Supported Standing Postures

(waves splash gently) Hello and welcome. This is a practice that focuses on standing poses that open the front of the body and they tend to face the short edge of the mat. I call them forward-facing standing poses. It'll be handy to have a wall that your mat is against and you probably will need two blocks and please refer to my tutorial on finding a seat, to find a way to sit that works for you to begin this practice. Take a moment.

Transition your attention inside and let your eyes close. Like we did in the seated tutorial, rock a bit on your sitting bones. So the pelvis rocks back, the spine rounds a bit, the pelvis rocks forward, the front of the spine extends. Notice how your pelvis responds to the rib cage responds to the head. And then let this become very quiet until it becomes still.

And once again, sense the pelvic bowl, and on top of the pelvis, you have your rib cage, which is shaped like an egg. And on top of the egg, you have the head, which is shaped like a sphere. So you have this structure of the bowl of the pelvis, the egg-shaped rib cage, and this round head stacked right on top. I teach at one studio in Berkeley and there's a Buddha in the studio and the Buddha has very long ears and his earlobes drape right over the center of his shoulders. And I think about him when I'm at my computer and my head gets forward, things start to move forward.

You want to have your round head stacked right over your rib cage so that the ears are aligned over your shoulders. Connect now into your breath. Feel the breath in the front and the back of your body. Invite the breath to be relatively long and smooth. I say relatively long because it can vary from day to day.

Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to move into a deeper breath, so be patient with yourself and just plant the seed that breath is moving into a smooth long breath. The inhalation creates a little more brightness, an openness inside, and the exhalation releases unnecessary tension. After your next exhalation, float your eyes open, keeping your eyes soft. And then reach your arms way up overhead, give yourself a stretch and lean a little from side to side, like a real stretch, like you just woke up in the morning, you're opening the sides of the body. You're finding out how you feel today.

And then come to the center and let your right hand come outside of your right hip and lean over to the right side, opening the whole left seam of the body. Keep your left thigh heavy, keep your left sitting bone rooted, and make sure here that your head isn't moving forward of your chest. Keep that alignment even though you're tipped to the side of the rib cage, head, pelvis in one plane. With your next inhalation, come all the way up. Reach both arms up overhead and as you exhale, left hand to the floor, side bend.

Imagine there's a big sandbag sitting on your right thigh, and it's rooting the right thigh down, right hip heavy, and the right side of the body opens, the right lung opens. Shoulders soft and away from the ears. And then inhale, come all the way back up. Get your head over your ribs over your pelvis, and then right on that axis, turn to the right. Bring your left hand to your right leg, right fingertips behind you.

As you inhale, find a little more lift and length in your spine. And as you exhale, turn a bit more around. The inhalation creates length and the exhalation is the lungs get out of the way, the body can turn a little bit more deeply. One more breath here, inhale, the crown of the head floats up. As you exhale, turn your spine.

With your next inhale, be tall as you come to the center, floating the arms up, and as you exhale, twist over to the other side. Make sure that the head doesn't fall off of the support of the rest of the spine. Crown of the head floats straight up. Every inhalation, a little more length, every exhale, a little bit more twist. As your spine is turning, feel also how your organs are getting a squeeze.

Twists are great for creating mobility in the lungs, waking them up. With your next inhalation, come to the center, and as you exhale, bring your hands down to your thighs. So we'll transition now to lying down on the belly. You can move whatever you're sitting on to the side and lie down onto your abdomen. And we're going to prop up onto the forearms.

Have your elbows right underneath your shoulders, and we'll take a gentle interlace of the fingers, broaden your collarbones, and lift your low belly up just a little bit so that you aren't sinking into the low back. Tuck your toes underneath you, take a big breath in, and as you exhale, lift the sides of your waist up off of the ground, lift your pelvis up off of the ground, and you're welcome to stay here, or you can extend your legs, powering back through your feet, through your heels. Let your low belly lift, the tailbone lengthens. In these style of poses that we're going to do in this practice, it's good to have some core awareness. You have it now.

Bring your knees to the floor, bring your pelvis down, open your chest. Forearm plank is a great for a quick core waker-upper. And then once again, tuck your toes, lift the sides of your waist, lift your pelvis. You can stay right here, this is challenging enough, or if you wish, you can extend back through your heels, extending the legs. Breath in.

Breathe out. Let go of any tension in your jaw or your tongue or your inner ears. And then knees back to the floor, belly down, and extend the whole front of the spine, reaching back through your toes. One more time. Breath in.

