Mindful and Fluid

Hi Yogis, welcome back. Today's practice is going to be focused on another five minute or so sit. So you'll need your props for sitting and that's all for this practice today. And we'll start off with a little consideration of what might support you in your day today or maybe even in your life. So again, sit comfortably, choose a position for your hands and play with that.

So your hands up, sometimes it's rumored that that feels a little bit more receptive. Your hands down, sometimes if you want to call in a little bit more grounding that's supportive. And it's also really nice to have your hands in your lap. Drop your chin a couple of degrees and I like to close my eyes but you can look at a point on the floor in front of you. And take a few deep breaths.

And after a couple of deep breaths, gathering your attention here, grounding into your body. Notice how you feel. That's all we have time for is a couple of deep breaths. Just for a moment, consider what might support you. Maybe in your practice today or in the wider scope of your day or your life.

Notice what bubbles up. And sometimes it's nothing, just holding space for yourself. With that, take a big beautiful breath in and exhale your chin down towards your chest. And then let your right ear come over your right shoulder. And this time you might take your right hand up and just rest it really gently, just the weight of your arm on your temple and take a few breaths into the left side of your neck.

That might be too intense so you can always leave your hand down. Let that hand flow down. If it's there, roll the chin down and over to the other side. And bring your left arm up. Breathing into that right side of the neck, easing up some of that neck tension.

Let your chin drop down towards your chest, rounding forwards, slumping a little bit in the shoulders, and then let your spine come back up to neutral and your head float up. Take your right hand in front of you, flip the fingers down, and pull back through the fingers, reaching out through your thumb, and switch. We'll be doing a little bit of playing on the hands today. And then take your right thumb with your left hand and pull back as you reach your fingers down towards the floor, straightening your arms, deep breath in, full breath out. And switch, just getting right into that webbing in between your index finger and your thumb.

We're gonna let that go, shake your hands out, move your meditation prop over to the side for now, and shift your way into your downward dog, pedaling out your feet. And inhale, shift forwards, exhale, come down onto your knees, walk your hands a little in front of your shoulders, and on your inhalation, arc your spine, look up, sit bones up, and exhale and round your spine, curling your tailbone and your head towards each other. Inhale, arch your spine, look up, shoulders back, and exhale and round. Let's come to a neutral spine here, and on our inhalation, left leg back, tuck the toes, right arm forwards, and you have the choice to float your left leg up, trying to use your glute instead of your lower back, nice deep breath in there. And then we're gonna take our right hand, one hand, distance in front of our left hand, turn onto the outer edge of our left foot, left hip rolls on top of the right, and reach your left arm up, and breathe.

You can look up, forwards or down, depending on your neck, and for more stability, you can tuck your right toes back behind you. If you like, you can even float your top leg, and maybe even bend it and grab ahold of the ankle, getting a little bit of a back bend here. That feels good. Unwind, and exhale right away, both hands come more symmetrical, and go right into your curl. Inhale into your arch, and exhale into your curl.

Neutral spine, left leg, or right leg, sorry, toes tucked back, left arm forwards, or float using the glute, nice long lower back, deep breath in, left hand, one hand, distance in front of your right, turn your hip open, maybe swing your shin back, tuck your toes, outer edge of your right foot touches the floor, maybe float your leg, and maybe bend back and kick your foot into your hand, arching in your upper back. Keep your tailbone sinking towards the back of your knee. Nice big breath circles you all the way back around. Exhale right into your curl. Inhale into your arch.

