to do is it shoves the femur forward into the socket, so that thigh bone should sit naturally. In the hip socket, it should be right there in the middle. Yet many people who tend to either clench their bottom and have this tuck tailbone, or those who kind of sink into their hips tend to shove their femur shove their thigh bone, their thigh bone is now instead of resting in the middle of the hip socket, it's pushing forward on the hip socket. So what happens is when you go into this stretch, you've got nowhere for that hit that side bone to go. It's already shoved forward in the socket. It's got nowhere to go. Okay, so and I'll get a lot of people who say I I've always been this way this is just the way I am. It is something that you are doing alignment wise. It is your posture or there's very few people where their thigh bone is naturally there, you know, your bones move based on the way your muscles tug on them. So, if your bone is sitting forward in the socket, unless you have like this, some people will have where their thigh bones very large, so it kind of knocks into. But for most of us, this isn't the, this isn't the reason it has to do with the muscles. So that is I've got myself completely off track, I do apologize, this happens a lot. So what we're going to do is we've got to start working on trying to pull that out of the socket. And there are exercises you can do to help with this, but you have to, you have to work on it. And you have to work on your posture. So in this figure four position, let's get to the point, we're going to take our hand, we're going to place it where the sits bone is, you're going to think about pulling you want to pull it you are grabbing your behind and you are pulling your behind back that butt cheek that sits bone, you are pulling it back towards the back of the seat. Now that usually will give you a little extra room to where that tibia can then sit more into not tibia, the thigh bone, the femur can sit more into the middle of the hip. And you'll get a little bit more range of motion, depending on the tension and tightness and why that area is tight, whether it's a postural thing, or a lock down thing where some people lock muscles down for protective purposes. And I'm not going to get into that. But it can be psychological, it could be there could be past traumas that have occurred, where you're kind of locking down. And it has to do with the psoas and everything. But I'm not, I don't want to get into that. But for many of us, it's more just a postural thing. So if you try this and you're really struggling and you can't get to it, then I would say you might want to speak to someone a little bit further because my guess is maybe something's being locked down due to past traumas in your life. So this is one of those situations where and this is why I like to do these movements next for you is our body is so completely interconnected that to assume that your muscles are just designed for your workouts is really not looking at the whole body. And there are things that can occur in our life that really can affect how our body responds. And a lot of that has to do with the psoas, so deep hip flexor muscles, and a lot of the muscles within our deep core. So if you're noticing problems with those areas in the way of tension and tightness, then you might want to work with a massage therapist or someone who can really help you get deeper into the muscle or with someone who can like a therapist who can really help you work through some of the past pains or traumas you may be dealing with. So I kind of went off on this, but it's important to understand why our body might be responding or not responding the way we want it to. And if you're dealing with a lot of nagging issues, I always would say look beyond the issue. So to completely get off track today, we're going with that basic seated figure four stretch for those of you who definitely suffer with sciatic pain. And if you're noticing more problems, you might want to step out and take it you know further with someone else. But this is your movement snack. Make sure to remember that this month we are doing our fitten five program that is our October it's like our fall get back into shape or get you know get fit, get moving type thing. And this is going to be $5 a month you can join us and you'll have access to our membership portal where you'll get the daily five minute exercise and you can join us over in our Facebook group or we have a community within the membership portal for those of you who are not part of Facebook Then also, I'd love to have you reach out to me, you can reach out to me at info at form fit online.com. And ask me a question. If you have some sort of movement or some sort of ache or pain that you're dealing with, I'd love to be able to help answer any questions you may have. So feel free to email me at info at form fit online.com With your question, and each month I'm going to provide a Thursday segment along with my movement Snacks, where I might be able to Ansel answer some of your questions. So I hope you all have a wonderful week, and make sure to keep moving. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor if you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media? And make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy humans. Now go out and enjoy more movements throughout your day.