Is texting giving you a bad neck? This five-minute yoga session helps

Here is an easy way to determine if your posture is getting deformed due to overuse of the mobile. Stand sideways in front of a mirror and check if your ears are in line with your shoulders. In the text neck syndrome, your ears will be a little forward and not in line with your shoulders.

Here are some simple yoga practices to keep you safe from harm’s way. These are practices which are meant to be done on and off throughout the day and not just once in the morning as part of your yoga or exercise routine. These are simple five-minute practices which must be done after every hour of device use to counter its negative effects. All of them can be done while sitting on the chair in the middle of your work.

1. Mushtika Bandha asana (Fingers clenching/relaxing): Sit relaxed with your head and spine aligned. Raise your arms to the shoulder level, inhale and stretch your fingers wide. Exhale and make a fist, curl your thumb inside and relax. Alternate flexing and relaxing the fingers helps release the stress resulting from using the mobile for keyboard. This is one round. Do five to 10 rounds.

2. Mushtika Naman asana (Wrist bending): While sitting straight and relaxed on the chair, raise your arms at shoulder level with palms facing outward and fingers pointing upwards. Inhale and push the palms against an imaginary wall. Exhale and drop your palms from the wrist so that the fingers and palms are relaxed and facing downward. This is one round. Do five to ten rounds.

3. Mani Bandha chakrasana (Wrist joint rotation): In the base sitting position, stretch your arms out, punch a fist with your thumb inside. Then rotate your fist clockwise and anti-clockwise for five rounds each. This helps release tension in the wrist joint.

4. Kehuni naman asana (elbow bending): Sitting in the base position, stretch your arms out at shoulder level with palms facing upward. Inhale and bend at the elbow, placing the fingertips on the shoulders. Exhale and straighten them to starting position. This is one round. Do five to 10 rounds. This is good for the elbow joint.

5. Kehuni chakrasana (elbow rotation): Stretch the arms out with palms facing upward. Fold the arms at the elbow, cup the right elbow in the left hand and rotate it five rounds clockwise and five rounds anti-clockwise. Repeat with the left elbow joint.

6. Skanda chakrasana ( shoulder joint rotation): In the base position, stretch your arms out along the shoulder. Place the fingertips on the shoulders, then rotate the shoulder joint clockwise and anti-clockwise for five rounds each.

7. Greeva sanchalana (Neck movements): In the base position, twist the neck area by looking to the extreme right, then left, for five rounds. Then bend your head to the right, then to the left. Repeat five times. Finally, rotate your neck without bending your head forward. So basically you do a semi-circle rotation of the neck in a clockwise and anticlockwise direction for five rounds.

8. Sitting Tadasana: Sit in a relaxed pose. Interlock fingers and rest the hands on your lap. Inhale and turn the palms outward, raise your arms over your head as much as possible, simultaneously bending the head backward so that you can look at the back of your fully stretched arms. Then with exhalation, slowly bring your hands down to the starting position. This is one round. Do five rounds. One can also do this asana in a standing position.

9. Deep breathing: Close your eyes, and practise deep breathing in and out with full awareness of your breathing pattern.

Do these practices to counter the side effects of using devices, which are here to stay as part of our workday life and entertainment.

(Kamini Bobde is a Kundalini practitioner who follows the Swami Satyananda Saraswati tradition of yoga. She is the author of Kundalini Yoga for All: Unlock the Power of Your Body and Brain. Published by Penguin)