Exhale neutral spine, again, right arm forward, left leg back, and maybe bend your left leg, come a little bit into a back bend, or even reach back, hold the outside of your foot, and kick it into your hand, and then sweep it back, exhale right into your curl, inhale into your arch, neutral spine, inhale open it up, try for a little back bend, maybe open it up, take the outer edge of the foot, kick, it's a little asymmetrical but it feels lovely, and then right into your exhale, and inhale, tuck your toes and reach it back into your downward dog, feet together at the back of the mat, inhale your right leg up, bend the knee, open the hip on top of the bottom hip, maybe even straighten out your right leg, and then shifting that knee in towards your nose, shoulders over your wrists, take that foot forwards towards a lunge, and you can walk your fingers back. Three deep breaths strengthening your back leg, lifting your back thigh, and deepening your breath, and then climb up out of your lunge by using your hands on your knees, or come right up, couple deep breaths here, so first option is to sink your tailbone, bring your ribs in, elongate it as much as you can, second option is to arc a little bit up and back in your upper chest, and then exhale, fingertips back down to the floor, left hand comes a little bit out and on a diagonal, right hand you can climb up onto your knee, or you can take your arm right up, shoulders up back and down to clear your neck, and then open it up into a twist, maybe even your right hand comes a little bit back behind you, strengthen your back leg and open your chest, windmill it all the way back to downward facing dog, feet together at the back of the mat, other side, inhale your left leg up, open the hip, revolve your spine, maybe even straighten out that leg, and exhale, bring it through, come up onto your fingertips, adjust your feet, three deep breaths, long back leg, strengthening your back thigh, and grounding your feet. Come up out of your lunge or sweep right up, first stage without a back bend, tailbone down ribs in, second stage a little bit of a back bend, see if you can really unlock those upper three ribs, two, three, exhale, come all the way back down to fingertips, right hand out on a diagonal, left hand climbs up, turn, release your shoulders back and open it up, maybe even spin in your upper back so your top arm opens and your front pectoral gets a little bit of an opening, one more breath, and sweep it all the way back into your dog pose, feet together at the back of the mat, inhale your right leg up, exhale, bring it through, come up onto your fingertips, this time stay low, drop your back knee to the floor, so it's your choice to keep your toes tucked under or take the top of the foot on the floor, check in with your knee, left hand out to the side a little on a diagonal, climb up onto your right knee, roll your shoulders back, open it up, some people here might turn your right toes and right knee out to the side, it might allow you to get a little bit more sinky in your hips, bend your back knee and take a hold of the foot, kick the foot into the hand like we did in the preliminary poses, beautiful breath in, exhale hands back to the floor, so left hand, one hand distance forwards of your shoulder, pick it up and start to take your right foot back halfway between your hand and your foot, turn onto the outer edge of your left foot and see if you can reach up into a side plank here, might even feel good to come up onto your toe pads, give you more space in your hip and maybe even some people can start to lift that right leg and stack it, deep breath in, hips lift and exhale back into your downward dog, feet together at the back of the mat, inhale your left leg up, exhale bring it through, so this time we're going to drop down onto your right knee, top of the foot or tuck the toe, right hand a little out to the side, climb up out of it, start to turn, turn, turn, you can open up that arm if you like, roll your shoulders back and maybe if you're on the top of the kneecap and you want to turn your left foot out you can take a hold of the foot, kick it back, curl in your upper back and see if you can curl your palate up and back if you're there and unwind. So here we're going to take our right hand, one hand distance forward, really press into our finger pads and take our left foot back, turn it out on an angle, turn out on the outer edge of your right foot and you always can stay on your fingertips or maybe open it up, plank pose, side plank, lift the hips, maybe there's a little lift or even coming up onto the toes and exhale make your way back into downward dog and from downward dog shift forwards, knees wide and sit back on your hips with a little bit of wrist release. So flip your right fingers towards you and start to lean the heel of your hand towards the floor and switch sides.

If you want a little more out of this you can bend your left elbow a little bit as you lean the heel of the hand towards the floor and if you want less sensation move the wrist towards you more, if you want more move it away from you more, let that go. We're going to turn our right hand palm back of the palm down, less sensation closer just to show you more sensation further away and you might try both at the same time. You can bend your elbows out to the sides and then slowly squeeze your inner elbows towards each other. You can also come up off your heels if this is really intense, for many it is. Tuck in your chin, inhale come on up, release your wrists and we'll come up onto our knees.

So from here if you have tender knees you can put your blanket underneath, hands at the hips, tuck toes and hips a little forwards up and back through your chest. Three more deep breaths, one, if you have neck stuff tuck your chin and look forwards, two and press your buttocks muscles down into your hamstrings. Simply push into your hips with your hands to help you lever your spine up and then exhale sit back on the tops of your feet. Just for a moment close your eyes, inhale into the body and exhale sink in. We'll do that one more time so shifting forwards, knees are a little wider than hip distance apart you can tuck your toes under, hands on your hips pushing down through your buttocks muscles, hips a little bit forwards then shoot up, arc back, you can always keep your chin tucked and for some of us we can lean back enough that we can take a hold of one of the feet and then maybe the other or the ankles.

