Day 15: Thank You, Self

(ocean waves) Hey, welcome back to Yoga Anytime. It's your good friend Robert here. Number 15, halfway there. I thought about it before starting this and I just wanted to acknowledge you signed onto this to practice with me. Thank you for trusting me.

It feels awesome to be able to do this and share this with you. Thanks. Number 15, we're gonna chill out a little bit. We're gonna start seated, slow down. Last practice was a little more boom, so we're gonna ooh, ground.

All right, so, as always, palms together, ground, close your eyes, and let's genuinely arrive. You and I, arrive and practice together. So close the eyes, take a breath in. Long, slow, grounding breath out. Let's do that again, one more time, breathe in.

And breathe out. Perfect. Number 15, that's it, you're done. (laughs) Okay. Maintain that connection, maintain that breath and let's do a little side stretch.

So take the left arm out, you can tent up on the fingers, reach the right arm high. Reach on over. If you wanna bend that left arm, if you have the freedom there to bend. But try to maintain equal length in both sides of the body. You can also take the hand behind the head.

I kinda like that option. Back up to center. Switch it up. Right hand down, left arm reach up. Come on over.

Place the hand behind the head if that's of any interest to you. Open the chest, stretch. Good, bring it back up to center. Exhale. Good.

Palms at the chest, breathe in. As you exhale, let's come over to the left. So stay tall, twist, twist, twist. And now once you've kind of maxed out, take the right hand to the left thigh and the left hand back behind you. And you may have a little bit more once you've got the arms here to lift the chest, roll the shoulders down.

And on the exhale, kind of pull the stomach in a little bit and then take the gaze over the left shoulder, and just kind of wring it out a little bit. Good, try this, right? We won't spend too much time on it, but if you pull your right shoulder away from the neck and then the head over to the left, there's a little neck stretch to be found there. Good. When you have more time you can explore that another day.

Good, twist. You can bring the palms to the chest or you can kinda just like, use your core to come over to the right side. Left hand to the right thigh, right hand back behind you. Sit up tall, rest the shoulders, twist. If you pull the left shoulder away from you and the head tips to the right, it's a little added benefit there.

Good, bring it back over to center. You can take a little casual counter twist. Take the arms up, breathe in, and reach out as far up and out as you can. Exhaling. Good, slide up.

Reach your hands back behind you, tent your fingers or plant your palms down. From here, kinda tip back a little bit, take the shoulders, and pull them back. Pull the shoulders back. Maybe come back a little bit more and push, like a bridge pose. Take the chest and push it forward.

Maybe let the head drop back just a little bit. Good, bring it back up to center. Bring the hands to the knees. Cat cow but seated, right? So chin to the chest, push the hands into the knees, push the back back, pull your belly in, round out the back like cat pose.

Inhale. Like that cow facing pose, arching the back. Two more. Exhale, round it out. Good, inhale.

Exhale. Inhale. Good, exhale, back to neutral. Right on, good start. Child's pose.

Come on over onto your hands and knees. Take a breath in and as always, enter the posture with the exhale. Wiggle from side to side, taking a little bit of time to kind of find your way into the pose. Constantly developing or cultivating this nice personal, intimate relationship with yourself. Based in positivity, love, gratitude.

Good. Come up onto your hands and knees, let's take it into downward dog. But what I want you to do is sometimes we're moving so fast. Like, curl the toes under, feel that sensation. Then you're gonna reach the seat back and take the time to kinda feel your way through it.

Now once you've done that, lift the knees. Shoot the seat up. Pedal it out through the heels, right? So one leg straightens, the other one bends. Coordinate some kind of breath with the movement.

Spine is long. Cultivating a sense of quiet in the practice today. Calm, peace, quiet. Lift your right leg up. Send it up to the right pinky.

Send it out wide. Good. And you can set the back knee down or keep it lifted. With the wide foot, like, off of the mat. Knee down or lifted, up to you.

Left hand supporting you. So we're still in that like, mellow vibe, right? But you need a certain amount of effort to hold the shapes. Take the hand, right fingertips to the temple. We're gonna get some big movement here.

Reach the right elbow as far down to the mat as you can and then open it all the way up. Good. Somewhere in that range of motion or range of movement you find your sweet spot. Open. Good.

Okay, bring it back. Bring the hand down to the mat, both hands to the mat, step back into plank pose. Okay. With or without your knees, three slow pushups, okay? So working the strength but slowly.

Inhale lower. Exhale. Inhale lower. Exhale, brace the belly and pull yourself up. It's almost like you're pulling and pushing at the same time.

One more time. Pull and push, good. Now with control, lower all the way down. Point the toes back, slide your hands back by your ribcage, lift your palms, lift your chest. Good.

Then take like, it's like the surfing, like you're on a surfboard or you're swimming. And just kinda like, make that crawl movement with your arms. Keep the chest up. Good, just a couple more. We wanna get that back nice and strong.

Okay. Reach out, get long, pull the elbows all the way back. Stay lifted, palms down by your ribs, inhale, push gently. Exhale for a brief child's pose. Inhale table.

Exhale downward dog. Lift your left leg up, breathe in. On your exhale, send that left foot way out by the left pinky. Keep the right knee lifted or bring it down for more support. Left fingertips at the temple or behind the head.

So what you're gonna do is begin to reach that left elbow down, and when you do that, inner left thigh, groin, is gonna feel a deep stretch. And then open up. Little bit of a twist. Bit of opening up through the chest. Find a little free flow movement there.

Breathing in as you lower. And breathing out as you come up. You can also breathe out as you lower, breathe in as you rise up. One more time. Good.