And exhale, belly lifts, pelvis lifts, heels reach back. So it takes a fair amount of effort to be here. Don't overeffort. The Buddha talks about right effort. Don't use what you don't need to use.

Keep your brain soft. Keep your eyes soft. Knees to the floor, pelvis to the floor. Reach back through your toes. Lift your chest.

And then soften yourself down, bring your hands by your ribs, press back into child's pose. In this child's pose, we'll just rest the arms so the elbows can be heavy. Let your forehead rest on the ground, let your pelvis rest back into your heels. Invite the weight of your head and brain to drop completely into the support of the ground. From here, come up onto your hands and your knees, and lock your hands about four inches further forward.

Have your index fingers pointing straight forward, and spread the rest of your hands away from the rooting of those index fingers. Tuck your toes, lift your knees up off of the ground, and then press your hands forward and lift your pelvis up and back until you sense that you have a straight line between your hands rooting down and your pelvis lifting back and up. Extend that line, and then extend your legs, pushing the thighs back. Let your heels sink towards the ground. Look forward and begin to walk your feet to the front of the mat.

There's a point where it gets awkward, just like life, and we just find our way through it with as much ease and grace as possible. When you get here to the front of the mat in uttanasana, keep your knees bent. Let's hold on to the elbows and let your spine sway a little bit from right to left a few times. Elongating the spinal muscles on one side, and then the other side. And then let your spine fall into the center, make sure your head is completely relaxed into the frame of your arms, and if you wish, if it feels okay on your hamstrings and your back, you can begin to straighten the legs by lifting your pelvis away from the rooting of your heels.

From here, release your arms, bend your knees, and with a heavy tailbone, like you have bricks in the back pockets of your pants, roll up bone by bone. Let your head be the last thing to come up. And when you get to the top, you'll have your head stacked over your ribs stacked over your pelvis. So we're gonna do a few half sun salutations. It would be helpful to have blocks unless you reach the ground very easily, then you don't need your blocks.

Otherwise, have blocks on either side of your feet, and we'll stand with the feet about hip distance apart, so let's say the outer feet are in line with the outer hips. Mountain pose. And now, just as an experiment, step your feet right together, root down through your feet, balance your pelvis, your ribs, and your head. Mountain pose. So you can decide for yourself which feels more stable, more mountainous, more rooted, either with the feet apart or the feet together.

There are many benefits to doing it both ways. Many teachers will tell you you have to do it one way, but it's really important, there's a practice in yoga called svadhyaya, which means self-study, self-examination, and a lot of this practice comes down to what works out for you on any given day. So, tadasana, as you wish it to be. You're gonna take your arms way out to the side, let your palms turn up, and reach your arms up, lift your chest. As you exhale, open your arms, dive all the way over your legs, hands either to the blocks or to the floor, and it's fine to bend your knees.

And then bring your hands to the very tops of your thighs. Press the tops of your thighs back as you take your chest forward, lengthening into flat back. As you exhale, fall back over your legs, hands to the block or hands to the floor. And then stretch your arms out to the side, reach up to stand, bring your arms up overhead. If it feels claustrophobic to bring your palms together, it's fine to have your arms apart still.

Having the arms forward also makes it easier on the shoulders, and release your arms down. Do that a few more times. Half sun salutation. Inhale, reach up. Exhale, fold forward.

This time as you inhale, you can just keep your fingertips reaching towards the ground as you come to flat back, even though there's a feeling of those thighs pressing back. Exhale, fold over, relax your head completely. Inhale, reach your arms out to come up all the way to stand. Exhale, hands in front of your heart and down to your sides. And again, big breath in.

Exhale, creasing right at the tops of the thighs over your legs. Inhale, you lengthen. Exhale, fold. Inhale, reach out to come up. Every finger awake and alive as the heels press down.

Exhale, hands in front of the heart and down to your sides. One more time, inhale. Exhale, fold. The eyes are very soft as you inhale and lengthen. And exhale, fold, feeling the release of the back of the neck.

Inhale, reach out to come up. And exhale, hands in front of your heart and down to your sides. We'll move along. Inhale, reach up. Exhale, fold forward.

