Day 27: Daily Omer Wellness Series

Omer Day 27
12 Iyar 5780
Wednesday 6 May 2020

For today’s practice focused on foundation and connection within endurance, we bring our attention to our hands and especially our wrists. Any movement work involving the hands requires mobility and strength in the wrists, and especially movement work for hand balancing, by which we mean yes handstands and the like but also pushups, planks, and other low / ground-position movements that require placing weight into one or both of our hands.

Especially as many of us are spending more time than ever using keyboards and mouses or trackpads, holding smartphones, etc it’s also helpful to focus some of our wellness work to the wrists to alleviate potential issues stemming from frequent (over)use of the same limited movement patterns. 

Try this one out and let us know how it goes! 

☀️Omer Day 27 practice [12 Iyar 5780 | Wednesday 6 May 2020]☀️

1. Go to the floor in a table-top position — hands and knees on the ground, arms straight.
2. With your hands pressed to the floor, palms down, fingers forward (e.g. like a pushup position) make five circles with your arms and torso to the right (clockwise) and five to the left (counterclockwise).
3. Rotate your hands so that palms are down but fingers are pointed back towards your knees, arms stay straight. Circle five times each direction.
4. Flip your hands so that palms are up, fingers pointing back towards knees. Five circles each direction.
5. Rotate and spread your hands with palms down, fingers pointing inwards towards each other. Make five circles each direction.
6. Repeat wrist circles if time, up to 4 minutes total.
7. Wrist Pushups: in a tabletop position, begin palms flat to the floor. Keep fingers pressed to the ground and push through your wrists to push your body (arms, shoulders, chest) up. You will only move up a few inches at most. In the extended position (at the top) your palms should be 1-3 inches off the ground, fingers flat to the ground. Modify the difficulty level as appropriate — more weight into the hands = more challenging; more weight off the hands (ie in the knees) = less challenging. Complete three sets with 20-30 seconds rest between each set. Set 1 = 10 wrist pushups; set 2 = 8; set 3 = 6. (3-4 minutes) 

🌀Materials🌀

• Open floor space
• Timer

✨Practice Notes ✨

• Generally the more limited your wrist mobility the closer you’ll want your hands to your knees; Also modify by adjusting how much weight is allocated to your hands vs the rest of the body (more weight into the hands will make it more challenging / increase the load and stretch to the joints);
• If you have sensitive wrists, begin very gently with small circles and only a small amount of weight directed to the hands;
• For the wrist pushups, try to put enough weight into the hands that it is challenging but possible to push your body up. If you have the right amount of weight, ten will be challenging but possible. Too much weight and you won’t be able to do as many (or any). Too little and ten won’t feel like anything. You get to determine here what the right stimulus is for you!

☀️ This post is part of our Omer Wellness Series – a daily 7-minute opportunity for introspection and intentional focus on caring for ourselves, each other, and our environment in this incredibly challenging time. ☀️

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