Spinal Health

Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for being here to practice today. I'm excited to share a spinal focus practice with you today, and, I think we'll all benefit from having a blanket in two blocks for our class. So when you're ready, please grab a blanket. I've got mine folded, and I'm gonna sit back onto a blanket and wiggle into a comfortable seat.

When you are sitting in a good spot, let's take your fingertips out to the side for a moment to start to lengthen up through the side of your body and then up through the crown of your head. So let's try to keep this postural awareness, which is already part of spinal health. Grounding breath or two here. And they'll start to drop the chin down a little bit towards what I might call the 06:00 position if we're on a clock. And then if you imagine your chin and nose are kinda moving along the clock, and you might head to your left going up toward 12:00 over to your right, Just kind of exploring your chin, your nose, kind of moving along the face of a clock.

See what kind of feedback you're getting today in the upper cervical neck spine. K. You don't need to go fast or trying to just be a little bit mindful of what feedback we're getting. Next time that you come to that 06:00 position, let's go ahead and pause. It raise your head back up, looking out to your horizon line. Now let's bring your fingertips to the tops of your shoulders, and we're gonna lift our elbows up and then bring him forward as you kinda round your back.

And then we're gonna bring those elbows up and back as you open the front of the chest. Elbows come forward as you round a little bit, getting into that upper mid back, and then opening front spine. You feel what pace works best for you. We might go slower or faster. I'm feeling your shoulder blades moving over those upper back ribs.

Try to really orient from your spine. Hey, one more, a little rounding, kinda like we do in cat pose and a little bit like our cow pose where we open up the fronts. K. Now neutral spine, open your arms wide. Let's cross one over the other, grab your outer shoulder blade area and a little rotation through your spine. You know, she'll trying to keep good postural awareness as if you had a block on top of your head, as you move the joints of your spine a little bit right and left.

Nice thing to do every day. Give yourself that hug. Alright. Now let's remember what arm is on top. And when you open your arms wide, put your other arm on top. And same idea. Hold the shoulder blade and a little bit rocking side to side.

K. It doesn't have to be a big move. Just a little bit to keep those joints moving. Alright. Now let's keep the arms out to the side and bring your fingertips down to the floor. Let's walk the right hand out and bring the left arm up into the air and open up through the side body for some lateral movement, and then bend your left arm to 90 degrees as you look towards your right fingertips. Look straight ahead as we take that left arm overhead.

Again, bring that left elbow back a little bit behind your center line as you look to your right hand. Again, left arm up, look forward. Left elbow back, look towards your right hands. A little movement through the neck. Let's tip back up to center, and left hand walks out as the right arm comes up overhead. You will bring that right arm to 90 degrees, look towards your left hand, and look straight ahead as you reach your right arm overhead.

Pull a right double back look to your left hand. And straight ahead as we stretch to that right side body. And elbow back, look down towards your left hand. Let's tip ourselves back up to center. Alright. Now we might move your blanket out of the way.

And as we slide our blanket out of the way, let's slide your feet over to your left side. Okay. So you've got your knees pointing to the right. If you can tuck your left foot under your pelvis, tuck your foot in that way under the pelvis, If your knee is tight, you might go for a straight left leg just so you have some options. K. Let's start with your right hand off to the side, and your left forearm parallel to the ground. We're gonna follow your left hand over to the right and kinda feel how your spine is moving here.

Then pull your left elbow back and open up the chest. We're gonna try a couple more times just reaching parallel to the floor with your left arm, see if you can follow your arm movement with your eyes. So you're turning through the upper neck spine. Nice focal point. Now the next couple, we might start to reach higher up towards the ceiling with your left arm.

So you reach up higher and get into maybe some different places in your spine. We'll still look back over left shoulder and reach up higher with your left arm. Pull back last time. Let's reach up with your left arm. And then take a moment, put your left hand on the floor and then right hand walks a little more forward just take a moment to turn a little bit your chest towards your hands towards the short end of your mat.