Place your hands onto the blocks, or if you're not using blocks, you can be on the tips of your fingers. Bend your knees and take your head forward like you're doing flat back, but step your right foot back to a lunge. In the lunge, have your left knee directly over your left heel, take your whole left thighbone and pull it back, and then make your right thigh very strong, very stable. I had a teacher once who would sit on my back thigh and I would have to support her weight without buckling down, you're gonna have that feeling, she wasn't a very big woman, but you want to have that feeling that you could support something on your back thigh. And then reach back through your back heel, it doesn't mean it's pressing back, but there's an energetic reach back through the back heel.

From the clarity of your legs, can you lengthen your spine and have awareness of the bowl of the pelvis, which is now tipped forward, relating to the rib cage, relating to the crown of the head, with the clarity through the spine. Find your breath. And then to step forward, first bend your back knee a little bit so that you can elegantly step forward. Uttanasana. Forward bend.

Bend your knees, take your head forward, and step your left foot back, so you're lengthening the spine to come into your lunge. Lunge has a similar spine to flat back. Right foot is open, heel grounded, knee over heel, whole right thigh pulls back to balance the pelvis and balance the sacroiliac joint. Keep the left leg very firm, clarity though the left heel, and then feel the rib cage and the head moving away from the stability of the pelvis. Connect to your breath, right here, right now.

Then bend the back knee a little bit, and spring off of it, step forward, Breathe in, flat back, Exhale, fold. Inhale, reach out to come all the way up. Exhale, hands together in front of the heart and down to your sides. We're gonna learn another version of the lunge. Inhale, reach up.

Exhale, fold forward, bend your knees, right foot back as the head goes forward, and this time we're gonna soften the back knee down to the ground. If it's at all painful on the right knee, feel free to slide a blanket underneath the knee for support. Now point the back toes and bring the hands up onto the front thigh. Now you might sense here the pelvis is slightly tipped forward. We want to attempt to lift the pelvis up, so zip her up, like you're wearing jeans with a little tiny zipper, low-cut jeans with a little zipper.

Lift the low belly up. From the pubic bone to the navel, lift up and you'll probably feel a nice opening in the front of the right hip. We want that, we want those hip flexors to open here. Bring your right thumb over your left thumb. Reach your arms up.

Let your pelvis sink a little further down. And then lengthen the sides of the waist and arc back any amount. Make sure there's no pain, no feeling of sinking into the back, but a nice long arc through the spine. Exhale, float your hands down. Straighten the back leg, and then push off of it, step forward.

Second side, left foot back, head goes forward, soften your back knee to the ground, and then bring your hands up onto your front thigh. You want the pelvis to be coming forward until there's an undeniable feeling of stretch in the front of the left thigh. The right hip and the right thigh keep pulling back, so we never in this practice want to just go extremely into one direction. There's always opposing energies, opposing actions and directions in the body, so as the pelvis is moving forward, the right thigh and the right hip pull back. Cross your left thumb over your right thumb, reach your arms up.

Use the lift of the arms to pull tons of space into your spine, and then as this pelvis moves forward, lift and arc back any amount. Don't overdo, and also don't underdo. Find the perfect balance for you right now. As you exhale, bring your hands down. This time, let's move the blocks to the side, root the hands, straighten the back leg, and set back into downward-facing dog.

Bend your right knee, sink your left heel for two breaths. Inhale, exhale one. Inhale, exhale two. And then switch, right heel sinks, left knee bends, two breaths. Inhale, exhale one.

Inhale, exhale two. Extend both legs, and then with you next inhalation, come forward to plank, opening the chest. And as you exhale, lower down to the floor. You're welcome to bring your knees to the floor first or straight legs. From here, reach back through your legs, lift just your upper chest, little cobra, and exhale, bring your forehead to the ground.

Two more times like that. Inhale, little cobra. Exhale, forehead to the ground. Little cobra's all about the muscles of the back. You're not pressing into your hands.

Exhale, forehead to the ground. And then press up onto your hands and your knees, and pull back into child's pose. Roll up. And now, for warrior 1, which is one of the front-facing standing poses, it's helpful to have very stretched out calf muscles. So we did that calf opener in downward dog and we're gonna do another one that uses a rolled blanket.

So take a blanket and roll it up. And then make your way up to stand, and you'll probably want to have your two blocks right in front of your rolled blanket. Step the balls of the feet up onto the blanket, so you're on an uphill slope, and then begin to fold at the hips, the tops of the legs, and come forward. Hands onto the blocks, they could be on the blanket, they might be on the floor. The blocks also have three heights, one, two, three.

