Free Spine, Free Mind

(ocean waves crashing) Welcome back, this practice we're going to begin sitting. If you have a blanket at home or zafu that you like to sit on, feel free to set that up now. This practice is going to focus on a lot shoulder opening and hip opening which will help free up our spine. Free the spine, free the mind. So when you get settled for sitting, try crossing mid-shins so you actually have the support of your heels out under your knees, that will feel really good.

And lift your chest so that your pubic bone drops straight down and you're off of your tail. You're not rocking back into your tail. Feel free to either leave your eyes open and look straight ahead or you can let your eyes close now and you're gonna bring your attention right to your nostrils, right to where the breath is entering and exiting at the nostrils, that soft smooth steady breath. Letting yourself land on the mat. And welcoming yourself into this spot.

Carving out this space in time. For your practice, knowing that you're successful because you have shown up. And gradually begin to increase the length of the breath and see if you can feel breath's movement into the sides of the ribs. Expanding those intercostal muscles right between each rib. You can feel the inhalation expand into the sides of the arms.

And now how about the back of the ribs. It's great, just a couple more breaths. Seeing if you can feel breath's movement in the back of your ribs. And now in the front of the ribs, let the ribs get nice and big and expanded. Now we're going to do the whole rib cage.

So sides, back, and front all together. Feeling for the whole rib cage sides, back, and front. The breath is one of the most powerful practices we have. The breath, the conscious breath, has the ability to regulate every single one of our body's systems. Alright, so now we're going to move into our cat and cow and you're going to do your best today to stay connected to that breath and the ribs, feeling that breath moving freely.

So as we exhale, you're going to lean back into your upper back. And then as you inhale, you're going to press your upper back forward, shrugging your shoulders and lift your head and then exhaling. Practice rolling under through the tail, pulling the navel deeply in. And do this a few more times together. Inhaling up.

And exhaling back. And inhaling up. And exhaling back. Last one. And then we're going to come up to seated for seated twist and just exhaling nice and easy, bringing that left hand to cross, inhaling, sit tall, and then exhaling, gently rotate the ribs.

And it's good to be gentle with our neck and our head here so we're not over craning with the neck, feeling that rotation come more from the ribcage. And when you exhale, you can draw the navel back, just one more breath in this direction. And then we'll exhale and we'll flow our arms around to the other side. And then take a moment, get set, inhaling nice and tall. And then exhale, take it a little deeper.

Listening for your ujjayi pranayama pulling it into the back of the throat. Right where the nostrils, nasal passage meets the throat. And play with getting the eyes really steady here, bringing them around to the corners of the eyes. Good and then we're going to inhale together back to center, we're going to open up our arms and interlace our hands, giving them a good squeeze with our shoulders, we're going to inhale our head up and hands straight down to the floor. And we don't want to let the head fall back, we want to keep lifting it skyward.

So you're creating a long arch through the back of your neck here as you're opening up your chest, one more breath. And then as we exhale, we're going to come up to seated, and bring the hands around to one side. And we're going to play with opening up the neck. So you can just begin to drop the ear over toward the hands. Inhaling and exhaling, and then you want practice breathing into the side that you're turning away from.

Feeling that in the scalenes, the front of the neck muscles. And you can play with different positions for the head so if you were to pull your chin further down, you're going to feel it more in the back of your neck. Kind of back side. You'll see that feels a little bit different than when we had our chin up and it was in the front. Inhale, let's come back to center together.

And we're going to exhale the arms to the other side. And dropping the head over in that direction. And so go for the front side of the neck first. Bringing the chin out. And if it feels good you can even pull the chin out even further.

You ought to be able to feel this all the way from your pack, from your chest, all the way up the front side of your neck, to the bottom of your jaw. And see how that feels and then take a few breaths moving it into the back side of the neck. By drawing the chin down. So as you pull the chin down, the gaze is straight down toward the thigh. This is one of my favorite shoulder openers, I love this, neck and shoulders, and then together inhale, let's come back to center.

