The 10-minute routine that
undoes a full day at a desk

Eight hours of sitting does something to a body that eight hours of sleep does not undo. The hip flexors shorten. The thoracic spine rounds. The deep cervical flexors weaken as your head juts toward your screen. The glutes forget how to fire. Ten deliberate minutes at the end of a sitting day can meaningfully counteract the accumulated damage.

The six positions

All you need is floor space and a wall. Move slowly — this is tissue restoration, not performance.

1. Child's Pose with side reach — 90 seconds per side

From child's pose, walk both hands to the right and breathe into the left ribcage. You're creating space in the thoracic spine and lengthening the lats — areas compressed by sustained keyboard posture.

2. Low lunge with posterior tilt — 90 seconds per side

Step your right foot forward. Before sinking: posteriorly tilt your pelvis — tuck your tailbone slightly. Without this, most people compress the lumbar rather than stretching the hip flexor. Then sink forward and feel the psoas lengthen.

3. Thread-the-needle — 60 seconds per side

From hands and knees, slide your right arm under your left along the floor. Right shoulder and cheek come to the mat. This creates a rotational stretch through the thoracic spine and posterior shoulder.

4. Doorway chest opener — 60 seconds

Stand in a doorway with elbows at 90 degrees, forearms on the frame. Step one foot forward until you feel a stretch across the chest and front of the shoulders — directly counteracting forward rounding from hours at a keyboard.

5. Supine figure-four — 90 seconds per side

Lie on your back, knees bent. Cross your right ankle over your left thigh, flex the right foot, and pull your left thigh toward your chest. Stretches the piriformis and external hip rotators.

6. Legs up the wall — 2 minutes

Hips close to a wall, legs straight up, arms open at your sides. This reverses gravitational pooling in the lower legs, decompresses the lumbar spine, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Do not skip this one.

"The body keeps a tally of every hour spent hunched over a screen. Give it ten minutes to settle the debt."