K. Walk your hands back in. And as we come up to center, bring this left foot forward, we're gonna take a pause. Let's grab a hold of your foot with both hands and lift your left heel and press your foot into your hands. K. Now we're gonna hold on with your left hand and take your left arm out to your side and maybe follow your thumb as much as you can back the space behind you, little lift of the chest, and see if you might feel a little bit more rotation through the waist area here. Alright. Bring that left hand back around to your foot, heel down, and we're gonna slide your legs to your other sides.

So let's see how your right knee responds. Maybe you tuck your foot under your pelvis. Maybe you stretch your right leg straight. Alright. Left hand to your side, right arm parallel to the floor. Just follow your hand straight over to the left.

And pull right elbow back, open the chest. K. We're following the hand or your right elbow. So you get more movement through the next spine. One more time in that way, reaching parallel to the floor. And now see if we might start reaching up a little bit higher with your right hand.

And then pull back with your right elbow, reach up a little bit higher with your right hand and back. And one more time, going up, and then pull it back. Why you take that hand down and let's swing your right foot forward, and we'll take that pause. Grab your foot with both hands and then lift your heel up. K. So we're sitting a little bit taller here, open chest, follow your right thumb out to the side or a little bit behind you, and then see if you can lift your chest and feel a little bit more movement through your waist area, then you should take another breath here. Right. When we bring your right hand back around, lower your heel, and let's slide your feet to any side, and we're gonna swivel around and come to a tabletop position.

So this is another great time for a blanket maybe about the center of the mat. So you'll have a little bit of padding here. Okay. When you come to tabletop position, I'm guessing some of you who have been here before, just try to bring some fresh awareness beginner's mind to your set up, really feeling your hands meet the ground, knees, hip distance apart, wiggle your hips side to sides, and then just a couple little moves through the sacrum tailbone, lower back, ribs, shoulders just to get rid of a little bit of stiffness that might be in your back. K? Just moving different joints. Now when you come back to a little bit more neutral tabletop, From here, let's start to round your spine, mindfully rounding, looking towards the knees.

Now let's lift the knees up for a moment and press your hips back in space and get a little longer through the arms and torso and legs. Knees back down. Again, look forwards. How does this feel today? Round your back. Look to the knees.

The knees can stay down or knees come up. Stretching through our downward dog, warm up, knees down, look forward. It is basic arching and rounding for your spine, and then we pause with elongation. One more knees down arch. So we're doing our flexion and extension and elongation, things we might wanna think about doing every day for our spine.

Now let's keep your knees down for just a moment. Let your hands go a little wider. So with the knees down, we're gonna tip forward and bring your chest a little bit more forward through the arms, and then back to tabletop. There's two more times. The hands wide as you bring your chest more forward, and back to tabletop.

Last one, bring yourself a little forward. Now let's walk your hands all the way back towards your knees and come up for a second, and we're gonna grab our blocks. Let's bring your left foot forward, and then we're gonna put tall blocks at the kind of edges of your sticky mat. So in our position here with our lunge, let's it can relax, creep the back toes actually curled under. And then let's send the left arm forward.

We're gonna repeat the sequence a few times. Turn your left hand to the face the long side of your mat and look under your arm as you look to your left or flip back a little bit towards your left thumb. Bring your arm forward and then back around. Now you might notice the blocks feel tall to you. So experiment second time.

See if flatter blocks feel better. Reach your left arm forward. Turn your palm to the long edge. Look under your arm or maybe back towards your left thumb. And forward and around.

One more time. Choose whatever block height works best for you. Left arm forward. Face the long side of the mat. Open the chest.

Reach again forward, and now for a moment lift up your back knee, okay, from that high lunge position, let's switch and bring left leg back and bring your right foot forward. Bring your back knee to the floor. If you wanna switch your blocks higher, go higher. Alright. Now the right arm goes forward. Turn your palm to face the long side of the mat and we're reaching up.

