Pre-Travel Practice

(waves splashing) We're gonna do a practice for getting ready to travel. So, you have to imagine the mindset that you're usually in when you're about to go on a journey and you might be on planes, trains, and automobiles, even going to foreign countries. And so this is a short sequence to really just set you up so that you'll be able to sit with ease in a chair for a long period of time because that's often what we're going through, of course, when we're traveling. It's also something that is intentionally not gonna be so vigorous that you'll actually end up, you know, really heavily stimulated because even though you're sitting still when you're traveling as we all know, it's very stimulating. It's very, very tiring actually for most people to travel.

So, this is kind of an energizing practice, but it's intentionally brief, so you can fit it into the time that you're gonna probably have reasonably available to you when you're getting ready to go on a wonderful trip. So the, this comes from the tradition of yoga that I practice called shadow yoga and this is the warm up. These are all practices we do each time before we get into a sort of main body of the yoga practice. So, to begin with, place your feet, actually with your heels together and your toes turned out. So, it's about like a 20, 30 degree angle with the feet.

And then you're gonna place your hands on your lower abdomen. And so, for men or people who identify with that gender, place your left hand below your navel with your right covering and for women or for people who identify with that gender, place your right hand below your navel with your left covering. And then, just begin by tuning into the balance of the weight on your feet. Tuning into your leg bones and your spine and creating a nice, it's a form of tadasana. This one with the heels turned in has a little more of an influence to open up the lines on the inner legs.

So, as you stand, take a moment and there's lots and lots of research out there now nowadays proving that if you visualize things going well, if you visualize yourself having positive interactions with people and things in your day, it goes a long way toward creating that possibility. So, as you stand here first, think something gentle, compassionate, towards your body. Because your body is actually the thing that actually has the hardest time traveling. The mind is all excited, but the body actually has to adjust to quite a big shift. And then take a few more moments and generate some kind of intention for the way that you're gonna interact with people, the way you're gonna move through your travel experience with grace, the way you're going to prepare yourself for any and all weirdness that might come your way.

And when you start to feel like you're grounded, you start to feel really steady, release your hands downward and then turn your feet so they're parallel and about hip distance apart. Wiggle your toes, wake up your feet. The first group of exercises are all joint mobilizations and so they're very simple. So, for men, take your left foot back and for women, you'll take your right foot back and we're just gonna do eight rotations of each of these. So, you begin to turn your left foot or your right foot outward.

That's two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Seven. Eight. Then go the other way. And you may have to adjust the spacing like I just did, like find out what really works and then you turn in and you wanna roll over the toes. The toes love this kinda thing.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. And then come back to center and we'll do the other side.

So, placing the foot back, take a moment to get poised, and then begin rotating outward. One. Two. Three. Four.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Go the other way.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. And step out again, comfortable width between your feet and now we're gonna do little circles with our nose. Circles can be as small or as large as feels comfortable.

So, first find what, how can you turn your nose in circles that feels really gentle balance for your neck and then we'll begin. So, one. Two. Three. Four.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Other way.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. Then, your shoulders, very simple. You're just gonna roll them back and down, so.

And one. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. Shoulder rolls the other way. One.

Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Seven. Eight. Then, bring your hands up. Interlace your fingers so they're just about in front of your, the middle of your chest, like your breast bone or your collar bones and your elbows are gonna hang together and that way it allows you to isolate a rotation in your wrist. So, we'll begin and you can go either direction.

One. Two. Three. There's two rolls for every count because these go really fast and it's good to do it this way. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. Other way. One.

Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Seven. Eight. And then release your hands down and this is a gentle twist. One. Two.

Three. So, as you twist side to side, you turn your head with your shoulders and you wanna actually restrain your hips and their turning a little bit 'cause that'll make it go up into your upper spine more. The upper back and the neck often suffer when we travel and so, it's a really nice motion to just loosen up any tension in the rip cage, chest, shoulders. It's good to do about 16, so we'll count the last eight out. One.

Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

Seven. Eight. And then come back to center and you make some little hip circles. Just swing your tailbone in a gentle circle. If you start to get a feeling for this, then notice that you keep your jaw completely relaxed and by doing that, it actually helps you to loosen up the top of the neck right where the neck connects into the base of the skull.

So, we'll do two more circles with the hips this direction. And then switch. And I'm not specifying which direction you go with any of these rolls because it actually doesn't matter. It's like, whatever you start with, you're gonna do both directions anyway. So, here's number four.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. And then you come back to center.

Step your feet together, hands on your knees, and this is actually for your ankles, as well. So you're gonna gently turn both ankles in a circle keeping your knees together. So now we'll begin bending the knees, circling the ankles. Two. Three.

As you do this, position the back of your neck, your low back, your tailbone in a way that's comfortable. Yeah, so that's six. Seven. Eight. Other way.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Seven. Eight. Good and now last ones. Step your feet out about shoulder width or maybe a little wider.