And we'll exhale and release, just giving everything a nice little wiggle, move it around, and we're going, I'm going to come off of one of my blankets, being on two blankets for seated extended side angle, I would be a little too high. So you can change your seat if you've been up on a zafu, you're probably going to want to come down or you can come down lower on a blanket if you've been up on two as well. And we're going to extend out through our right leg, pulling that left knee in, left foot in. And we're going to do a little kidney warming exercise. So the arms are going to be moving a lot and we're going to slide that left hand up our backside, rolling over our kidney spot.

So doing lots of movement and getting a swift movement with the arms, kidney warming exercise, and you're feeling that connection of the palms and hands to the body. As we come over, we're going to pause for the extension and then keep rubbing the kidneys, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub. So soothing. Inhaling, you can play with the arm, if you want to just relax it behind your back, you're welcome to do that or sweep it up and over like I'm doing now. And then taking two more breaths here.

See if you can lift and rotate the chest even though you're leaning farther and farther over. And then to come back up to seated we'll sweep that left arm up and we're going to wrap that right hand over to the left knee, moving into a twist. And keeping the neck soft here. And then exhaling, drop the left hand down to the floor, we're going to lift up off our seat, onto our left knee, right foot, nice big reach, opening up the whole front of the right side of the body. And then exhaling, lowering back down.

We're going to switch up the legs so you'll be bringing that right foot in and the left foot out. We're going to get into that kidney warming exercise again. And so remember, you're sliding the hands along the body and we want to bring them up here. So sliding, sliding, getting that good warming in the kidneys. And then as we go over, we're going to pause, and get the kidneys, good good rub.

Yeah, it helps to nourish the adrenals and the kidneys jing, adrenals are responsible for cortisol production, inhaling, and remember you can do that, you can do the relaxed arm variation with the drop neck and head if you like. Or we can keep playing with that sweep. And then as you inhale, you're going to lift the chest and create a little bit more rotation towards the sky. We're going to come into our twist. So our right arm is going to sweep and our left arm's gonna come across to that right knee.

And gentle twist, you want to keep your sit bones down on the ground, that left seat is going to get lighter, but we still want to let it keep dropping toward the blanket or the floor and not letting it roll forward. One more full breath here. We're going to drop that right hand down into our lift. So we're coming right up onto that right knee, left foot rooting down to the ground, finding that big side stretch. Great big breath.

Just one more full breath here. And then we'll exhale back to the floor. And we're going to open up the right leg for upavishta konasana. So making the feet active and we want to do our best to keep our knees and our feet straight up and down. So they're not rotating back or falling forward and especially when you come out onto the floor be careful so you're not letting the knees rock inward, keeping the legs nice and active, and then feel free to relax the head and come as low as it feels comfortable for you, if you have a block at home, you could set it underneath your forehead.

Great big breaths here, settling in, a little deeper, breath by breath. And then with our last exhalation here, we're going to inhale ourselves back to seated. We're gonna take our hands to the insides of the knees and pull the soles of our feet together for baddha konasana. And for baddha konasana you could grab the ankles, you could grab the feet, you could also just let the hands land on the floor, so just relaxing your body down, softening into it, curling inward, and practice circulating the breath, so breathing up the front of the spine. Looping it through the crown and back down.

Letting the breath take you on that inner tour of the body. And then inhaling, we're gonna come up to seated. And sitting tall and I'm going to be turning this way because we're going to start doing some rock and rolls. For rocking and rolling, it's great to grab the backs of the knees and then so what you would do, is you'd be using your lower leg to pump you forward and back so that you're not engaging your neck and your shoulders and it's gonna allow you to create a nice smooth roll through the spine. Sometimes the mat or the floor can feel too hard and you need extra padding underneath the vertebrae, feel free to pause and set that up so it feels really good.

