Day 29: Practice Presence

Hey, welcome back to Yoga Anytime. This is practice number 29. I can't even believe it, but we made it to 29. Today I thought we would add one more pose that we have not done yet, and that's revolved half moon. It's not easy, I don't practice it very often, but I'm gonna practice it today here with you.

We'll see together how we do, alright? So there's a little flow in the beginning. As always, we usually always, usually, start at the front of the mat and warm through sun salutations. Today we'll do that, but then we'll kinda stop and we'll do individual poses holding for about five breaths a piece. So remember, quality over quantity my friends.

Here we go. So, our ritual. Palms at your heart, ready to practice. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Couple rounds of sun salutations. Breathe in, circle the arms up, and for this round, take the arms out. A little different. I usually bring the arms down the center line, but like a swan dive they say, swan dive the arms down. That's the exhale.

Inhale, lift halfway. Exhale, step into down dog. Take one breath into plank pose. If you're ready, bring the knees down or not. Lower down, low push-up.

Inhale for your cobra or upward facing dog, whatever you're feeling. Hold it for a breath here. Roll the shoulders back. Long spine, connected. Good, downward dog, exhale.

Gonna make a little journey up to the front of the mat, so I like to personally come up onto my fingertips, step, step, and step. Fold, exhale. Inhale, lift half, and exhale. Ujjayi breath is very present in your practice today. Soft knees, tuck the tailbone, roll up.

Good. Let's do another one. Breathe in, arms high. Breathe out, swan dive. Inhale lift halfway, exhale plank pose.

Pause here while you hold a strong plank. Heels back, legs strong, core braced. Shift your body weight forward a little bit. Exhale lower, inhale upward facing dog. Exhale, downward facing dog.

Ujjayi, Ujjayi. Good. That audible, ocean-sounding breath flowing. Just think of it as life, you know? They call if life force, prana, energy, so just think of it as that flowing through you body, and you're in control of it.

You can breath shallow or you can breathe more consciously and powerfully. Walk up to the front of the mat. Fold, exhale. Inhale lift halfway, exhale fold. Strong legs, rise up, breathing in.

Exhaling palms to the chest. If you feel like you wanna do another couple rounds, go for it, or step the left foot back, warrior one. So just the left so you get a little balance every time. Lift the left leg, step back. Check in with the feet, heel to heel, pretty safe.

A little wider, even safer. Not safer, more accommodating, let's say. Put the angle on the back foot, draw the left hip forward. Inhale the arms up overhead. Interlace your fingers.

Draw the index fingers long, and then cross your thumbs. Once you get the posture set, you get the framework of the pose done, we'll start with five breaths. Ujjayi breaths breathing in and breathing out. Breathe in, breathe out. You can feel as you inhale a little more length happen and if that's the case, you keep that length as you exhale.

One more time, breathe in, breathe out, palms to the chest. Lift the left heel. Step the left foot up to meet your right. Feet hip width. Inhale the arms up high, exhale palms to the chest.

Okay, lift the right, step back, bring the heel down. I really don't need to even look down. Personally, I feel like I've got it. I'm gonna interlace my fingers, so I get he framework done, and then rise up on the breath in, and go to that place in the pose where you almost feel like there's a little shaking happening, right? You're engaging necessary muscles in the legs.

Lifting and stretching through the side body. Breath, that prana, that life force flowing throughout your entire body. Just kind of like imagine that. Imagine that, and you're in full control of that, and really what it simply comes down to is that it just makes you feel a little bit better, a little bit more energy. Good, one more big breath.

Exhale, good, palms to the chest. Square off the hips and step the right foot up to meet the left. Feet hip width, grounded in mountain pose. Inhale, circle the arms up. Exhale, palms to the heart center to your chest.

Warrior two. Lean to the right a little bit, lift the left, step back. This time warrior two. You got your hips open, right? You have your hips open, back foot open.

Straighten the front leg, breathe in, and now exhale, just land it. Land the posture. Feel free to close your eyes. You know the mechanics. You've been practicing, right?

29, 29 20 minute practices here with me. You and I together, warrior two for three more breaths. There's that sense of like, really grounding and calming. You don't need to even focus on engaging. It just becomes more natural, more sort of intuitive and instinctual.

One more breath, breathe in. Breathe out, straighten the front leg. Bring the palms to your heart. Point your toes forward. Wide leg forward bend.

Bend the knees, breathe in. Push the hips back, long spine, forward bend, exhale. Five breaths. You may even come up a couple times, breathing in, lengthening, kind of wiggling into the pose. Exhale.

(breathes deeply) Feeling through the feet, engaging some muscular, right, little muscle up through the inner thighs. Okay, come back up out of the pose. Bend those knees a little bit. Hands on the hips, come all the way up. Let's go to the back of the mat, warrior two.

Point the back toes, straighten the front leg for a moment. Get your alignment and then land, right, and land with the exhale. So take the breath in with me, exhale. The gazing point in this posture is over the left middle finger if you'd like to keep your eyes open. For some reason, for me, warrior two is always eyes closed.

