Wellness Event Takeaways

This month Team 2 Claps 1 Snap had the privilege of hosting a Wellness Event for Microsoft’s Research Interns. At this event we talked about how our posture can create aches and pains in our bodies and other side effects like headaches and insomnia. Along with this information, we demonstrated exercises and stretches you can do to strengthen your body, improve your posture, and reduce pain in those problem areas, preventing injury and providing long lasting benefits. Next month we have been invited to do our FUNdance with the interns, showing them TikTok-like dances!

During the posture event, we covered three key topics: eyes on the horizon, neutral pelvis, and grounded feet. In keeping your eyes on the horizon, it’s important to have a relaxed neck and shoulders. An easy way to keep your eyes straight is to check and adjust the heights of both your monitor and desk. Neutral pelvis is a little tougher. Although you may believe that leaning forward and pushing your chest forward can combat a slumped-over posture, this positioning can result in an equally bad anterior pelvic tilt. It’s important to keep your pelvis directly under you, not tilting forward or backwards nor off to one side with your legs crossed. The last and most simple topic is having your feet grounded. To do this, you can adjust your chair height and even grab a stool to make sure your feet maintain contact with the floor, helping with overall posture as well as weight distribution.

Additionally, we went over six different exercises to help improve your posture. At this event, Coach Miss Victoria focused on basic exercises to stretch and strengthen the front and back of the body. The exercises for the front of the body focused on stretching—opening up and stretching your chest and hip flexors. These areas become extremely tight after sitting at your computer for hours day after day and need to be stretched gently at first. Next, we focused on strengthening the backside of the body with some upper back and glute exercises. Even simple holds and pulses can make a difference in engaging those muscles.

Thinking about breathing might seem simple or unnecessary, but there’s more to it than you may think. A hunched-over posture crushes the ribs down, leaving little room for our diaphragm to expand and forcing the tiny muscles in our shoulders and neck to work, making them even more tense.

Steady oxygen is always important, and helps our brains stay refreshed and working for the long days. You could be spending eight hours a day using the wrong muscles to simply breathe, so just implementing this tiny change makes a huge difference. The last three exercises stretched our hips, lower back, and hands and wrists. All of these simple stretching and strengthening exercises can be done at home or even at your desk and require nothing more than a chair.

Taking care of ourselves is essential and can be made more difficult during unusual times. The techniques we covered to improve posture and body positioning will help you long-term and can be practiced no matter your age or physical limitations. The 2 Claps 1 Snap team was delighted to be able to share this knowledge with the next generation of tech workers, helping them to start strong with even stronger bodies.