Just a couple more here. And then we're going to do our best to pop to our feet in a squat, you might be able to do this without your hands and you may just need a little push from the backside, either way. We're going to go wide with the feet. And we'll settle in, if the heels are lifted off the floor, no problem, you can just leave them like that or you could slide your blanket up underneath your heels for support. Breathing right into the bowl of the pelvis.

Low belly, pelvic floor awareness. Breathing into the back of the sacrum. The sacrum's that big flat bone, well actually it's a group of bones at the base of your spine. And then we're going to stretch out onto our toes. And come into uttanasana.

And we're going to move into some lunging, just to warm up the legs, inhaling, so you're going to come halfway. And then stepping that right foot back, nice big lunge, sink into the hips, lift the heart, lift the chest. You can be on your fists or your fingertips, you can even come up and use your blocks if you like. And then we're going to step that right foot forward. And we're going to move that exhaling left foot back.

Sinking into it. Nice deep breaths, reaching through that left heel, one more full breath, then we're going to step back to uttanasana. And we're going to widen our stance here. Let the head hang one more time. Great big exhalation and then as we inhale, we're going to life the chest, extend the arms, sit the hips back behind the heels and then we're going to come all the way up to standing.

So you're going to squeeze from the undersides of the bums as you reach and then just throw the arms down. We're going to move into garudasana, balancing pose. So I'm going to begin with that chair but the feet are coming together now. We're going to bend into the knees, stretch the arms open, take the right arm under the left, and the right leg up and over the bent left leg, wrapping to the best of your ability. And then we want to do our best to actually settle back toward our heel.

Keeping our hips in that neutral hinged position. So watch for not tucking the tail under here. Nice big breaths. Shrugging the shoulders down the back. If you like you can play with lifting the elbows.

And then give those knees a good squeeze towards each other. Great hip and shoulder opener here. Working with our balance, one more breath. And we'll come out of it, unwinding the arms first, and then the feet, legs, stretch, exhale sit, bending the knees, you're gonna wrap that left arm under the right this time and the left leg's coming up and over the right with our next inhale. And exhale, you're gonna wrap the foot around, do our best here.

And practice settling back into that heel. So garudasana is eagle pose, so you're nice and perched here. And with the eagle eye of your gaze, out of your right fingertips. And then we're going to fly off of our perch as we inhale and exhaling. We're going to come into salutations and a lunging sequence together.

Standing tall, together let's inhale our arms out and up, and exhaling finding that deep hinge. And then we're going to plant the hands and step through chaturanga, inhaling for plank. Exhaling, chaturanga, inhaling for cobra, or upward facing dog your choice. Exhaling for downward facing dog. We're going to be stepping our right foot forward for lunging.

Pressing though that right heel as you inhale your arms up and as we exhale we're going to bring the arms down and move into our high split variation. Letting your head drop and letting yourself flow through this just a couple times, in and out, pulling the toes towards the nose. And then we're going to come into the twist, left palm down, inhaling the right arm, revolves upward. so you're in that lunge position, dropping into the hips, you can give that left bum a good squeeze. And then from here, we're going to come into the high splits in the twist.

So I like to come up onto my fist and then we're pulling the toes back and keeping that revolved trunk. Just a couple breaths here. And exhaling down comes the right hand, together inhaling for plank. Exhaling chaturanga dandasana, cobra, inhaling, exhaling, downward facing dog. I'm going to inhale that left foot forward.

High lunging as the arms come up, settle down into the hips, pressing through that left heel and then exhaling down come the hands. And we're going to move into that high split variation. Toes towards the nose as you let drop and hang. And then inhaling, back to the lunge, exhaling back to high split variation. So we'll just alternate that a few times.

Working our way a little deeper into the hammies and the hips each time here. And then we're going to inhale into our twist, our lunge twist, so the right palm drops down. Left arm, whole body's revolving. It's a great practice to work with the eyes and to hold them steady in one spot for a few breaths. And then we're going to come into our revolving high split variation.