Maybe looking to your back thumb. Follow the hand, the arm forward, and we're back to where we started. Two more times. Reach forward. Turn your hand to face the long side of your mat.

Sweep your arm back. Reach up. We're back to the block. One more time. Reach forward. Open up through that right side of the chest.

Reach forward. And when we get back to the block, lift your back left knee, we're back to that lunge. Step your left foot forward and then adjust your feet under your hips, bend your knees. We're gonna reach back and grab your blanket and slide that out of your way. Now keep your forward fold. Just ask for a moment here.

Grab opposite elbows, and let's sway the body a little bit side to side just to move the spine in this way, and in a way that feels good for you. It release the elbows when you're ready. Move one block to the side, and we're gonna grab one block as we come up to stand. Now, as you get ready, we're gonna take our block. I'm gonna face you here so you can see The block may be between my knees so that my knees are pointing straight ahead when I bend my knees.

And when you find your mountain stance here, let's say the arms come up towards your ears, grab opposite elbow. We're gonna do a lifting up lengthening that elongation through your spine. Bend your ankles and knees, open your arms out to the side, and take your left hand to your outer right knee and your right arm around your back. As you bend your legs, come into your chair and look to the right. Take your right arm in front of you, touch that left knee, and we're gonna drop our chin a little toward our chest.

Grab your opposite elbow or income all the way back up to standing where we started. Bend your knees. Open your arms wide. Right hand to that left leg. Left arm around your back.

Look to the left, deepen the chair position. Left arm comes around. We touch the right leg, chin to chest, grab your elbows, come on up to standing. Arms out to the side as you bend your knees. Left hand to the right, right arm around your back.

Look right. Right arm comes around the front, chin to chest, grab opposite elbow, and come back up to standing. Bend your knees, arms to the side, right arm to the left, left arm around your back, take the left arm in front, chin to chest, Grab your elbows and come on up. Sure. We can do that one more time. Arms out to the sides.

Left hand to the right, right arm around your back. Look right. Right arm comes around the front, grab your elbows, come on up to standing. Arms open wide, right hand to the left, left arm around your back, deepen in the legs, left arm in front, grab your elbows, and let's come all the way up and we're gonna stay here, and then take your arms down to your side. Hang on. Step back up to the top of the yoga mat.

And have your feet hip distance apart. You might roll your shoulders a few times. Let's take a step back with your right foot so you end up in your warrior one stance. So kind of short, kind of narrow, And as soon as you have that stance that works for you, take your arms out in front of you. So as we're here, we're gonna slide your left hand along your, front body with your elbow pointing back.

We're going to follow your left hand forward. Follow your left hand towards your chest and the reach forward. Left hand toward the chest and forward. Let's do one more. A little more movement through that upper, mid back, forward, and then step your back foot forward. Let's come into a chair for a moment here, and then legs straight arms at your side.

Okay. Switch leg. So left leg goes back. We're in our warrior one stance with her arms straight out in front. Slide your right hand towards your upper chest. Look right and then look forward. Pull your right hand back towards your chest.

Look right and then forward. Again, pull the hand back and forward. One more time, pull your hand back to your chest forward and then step left foot forward that's coming to chair with our arms up. From your chair coming up to straight legs, arms at your sides. Alright. Now let's take a step and face the long side of your mat. Turn your toes out, bend your knees, and come into a comfortable straddle position here.

Alright. Let's bring your elbows in, palms to the side. Some of you know, I love this movement for the spine. We're removing our body right and left without moving the knees. Again, imagine you've got a block on your head so you're keeping good posture and just finding lots of ways where we can move the joints of our spine. K. And we're gonna pause in our center and straighten your legs, arms up in the air, standing x. Let's bring your left arm over your right, and as you touch opposite knee, look down, round your back, and then come up with your arms wide standing x.