This is a standing spinal wave. It begins by bending your knees and sticking your tailbone back so you flex at your hips and then you curl your tailbone under and you roll up. Your head's the last to lift and you come right back to a balanced place in your feet. So, let's begin. Bend your knees, your hips come back, then tuck your tail and roll up.

One. Two. As you do this, really tune in to your spine and the feeling of areas where there's more tension in the spine. Four. Five.

Six. Keep your weight balanced on your feet the whole time. Seven. And last one. Eight.

Exhale here. As you do that, you're gonna start your ujjayi breath for a few rounds. So inhale, then stretch your arms out to the sides of your body and up. Raise your arms up above your head at the top of your breath and then exhale and weigh down. We'll do this two more rounds with some deep breathings.

If you know the ujjayi breath, you start that, if not, just deepen your breaths. So, inhale. If you choose to, you can look up. Top of the inhale's when your fingers meet and then you weigh the hands down the center line as you exhale. And everywhere your hands pass, bring your awareness to that part of your body.

And inhale one more time. And exhale down. Alright, so the next practice is actually one to help you tune up your organs of digestion and elimination. Because you know, weird food, weird water, weird everything when you travel. It's very easy, just the nervous system gets destabilized, gets stressed by travel that the digestive system will actually be inhibited by that and so this one actually is a very gentle way of massaging your internal organs, getting all the circulation happening in your digestive tract while you're traveling.

So, what you're gonna do is you're gonna place your hands on your legs. This practice is called uddiyana bandha kriya and so you'll bend your knees, your flex at your hips, and slide your hands down just above your knees. As you come to that position, drop your chin down. You find the level that you wanna be at, like for the, for visuals, I'm gonna stay up a little higher so you can see me. So, I'll start with my head forward and you see how I have really long arms and so I naturally have to let my shoulders come up, so you don't force the shoulders to come down.

You actually find a position where your arms are straight, your hands are engaged, but your relaxed up in the shoulder. And so if you're, as you're in this position, you exhale and feel the weight into your feet and your shin bones. Your chin comes down as you're completely empty of the breath, you're gonna gently draw your navel straight back towards your spine like this. And you relax and inhale. As you inhale, sink a little into the squat.

Exhale. Again relax through your throat, your eyes, your belly, your chest. Let all the action be in your legs and arms and then when you're empty completely, hold your breath out for a moment, relax your belly, and then draw your navel back in. And then release it forward and inhale one more round. Exhale here, again relaxing right through the core of the body from the mouth and the throat, the heart, the belly.

Keep the body really supported by the arms and legs, but the low back relaxed. The throat relaxed. The bottom of your exhale, just draw your navel straight back so you massage your abdominal organs. Release and inhale. We'll do one more round like that.

Three rounds. Exhale. Come on down, set yourself up. As you're empty, relax the abdominal. You see I actually, I consciously let my buddha belly out and then I rela-- and then I draw the navel back in.

And release it again to inhale. And as I inhale I notice my legs and my feet. And exhale. Release the belly and inhale. One more round, stay in the position.

Exhale completely. At the bottom of the exhale, relax the abdominal wall, then draw the navel back in towards the spine. And release the navel forward and inhale and this time stand. We're gonna drop right down into a squat. Turn your toes out about 45 degrees as you lower down and depending on your capacity here, land your hands first with your hips up fairly high and then if it's comfortable, you sink down so that you're in this position with the feet about shoulder width and the hips down.

So this position is called malasana and malasana literally means something that helps to improve elimination. And so, what's nice is to have the hands down on the ground and then bring your head up to normal, you know, kind of a neutral position with your neck and we'll take five breaths here. (breathing) Long, smooth ujjayi breaths. As you inhale, see if you can actually position your body so you can feel the resonance of the breath down into your abdomen and your pelvic bowl. If you can feel your breath, then the breath is stimulating those areas and that's really how you, how you keep the area functioning and circulating well.

That's what the yogis mean by building up the Prana. It's to actually have the Prana, which is inside the breath, nourish an area, and that improves the functioning of all of the tissues in that region. So, in this case, really targeting the low abdomen and back. Sort of reproductive of eliminatory organs. Good, last exhale here.

And then, inhale and as you come up, turn your feet back parallel with your hands down. If you need to bend your knees, please do and then we'll come in to uttanasana and you can have the feet hip width, or you can step the feet together and then as you fold here, you will relax at the elbow and broad at the shoulder and bring your forehead down so that your neck is relaxed. The bottom of that exhalation, pause at the end of that exhale for a moment and then take a deep inhale into your belly and your hips. Last one, exhale. And then coming up to standing.

Inhale yourself up to standing. And just stand in the mountain pose again, coming back to where we started. Bring the hands down on the lower abdomen. Relax your shoulders and ground through your feet. And again, and just, this is sort of your savasana.

It's like, the reason we're not doing anything on the floor is because you're gonna be sitting, likely sitting so much it's good to end standing because it keeps the body poised and you can move right into pickin' up your bags and walking out the front door, if that's the case. So, thank you and have a wonderful trip.