(pen scratching) (birds chirping) (child giggling) - Welcome to Inpact at Home, where we practice interrupting prolonged sitting with activity.

I'm Heather Lewis, and I'm here for the next eight minutes to bring mindfulness to your day.

Mindfulness means paying attention to one thing right now.

And it helps our brains and bodies become stronger, healthier, and happier.

Let's get started.

Today's mindful movement will help us learn how to relax our bodies and our minds.

Sometimes our bodies get sore and tight from different things like working out hard, or sitting in one place for too long.

And sometimes feelings like sadness, or anger, or stress can make our bodies sore too.

But we can do something for our bodies and our feelings.

Because everything is connected, helping one thing to relax will help the other to relax.

As always, we start with mindfulness to bring us to the here and now.

Listen for the chime for as long as it lasts.

Put your hand on your heart when you can't hear it anymore.

(chime dinging) Okay.

Now you have a choice to make.

I want you to be comfy.

You can sit like I'm sitting, or you can lie down.

Whatever feels best to you.

It's really great to lie down, and this is a great thing to try, when you're trying to go to sleep at night.

It can really help relax your body and mind to get ready for sleep.

Okay, I'm going to stay sitting up.

You might be laying down.

I want you to start with your head and your face.

Now you're going to scrunch everything together.

Like you're flexing a muscle, only you're doing it with your face.

So scrunch together, your eyebrows and your eyes are squeezed shut, and your lips, and your jaw, and your face is all tight and hard like a stone or like ice.

Like a block of ice.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and relax.

Relax, let it melt.

Did you feel that?

Tight, tight, tight.

And then, melt.

All right next, we're gonna do our neck and our shoulders.

And we're gonna freeze them tight again, just like we did with our face.

Ready?

Squeeze our neck and our shoulders really tight.

You should be shaking a little bit because you're squeezing so tight.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release.

Melt your neck, melt to your shoulders.

Let them melt like a puddle.

All right.

Now we're gonna move to our arms and our hands.

So we're gonna put them out straight, like really stiff spaghetti noodles that don't bend, unless you put them in hot water.

So really stiff.

And let's pretend we're squeezing lemons with our hands and we're tight, tight, tight.

Tense everything up, squeeze everything so, so tight.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release.

Let it melt down.

Let 'em float down to your legs or to the floor.

And melt.

Now, I want you to imagine, we're gonna tense up our tummy and make our tummy really tight.

And you can do that by imagining that someone is running toward you, and they're tripping and falling, and they're gonna fall right on your tummy.

So you need to brace yourself and tense up your tummy, squeeze your tummy, your abs really, really, really, really tight.

Because someone's going to fall on you and it's gonna hurt, so tense it up.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release.

Let it melt.

You were frozen, and now you melted.

Okay now, we're gonna do our legs.

So put your legs, if you're sitting, put 'em out in front of you.

If you're laying there already ready for you.

We are going to tense up our legs and squeeze them so tight.

Like they're frozen, like a frozen statue.

Everything else is relaxed, but your legs, your legs are so tight.

And then squeeze your bottom too.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release.

Melt to the floor.

Let your legs and your bottom melt into the floor.

All right, now we've made it almost all the way down our body.

What's left?

Our feet.

So we're gonna scrunch up our toes, scrunch up our feet.

Really, really tight.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, tense and tight, frozen like two ice cubes.

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and release.

Let them melt into the floor, like a puddle.

If you are laying down, I want you to feel the ground underneath you,.

Supporting you.

Your body should feel melted, like a puddle on the floor.

And while you're there, let's put one hand on our heart, and one hand on our belly.

And let's do some deep belly breathing.

Remember your hand should go up when you breathe in, and should go down when you breathe out.

Here we go.

Breath in.

(inhales deeply) And breath out.

(exhales deeply) Keep melting into the floor.

Your body's very relaxed.

Let's take another deep breath in.

(inhales deeply) Hand goes up.

Breath out.

(exhales deeply) Hand goes down.

Remember your body is melted like a puddle right into the floor.

Nice and comfy.

One more time.

Breath in.

(inhales deeply) Hand goes up.

And breath out.

(exhales deeply) Hand goes down.

Now check-in.

How does your body feel?

Does it feel calmer, more relaxed, melted?

That's a really good thing to try before sleep at night.

Great job melting boys and girls.

I hope you enjoyed today's mindfulness activity.

Inpact at Home is a chance to apply the skills you may have learned in your PE class to improve your health.

To learn more about the health benefits associated with daily movement, visit inpactathome.umich.edu.

Now don't forget to fill out your daily log.

We will see you again during our next workout.

(pen scratching) (birds chirping) (child giggling) - [Announcer] Support for this program is provided by the Michigan Public Health Institute, and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

(light music)