Try these simple, practical self-massage and movement techniques to relieve overall systemic stress and perform as your best self!

Objectify Your Pain! Try these simple, practical self-massage and movement techniques to relieve overall systemic stress and perform as your best self!

Facial Massage:
There is a reason facials feel so good during and after! The touch response to your body experiences over the vital nerve and lymph junctions during a facial happens typically in a relaxing, pleasant context of a spa day. This aids in the sense of relaxation involved with a facial massage, but you can replicate this on your own daily as maintenance. By massaging these areas, we stimulate the nervous and lymph systems to generate blood flow and move lymph “swamping.” That’s a build of gunky lymph and old tissue waste. Just make sure to use nasal, diaphragmatic breathing through the drills and hydrate well daily to flush it all out!

Tech Neck Stretches:
Most people, especially during quarantine, are spending way too much time on their phones and computers. Far too few people realize how tight the muscles that attach their chin to their collarbone are. Simply massaging the collarbone’s bony lining and stretching these jaw/tongue and throat muscles can have a major impact on the tightness usually felt in the back of the neck! The back you ask? That’s because those cervical extensor muscles and occiputs spend all day trying to hold that heavy melon up in a less than advantageous forward leaned position. Imagine how tired and tight you’d get trying to hold someone all day who was teetering at a 45-degree angle off the edge of a cliff! The more forward your head and down your chin is, the heavier your head becomes. That’s just physics. These stretches will help your 10-11 lb noggin directly on top of all of your strongest foundational structures!

Diaphragmatic Breathing and The Royal Coil with The Breath Belt:
 Use nasal (breathing long and deep in through your nose) breathing as often as you can remember daily. Make it a habit. It brings much more oxygen into your system because your nasal passages are specially designed mucous membranes which turn air into nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is found it a lot of pre-workouts and beets! Why does that matter?! It opens up your veins and blood vessels to allow even more oxygen into your system. This gives you a great pump! But more importantly, your muscles, heart, and brain function much better with better blood flow. You also clear lymph, lactic acid, and other bodily waste products because of this too.

Wearing an elastic belt like the Breath Belt not only generates direct resistance to your diaphragm but also provides a mobile touch response to remind your muscles to fire properly and massages those muscles to help them stay long and functional!

What’s this royal coil nonsense all about? David Weck developed this. As the inventor of the BOSU Ball, David Weck also developed the Weck Method rotational movement training system (RMT). The big takeaway from this system is teaching your body to better utilize its rotational capabilities by engaging the Spinal Engine through the Lats, obliques, glutes, and other supporting spinal muscles. This technique fires up all of these muscles while reducing the tension between the lowest rib and hip, decompresses the spine as a whole, and feels downright good!

Do you need help bringing your body out of a state of stress or out of fight or flight mode? Then, check out Just Breathe, and try these simple breathing tools and exercises to get into a more relaxed state.

MEET THE COACH
Dan Palacios
Strength, Conditioning and Personal Performance coach and founder of Live Kinetically

Dan has 10 years of experience working with all manner of clients from elite athletes to young children and adults with special needs. With over 15,000 hours of time spent with real people who have faced unimaginable odds, Dan has come to understand human condition and it’s undeniable relation to biology as well as bio-mechanics. Dan’s goal is to guide and inspire people to redefine the meaning of health. To make humanity stronger and more resilient, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually is his primary mission.

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