Gentle Opening

(wave splashing) Welcome back, this is a practice that can be done if you want a mellow start to your day or a great way to wind down at the end of the day. This practice can be done any time of day and we're gonna begin in child's pose. So if you'd like, you can grab a blanket to start with, underneath your knees and I'm gonna turn around this way so you can see me. As we begin into child's pose, you're gonna sit back on your heels and stretch your arms out in front of you and if your head doesn't reach the floor in child's pose, you could cross your arms and stack your forehead on your hands and let's take a few deep breaths here together. (breathing deeply) When you're breathing, see if you can feel down into the bowl of the pelvis, out across the sides of the hips.

And you might even be able to feel your sacrum like an island rising up out of the ocean of your back. Just letting yourself get grounded and centered, bringing your attention deeper and deeper into your body. And then, together, we're gonna begin moving. Then stretching your arms forward and coming out onto all fours, we're cat and cow, inhaling deeply into the cow, shrug your shoulders back as you exhale, tuck the tail, really lean from the pelvis here so that you're getting that good stretch in the lumbar spine and then just find your own breath rhythm, letting yourself move as it feels good to do so. You can explore, really reaching, feel free to bend the elbows.

You can even move the fingers around, stretch out your toes. (breathing deeply) And for the last two, we'll add a lion's breath extension so when we go into our next exhalation, we're gonna extend our tongues together, breathing out of our mouth. (breathing deeply) (exhaling forcefully) (breathing deeply) (exhaling forcefully) Last one. (breathing deeply) (exhaling forcefully) Just clearing out our space. From here, we're gonna go into a side stretch.

You're gonna reach your left leg back, curl over onto that left heel and sweep your left arm up into the sky. (breathing deeply) Let your breath fill your ribs and practice getting that sense of expanded breath (breathing deeply) in your diaphragm, in your lungs. From here, we're gonna go into a modified half-moon, you're gonna press through your toes and squeeze up through that left leg, lifting. You wanna do your best to get that left heel raised a little higher than your hip here. (breathing deeply) The more you press through your right foot, the easier it'll be to balance and we're building strength in our cores, you wanna squeeze up through the pelvic floor and draw your low belly toward your kidneys, toward just the back of your body as you inhale.

And then as we exhale, we're gonna move into fire hydrant, so you're pulling that left knee forward and up. Uh-huh, good, and inhaling, send it back, and exhaling, squeeze. Inhaling and exhaling, beautiful. Inhaling, as we cruise onto the other side, I'll have my back to you for a bit. Inhaling, over onto our left side for that side angle, you're opening it up, pressing through that right heel.

The more you can anchor through the right heel, the better it's gonna feel for your stretch. (breathing deeply) Let the breath breathe your whole body open, just putting your trust into your breath. And then, we're gonna squeeze that right leg up off of the floor for modified half-moon. You wanna kick that heel up nice and high, press through the top of that left foot. (breathing deeply) One more full breath.

(breathing deeply) And then as we exhale, we're gonna move into fire hydrant, so you're pulling that right knee forward, inhaling, sending it back, exhaling forward, inhaling and exhaling. Yeah beautiful, inhaling and exhaling. We're gonna transition back to the floor. We'll take the cow for our downward facing dog, so you find that extension for your downward dog as you curl your toes and lead with your sip bones up into the sky. Start with bent knees as you let your head hang.

(breathing deeply) Let your palms melt down into the Earth and let yourself reach over to one side, pressing through one heel, reach over to the other side, and if you lean into each hand, as well, you'll get a great stretch through the rib cage. (breathing deeply) From downward facing dog, we're gonna go into a three-legged dog, elevating the right leg and you'll just lean your body weight over as you stretch and, if you stretch or roll your right hip forward, you'll get a deeper stretch down through that left leg. It'd be great here if you can soften around the arms, around the head of the arm bones, into the shoulders, and just let your head hang and you can even lift your gaze towards your belly, getting a good neck stretch. Then, we're gonna exhale forward to our lunging stance and we'll just go ahead and remove our blankets now. As we come into our lunge, sink into your hips, letting that knee come right over the ankle here and press into that right heel.

