Searching Eagles

Searching Eagles

Laura Brooke: Hello everyone. My name is Laura Brooke. I'm with the National Center on Early Childhood Health and Wellness. And today, I'm going to share some yummy strategies with you around stretching.

Stretching helps our bodies to stay flexible and, most importantly, helps our spine to stay flexible. We need a flexible, healthy spine to help our organs, to help us move, to help us do what we do every day.

I'm going to start with one called Searching Eagles, one of my favorite.

So I'm going to ask you to take your legs and spread them a little farther than hip distance apart, and then soften those knees. We don't want locked knees. That creates a lot of strain on the knee. So soften those knees. Soften those knees.

And then just let your arms float up to about shoulder height.

And we're just going to begin by letting the arms flow side-to-side, rotating that torso.

This may be all your body wants to do right here. It can stop and say, "I've had enough twist." It might say, "Take me a little deeper."

So you're going to follow with your eyes and your head. So listen to your body. 

Can you feel that spine saying, "Thank you?"

Feel that nice spinal stretch, spinal twist.

You're also getting a benefit of massaging the internal organs.

Listen to your body.