Radiant Morning Flow

Greetings, friends. Welcome to this practice. We've been working at the wall for a few sessions now, and this one is a continuation of that. We'll have a little fun with it. Have a couple blocks and a bolster with you.

And let's start seated in sukhasana. Place your hands on your knees lean back, and then start to let your spine circulate in some simple, soofy rolls around the bays and of the hips and just invite a little bit of fluidity and play and almost a feeling of a massage between the rib cage and the hips. You're welcome to close your eyes and relax your head and neck and just notice what you can kinda stir up and release here as you move and breathe. And then take it the other direction. Nice and easy.

Just feeling into the low back, the hips, the tummy, shoulders, ribs, and all these ball and socket joints that we have in our body, at least four of them anyway, and see if we can find that movement in those spaces. Take the left arm out up and over as you reach into a side bend and then circulate forward behind you. Reach across with the opposite hand to your knee sit tall on the inhale. And as you exhale, just turn your gaze behind you. So we're looking back here.

Come back to the center. Reach the opposite arm out up and over. Enjoy a big free side bend here as you inhale lengthen. And then exhale circulate it forward and around opposite hand comes to the knee, sit tall. And then as you exhale, just turn your gaze.

We're gonna do that one more time. Left arm reaches out up and over. Circulated all the way around opposite hand comes to the knee sit tall and turn from the naval ribs to shoulder to your gaze, and then back to the center reaching right arm up and over. Circulate forward and around, nice and low to come up tall, inhale sit tall, reach up through your crown. As you exhale, gentle twisting from the naval ribs, shoulders, finally your gaze.

Really swing your legs towards the short edge of the mat. We'll go into a little bit of core work here. So lean back into the hips, hands behind the knees, feel this posterior tilt in the pelvis, and then inhale to lift your chest. Exhaled around. And I know the next couple of practices that are coming have some inversions in them at the wall. And so this practice in particular has a lot of like focus preparation And one of the things that we need to cultivate is some core strength.

You're welcome. So as you exhale hinge back, lift your feet, you're welcome to cross the ankles here, and then just find a kind of a relaxed navasana. If there is such a thing, is there such a thing as a relaxed navasana? Cross the ankles. Let the knees come apart so the hip flexor stay just a little less engaged. And then take the hands just off the edges of the mat, feet come together.

We'll stand and lean back and that's kind of powerful and then bring it back in. So we go open and then exhale close. And my hands, my arms kind of provide a guide or a frame so I can rock on my pelvis back on the tail. And you might hear my voice quivering because it's hard. It's challenging.

We gotta embrace the challenge here as we awaken a little core strength with a Arta Navaasana to a lifted Nivasana. Hold here. Press yourself up to hands and knees and come into downward facing dog. Let's take a little bicycle movement through the ankles, the toes, feeling into the calves. Feeling into the breath.

And then we have that beautiful expanse of the wall behind us that we'll work with again today kind of in, similar yet different patterns. Hopefully, the walls will be covering your friend and You don't feel like you're being driven up the wall. Start to walk your feet towards your hands and come into a forward fold. Feed hips width apart. Just hang out here. Relax your head, your neck, your shoulders.

Let's something go. One more breath here. Keeping the knees slightly bent. Ribs and spines supported. And then let's bend the knees a little more deeply.

Draw the naval in slowly start to roll up one vertebra at a time. Once you come to standing, shrug the shoulders back and down. We're standing up. It's an accomplishment. Bring your hands together.

Bring your feet together. And we move into Surayanamaskarsi. Inhale, circle the arms out and up. Like an arrow, exhale swan dive and grab your blocks. We'll use our blocks for this particular namaskar.

I like to use them on position two. Step the right foot back to a long lunge Really let the hips drop, but keep the back leg straight. Heart forward. And then as you exhale, heels of the hands at the edges of the block, step back downward dog. We inhale to shift forward. We take a very high Chaturanga, which means bend the elbows just a little bit, and then flip over the feet to this open, supported, kind of, proud upward facing dog, exhale downward dog.

Stepping that same right foot forward into that runner's lunge, let the hips melt, but keep the back leg straight, and then exhale step to the front of the mat forward full. Lift the head, the heart come all the way up. Big inhale. Exhale. Hands to the heart center.

Let's do it again. Inhale circle out and up. Exhale swanda, forward fold, really completing each shape. Step the left foot back, long runner's lunge, follow it with the right downward facing dog. Inhale shifting to plank, exhale bend the elbows just a little, flip the feet upward facing dog, exhale downward facing dog.

Left foot steps forward as you inhale, exhale step to the front of the mat. Inhale come all the way up. Exhale hands to the heart. Has a bit of a business like flow. We inhale to reach Exhale, fold.