Hips forwards, shoulder blades together and up and maybe even let the head go back, ustrasana. Three breaths, one, two and three. To come out sink your hips back, put one hand on your waist, push the other hand on your waist, head is the last thing to come up and exhale lean forwards and sit back on the tops of your feet. Close your eyes, deep breath in, exhale everything out. We're gonna walk our hands a little bit back behind us here so if your wrists are feeling a little bit tweaky you can turn your fingers back behind you if not turn them in towards you and start to lift your knees a little bit off the floor so the tops of your ankles are getting a bit of a stretch.

And some people you can even come more forwards and really get into the tops of the ankles by coming more up onto the toe pads. One more breath and then exhale shift all the way forwards downward dog so you can roll out your ankles a little bit and lean back, rooting your heels. Two more seated poses before our sit so you can just for a moment come into your child's pose, maybe elbow support your head all the way down. We're gonna roll up here and I'm gonna shift to the side just to show you a little bit better with our right leg out and the left leg in in external rotation and you might even want to have something underneath your hips now so I'm gonna do that for myself so that the belly is relaxed and the pelvis is tipped forwards. Some people start by hands behind opening the chest we're gonna have a really nice wide angle through the knees and then if it feels right start to shift forwards into this half dragonfly shape and so it's personal how far you come hopefully you're feeling a nice long stretch in the inner thigh a little bit in that left hip.

And we'll take three long slow deep breaths here shoulders away from the ears two and three bring ourselves all the way up and go right into switching sides so right leg comes in left leg shoots out get as nice and wide through the knees as you can potentially sit upright with your hands behind to bring the lower back in and if it feels right sink forwards tip your pelvis forwards and come into a forward fold. Left toes up femur bone sink jaw relaxes come back to the heaviness of your pelvis here two and three and slowly bringing yourself up we're gonna lean back free both legs out nice and wide hands behind and start to bring that lower back in as much as you can rotating the pelvis forwards over the femur bones and some people really like to have some something under their knees here so that's always an option to set yourself up or even just drag your heels towards you it'll give you a little bit more access to tipping your pelvis forwards and of course come as low forwards as you like no striving here just getting a nice full sensation of stretch through the backs of the legs and if you want a little more you can always start to reach out through your heels and pull your toes back you can come out to your forearms or even on right onto your forehead if you like and imagine someone's pressing into the tops of your thighs and grounding your thighs down to feed your spine more forwards and feel that really nice bloom of softness in the palate the jaw and the skull from the strength of your legs into the softness of your spine one more nice deep breath and we're going to slowly bring ourselves up from there so it might be useful for you we've been there for a little bit to kind of help your legs in give them a little shake and we're going to set up for a seated pose so prop yourself up on your bolster or your two blankets or your one blanket or maybe nothing at all and settle in again choose the position for your hands you can play with that roll your shoulders a little bit open and feel the weight of your belly drop into the pelvic bowl tuck your reach in a couple of degrees and see if you can get a dome like lifting in the mouth top of the palate the vault of the skull a couple grounding breaths here inhale gather your attention notice how it feels to be embodied and exhale feel what's touching the floor get grounded spacious and relaxed if you've been sounding the breath with an ujjayi pranayama or a little bit of that sound for the breath just start to relax the center of the throat so that the breath is still deep but a little bit softer than in the asana practice or in the posture practice and go for no restrictions around the breath the shoulders the neck and the face remember to be as comfortable as possible so if you need to quietly shift just practice doing it a little bit slower so that it's not jarring for your nervous system adjusting into comfort and ease and then come back to considering what might support you what has been uncovered if anything how can you support yourself and you might fall back on tried and trusted techniques that you've used in the past and you might open to something fresh coming in a new way of thinking and sometimes doing nothing at all is doing everything so maybe spaciousness is all that's needed simplicity relaxation for the last minute or so here see if you can come into contact with the spaciousness that you have inside the spaciousness around you the spaciousness of having some time to drop in and let some deep breaths come into the back of the body the back of the lungs the back of the heart let your eyes start to open and just gently receive the light and if you like let your hands come together at your heart so nice to practice with you today namaste