Get Grounded

So if the feeling of grounded hasn't yet rooted in you, hopefully after this practice it will. Alana is going to help me demonstrate thank you for being here. So step one, lie your beautiful self on down. Knees bent, soles of the feet on the floor. Step two, let's get a sense of the hip rotation.

So please bring your right ankle up onto your left thigh, keeping your left foot on the floor, begin to feel into the movement of the hip joint. So as you inhale let the right hip and knee come towards your heart and as you exhale let the right hip and knee move away from your heart. As you inhale right hip and knee towards heart and as you exhale let the hip and knee move away. Three or four more times like this with your breath, just trying to get a sense of the movement here, beautiful. So as the hip and the knee come closer to your heart we usually call that internal rotation and as the hip and the knee move away we call that external rotation, nice.

Next time you're in external rotation pause and then let the right leg extend up towards the sky. So soften the knee a little bit so your hamstrings aren't so much a part of the equation and then same idea see if you can get a sense of the rotation of the hip here. So letting your foot and knee be the indicator light, as you're ready on an exhale let that hip externally rotate so your foot and knee will kind of point out towards the right and as you inhale internally rotate, really work from the hip and the knee and the foot will point in. Beautiful, continue, exhale external rotation, inhale and internal rotation. A little more like this, like really do your best to let the knee and the foot simply follow what you're doing so you can really get a sense of the movement from your hip joint.

Beautiful, now next time you're in external rotation stay here, let the right ankle come on back to your left thigh, roll that hip and knee away from you and if it would feel good let the left thigh draw in and wobble a little bit just to get a stretch. For some of you this will be enough, if you desire a little bit more flavor your hands can catch around the back of the left thigh or up around the top of the left shin, nice. Softer in the shoulders, easier in the jaw, wider in the neck. Beautiful let the left foot come back down to the floor, let the right leg come up to the sky, shake her out a little bit and a couple ankle circles usually feels good in one direction, nice and then the other. And then let the right knee bend, let the sole of the right foot come back down to the floor and pause, big deliberate inhale, exhale everything and just be aware of the results.

Nice, we'll do the same thing on the other side, let your left ankle find your right thigh, keeping your right foot on the floor just begin to get a sense of the hip rotation here so as you inhale left hip and knee towards the heart and as you exhale left hip and knee away and as you inhale left hip and knee towards the heart and as you exhale left hip and knee away, three or four more times like this with your own breath pacing, letting your curiosity start to move towards where you're feeling it. Beautiful part of the skill of being able to be grounded is to deliberately be able to move the awareness down. Beautiful next time you're in the external rotation with the hip and the knee moving away from you, pause and then release the leg up towards the sky, let the knee stay soft as you begin to explore the rotation here so yes as you exhale external rotation and as you inhale internal rotation, exhale the knee and the foot follow the hip and they kind of turn out kind of duck foot and as you inhale knee and hip turn in pigeon toe. Continue like this, couple more rounds and just see if you can get a real sense of moving from the hip joint, little softer in the mouth and the jaw, yes. Beautiful next time you're in external rotation, maintain that, bring the left ankle back down on top of the right thigh, rolling that left hip and away and if this is enough stretch you stay right here, if it would feel good the right thigh can come in close, you might just wobble or you might enhance it by catching around the back of the right leg or for a couple of you the right shin, nice.

Let out a little bit of line in the shoulders, let the shoulders relax, jaw soft, eyes kinder, really nice, beautiful as you're ready let the right foot come back down to the floor and let the left leg come up to the sky, shake it out a little bit, couple of ankle circles in one direction and then the other and then eventually bend the left knee and let the sole of the foot come back down to the floor to meet the right, big deliberate inhale, exhale everything. So we've established a little bit more movement and understanding in the hip joints, we're going to connect that understanding to the floor of the pelvis, so let your legs one at a time slowly straighten out, shake them out just a little bit like yes. Now without being deliberate or specific in the instruction just yet, move your awareness towards the floor of your pelvis and just without too much sort of overthinking just gently let the floor of the pelvis draw up and in and then let the floor of the pelvis relax, draw the floor of the pelvis up and in and let the floor of the pelvis relax. Now if the term floor of the pelvis doesn't make any sense, it's the bottom part of your torso between your legs, so as if you were holding in the knee to kind of urinate or pee okay, got that, couple more times just make sure you have a sense of the floor of your pelvis, excellent. Now we're going to get a little bit more specific, so from here now turn your toes out, so externally rotate your hips, duck foot your feet and now move into engage the floor of your pelvis and then let it go, like let it engage and relax a few times and see if okay, see if the engagement moves back more towards the region of the anus, so more towards the back of the floor of the pelvis, beautiful.

