Day 23: Hip Hip Hooray

(waves crashing) Hey there, welcome back to Yoga Anytime. This is practice number 23, we're getting so close. And we're still outside. I can't even express how cool this is for me to be able to practice outside and share what I love with you. So I'm not sure where you're practicing, but I hope it's comfortable.

Front of the mat, let's begin. (clearing throat) Get your feet grounded, get your legs strong. Get your breath right. (inhaling deeply) Bring the palms to your chest. (exhaling) Let's take a breath together.

Breathe in. Breathe out. (exhaling loudly) Let's do that again. Breathe in. Breathe out.

(exhaling loudly) One more time. Breathe in, and breathe out. (exhaling loudly) Inhale, the arms out and up. Big sweeping inhalation. Exhale, we're gonna move a little slower, so forward bend, just a little slower than last practice.

Inhale, lift up half way, bend those knees if you'd like you. Lift your chest, bring the right foot back. On the exhale, bring the knee down. Untuck the toes and go ahead and come on up. Take the right hand on the left thigh.

Left hand back behind you, go ahead, a little twist to the left here. You can extend your left arm back. Come back over to center. Take the right arm, reach it up. Send yourself over for a little lateral flexion, a little lateral bend.

You can take your right hand on the left wrist to help encourage that up and over. Good. Both arms up, breathe in. Breathe out, bring the hands down. Step back into downward dog, inhale into a plank pose.

Exhale your way down, half way. Inhale, upward facing dog. Exhale, downward facing dog. Take the right leg, lift it and send it up to the right thumb. Bring the back knee down.

Good. You find your position for the lunge, it feels good, right? It feels appropriate for you. Take the left hand on that right thigh, shoulders down, long spine, right hand on the back. Begin to rotate and twist open to the right.

You can look over the right shoulder and also release that right arm out. (exhaling loudly) Beautiful, right back to center. Take both arms up, take hold. We'll start right away by taking the left wrist with the right hand, and reach up and over to the right. Beautiful, good.

Inhale, arms up, exhale bring the hands down. Step the left foot up to meet your right, exhale. Bend the knees a lot, tuck the tailbone. Get really rounded here and roll up. Inhale, the arms high, sweeping them high.

Exhaling, forward bend. Inhale, lift the chest. Lengthen your spine. Brace the belly. And then exhale, your left leg back, knee down.

Arms up, and then circle back behind you. We'll take the hands back behind us, interlacing the fingers. Taking the chest forward. Shoulders back. If this is difficult, we're gonna hold three more breaths, but if this is difficult to hold, you can always just kinda rest the hands at the back to help encourage the chest open.

Can always take the hands behind the head as well. Okay, bring the hands down. Grab a blanket. You might wanna pause this, grab your blanket, and roll it up like so, as best you can. We're gonna introduce pigeon, but fully prone facing forward pigeon.

So I like to bring it here, about middle of the way, middle of the mat, and pigeon-- so if the right leg is forward, the stretch will be through the right glute. This little band, this IT brand region, okay? So I'm gonna walk the right foot over to the left, place my knee down on right side of the mat. The idea here is to try to get your left hip to point downward, hips square. You might wanna bring your right heel a little closer to your groin.

If you need a little more, like if you're just like, "what, are you kidding me with this?" Get more blanket, and post up underneath your seat for support. Okay? I'm pretty good here. Extend the left leg back. A shape like this, in the very beginning, if you've not done it, it takes a little bit of time. So take the time necessary, find your spot, find your breath.

Make sure that it's useful, you feel like you're in it, and you're like, "alright, this makes sense to me". If you'd like to bring your arms forward, bring your arms forward. Stack your fists, if you have your block nearby, you can use a block. One important queue is to point your right toes directly forward. This will engage a lot of the muscle, tendon, ligaments around your knee, to protect your knee.

If the pose is really challenging, you know, you feel this big, tight hold. If your breath in the same, right? You're just gonna feel kinda stuck. So what I invite you to do, is adjust so it's not so intense, but even more importantly, open the breath, especially the (exhaling deeply), the exhales, okay? Let's go a couple more breaths.

That exhale has the potential to be so calming and cooling. Alright, push back up. So your exit strategy may be a little different than mine. I'm gonna place the blanket just here, because I'm gonna reuse it on the other side. So keep it nearby.

Curl the back toes, push yourself up and sweep that leg back. Downward facing dog. I like to lift that right left that was just under here, lift it, now open it. Bring the left leg down. We'll take it through a little vinyasa, like a little transition.

So come into plank on the breath in, exhale, lower down. Inhale, upward facing dog, and exhale, downward facing dog. Take the left leg, lift it on the breath in. Exhale, engage the core, send it all the way forward, bring the back knee down. Lunge, arms up, just as we did before.