Moving purposefully, right foot steps back, inhale. Exhale downward dog. Inhale shift to plank. Bend the elbows just a little. Just flip the left foot.

Keep the right toes tucked under. Notice how that feels. Down facing dog. Step the right foot forward. Inhale.

XL forward fold. Inhale all the way up. Exhale hands to the heart. Let's keep it moving. Inhale out and up.

Exhale fold. Left foot steps back. Inhale. Exhale downward dog. Inhale shift. Exhale, bend the elbows.

Just flip the right foot. Keep the left toes tucked. Downward dog. Left foot steps forward, inhale, exhale forward, fold, inhale rise. Exhale bring it back.

Let's take one more full round, circle the arms out and up. Like an arrow and then exhale, fold, release. Right foot steps back, inhale, like you're looking down a track, exhale downward dog, ripple forward like a wave, Bend the elbows just a little flipping both feet upward dog, exhale downward dog, right foot, inhale, exhale forward full, inhale rise. Exale. It's very effective. Nice and warm here.

Inhale circle the arms out in a exhale moving through, cutting through. Hit the left foot back. Inhale. Even the eyes focused. Down dog. Exhale. Ripple as you inhale, plank, exhale chaturanga.

Oh, up, up for dog. Exhale downward dog. Left foot forward. Inhale. Exhale forward fold. Inhale rise.

Exhale. Hands to the heart. Take a nice wide step towards the wall. And really meet yourself here, feel that tadasana alignment from the crown to the heels in a reflection of the wall you see before you not as a barrier, but as something to work with. Bends your knees come into your chair pose on an inhale, and let's take a twist to our right.

So left elbow is gonna go to right, outer thigh, turning the spine. And just feeling that rotation. Just like we did in the beginning from naval ribs, heart, shoulders. Now, put your weight into your right foot. Step the left foot back to a long lunge. Come on up to your crescent pose.

Open up to warrior two. Adjust your feet as you need. Sync down a little bit, make sure that right knee is over your right heel and then expand. I steady on the middle finger of your front hand. Take a deep breath in here and just allow yourself to arrive.

Now let's reverse our warrior, reach up and back. It's like a wind up And then as you exhale through side angle post, circle through it, come to a wide forward fold, pivot your right toes in, relax your head and neck. Inhale lift the heart. Exhale, turn to a runner's lunge facing the left foot, bend your knee. We'll stack the blocks over to one side because we we don't need them anymore.

And then step right into chair pose. Right foot meets the left inhale. Exhale hands to the heart. Take a twist. Moving right into the second side. We're not messing around a whole lot.

Kind of unornamented practice, direct and focused. Reach through the heart. Big inhale. Spiral. Put your weight into the left foot, step the right foot back, runner's lunge, come up to crescent, find that direct focus.

We need that for inversions. Open up warrior two. Adjust your base, sink down and find the middle finger point, the nail specifically in your front hand. Inhale reverse your warrior. There's a big side bend, flow through side angle all the way to your forward fold, that left foot pivots in, and we release.

Walk your hands back. Hang out here for a moment. So we want the hamstrings nice and open for inversions. We also want the shoulders open, so we'll stay in this wide leg forward fold. But take your hands forward.

So you're in a wide leg down dog. And you can come up onto the fingertips, almost like you're cupping mounds of sand underneath your hands, and let your shoulders relax. Let your heart relax. Three breaths here. And I love to add a little bit of movement in the spine, so you're welcome to join here as you inhale, you can rise up on the toes and round your spine. And then as you exhale, melt the heels, melt the heart.

Breathe out of the mouth. Inhale through the nose, round and below upward as you rise up on the toes. Exhale, melt the heels, melt the heart, downward. One more inhale coil upward. Exhale, heels melt, hips back.

Heart descends. Walk the hands into the long edge of the mat, lift your chest and turn runners lunge towards the wall. Our friend, our friend the wall. We're gonna climb up it. Reach your hands up the wall.

Step up. The left foot's gonna go on the wall, but I'm a little too close. So what happens we adjust? We don't make a big deal out of it. Step back. Put your foot on the wall. Now, if you have a slippery wall, you can use a chair or a tabletop, countertop, or you're welcome to bend the knee, keep the legs straight, but reach up and feel that reflection. Of alignment in the body and then forward. Fingers land where they're gonna land. You might reach the wall or your shin back of a chair. Use what you've got.

But hang out here and feel that beautiful opening along the back of the left leg. Relax your head and neck. We're kind of moving into a padagusthasana series here. But taking out the balance component and using our front the wall. Now we'll come back up on the inhale and here comes our twist, opening your chest towards the direction of the raised leg.

The right hand can move towards the wall. The left hand back behind you. Sometimes I like to place my hand on the outer knee and just turn and feel that rotation. It's the same. Kind of action is twisting triangle twisting half moon.