Now turn your toes in, so you internally rotate your hips, pigeon toe, yes, and now see if as you engage the floor of the pelvis and relax and engage the floor of the pelvis, see if it moves more towards the front, more towards where you might need to hold the knee into urinate, beautiful, let's do that again, turn the toes out, externally rotate the hips and just see if then when you engage the floor of the pelvis, if there's a movement back towards the back, this is tends to be more towards the region of the anus or as the yogis call it, Ashwini Mudra, Ashwini translates as horse, Mudra usually translates as seal, see if that's happening, maybe, maybe not but this is what we're playing with, okay now see if you can turn the toes in, internally rotate and this is a harder Mudra to find, this Mudra at the front of the pelvis, the Vajrolay Mudra for men, the Sahajolay Mudra for women, it's more towards the front, it's a little harder to isolate, nice, go back and forth a couple times on your own and just see if you can find these different regions, we're just kind of mapping the pelvic floor to see if we can, you know, eventually be able to hold our awareness here, yes, nice, is that making sense, okay now bring the feet so they're in the center, toes pointing up towards the sky, maybe even flexing back just a little bit and now see if you can start to dial your awareness in towards the center of the pelvic floor, so between the genitals and the anus, the region of what usually gets called the perineum, okay and the play here is can you can you play with drawing this area up and in and then relax, draw this area up and in and then relax, avoiding the temptation to be like, okay you're not trying to like impress yourself, you're just trying to like, it's almost like this kite shape that you're trying to pull these four points in and let it out, beautiful, okay big deliberate inhale, exhale, relax this effort, shake your legs out a little bit, nice, nice work, hug your knees into your chest, give yourself a little bit of a break here, so our purpose in mapping the floor of the pelvis is then to be able to relax, it's fun, it's really hard to relax something that we don't yet know how to engage and for most of us you know there's a lot of talk about tone of the pelvic floor but for most of us we are not first weak in the pelvic floor, we're tense in the pelvic floor and then the tension results in weakness, so first step towards strength is knowing how to relax, so now find a comfortable spot, so for Alana she's chosen to bring her heels in line with her sit bones and her knees in line with her hips and for most of you that will be comfortable, if that's not comfortable on your back okay you could put a bolster underneath here but we want to find neutral, so do maybe avoid the temptation to let the knees fall too far out or too fall in because we want to find a neutral spot, so bring your hands to your navel, so one hand over the other, the navel being another fancy word for belly button, so with one hand over the other at the navel hold your hands here and for some of you the quality of feedback here at the navel might be enough to hold your attention, for most of us letting the breath happen here or a feeling of the breath happen will assist, so letting the inhale rise into your hands and letting the hands fall back towards your spine on the exhale, so what you're establishing here is your ability to help tether your attention with the breath and a particular sensation in the body and sometimes as we become aware of the navel region what becomes obvious is this little hard donut of tension around the navel, most of us carry a quality of anxiety here which also can feel like excitement, I mean this is the first place where we were connected and then disconnected, so there's a sense of oh I'm on my own and what's going to happen those two things kind of go together, if it feels safe to do so now lower your hands down to the lower belly more the region that you might know is the pooch and with your hands on your lower belly for sure for real use the breath to help tether you here, so really let the breath open up into the hands and then as the hands fall on the exhale this is an easy area to get lost in, this is an easy area to like disappear into, so let the breath be a little bit more deliberate like feel your hands here, beautiful, softer in the jaw, easier in the neck and now keep your hands here on your low belly and only as it feels safe to do so move your mind, move your attention towards the floor of the pelvis and can you feel the movement of the breath in the floor of the pelvis, so on the inhale you might feel the floor of the pelvis sort of widen open to send and on the exhale you might feel the floor of the pelvis draw up and in, sometimes I don't know if it's stage fried or just kind of resistance but sometimes it's reversed no problem if it is and this might be enough of an ask holding your awareness on the floor of the pelvis and feeling the movement of the breath here and if that's enough you just keep doing this but if it feels safe to do so now see if you can relax the region of the ashwini mudra, the region of the anus like can you let this area relax a little bit more like can you soften some of the tension, can you feel the region of the middle of the pelvic floor, the center point what some yogis refer to as the mula bandha can you let this region relax the region of the perineum yes stay with it as you move up into the region of the genitals that the region of the genitals relax beautiful and can you find the region of the front mudra the sahajole or vajrole yes beautiful now move your awareness back to the perineum the center point the region of the mula bandha and let the like spread the feet again like feel the feet on the floor yep last part of this lesson here supine can you soften the region of that that mula bandha region that region of the perineum and can you feel the possibility of connecting down to what our Taoist friends call bubbling spring this little spot between the big and the second toe right underneath the ball of the foot like there's this little spot yeah and sometimes you can map what the Taoist used to call bubbling spring now sometimes gets called kidney one right up into that perineum so you're grounding through the pelvic floor all the way down through the feet beautiful okay relax the effort of relaxing arms can stay on the belly or be by your sides and and allow yourself some time here