I like to come up onto my fists. You could also use a block. And then we're going to pull up through the hips, toes towards the nose, and here feel free to lean back into that right hand, rather than pushing toward the leg, open up that V space. One more full breath here together. And as we exhale, come down, set ourselves up for our vinyasa sequence of chaturanga, cobra, up dog, and downward facing dog or you could just skip it and go from plank to down dog, your choice.

Inhaling, exhale, inhaling, and exhaling. Inhaling, we're going to step our right foot all the way up between our hands for a low lunge sequence. We're going to drop our left knee down to the floor and inhale our hands to our knee. If you want to practice reaching your arms here you can. Use your breath and the lifting of the low belly to support your lower back.

And then as we exhale, we're gonna pull back into that low split variation so if you're in the habit of practicing splits, feel free to start working it out here as wide as you like. And again, what's really nice here is to work that hinge, the deeper the hinge, the longer we're gonna be able to open up the hamstring, rather than coming up into a round if you can help it. And then we're going to return to the lunge and we're gonna do a foot grab here. So come off onto your left hand and go ahead and lean over toward it so there's a nice big space between your right foot and your left hand and then your right arm is going to sweep back as you take that left foot. And breathing deeply into the front of your left thigh.

Let the breath travel all the way up into the chest and back and getting a sense of that right shoulder blade sitting in and onto the back. You could practice pulling it in a little closer. And then exhaling we'll release and travel on into our downward dog, so again, you can move right into down dog or moving through the vinyasa sequence, exhaling chaturanga, inhaling for cobra, squeeze through the bum and then exhaling, navel to the spine. So we're lifting and drawing the belly up for downward facing dog. Full exhalation, we're going to inhale our left foot all the way up between the hands for low lunge.

Settling in, hands across the knee, inhaling. Practice feeling for the floor of the pelvis and squeezing upward, roll them on back. Relaxing around the back of the neck and shoulders. And then exhale, we're going to release our hands back to the floor and pull back into our lower split variation and again feel free if you worked it out on that other side, you can stretch out here as far as you like. And then we're going to come back into the lunge.

So you'll draw that heel back toward you. Sinking forward so the knee is right over the ankle and then remember you're going to open up that space between the hand and the foot. Nice big space so that we can create that sweep with our left hand to grab our right foot. Inhaling, when you exhale, hugging that left shoulder blade onto the back. Nice big full body breaths.

And exhaling as we come down here, we're going to move into some cobra variations so we're going to hang out on the floor for a few breaths, inhaling for plank, nice and strong, squeezing the belly and the thighs, as you exhale all the way to the floor. Inhaling, we're going to start with locust. So you're going to take the hands back, flip the palms to face up, keep the backs of the wrists on the floor and then as you inhale, lift, raise the legs up. Here with the lift of our head, we want to keep the back of the neck long, even though we're drawing the head up so we don't want to pull the chin way forward. And then you could lift the arms, as a variation we can open up the chest and shoulders a little bit more here with the interlace of the hands.

And then exhaling, lowering, we'll release our hands, and bring them underneath our forehead, resting our head. You're going to bend at the knees and just sway and rock the lower legs and hips from side to side. And we're going to do one more cobra variation, extending with our lower backs. So we're going to tuck our toes under this time, keeping our knees down and you're going to work on really drawing the low panel of your abdomen inward. Inhaling, pressing the hands, squeezing the shoulder blades deep and remember to keep that low panel of the belly pulling up and in, so we're not letting it compress to the floor, we're squeezing it up off of the ground.

Breathing deeply, into your lower back. And all the way down into your tailbone. One more full breath. And then we're going to practice pushing down to our knees, pulling up through our belly, to push off of the ground. And we're going to come through to seated.