Find that hand position behind your back. Anything that helps bring the shoulders from a forward position to open. (exhaling loudly) Good. Take the arms up, breathe in. And now we'll exhale, bring the hands down.

Grab your blanket, pillow, cushions, whatever you have, whatever you need to keep your hips square and feel supported. Bring the left foot over the right side of the mat, and your left knee down onto the left side of the mat. You can really see clearly here, my foot. It's not lazy at all, it's really active, pointing straight away. You can bring your heel a little closer to the blanket, if you'd like, if that frees up the hip.

Right hip, draw it toward the blanket and then scoot that right knee back. Okay. That's good for me, so I'm hoping you found your spot. (exhaling loudly) And once you find that shape that feels like you can do this, walk it forward. Support your head.

Alright, so this is a good pose for holding only what's necessary. Use the only muscular effort necessary to hold you in the shape, and then learn and practice letting go of what's not necessary to hold. Shoulders relaxed. Neck and head. (exhaling) Okay.

You're gonna slowly push back up. This transition, you're gonna keep the blanket nearby. We're gonna enter a pose. If you haven't noticed, this is kinda a hip centered sequence. We're gonna get into a pose called frog.

So, let's take it back up into downward dog. Lift the left leg high, spill the hip open to just kind of free that up. You can roll through the hip. And now, bring the left foot down. Bring your knees down.

I'll face you. So I've got plenty of cushion here. If you'd like to use a blanket for your knees, set that up, you know, come into the shape, and then if you need to... I'll just show you. You can take the blanket out about this wide.

Now bring your knees down, and it's like a wide version of child's pose to begin. Okay, so your knees are really wide. Now bring your big toes to touch and then your seat comes back toward the heels. Okay, this is sort of like the first progression. So knees wide, big toes reaching toward one another.

Inner thighs, groin going, "hmm". (chuckling) There's just sorta like, maybe you feel intense here, maybe you don't, but the next spot is going to be, lean forward and now bring your feet out. My right foot's in line with my right knee, left foot's in line with my left knee, pointing the toes out. Now here, I've got much less range of motion. When I bring my seat back, now it's like, whoa.

So I'd like you find your safe, like, (grunting softly), posture, okay? And what we'll do is, we'll kinda settle into it for a little bit of time. At least, we'll say five very long, extended breaths. So just like pigeon, you're gonna wanna like, relax where you do not need to be engaging. Send that intensity, that tension in the hips.

Nothing but positivity, compassion and kindness through breath. (exhaling loudly) Okay, now make your way out of the pose nice and slow. Maybe even come forward and start back where we were before. Big toes to touch, take your knees a little bit more narrow, so it's like a big child's pose. Good, now come forward.

And I can just leave the blanket just like this. Come on down to your seat. Roll down to your back, and right away draw that left knee into the chest, then the right. Extend long through the opposite leg. Good.

Now the left comes in to join the right. Both hands on the inside of your legs. Take hold of the shin on the left and the right, just below the knee. Then let the legs kinda collapse into the arms, so the arms are supporting the legs. You're basically lying on your back now in this more passive frog pose.

Slide the hands up toward the outer edges of your feet, or actually on the outer edges of your feet. Let the head and shoulders come back down to the mat, and now rock side to side. So your feet are, as best you can, get them over the knees. If you're a little on the bendy side, you can practice straightening one leg, straightening the other. You know, as we come into 23 practices together, we can really begin to explore each posture.

You have full license with each and every pose to make your own, creating and developing your own practice. Good, let the feet come down. Pause. (exhaling loudly) Bring the bottoms of your feet together, let the arms come out, relax. Whenever you feel like straightening your legs, straighten your legs.

And today, my friends, we will have an extended relaxation together. So we'll spend about a minute and a half here lying completely rested on your back. So first, take a deep breath in and exhale fully. (exhaling loudly) And let's get in the practice here, we'll probably have about a minute to go in the relaxation. I'm not gonna say anything.

Just simply relax every single muscle in your body for the next minute, you and I together. Okay, begin you move your fingers, your toes, let your neck drift from side to side. Roll your wrist, point your toes forward, point your toes back. Beginning to come back into your body after that short rest. Stretch your arms over head.

(exhaling loudly) Roll to your side. I'll roll to my left, as I've been doing. Knees bent, like really curl up here and let your head rest on your arm. Full license to get comfortable. And push up to sit.

(breathing out) Man, hips, we got in there. In just 20 minutes we got in some space there. So, I love it, hopefully you're able to kinda access some pleasure there. I always enjoy spending this time with you. So, again, thank you.

Number 23, wow, getting so close. Namaste, blessings, peace, have an awesome day.