We're gonna drop the left palm down and inhale into our twist, the right arm reaching up. (breathing deeply) Practice feeling for your breath, moving throughout your whole body when you inhale, filling your whole trunk. (breathing deeply) And then when you exhale, sending it out through your limbs. Keep that left thigh nice and strong and you can even give that left bum a squeeze and it'll be especially good to squeeze that left bum as we inhale to come up. (breathing deeply) Practice dropping your ribs to support your lower spine, if it feels good, you can start to sink a little deeper into the ground here.

You could even begin to raise your gaze. If your shoulders feel tight this morning, feel free to broaden, expand your arms and you could even just leave your arms out of it or try prayer at the heart, inhaling and exhaling. Give a good squeeze and then inhaling (breathing deeply) and we're gonna bring the hands down to the floor as you exhale and pressing back, you might want blocks here. You could easily walk your hands up onto some blocks here, I'll show you. This is what I like to call high splits variation.

So, we're pulling the toes back, we're keeping that nice long stance and we're able to just get a little bit deeper into our hamstrings here. (breathing deeply) And then we'll pause in that high split variation for a few breaths and if you need help reaching the ground, feel free to turn up the blocks nice and high. (breathing deeply) You wanna be careful not to hyperextend in the right knee here. If you feel a lot of pulling on the inside back of the right knee, just give it a little soft bend so we keep it more in the belly of the hamstring and you'll also start to feel some more lateral hamstring stretch along the outside of the right thigh and into the right bone. (breathing deeply) And then exhaling as we transition, we'll remove the blocks off the floor and set up off the mat and set up for our vinyasa sequence, inhaling together, we're gonna come into plank, making the body nice and strong, firming through the abdominals and exhale, squeeze the hands as you lower, looking forward.

As you land, inhaling, curl the chest open, drawing the shoulder blades down the back and reaching out through the soles of the feet, spreading all ten toes. Exhaling into downward facing dog, and we're gonna come into that leg raise on the other side, inhaling together. (breathing deeply) And remember, you can play with rotating that hip forward more for deeper stretch down the back of that right leg. See that softening around the head of the arm bones as you breathe deeply. Practice curling your head back a little bit further.

And then exhaling, we'll step that left foot all the way up between the hands, getting nice and rooted here. Practice sinking down, make sure that that knee is right out over the ankle as we drop our right hand down and inhaling, sweeping our left arm up. (breathing deeply) You can close your eyes and settle a little bit more deeply into the body. (breathing deeply) Just coming into your breath rhythms. (breathing deeply) Keep turning your attention towards your breath and trusting your breath to guide you here.

(breathing deeply) We'll stand up and as we stand up, we wanna really put the pressure in that left heel, that'll help engage our left hamstring as we draw up from the low belly and then give that right bum a really good squeeze here. (breathing deeply) Relaxing around the neck and shoulders as you settle in. (breathing deeply) And remember, you can always take that rest with the hands. (breathing deeply) And then exhaling, we're gonna come into that transition. We're gonna sink a little bit lower into our lunge, getting a really good stretch in the front of that right hip flexor.

And you can use your blocks here. (breathing deeply) As we play with this transition, threading your breath, inhaling forward and exhaling backward. Continue here for several cycles. (breathing deeply) Practice diving the navel towards the spine on exhale. (breathing deeply) Just creating the allowance for space movement.

(breathing deeply) And then we're gonna come into that high splits variation and hold for several breaths. (breathing deeply) Turn your attention toward your breath. The more we can use our attention to monitor our breathing, the more our body can relax into that breath. The breath will naturally care for the body. (breathing deeply) You can let yourself relax into the hammock of your breath here.