Eyes closed. Minimize the distractions. One more breath, breathe in, and breathe out. Good, straighten the front leg. Bring the palms to your chest and go ahead and just turn your feet toward the front of the mat where we began, lift the back heel, step all the way up.

Inhale the arms high, exhale palms to your heart center. I also like to call this, like, home base, like, back home, right here. Okay, lunge with a twist. So lean to the right, lift the left, step back, feet hip width. A nice long, healthy lunge.

Now you can take the twist just like so, left hand on the right thigh, right arm back behind, right, that's option one. I prefer in this one here to lean forward, definitely pull the stomach in on the exhale so there's this space being created. My right hand on the right thigh, long spine, and then the rotation, you can see, there's the rotation. My hips aren't moving, hips aren't moving. Left elbow hooks over, palms pressing together, back leg is strong.

Breath, life force, prana flowing. Create the shape and then just completely drop into the experience. That breath, body unification, right, that union. Active in the belly with the breath. From here, I'm actually gonna grab my block, so you can grab yours and bring it over somewhere around my right foot.

I'm gonna have to kinda switch it up possibly, but go ahead and come back to center, come out for a moment, straighten that front leg. Okay, start with warrior three. So the work into that revolved half moon, which is difficult, we start in warrior three. So go ahead and launch up, hips are nice and square, right leg definitely fatigued. Now that left hand is gonna come down to the block, maybe the block is about a foot out in front of your right toes.

Left hip draws down. Begin to take the chest open to the right. I'm gonna move the block over a little bit to the left so it's below my shoulder. Hips are square, strong right leg. Now open that right chest, like the chest, and your right shoulder, open it up, open it up, hips are square.

Feel free to reach that right arm high. Use the block on that high level. Bring the ground up to you, up, up, up. Lift the left leg, strong left leg. Nice, now slowly come back out, back into that warrior three.

Good, step back into the lunge. Breathe in, reach up. Breathe out, palms to the heart. Step the left foot up to meet your right. My right leg got so fatigued there.

Good job. I don't know about you, but that's definitely a very challenging posture for me. So, okay. Let's clear that one away. Let's see how it is on the left side.

Inhale the arms high. Exhale, palms to your heart. Step back into lunge, and for me personally, twisting to the left is a little more difficult, so I'm gonna go ahead and come right into it. I'm gonna lean forward. Quality connection to everything happening.

Relaxed, belly in. Right elbow over the left thigh. Create the twist. Steady and clam. Okay, slowly come out.

Minimize that stance, so the distance between right and left foot. The block's pretty good where it is. Bend my right leg and then float up into that warrior three. Left leg is already fatigued. Right hand down on the block on the highest level.

Good, so make sure that left leg's strong, hips are square, right leg is lifted as high as you can get it and drive your right heel back. Now begin to open the chest. The left part of your shoulder, right, and your chest opens out to the left. Hips are square, hips are square. Left arm reaches up, steady gaze.

What I love about this one is it requires every bit of my attention. Good, slowly come out. Come back into the lunge. Inhale the arms high. Exhale, palms to the chest.

Step up, mountain pose. Inhale your arms high and palms to the chest, exhale. Good job on the standing, standing little series there. Take your feet out. I'm gonna move my block away.

Squat, so we'll basically just come down, squat, pause for one breath, and roll down to our back. So come down, open up the hips. Okay, now come to sit. This one, actually, in the beginning I didn't really prep you, but this is another pose we haven't done yet. This is boat pose.

So we'll start like so. My body, nice and long, okay? I'm not rounding here at all. What I wanna do is keep this upper body exactly like so. I'm gonna hold onto the backs of my hamstrings to lift my feet up.

Keep the chest open. Nice, braced core here. So there's all kinds of things you can do here. You can straighten your arms. You can straighten one leg.

You can straighten the other leg. You can straighten both legs. Brace through the belly. Nice, strong posture here. Connected breathing.

Good, knees bent, slowly roll down. Bring your feet down to the mat. Arms out, windshield wiper your knees from side to side. So for this 20 minute sequence we spent a little more time standing in some of the standing poses. So if you feel later, after we close out, you'd like to do a few more things, go for it.

You know by now what your body kind of craves or needs. Okay, bring your knees back to center. Hug the knees into the chest. The great equalizer. Okay, feet down, slide out.

Arms away from the body, legs long, arms long. Lift the head, chin to the chest, set the head back down. Breath in, breath out. Rest. Let's take three breaths together, kind of building a little bit of energy, right, so we took a short rest.

I'll take another two breaths. Breathe in and breathe out. One more time, breathe in. Okay, roll over to your side. Bend the knees, rest your head one moment there and then let's push up.

We'll meet back where we always meet together after every practice, 29 of them are met right here, you and I. Good job, 29, can't wait for 30. Thank you for showing up once again. Namaste.