And set ourselves up for seated forward full. Paschimottanasana. Sometimes, it's nice to elevate the hips on a blanket if the pelvis, tailbone is rolling under lifting up a little bit on a blanket will help you here. Feel free to bend the knees as you reach for the feet. And again, we want to focus on creating that length through the spine, rather than pulling back and rounding, so you're finding that hinge forward.

You could also use a belt or strap at home and your hands can always be at your shins, no need to grasp the feet. Nice big inhale. Keep that strong diaphragmatic breath moving. Full exhalation. And then inhale, you're going to come up to seated, and come into janu sirsasana a.

So we're bringing that right foot back into the left thigh. And the right hand forward and with the janu sirsasana sequencing, it's good to reach from the arm of the bent leg so that our greater reach isn't coming from here but from the side that we twist from. And then you can just bring that other hand along for the ride. Letting yourself soften. Together inhaling, coming up to seated, we're going to come into ardha matsyendrasana so you're going to pick up that right foot and bring it up and over your left leg, we'll wrap our left arm around.

And so, this is one of those poses, again, where we want to be aware of how we're sitting in our seat, and so if our tailbone is rocking under, moving the foot further down the leg will actually support you in coming up higher onto your sit bones. So feel free to do that so you can be right up on the points of your sit bones here. Inhale to get tall and then exhale making that twist. Sometimes it feels good to take that left arm up and over. Hooking it on the outside of the right leg.

And you could even wrap that right arm around, just another breath here. As we exhale, we're going to unwind and we'll go through the janu sirsasana and ardha matsyendrasana with he left leg. So pulling the left heel now back into the inner thigh. And remember we want to start with the reach from the left arm so we feel that rotation, it's a great release for the QL, the muscles of the lower back, quadratus lumborum, and we just let that right hand come along for the ride. At any time during these seated forward bends feel free to bend the knees.

Make sure that your teeth are separated. Letting your cheeks hang from your gums, from your mouth. One more full breath here. And then inhaling, we'll come up to seated. And we're going to pick up that left leg and bring it across and so remember you want to feel for staying up on the sit bones and then taking that right arm as we exhale around and then pause to get long again, inhaling and exhaling, so we keep that nice long lifted spine, especially in the lower back.

We're not dumping into our lower back. Pulling the kidneys up and in. Letting the jaw relax. Even the scalp and the skull around the ears. Last exhalation here.

We'll inhale, unwind, and we're gonna come onto our back. And draw our knees in for happy baby straddle. So just get a nice wide angle with those thighs. And then up into happy baby or you could play with plow pose. So for plow, you want to draw the shoulder blades down the back and reach over using your abdominal muscles to support your spine.

And as you take your legs back, you could practice lifting and pushing into your elbows. Just one more breath here, getting that good plow stretch. And then as we exhale, we're going to bend the knees and we're going to roll down into our fish. So in fish, you want to roll down vertebrae by vertebrae. Let the head just follow the knees so you're not gluing the head down to the ground and then lay the head back.

As you stretch out the legs, you're going to press the hands right deep into the side of the body. I don't recommend sitting on them myself and as you stretch out the legs, that'll just lift the chest and you'll be on the crown of your head. It's a great opening for the neck. In front of the throat. And as we exhale, we're going to push into our elbows and inhale pull our head out.

And just let our bodies just open up for final resting pose, savasana. Letting a nice full breath come in. And exhaling it all the way out. Letting yourself sink in here for a couple of minutes, completely letting all of your muscles release from your bones. Going to slowly deepen your breath now.

Wiggling your fingers and your toes. Moving wrists and ankles. Drawing your knees into your chest. Give the knees a little rock, side to side. Roll onto our right side.

And up to seated. Taking a moment to sit tall. Completing your practice with your spine open, centered, and aligned. As we reap the fruits of our practice, may those around us take great pleasure in them too. May we all be happy and free.

It's a lovely honor to be here with you today. Namaste.