(breathing deeply) We're gonna exhale and return forward, setting ourselves up for our vinyasa sequence. If you'd like to put an upward facing dog instead of cobra, feel free. The most important thing is in our plank pose. We wanna squeeze the thighs, the buns, the belly, keeping the whole body firm like a plank as we lower toward the floor, so we don't end up in an inchworm position. Inhaling, front cobra.

(breathing deeply) If you're interested in working upward facing dog, you could slide the hands back a little bit further and push and squeeze from the thighs and bum and then, exhaling for downward facing dog. (breathing deeply) In downward facing dog, sometimes it's our tendency to really push from our arms. See if you can relax some of what your arms are doing. You could even just give a little move, see how everything's feeling and then put a bend in the knees and really curl and lift from the seat. You can notice, too, the arms might want to jump in there with it and push, push, push.

Let them be soft, that'll actually help melt the hands, keeping a firmer hand placement, (breathing deeply) which is a great way to take care of our wrists here. Inhaling, we're gonna step forward into prasarita padottanasana in that right foot and you're gonna walk yourself around, between your legs. (breathing deeply) And stretching out your arms as you lean back, remember, if you have a tendency to hyperextend, softening around the knees, so just put that gentle micro-bend and then see if you can lift your quads here. (breathing deeply) So, you're getting the sense that the inner thighs are lifting and rotating up and out. (breathing deeply) Give the head a little wag, just letting everything hang loose.

Then, we're gonna move into prasarita padottanasana revolving, and so when you come up, lean back into your heels and keep your tail lifted. You're also welcome to use your block. That will help you come up just a little bit higher, so the good way to know whether you wanna use a block or not is if your shoulders, when your arms straighten, are a lot lower feeling than your hips. It's nice to bring it up 'cause it'll all our trunk to revolve and so, as we reach that right arm up into the sky, we wanna feel the trunk revolving, so we're not just pulling from our arm. So, just notice that right shoulder, we want it to feel nice and loose and free and then, you can push out into the feet to take even a little pressure off of that bottom hand.

(breathing deeply) Pressing through all four corners of the feet. (breathing deeply) And then exhaling, down comes that right hand, let's switch it up. So remember, rotate from the trunk so the reach of the arm isn't dragging the trunk but the trunk is drawing the arm out. (breathing deeply) See that I'm lifting all 10 toes and squeezing the thighs up away from the ground. As we exhale, we can practice our mulavanda, drawing up from the floor of the pelvis, that gentle squeezing.

(breathing deeply) And as you inhale, drawing in from the low belly, uddiyana bandha. (breathing deeply) And then, we're gonna go ahead and transition out of this back through our vinyasa sequence. Feel free to use your cobra or your updog variation. (breathing deeply) Just take a few breaths here together, getting settled. We're gonna be transitioning to the floor.

(breathing deeply) And see if you can give that seat a final twirl, really reaching out of those hamstrings. And then, together, coming down into our child's pose and having a rest. You might wanna even give the arms a rest by sweeping them around toward the feet. Nice full body breaths, riding that breath wave. (breathing deeply) You can feel that buoyant quality of the body along the breath as you inhale and that soft easy relaxation through your exhale.

(breathing deeply) From child's pose, we're gonna come on up to seated and transition onto our backs for bridge pose. We're gonna be using our blocks in bridge pose and if you just have one, you can use your block at this level or, if you're newer to bridge, you can use it at this level but if you have two blocks and this is a regular practice for you, you might wanna try stacking one on top of the other. This is my preferred way to practice. We're also gonna be using a strap later on. You can do this without a strap and/or you could use even a belt from your closet if you don't have a yoga strap at home.

So, let's lay down for bridge pose and we're gonna set our heels right underneath our knees and just give your feet a chance to land, feel your body on the ground, open up your arms, rolling the shoulders back. (breathing deeply) And if you don't have a block at all at home, you're welcome to do bridge pose without the block. If you are gonna be using blocks, we'll begin placing them now. It's important when we place the blocks that they're right underneath the sacrum. So, we want them below the spine and just above the tail and you want that feeling that they're resting nice and firm and then, in this pose, we wanna open up our shoulders and draw our spine up and into our body so that we're not feeling the bones and vertebra pressing down into the mat.