And you're gonna be here for a while, so most bodies, everybody's different luckily, but most bodies in a forward fold without anything beneath the balls of the feet, the stretch goes into the hamstrings, the upper part of the back of the leg. When we lift the balls of the feet, the stretch tends to go into the calf muscles. If you don't perceive that to be true, it's possible that you have long calf muscles and they're all ready stretched out, and tighter hamstrings. So your hamstrings will always sing to you louder than the calves, but for most people, rolling a prop underneath the balls of the feet stretches the calf muscles. There's actually two calf muscles on each leg.

Bend your knees just a little tiny bit, and you might feel a slight difference. When you bend your knees, you get into the thinner, smaller muscle called the soleus underneath the bigger gastrocnemius. Straighten your legs and see if you can feel the bigger muscle stretches. And just a few times, just a little bend at the knees. You may also feel some sensation down into the Achilles tendon.

Straighten the legs. Just a couple more moments here. The body opens cell by cell, so we'll take our time, kind of like when you take a hot bath. If you're really cold and you just hop into a hot bath for two minutes, not much is gonna happen. But if you stay in for 10 or 15, 20 minutes, a deep soaking happens, and we want that effect from our yoga poses.

They soak deeply into our cellular being. Now, you could stay longer, but that's enough for now for me. Step back, and then just go into the regular forward fold, and you might have a very different experience of it. Bend your knees, roll up to stand. And when you get to stand, your mountain pose may have a different feeling.

So the extra length to your calf muscles, you may feel your heels just plummeting into the ground in a real sense of stability on which you can stack your pelvis and then your ribs and then your head. Okay, we're gonna do a few poses now using the wall for stabilities. You can just move any props that you have over to the side, and face the wall. First thing we're gonna do is stand about an arm's distance away from the wall, and then bend your knees, and then step your left foot approximately 3 1/2 feet back. You wanna have your back toes on a very strong angle, so your heel is reaching back, those elongated calf muscles will help with that.

Bring your hands onto the pelvic bowl, lift the front of your pelvis up, like you're wearing suspenders, go up, and then turn the pelvis so that, in this pose, parsva tadasana, the pelvis is pretty square to the wall in front of you. Descend heavily through your tailbone as you float your arms up. Breathe in. And as you exhale, tilt the pelvis over the thighs and reach your fingertips forward to the wall. If you feel like you're a little too far away, you can feel free to just scoot your pelvis forward so that your fingers reach the wall without strain.

From here, pull your right hip crease back and root down through your left heel. Parsva tadasana translates to extension or stretch of the sides of your body, so feel the whole pelvis being pulled away from the wall as the rib cage, the head, and the arms extend towards the wall. Take a moment to just bend your front knee a little bit, and then as you re-straighten the front leg, make sure you're not jamming into the back of the knee. You shouldn't feel extreme strain or pressure in the back of the knee. Bend your front knee, step forward.

And then arm's distance away, or if you need to be a little closer, that's fine, and step your right foot about 3, 3 1/2 feet back, pause, hands to the hips. Again try to make your pelvic bowl a little bit more upright, lifting the front of the pelvis up. A release down through the low back. Turn the pelvis so it's flush to the wall in front of you, root through both of your heels, lift through your spine, reach your arms up, breathe in. And as you exhale, tilting the pelvis over the top of the thighbones, making sure not to jam into the front knee, fingertips reach the wall.

From the rooting of the left heel and the ball of the left big toe, pull your left hip crease back, and feel the steadiness of the legs giving the spine permission to breathe and lengthen. Have your ears right in between your arms, so your head is not drooping down. Little bend of the front knee. Re-straighten to get more clarity through the leg. And then bend your front knee, step forward.

I like to rest, I get a little dizzy sometimes, and I like to rest with my forehead on the wall, like a little feeling of standing child's pose. Bring your hands to the level of your hips, and then step back so that you're in an upside-down "L"-shape, or we could call this downward-facing dog at the wall. I have another little short practice on downward dog, so if this pose is interesting to you, or you want more explanation, feel free to refer to that practice. Bring your feet together. We're gonna go from here into warrior 3, virabhadrasana 3.

You're gonna reach your left leg back, let's flex the foot, and don't worry how high it goes. It really does not matter how high it goes, but feel it very long. And if it does begin to get higher, it shouldn't go higher than hip level. If it does begin to get up that high, sometimes the abdomen loses support, so feel that zipping from the pubic bone to the belly button, the support across the abdomen, as you reach back through the left heel. And then just feel the pose.