Right arm in front look down. Inhaling standing x. Again, left arm on top, look down. Come up standing x. One more. Right arm over cross.

And then bring yourself up. K. Let your arms come down and bring your legs just a little bit wider apart. Let's visit a warrior two with your right foot turned out, arms out to the side and bend your knee toward 90 degrees. And take your left arm up by your ear and reach it over to your right hand. So you look to the right hand, slide your hand across your chest, and then we go back up.

Gonna reach your left hand over to your right hands across the chest, look forward, and then back up. Over to your right, pull across the chest and up. One more time. Reach over to your right across the chest and then up. Okay. Liz, I had the arms parallel, feet face forward, and then turn your left foot out, second side, bend your knee. Find the comfortable angles here.

Right arm, this time comes up. We're gonna follow it over to your left hand, then along your chest. Go up. Start to look to the left. Pull the hand across your chest and then go up.

Again, reaching over to your left. You might notice it's a little stiff in your back area. That would be kinda normal as it's not so easy to move around that mid waist turn to the left. And across your chest. Let's keep your arms wide straighten your front leg, toes face straight ahead, hands to your hips.

Hey. Roll your shoulders. Let's give your legs a break for a second, heel toe in, and let's find both blocks. And we're gonna bring both blocks to the front of the long side of your yoga mat. And let's, again, go a little bit wider with your feet. Take a moment as we bend the knees.

So it's a little easier for us to bring our hands to meet those tall blocks and then let the legs go a little bit wider apart. K? Kind of feel into the length of your legs here. Walk your blocks forward so you have a moment to elongate again in your spine and have the head lower than the heart if that works for you as we create a little release in that sacrum low back area and let the head dangle a little bit between your arms. Alright. After enjoying a few wonderful breaths here, elongating the legs and the spine. Let's walk your blocks back a little closer towards your yoga mat.

And as you're here, keep your legs strong. Let's pull your right hand towards your waist and look a little bit again over to your right. Just moving through the spine, and then take your right hand to your block. Take your left hand towards your waist and turn and look to the left and then hand back to the block. Let's do one more time.

Turn to the right hand to the waist. Open the chest, hand to the block, left hand to your waist, turn, lengthen your spine, and come back to the blocks. Now bring your feet a little closer together. We're gonna use our blocks to help us walk back to the short end of the mat and lift up your back heel. So you're in a lunge position.

Now we can move our blocks out of the way and help us come down for a moment into a plank and then knees to the blanket. K. You might grab your blanket again. Highly recommend padding the knees just so we're not distracted if we're on a harder floor. And as you come to your knees position, hands slightly forward of your shoulder line, put your right hand in front of your left hand. And from here, just a little bit of bend of the elbows, right leg, right arm, pretty straight.

Let your head come down and stretch and lengthen through the right side of your back. Hopefully, you can feel that here. And then bring your hands back onto your shoulder line. Left hand in front of your right hand, left arm stays pretty straight. Right elbow's gonna bend as you drop your head down and move your hips back a few inches.

Find more space so that left side of your back. And we'll come back to tabletop. Alright. Let's make some space where we can move our knees back and we can come down to the floor here. So when I think of spinal health, I also think of ways to strengthen my back. So I wanna encourage you from here to have your arms forward and point your toes straight back.

As you inhale, let's float your hands up off the floor. And then pull your arms wide to 90 degree angles. Arms again go forward and we lower back to the floor. Inhale, lift your hands up, pull your elbows up to 90 degrees, open chest, reach forward and then lower your arms. K. All the while we're looking at the floor here under the face.

Hands up, elbows wide, strengthening upper mid back, arms forward, lower. Let's do one more. A lift of the hands, elbows wide, and then arms forward, hands down. Slide your hands under your forehead for a moment and wiggle your hips a little bit side to side. Have a nice thing to do regularly for the spine here.