(breathing deeply) Just letting yourself land on this support of the blocks and with the support of the blocks, you can play with inching the feet forward just by squeezing your toes inchworm, inchworm, inchworm, getting a little bit longer legged and you'll still keep a good bend in the knees but this'll help lengthen out our hip flexors for us. (breathing deeply) Now, if you're not using a block at home, you might wanna come down for a rest here for a few breaths. (breathing deeply) And then our next bridge pose variation, we're gonna be raising a leg up, so we're gonna slide the heels back underneath our knees and we're gonna squeeze our right knee in toward our chest and this is a great spot right here to see if you feel comfortable staying lifted here. And then, reaching that right heel into the sky, reaching through the toes, make the foot real active and then see if you can press off the block, just even a half inch. You can use the elbows, give an extra firm press down through the upper arm, you're gonna feel your hamstring on that left side engage, exhale.

Plant the body back on the block and then release that right leg. And so, if you're at home and you're doing this without a block, you'd actually just come down to the floor for a rest before beginning the other sides. So, we're gonna do the left side now and you're gonna inhale that left knee into the chest and send that left leg up and remember to feel free to hover with the knee in the chest, as well. Inhaling, squeezing, getting everything nice and strong and then give that extra push in to that right heel to raise and elevate the hips. (breathing deeply) Use the inhale to elevate.

You can exhale, relax on to the blocks, so you can move in and out of it with the inhale and exhale or you can inhale and hold through a few breaths. (breathing deeply) We're gonna do one more bridge pose variation. (breathing deeply) So, fully resting and then beginning with the right leg, we're gonna pick up that right knee again and cross the right ankle so it's resting right on top of the right thigh and let that right knee fall open. (breathing deeply) So the inside of the right leg is now facing the sky. (breathing deeply) And again, if you wanna play with a little lift and squeeze if you're looking for more strengthening today, you can lift and squeeze or you can do the rest.

(breathing deeply) And so, after several breaths here, we're gonna release that right leg and we're gonna be coming to the left side, crossing that left ankle up, over the right thigh and then how we'll check, make sure the vertebra of your spine is drawn up into your body, not sinking down into the mat. (breathing deeply) And then let that left leg, left knee fall open, left inner leg facing the ceiling. (breathing deeply) See if you can expand your breath all the way into the tippy tops of your lungs. (breathing deeply) Right up into the wells of the collarbone. It's getting our lungs into that upper 20 percentile of lung filling that helps build our immunity, especially against airborne illness.

(breathing deeply) And exhaling, from here, we're gonna transition into waterfall. So, you might wanna move the blocks in, even just a little bit closer and again, if you don't have a block at home, feel free to just extend the legs straight up. The blocks give us a little extra elevation and when you go to bend a knee up and then the other leg, you can just see how it feels to open up here and you can play with different angles but we wanna play with getting the blocks right up underneath our hips so that it's easy for the feet to go straight up into the sky and again, you wanna check the positioning of the shoulders so your vertebra are drawn up and into your body, not pressing down into the mat or the floor. Relaxing your lips and cheeks, you can close your eyes here. (breathing deeply) This pose is a wonderful way to gently stimulate our immune system.

If you have the ongoing coming on of a cold, it's a great virus fighter. It's wonderful stimulation for the thyroid gland, especially if you're doing that deep ujjayi pranayama breath in the throat, you can play with that here together. (breathing deeply) So remember with ujjayi breathing, (breathing deeply) the breath is entering right where the nasal cavity meets the throat. (breathing deeply) Deep in that upper glottis region of the throat. (breathing deeply) And then to come out of this pose, you're gonna let the knees bend and relax and then drop one foot down to the ground, feel that foot firmly land and then land with the other foot.