Now drop swing the left arm, reach both of them up. A little bit of a change here in the base. We'll start to heel toe the right foot open and heel toe that left foot forward. Bend into your left knee and it's got like an essence of side angle pose, an essence of warrior too as we bend the knee and reach towards the wall with the opposite hand. Left elbow presses against the inner knee.

Turn the chest open. I love this shape. It feels so nice on the whole right side of the body. So really lean into the wall here. Full body breath.

Now kind of a cool transition will straighten the left leg turn the left toes down a bit and take your torso with it. Hello. This is my favorite view, upside down, and just check out your base. And if you're kinda like the floor is far away, Step out, grab your blocks and bring the floor up to you. So we're in our Prasarita, Pada Tanasana, but somehow we've got up the wall. It's amazing. Let's continue this path.

We'll start to walk our hands to the right pivoting right foot to point towards the back of the mat and the left foot's on the wall. And we've got a little warrior three action. Once again, you can bring blocks with you, bend the standing leg. I'm gonna shift my right foot back slightly so I have that right angle between bottom leg and top leg. It's a beautiful opening here for the right hamstring.

Relax your head and neck. This is a great preparation for Handstand, we could push into the hand so much and raise our right foot to the wall and all of a sudden we're in elbows or we could just stay with our foot down. We've got some more elbows coming in the next video actually so we can save it. Now from here, left foot joins the right, soften your knees, roll it on up. Wow. That was amazing.

Should we do it again? Let's do it again. Flip it around and now we've got the opposite side. Bring your right foot to the wall, square your hips off and we're in. Reach your arms up. Not messing around today.

Go forward. Fold and drop right into it. It's interesting to kinda note which poses we sort of delay and take our time and dilly dally getting into. Or situations, tasks in life. They were like, I've gotta do this thing, but I don't really want to. And sometimes we have to just like cut through the static and go right to it.

And that's a a helpful part of inversions. It gives us that skill. Let's reach up on an inhale. As you exhale, add the twist, open your chest to the right, left hand reaches towards the wall or the outer leg, right hand reaches back. Hopefully, you have a beautiful view like I do. These orange trees, take a deep breath in.

Exhale twisting a little bit more. And then drop swing, come out. We start to open up towards the left heel toe, heel toe, make the adjustments so that you can lean into the wall. Bend the right elbow, bend the right knee, sweep the left arm up. Here's our side angle variation.

We turn the chest open and hang out here. It's a really wonderful hip opener, the hip flexor quadriceps, adductors, ribcage, chest. This whole left side gets to breathe, a little bit of fresh air. Take one more breath here. And then let's take that transition where we start to turn the right foot in. We drop the torso down slow.

Maybe you wanna grab your blocks. Maybe you wanna just hang out in this asymmetrical prosarita wide leg forward fold. It's definitely an interesting shape. Probably maybe you haven't been in it yet today. Start to walk your hands to the left.

And again, we heel toe slow. So we square it off. Maybe sliding that left foot back a little bit, finding our standing split slash warrior three is basically where we're at. And you're welcome to press into the palms and press into the foot on the wall and just drive that left leg back just for a moment. Feel the possibility and then bring it back down.

Saving it like a dessert. Let's step out of that. Bend your knees. Come up into utkatasana. Exhale sweep your arms back.

Inhale reach it back up. Exhale sweep it back. Inhale come all the way up. Look up and back towards the wall. And then bring the hands to the heart.

Forward fold. Walk it out to plank. Lower down to your forearms. Oh, we're here now. We've got these blocks.

I'd love for you to take one. Place it right under your hips just as a guide. And then from here, start to roll your hips from side to side. It's a little bit more core work to get us ready. For our inversions. Just what you were hoping we would do.

Side to side like you're tracing a rainbow up and over the block. And now let's go ahead and drop the right hip all the way down. Oh, nice. Turn the form and catch the top of the left foot and just take a little moment here to open up the quadrice up, open up the front of the left hip. And you can pull your left heel towards your glute.

We're gonna go off road, bring the ball the foot behind you. Roll your right cheek to the edge of the mat and then come up so you're on your right palm. We're primed to go into a little flipped dog wild thing. It's I like to call it Arta Urdwadana, half backbend So start to lift up through the hips, the heart, the naval center as you reach up and back, and then exhale, land lightly. Feel that empowerment as you press through the outer edge of the right foot, lifting through the heart, exhale, we're right on the edge of the mat one more time, inhale, lift, and then we can climb back into our plank and drop down onto our forms.

Just like that. Start to roll the hips. Side to side. Working with empowerment with steadiness and the yogis call it tapas. This burning enthusiasm, perseverance dedication side to side. Here we go.

