A few simple, enjoyable exercises you can do from your office chair to help awaken and relax your body.

• Sit and move out of a feeling of expansiveness.  Breathe deeply, and visualize that every part of your body is lengthening, expanding, and loosening.  Tell your head to go up to the ceiling and your shoulders to the walls.

• As you breathe, visualize that every area is separating and expanding still further – your rib cage and sides are moving outward.

• Rotate your head, in both directions, as you work.

• Throughout the day, picture that every movement you make is performed by the most peripheral areas involved – fingertips, toes, etc.  As you walk, visualize that your feet are lifting your legs, leading the motion.  As you keyboard or write, visualize that your fingertips are doing all the work and the rest of your hands, wrists, etc., are just coming along for the ride

• Slip out of your shoes, and roll a tennis ball under a foot while you work

• Rotate one shoulder as you work.  Wiggle it; try to sense how it “wants” to move, and do that.  Then do the same for the other shoulder.

• Make circles with your head in both directions.

• Make horizontal circles with your navel while seated at your workstation.  Then make circles up and down with it.

• Open and close your jaw (without chewing gum) as smoothly and effortlessly as possible.

• As you work at the computer, don’t let the periphery disappear.  Every ten minutes or so, as you happen to think of it, wave your hands to the sides of your face and pay attention to the fact that, beyond your computer screen, the rest of the room exists.  This will reduce the strain in your eyes.

• Move your eyes in big circles.  If your eyes resist some parts of the circle, go back to those points.

• Put one hand between your eyes and walk around for a moment enjoying your peripheral vision, noticing the two different worlds each eye sees.

• If you can look out a window while sitting at your workstation, look away from your work long enough to appreciate one small, interesting detail in the distance.

• Hang mobiles beside and above your workstation, to stimulate peripheral vision.

• Breathe deeply and slowly, in and out through the nose.  Feel as though first the stomach and then the chest fill with air.  Take longer to exhale and to inhale.  Enjoy your breathing.

• Blink softly and frequently while you work.

• Visualize, as you type that the keyboard is like a trampoline, and is bouncing your fingers back up, so they are typing effortlessly.

• Visualize that your head goes all the way up to the ceiling and your neck is stretching.