We're gonna come off of our blocks if you're using them, so you'll remove them off to the side. And to do a counter-pose from the bridge pose, we're gonna thread the needle. So, you're gonna take your right leg and cross that right ankle over the left knee just like we did when we were in that bridge variation but now we're gonna hug it into our chest. In this pose, when you make your hug, you wanna keep your shoulders and your neck and your head as relaxed as possible. If you find that you're really pulled up, you could use a block or blanket underneath your head and/or you could always change your grasp to behind your leg, that might feel more comfortable.

It's fun, it's fun to play with. So, we can pull in, (breathing deeply) or we could exhale and we could push out, so that can also feel really good and slightly different kind of stretch around that right hip. (breathing deeply) And then, if you are pushing out so that the arms are fully extended, go ahead and just relax so it's a looser grasp, relaxing the feet, you can wiggle the toes, close the eyes, and let yourself land for a couple of breaths. And then we're gonna release our hands, set that left foot back on the floor, unwind the right leg, and then we'll change, crossing that left leg across, pulling that right knee in to the chest. When we do release from this pose, it's really important that we are releasing our hands first before undoing the legs so we're not slingshotting out of it.

(breathing deeply) You can just let yourself drop in and remember, there's the squeeze and pull with the arms, you can play with that or the push with the legs into the extended arms. (breathing deeply) See if you can elongate your breath fully up the front of your spine. See if you can make this next breath even just a little longer than the last one. (breathing deeply) Great, and then exhale. Again, remember to release the hands first and then unwind the legs.

We're not slingshotting out of that. We're gonna move into supta padangusthasana and you'll use your strap and remember, if you don't have one at home, you're gonna be able to do this with just your hands and you're gonna start with an interlace behind your leg and I'll talk you through that. I've got my belt all looped here. We want a nice big loop so that when you put the loop around your foot, you can just easily hang your hands over your loop, so your shoulders are real relaxed. A lot of times when this pose is taught, it's taught by using the arms to pull on the leg, but I want you to do it slightly different where you actually kick the leg against the strap and keep more of a right angle.

The stretch will be slower to come on but it's gonna be a much deeper stretch into the belly of the hamstring for you here. See if you can broaden the foot and make it real active, expanding into those metatarsals. Those are the little lines in the top of your foot, so you can see them popping up through the skin, making more definition and keeping your ankle somewhat open, so we don't want a deeply flexed foot here. We actually want it open for the hamstring stretch. (breathing deeply) And we'll just take a few breaths together.

Remember if you don't have your strap, you're doing this with your hands interlaced around the back of your knee. (breathing deeply) And then we're gonna exhale and transition our strap. We'll open up our left arm, placing the strap into our right hand and taking that right leg out to the side. Do your best to keep it active. Let your elbow land on the floor and if you don't have a strap, you're just gonna rest your leg in your right palm.

Nice full belly breaths. Do your best to keep that left hip on the ground. If you tend to be a hyperextender, the knees you're gonna want to soften. And then another thing you can do here is you can actually make a bicep curl. We don't get a lot of bicep strengthening in our yoga practice, so this is a great way to get a little bicep strengthening in, great counter-pose to the tricep strengthening that we do in our chaturangas and cobras.

(breathing deeply) And then we're gonna inhale and kick the foot into the strap to transition it, we're gonna pass the strap into the left hand, open the right arm out and so again, if you're not using your strap at home, you're just gonna pass your leg over into your left hand, letting it rest in your left palm. And we actually do our best to keep the leg elevated rather than twisting all the way over. Think like reclining, revolving triangle and you can even turn your head. Feel free to close your eyes, softening into the breath. We want to keep the right foot actively pushing the strap but the left leg can rest now.