Just let it wiggle side to side. And now let's refind your center for a second here, comfortable belly breath in, and out. Let's get ready now to turn over onto our back. And as you flip over onto your back, you might scoot your blanket out of your way and put your blanket underneath your heads. K.

As you have a little bit of support under your head, find that comfortable position here. Once your feet meet the floor. Alright. Now let's tip your knees towards your chest. It's something that can feel nice to do for the back. Hold on to your knees and push your knees forward.

Super simple. Pull the knees towards your chest, knees forward. And again, knees towards your chest. Now keep your knees above your hips and let your arms open up to your side palms down, and let's do a little rotation on her back here. A twist, knees to the right, turn your gaze to the left.

Resunter yourself. Drop your legs a few inches to the left and then turn your gaze to the right. Resend to yourself. Lakes to your right, turn a little bit to the left and recenter. At your own pace, a couple more times, legs go in one way.

Your eyes might look the opposite direction So removing all those different joints of your spine. Okay. At a pace that feels good for you, maybe we'll visit each side one more time. K. Then put your feet when you're ready on the floor. K. Final, move with your left knee in towards your chest, stretch your right leg down to the floor. Let's put your right, left foot on your right leg and left arm opens to your left.

Let's see if we might start to move this left knee a tiny bit to the right and with that final little twist and also the, encouragement to lengthen this left side of your body. When you come back around to center, let's switch, hold your right knee in, stretch your left leg to the floor. Then put your right foot on your left leg hold your right knee with your left hand, right arm to the right, and just start to gently peel that right side of your back away from the floor. K. Whatever amount feels good for you and helps you create a sense of space and length. Down that right side of your body.

When you feel complete, come back to center, and last time knees in, Let's circle the legs, holding onto a knee with each hand. It's kinda nice sometimes to end with a little bit of, joint mobilization. Let's put the feet on the ground when you're ready and just take a little pause or we might rest the hands on the abdominal area. I'm a huge fan of keeping your hands here. So we kind of have a target area we might try to breathe into.

So let's try to inhale towards your hands and have your belly rise up towards the sky on inhale. And just feel your belly falling away from your fingertips as you exhale. Maybe your eyes soften and close. Inhale belly rising into your fingertips, and the belly falling away from your hands as you exhale. Try to bring mindfulness to that area for maybe four more cycles of your breath.

Expanding belly and softening the belly. Filling belly and softening the belly. And after that last cycle here, if you're ready to start to finish this part of the practice, we might tip the knees towards your chest. That feels good for you. Hold on to the back of the knees.

And when you're ready, we'll rock and roll our way up towards sitting. Alright. Now we wanna use that blanket again to slide that underneath your hips. You know, we're coming back up to where we started. And as we come up to sit, as I mentioned, sometimes I like ending with just a little bit of a spinal mobilization. So we might have our arms go up and back.

Couple little shoulder rolls. After doing those shoulder rolls with your hands on your knees, circle your ribs around, kinda like we did in our tabletop position. Nothing's strenuous, but just to get different joints moving here to get you ready for your day. And then bring yourself back up toward neutral. Press your left hand into your left leg and take a look over your right shoulder as you lean a little forward. Come back up.

Right hand presses into right knee, and we look over our left shoulder. And come back up. Let's do that one more time. Press your left hand into left leg. Look over your right shoulder lean forward.

Come up. Right hand on right knee. Look over your left shoulder. Now when you come back up to center, let's bring your hands on top of your head and refresh our postural awareness as we look straight ahead and lift your head into your fingertips. One of the best things we can do for our spine is keep aware of our posture throughout the day.

K? So let this bake in a little bit more into your muscle memory, sitting tall, taking a comfortable breath into your belly. And the belly moving slightly and toward the back as you exhale. And one more time here, inhaling and exhaling. I let the hands lower right in front of your heart center and maybe create your own individual intention for this new day, which you wish to bring a little bit more into this day. Keep that in your heart mind.

And thanks so much for being here to practice today. Nava stay everybody.