Bring it on down. Step back into plank again. One push up, slowest. Use your knees if that's gonna make it more useful for you. Pause in plank, breathe in.

Slowly lower down. Point your toes back. Now press the tops of your feet, like crazy down into the mat. That way your kneecaps lift, okay? Push your hips down into the mat.

Strong legs, push the hips down. Lift your chest. Good. Reach the arms out. Field goalpost.

Field goalpost shape, right? Now lower down. Reach as you lower down, breathe in. As you exhale lift your chest and pull the arms back into that field goal shape. Breathe in, reach, lower, breathe out.

You don't need to look up. Keep the head in line with the spine, okay? Two more. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Hands underneath the shoulders. Gently push a little bit more. Breathe in.

Exhale, tabletop. Nice. Inhale, cat pose. Exhale-- Oh, inhale cow pose, sorry. Exhale, cat.

One more, breathe in. Breathe out. Cat pose, cat pose. Nice. Back into a neutral position.

From here, curl your toes under and come to sit up on your knees. Your knees, shins, and toes, all right? Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Isn't that some sorta song? But we just said knees, shins, and toes.

It's a different song. So, camel pose. It's a back bend, right? But let's not even call it a back bend. Let's just call it like, heart shining, stretching your chest open posture, all right?

Sometimes the backbend, people think about the low back and we really wanna eliminate the low back in this posture, okay? So for the first moment here, what I want you to do is get that tailbone, extend it down. Look at the difference between here, tilted forward. If I come into the pose like here now, that's just not, it's not great at all. So, tailbone.

Down, neutral, okay? Shoulders back. Now take the hands to your bottom. I like this version. So if I take my thumbs-- I'll turn around so you can see.

Hands around my waist, thumbs drawing toward one another, supporting my low back, okay? From here, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna keep pushing down as I push my hips forward, keep my tailbone down. And then really all I wanna do is pull my shoulders back and just begin to get that flavor, that sense of what that feels like. What did we call it? We called it heart shining like, crazy open pose.

(laughs) Something like that. So push chest up and back. Tailbone down, tailbone down. I don't feel not a thing in my low back. All I feel for myself, for me, is my upper body opening and stretching.

Nice, good. So so far, you can stay right here and you can even reach your arms back behind you, hold onto a wrist, opposite wrist, and pull the shoulders back. Kinda rock that out. Or do what I just did. Or if you're feeling somewhat, a little more ambitious, take the right arm, reach it back to the right heel.

Left arm to the left heel, okay? I haven't changed that pelvic tilt. I'm drawing my tailbone down like crazy. I'm pushing my hips forward. Instead of just leaning back I'm actually kinda pulling my heels up.

And then my chest up. No low back funk. Not at all. Breathing. Chin to the chest, come out very neutral.

Left hand on the left hip, right hand on the right hip. Walk your knees together, your thighs together. Untuck the toes. The counter pose, so we just had this really nice, long, extended spine. The counter pose more of a flexed spine, like cat pose.

So now with my knees together, child's pose. Belly's going to rest on my thighs. Situate yourself. And immediately, if you're able to kind of get down in this position you can feel the counter pose. From right around my like, mid to low back all the way down is this nice counter pose.

Hands on the heels possibly. Maybe I rest my hands stacked on one another. Head on the hands, some kind of support for the head. If you're feeling-- When you come into child's pose, right? With the knees together and you feel like it's hard to breathe, it's totally normal because your stomach is kind of pressing into your thighs.

So see if you can just kinda figure that out. Okay. Once you feel like you've got that counter pose done, we're gonna push up and time for where? Where do you think? On the old back.

Good guess. All right. And this is where you can also get that child's pose sensation, that counter pose. So once I've landed on my back and I can kinda pull my knees in and get that same child's pose counter pose. You can see if you watch me here, my back is kinda goin' like so.

It's not the extended, it's more of the flex. Now from here, take your knees out as wide as you can. This is a pose we've not done together yet. Knees out wide. Then take your hands through, palms facing down, through the knees.

Now let the right hand rest on the top of the right shin, just below the knee. And the left hand at the top of the shin just below the knee on the left, okay? Both arms are totally straight. Now let your legs completely relax. Your heels draw down toward your seat.

So this, to me, is a very sort of like, level one, doable. Doable Happy baby. Also known as dead bug. If you feel like you wanna go a little bit deeper, it's just not quite enough, you start to reach the feet up over the knees and slide your hands up to the calves, maybe. Or maybe even the ankles.

Or even, like for me, I like to hold onto the outer edges of my feet, but I'm not gonna stay rounded like this, on like a turtle shell. What I'm gonna do, 'cause I know I have the ability, is to draw my-- Make sure my neck is long, head long, and breathe. Now most of my back is grounded and I've got this big wide position in my feet for me to rock side for side and massage my back. Now my friends, my friend, do this. Stay here for as long as you'd like or bring the feet down.

Bottoms of the feet together, arms down by your side. Long neck. Take a full breath in. Long breath out. Relax every muscle in your body.

Like totally time to chill. Chill, relax, let go. Let the floor support you. No muscular effort whatsoever. Soft eyes.

All the muscles in your face relaxed. So, unless you're in a rush, stay here. I'll transition up to sit but stay here. And as you're lying there on your back continue to relax all the muscles. Don't feel rushed.

See if you can really enjoy another minute or two minutes with your eyes closed, relaxing. So, to close out, again, thank you for all your trust and for your efforts. It means a lot to me. We're halfway through. We are halfway through.

Good job. Good job, well done, namaste, peace, have a amazing day.