to just be in what you've just done like the results of bringing your attention lower and if you passed out during this part of the video well now you have another method that you can use to fall asleep okay otherwise only as you're ready you're gonna bring your knees one at a time into your chest and wobble you'll roll to your right or whatever sides is convenient and you'll eventually find your way up to a seat something like sukhasana wobble little side to side and then let's just see if some of these spots in the pelvic floor can be available a little bit in the asana so just like wobble a little bit again side to side like really feel your sit bones ground and then can you feel what happens like relax the floor of the pelvis particularly the Ashwini mudra and then just start to lean in a little bit like let your elbows come forward onto your knees just pause here and so as you lean forward can you feel are you aware potentially of a tightness of gripping that sometimes happens in these inner thighs it's pretty common in the inner front groin and instead of trying to do something in the hips to relax that can you choose to relax the front of the pelvic floor the sahajole or vajroly mudra yeah can you relax the middle of the pelvic floor like can you choose to soften some of the tension here to help you feel a more grounded seat and for some of you this is deep enough of a forward fold if you'd like continue to let your arms come a little bit forward maybe it's down onto your forearms but in this particular lesson pay attention to what you can do in the floor of the pelvis to help you drop in deeper one of the things so many of us do is that we hold on to our legs right we were pulling up and into our legs so in an effort to start to find a more easy relationship with grounding can we like trust our legs from here inhale up just enough start to walk your hands over to the right till your heart is coming out over the right knee and now feel there's probably a little bit of grip in that left tip can you find out how to relax these Sweeney the perineum the yeah that front mudra gorgeous continue on over to the right till the right forearm comes down to the floor circle the left arm in front of the face and over yes and so you're in a familiar shape you're in a familiar side bend wiggle and move as it feels correct to you beautiful Lana okay like feeling your breath but every so often can you really feel letting instead of just externally rotating the left hip can you soften the a Sweeney the perineum the Vajral the the pelvic floor mudras yes gorgeous couple more moments let it feel good for you and then take a look down at the right arm and let an inhale bring you all the way back up and pause and let your eyes close and sit in the sauce of you beautiful switch the cross your legs let's find that on the other side okay so again step one is you're finding your seat it's like snuggles snuggles snuggles snuggles snuggles and like like let the let the floor of the pelvis relax yes and then only leaning in as you've been invited and as you lean in like see if you catch that first little snag you may or may not be working with this all instructions are not for everybody but if and as you catch that first little snag can you endeavor to like drop the front of the floor of the pelvis to help yes and for some of you this is deep enough stay here if you've been invited you can continue your journey forward and it's just trying to allow your investigation to be a little subtler there's plenty of instruction on the hips we're just trying to tune a little bit to something less obvious gorgeous beautiful letting it feel good for you yeah then inhale lift up a little bit walk your hands over to the left until your heart comes out over the left knee and pause you'll it's likely that you'll feel a grip in this left hip or excuse me this right hip and can you instead of you know externally rotating the hip can you just relax the ashewini and relax the middle and see what happens and then only as you're ready continue on over to the left left forearm comes down to the earth circle the right arm in front of the face and up and as you come into the side bend beautiful Lana like wiggle and stretch and reach so it feels good to you and then every so often bring your awareness into what you can do in the floor of the pelvis what can you do what can you relax and allow to soften to give you more room without so much effort yeah so pretty beautiful take a look down at the left hand and let it inhale bring you all the way back up to sitting and pause in your seat and let yourself enjoy the results now take your time on this one because it's a bit like asking melted butter to stand up so just be easy and gentle but eventually the request is to make your way towards standing in whatever method works for you and then let's see if our grounded lesson works so feet about hip distance apart big deliberate inhale and exhale let us happen and soften the knees and as you soften the knees soften the floor of the pelvis and as you spread your toes a little bit like tuned you remember that spot like right in the center of the floor of the pelvis that that little spot that perineum that moolabunda as you spread your toes a little bit and find your feet is it possible is it available right from that spot all the way down to this spot right between the big and the second toe underneath the ball the foot like as you let your knees soften can you feel maybe the bubbling spring aspect so that as you as you allow yourself to can you feel how the earth naturally wants to kind of give back there's a when you're really grounded there's a quality of buoyancy that's right there like the opposites are always right there now maintain that sense of grounding okay so we'll we're on our way towards the completion of our lesson you're going to maintain that sense of grounding while you just root into the feet enough like just root in enough to feel the heart brighten and you'll know you've gone too far if your breath gets caught you'll know you've gone too far if you lose your ground and you feel anxious so you just yes you're looking for that place where the inhale and the exhale are same Sama and then base of the skull widens gorgeous let your head find her alignment so she's really bouncing also pretty and thank goodness that when we're in a closer towards a true alignment it feels right grounded generous spacious beautiful thank you so much for your great work thank you so much Alana