I'll be quiet for a moment. Feel what you feel. Float that foot down. Let's bend the knees. Push onto your feet and just hang the spine for a moment, give yourself a little break in uttanasana.

Release your arms. Come up. Step forward, hands hip level, and then step back, finding the elongation of your spine. And we'll take the other leg back, reaching back and up through the heel. See if you can roll the abdomen a little bit from the right side to the left side as a way of keeping the pelvis relatively balanced.

You should be able to balance a teacup there on that pelvis. Front of the belly lifts up. Arms are extended, ears in between the arms. This is not an easy pose for anyone I've ever met. So you can just breathe into the challenge of it.

Find as much ease within the challenge. Float the leg down, walk forward, rest your forehead onto the wall. The next pose is called natarajasana, it's a balancing pose. We're gonna use the wall for stability. It translates to king dancer pose.

So, once again, face the wall about an arm's distance away. And then bend your left knee, so that the quad stretching we did earlier in the lunges will be of great value to you here. If it's hard to reach your foot back there, you can use a towel or a strap, wrap it around your ankle, or if you aren't wearing precious pants, you can hold onto your pants. If you don't want them to get stretched out, that'll be a problem, but if you don't care. And then lock your arm that's on the wall up the wall.

Find that lift from the belly, from the pubic bone, I mean, up to the belly for the stability there. Have your left knee relatively close to your right knee. Find your breath. And then begin to pull the left thigh back. So a lot of these forward-facing standing poses are back bends, and we want to make sure that we're not crunching, hurting, damaging the back in any way, so just go to a place that feels healthy for you.

At a certain point, you many let your pelvis tip a bit over the right thighbone. Again, make sure you're not jamming into the knee that you're standing on. And then release, step that foot down, we'll go right over to that second side. Left hand to the wall, hold on to your right ankle, strap, pants, and first, we'll get used to being here. I think of that book The Life of Pi and little Pi is out on a boat, he's a little kid on a boat and he's learning to eat turtles and deal with all of the scariness of being a kid alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean, and a few times in that book, he says, "It's amazing what you can get used to." I think of that when I'm facing a challenging situation, can I get a little used to this?

Can my nervous system settle into it? Left hand reaches up the wall, the right thigh pulls back. Make sure there's abdominal support. And then as the right thigh pulls back, the foot lifts, the right ribs will roll forward, and still there's communication between the pelvis, the ribs, and the head. And then release yourself down.

Let's turn to face away from the wall. Step your feet about a foot away from the wall. Let your pelvis rest back into the wall, and fold forward, your legs will be on a diagonal, so you get a little support here with your sitting bones resting into the wall. You can let your hands hang or hold on to your elbows. And then bring your hands by your hips, press yourself onto your feet, find yourself balanced over your feet.

Inhale, flat back. Exhale, fold forward. Inhale, reach your arms out to come up. And exhale, hands in front of your heart and down to the side. Take a moment.

Okay, and we're gonna finish this practice with a couple of seated poses. So I'm gonna recommend that you once again, probably best for most bodies to sit up onto a folded blanket. So from this pose, which is called dandasana, we'll take the right knee and bend it. This is a twisted pose called marichyasana c. We'll reached the left arm way up overhead, stretching the whole left side of the body, and then twist to the right.

Take the crook of your elbow, wrap it around your right knee, and bring your right fingertips onto the floor behind you. We did a twist a while back when we started this practice. See if this maybe feels a little bit different to you at this point. If you are pretty twisted, and that's not an insult in yoga talk, but if you're twisted, you're twisty, you can hook your left elbow to the outside of your right knee. That takes you a little bit further around.

And when you come out of the twist, try not to shrink at all. Feel light as you come out of the twist. When you come out, it's when the organs get their big fresh supply of blood and water, so it's important not to crunch in on them as you emerge from the rotation. Inhale, the right arm up. And as you exhale, twist, hooking the elbow.

Make sure that the straight leg stays clear, energized, awake. The sitting bones as equally rooted as possible. And then let the breath guide you. With your next inhalation, come to the center, again, staying tall as you come to the center, and then release your left leg forward. I'm gonna get my strap for the next pose, which is called janushirasana.

Janu means knee, shira means head. You're gonna bend the knee again like we started the last pose, and then we're gonna open that leg to the side. The legs resemble a tree pose for this version of janushirasana. And then even if you're really flexible, take your belt and wrap it around the ball of your left foot and hold onto the strap with your right hand. Draw the shoulders down, and twist to the left.

