Restorative Flight

Welcome back to Acra Yoga Family. I'm happy to return with Lynn and Ashley and we're going to take you through some restorative partner stretching. So first they're both going to come into a downward facing dog facing away from each other. All right yeah. Their heels might touch and then they're gonna take their widest possible dog so they can step beyond their yoga mat taking a moment here enjoying downward facing dog and then they'll begin to walk their hands closer in and they'll reach right forearm to right forearm clasping gently and then lean away just a little bit and you'll notice that the one hand that they're supporting can begin to walk a little farther out. Yeah. How are you feeling? Yeah. So I can check in with them and at home I encourage you to check in with your partner. Take a deep breath here. Exhale deep in and lengthen into the twist and then walk the hands a little closer. Place your weight fully in your own feet and we'll switch left forearm to left forearm taking a gentle clasp and then leaning away and then walking your other hand a little farther out to the side. Very nice. Good. One deep breath cycle in. Let go into the twist. And then make your way back to center. You can step the feet a little farther away from each other to come to standing and then we'll help Lynn down as she gets ready to base. Very nice. So we have a base, a flyer, and I'll be playing the role of the spotter. We're going to go up into lifted bada canasana. So Lynn is going to place the tops of her feet just below Ashley's hip bones. Ashley is going to reach her hands back and behind so this is definitely a trust fall. As Lynn reaches her hands up, Ashley can begin to bend forward and then Lynn will straighten her legs. Then Ashley will take bada canasana so she'll bend her knees, take the bottoms of her feet together, and then can you look up your belly and make sure you can see your toes. That's a little alignment check to make sure that the femur is parallel to the ground which gives a shelf for the base's feet to really fully support. And then we'll check in here. How are you both doing? Yeah. Now we let gravity do the work. So Lynn has four points of support. Oh, will you show me a little bit off in your alignment? So it's often common that the base's toes will come towards their nose in which case I'll say bring your legs back towards the patio. So I'll use something that's in the room and tell the base to bring their legs in that direction. If Lynn wasn't so open in her hamstrings she could give a slight micro bend in the knees and as long as the heels stay over the hips this is a safe strong supportive pose. Notice shoulders over shoulders. So we're using the bones so that we don't have to use too much muscle. Okay. We're gonna transition to folded leaf so our flyer will take her legs wide and a pike straddle. Feet stay really heavy towards the ground. Active through the feet with the base's toes and then we'll simply lower her to the ground. Flyers I encourage you to take the back of your hand to the ground releasing out towards the hips. So sometimes flyers really want to push into the ground and when that happens it sends everybody into their muscles and we want to allow gravity to do the work right now again. So I'll check in. How are you both doing? Yeah it looks wonderful. And maybe the base wants to give a little thumb circle around either side of the spine. There are so many things that you can do here. Folded leaf is kind of like the downward facing dog of aqua yoga. So we like to come back to it and restore our sense of equilibrium and get all the benefits of an inversion while we're relaxing upside down. To come down we'll place hands on shins flyer. Yep here the shins. You might have to help them figure out where that is. And then base will bend the legs bring the feet to the ground. So right here scoop under her heels. Yep scoop under the base of heels and then lean back and take her legs with you. Yeah very nice. So we take a little moment right there and then we'll place her legs down to the ground by taking a wide squat. Yeah we'll come all the way back up and then we can reach down. And depending on what you're excited about today we might switch things around and try that again so that we all get the chance to base and fly and spot. Depends on exactly what the sizes are within your group. This works for children and adults. Have fun. Thank you both so much.