And then as we inhale, we're gonna come back to center, kicking the foot into the strap and we're gonna open up the strap again with both hands, sliding our left foot up into the strap, removing our right leg and so, if you're not using the strap or belt at home, you're just gonna interlace your hands now around the back of your left leg. So, now we're working supta padangusthasanaon the left side with these three variations, so that's straight up. And remember, we wanna kick against the strap, so if you hang your hands over the strap, that'll give you a nice strong resistance to kick from. (breathing deeply) Nice big breaths here, relaxing the rest of the body around the jaw and the eyes, shoulders, and neck. Then, we'll exhale, we're gonna pass that strap off into the left hand, opening up the right arm, pushing, keep pushing, kicking that foot out against the strap.

Do your best to keep your right hip rooted into the ground so it's not rotating, turning with you. One way to help do this is to anchor that left elbow down. (breathing deeply) The other thing that really helps is that instead of overly straightening at the right knee to help keep the right hip down, see if you can squeeze in from your abdominals, that's a great way to strengthen the belly here and we'll play again with that bicep curl, really pulling that left fist in toward our shoulder. We're gonna move into the twist now. As we inhale, we'll kick the foot into the strap, pass it into the right hand, open that left arm out, letting that right elbow land, you can rotate your head, turning your gaze toward your left fingertips and keep the left foot real active but go ahead and let the right leg completely relax now.

So, the right leg, the one that's on the ground, you're completely letting it relax. The left leg, the one that's in the strap is nice and strong. Great and then inhale, let's come on back to center and then just go ahead and bend the left knee, remove the strap and set it off to the side and grab a hold of the knees and you're gonna pull the knees back to outside the ribs for happy baby straddle. (breathing deeply) And just letting the sacrum root into the ground, nice big breaths as we start to wind down our practice. Take it out into a leg extension with that hand cupped underneath the right knee, stretching out through that right heel, right leg out to the side, the inner grind stretch, really great preparation for happy baby, then we'll flip it over to the other side, inhaling, give it a good stretch, reach it out.

(breathing deeply) And then, we'll reach up for the outside edges of the feet, drawing those heels back over the knees and check and see how the shoulders feel. You can give the head and shoulders a little movement. (breathing deeply) And so remember in thread the needle, we were talking about the push/pull, you can play with that same thing here. So, you can use the arms to give the legs a gentle pull or you could use the legs to give the hands a gentle push and they're always gonna change the way the spine is moving a little bit. Last couple breaths here.

We'll exhale, we'll release the hands from the feet, letting the knees come together and moving into our lying twist, dropping the knees over to the right and the arms are nice and wide, airplane winged open, letting the body settle, relax fully through the legs and feet and letting your head turn over to the left. Each time you exhale, let your body get just a little bit heavier, winding down our practice. Inhaling, we'll come back to center. And exhale, we're gonna move over to the left now and let your head rotate to the right and start to sink in, letting your feet and legs completely relax. Make sure your props are out of the way so that you can feel that complete freedom of your body.

Just feeling the gravitational pull of the Earth, letting it have the body. Then together, to come back to center, we're gonna inhale. We're gonna set up for final resting pose, savasana, so you'll stretch out your legs. And you want to let your legs and your feet and just open up, letting them rotate out so it's nice and comfortable and then bring the hands, arms down about halfway so they're not all the way in by the sides and they're not all the way out from the shoulders but they're right in between. Somewhere in the middle so the shoulders can feel nice and relaxed.

And then I really like to move my hips around to get my sacrum a little flatter into the ground. If you have a blanket at home, you can roll it up and place it behind your knees. Just begin to sink in, scanning through the whole body. Let yourself rest here for a few minutes. In a moment, I'm gonna come to seated and I'll be singing you out of savasana today.

(singing in foreign language) (lightly tapping singing bowl) (lightly tapping singing bowl) (lightly tapping singing bowl) Just letting your breath deepen, wiggling your fingers and your toes. Here in savasana, taking any yawny stretch that might feel good, reaching your arms over your head. When you're ready, you're gonna roll off to your right side and make your way to seated. We'll close our practice in anjali mudra. It's such a lovely honor to be here with you today, namaste.