Four more. Breathing. Adjusting your toes as you need to. And now let's lower the left hip down, turn the left form, parallel to the short edge of the mat, and let's take our right heel towards our hip, and it's just a gentle little royal dancer opening as we press back in a moment to for me to catch my breath because I'm out of breath. But we're still rolling.

Sometimes you gotta keep rolling when you've had one cup too many of coffee. Okay. Let that be a lesson. So from here, take the heel towards your butt. You're gonna open up the right knee and the ball of the foot comes down. We lift up and plant.

I've got kinda one sort of long line from left hand to hip to the outer edge of the foot. That provides a nice base and then start to drive down through the knife edge, lift through the hips, up through the heart. Find this beautiful arc. And then exhale, take it back down. Allow this to be a lunar moment, inhale, recovering your energy, studying yourself exhale.

One more time, inhale rise up and over and then climb back into your plank. And I just accidentally kicked the bolster which is on cue because I need it for this next move for you to come onto your hands and knees. We'll take our blocks and place them so that they're parallel. We're gonna move our bolster behind us and turn them actually to position three. Come up to standing. Nealing warrior, it's a shape that we worked with in a previous practice.

We'll come right into it again. The left foot to the wall, walk the blocks back a bit, controlled descent here slowly lower landing on the left knee on the bolster. Now you're welcome to hang out right here. It's a great quad opener. Today, I'd love to offer you a variation of coming into pigeon.

So we can take the blocks forward a bit. Heel toe, making our adjustments, the right foot goes across, and then the right knee. Oh, it comes down. So we kinda shuffle the deck a bit and mix our pigeon with kneeling warrior, which becomes a beautiful prep for a posture that we call Royal King Pigeon. So, lift your chest. Whether it's Royal King or Royal Queen Pigeon, give it that elegance maybe walk the blocks in a bit more, open up through the chest, looking up and back. Lot of sensation here.

And slowly soften forward. Back shin is gonna roll towards the opposite edge of the bolster and we come up onto our right foot. Little agility move, we step right out of that into a forward fold, turn the blocks, business like, right into the second side, right knee moves back. Bring the blocks back as far as you like, start to heel toe your left foot across and here we go. We lower down. Take the blocks forward a bit and we settle right in.

This is definitely one of those postures that sometimes I daily dally getting into because it's challenging. Hips can be tight, quadriceps, hip flexors, back bending. These are very common areas that present a little bit of of a challenge. It's on that list of poses that sometimes we avoid, right? But we wanna keep working with them.

So as you start to kind of settle in, keep rising to the posture, I'm pushing against these blocks to find that upward rising energy up and back. One more breath here. And you might be thinking, How is this gonna help my inversion? It's the quality of this practice, the focus, as well as hamstring core shoulder opening, hip and quad opening, but it's the quality of the practice. We're gonna take that feeling, that rasa into our inversions. Let's start to come out of this.

We'll take the back foot, roll it. I push off the blocks just so you can see that little agility move there. Boom. And then we're gonna, oh, have a seat and take a load off, take your blocks behind you, bring your bolster back off of the mat. We don't need it anymore. And from here, we come right back to where we started for a moment with these sufi rolls and oh my hips feel very different than when we started.

So notice how yours feel. And let yourself kind of settle, come down. Take it the other direction. Start to take the busy out of business and just let it be focused and grounded. We get so much more from silence than we do from noise, which is a great bruce lee quote.

So with that awareness, we'll come on to our backs. Can spin your feet towards the short edge of the mat, bring your bolster into play under your knees. And without further ado, drop right in onto your back. Circle your arms up over your head. Reach out to your full length, engage your legs so the feet float off the mat supported by the bolster, flex in point.

Through the heels. As you do that, bring the legs a little closer together so their hips width apart and then press through the heels reach through the arms. Press into the back of the bolster. Take a deep breath here. As you exhale, pull the abdominals in, pull the ribs in, and just feel this shape.

This is your handstand shape, but we're on the floor and then let everything relax. We'll do that one more time as you inhale reach through the fingertips, reach through the feet, flex and point, let the feet come off the mat. You're pushing the back of the knees into the bolster engaging the quads flex and press, maybe bring the legs all the way together. If that feels okay on the low back. Pull the abdominals and ribs in and down as you reach, reach, reach reach through the heels, through the fingers.

That's your handstand feeling right there. Pull it, reach press. And then exhale relax feet come apart, arms swing down by the sides, close your eyes, and we take a very concise Shavasana moment here. Start to send a little bit of movement to your fingers and your toes, reawakening, blink the eyes open, taking the colors you see around you above you. Reach your arms over your head, and fingertips reaching toes pointing as you reach, and then draw the knees into the chest.

Roll over to one side. And press yourself up to a comfortable seated position, maybe have a seat on your bolster, on your throne, bringing the hands to the heart. Congratulations. Excellent work. Thank you so much for being here this morning and practicing with me.