Feel the right half of the back, the middle back is where your kidney is, wrap that kidney around toward the front of your mat. And then make your way back to the center. If you're feeling any pain or this knee is very high in the air, please support it with a block, like so. Okay, so we've come out of the twist, and now we are going to pivot pelvis over the thighs and walk your hands down the strap. Maybe you hold onto your foot.

It's fine to hold onto the strap, in this yoga practice being more flexible is not better, it's just different. What's important is that we work with a sense of ease, breath, spaciousness, kindness. If you are very flexible, you may want to take another block and put it on the far side of your foot, and lengthen your spine forward. In forward folds, you want the spine to be in a long arc. One of my dear teachers, Jennifer Brilliant, says keep your spine like a portabello mushroom.

With your next inhalation, come all the way up to sit. Bring your right knee up and straighten the right leg. Second side, we'll draw the left leg in as we did for the marichyasana pose, open it to the side, and wrap the strap around the sole of the right foot. Hold onto the belt with the left hand, bring your right fingertips behind you. My head is over my rib cage, my rib cage holds my heart, and the ribs are balanced over the pelvis.

As I'm twisting, the energy on my left arm is pulling to the left to help my spine rotate to the right. And then coming out of the pose, janushirasana does have a slight twist in it, so we keep a little rotation to the abdomen, and then begin to walk your hands down the strap. You have your options of the strap, the foot, or a block beyond the foot. And then let your spine release forward over your front leg, not coiling in on yourself, but feeling the head, a long journey away from the rooting of the tailbone and the pelvis. The breath touches the interior landscape of your body.

With your next inhalation, come all the way up to sit, and then bring the soles of your feet together, baddha konasana. You can have your heels pretty close into your pelvis if your hips are very open, or the feet might be a little farther forward, which for most bodies is a little bit more peaceful on the hip joint. But you figure out where it feels best for you. Take a big breath in, lengthening your spine, and as you exhale, again, the beginning of the forward fold is from the bowl of the pelvis tipping forward. That tips the spine and that takes the head forward.

I love to rest my forehead onto a block in this pose. This makes it in the little bit more restorative family of poses. I'll just stay for a few breaths. We're on the slippery slope here towards our final relaxation, so begin to cultivate that feeling of letting go. Slide your hands back, use your hands as well as a little core support to bring you up to sit.

Use your hands underneath your knees to bring the knees together. And then we're gonna finish this pose with the legs up the wall. So, if you don't happen to have a slice of wall, of course you can just lie in savasana normal on your back, but if you are going to do legs up the wall, you might want to have a blanket for underneath your head. And then, I like to start kneeling facing away from the wall, and then come forward like I'm going to do child's pose, and roll (vrooms like an airplane) right over onto my back, and then I can adjust myself. And if you're very loose-muscled, your pelvis might be touching the wall, but for most of us with a little tightness in the hamstrings or in the low back, it's helpful to be on a slight diagonal with the legs away from the wall, so it's fine to have the pelvis away from the wall.

Take your arms up onto the sides and then shift your weight to your left shoulder a bit and pull the right shoulder blade down. Shift the weight to the right shoulder, pull the left shoulder blade down. If you're more comfortable with your hands resting onto your belly, that's also a fine place to be. And see if you can give yourself full permission to rest and be quiet and be still. And let yourself sink into the stillness.

And if you notice thoughts come, see if you can let them also go. Thoughts are much like clouds in the sky. If you let them go, they'll keep floating by. And that's our job here, just for another minute or two. Rest in your skin, let go.

If you have the time to stay here another five minutes, 10 minutes, feel free to do that. Sometimes I find it helpful to set a timer so that there's some parameter. But if you have lots of time, it can also just be open relaxation. If you're ready to come out, however, let your knees bend, sliding the feet down the wall, and then roll over to one side. Press into your hands, make your way up to sit, and you can sit with your back right against the walls for some support.

It's also fine, take your time, find a seat that works for you. If you want to sit upon a blanket or a bolster, you're encouraged to take care of yourself in every and all ways. Take a moment to notice the residue of this practice. How do you feel now? These poses are important only if they make you feel better as you sit, as you walk, as you are in your everyday activities.

When we take the time on our mat to work with our bodies and our breath, we're gonna brighten ourselves. Like a pebble dropping into a pond, the effect can just ripple out. So I thank you for practicing, for taking the time. Take good care of yourself. Namaste.