Day 3: Wring It Out

Hey, welcome back to day three, day three. So we're going to start the same way, spinal wake up, child's pose. All right, let's go. So spinal wake up, push back into child's pose on the exhale. So we're going to get right into this.

Come forward into table. That's the breath in, on the breath out, push back toward child's pose. When you begin to become more and more comfortable, you start to add, add little movements that feel good. Keep it simple, right? So the movement that you add feels good and it feels right.

So when I'm doing this, I'm kind of going side to side to loosen up the low back. Okay, now the next time I exhale, I push back and we're going to enter that lateral stretch from the full child's pose position. So stay here, but just kind of crawl the fingers of both hands as far over to the left as you can. And if you want to stack the right hand on top of the left, go for it. Good.

So really look to lengthen out both sides of the body. Even though the stretches, the emphasis is on the right side, you still want that left side to be lengthened. So we're looking for that lateral flexion in the spine. Come back over, crawl the fingers to the right. Emphasis on the left side now.

So situate your fingers, your hands in such a way that gives you that stretch. Breathe into the backside of your body as well as the front. And continue to work, we'll bring the hands back to center, but continue to work through this challenge with the idea of finding your own way. Walk the hands forward. Work your way into puppy pose, elbows down or lifting, spine lengthening.

So it's like trust your feelings. When you get into a pose, if it doesn't feel right, you shift it, you change it. It doesn't have to look like the person in the magazine or how you think or envision the pose. Check in with how it feels, listen and trust. And that I believe will take us a long way.

Good. Now come forward into sphinx pose. Lift the chest. There's that little wiggle when you get into a pose, right? There's just a little wiggle around to find that position.

Today, this is like day three of the same opening. If you have the availability in your low back, see what it feels like to maybe straighten the arms. Don't bring the shoulders up high, soften the shoulders, lift the chest. That's an option. If you're here, because I asked you to come here, but you're struggling and you can't wait for me to tell you to come out, maybe it's a little too much and you bring those forearms back down.

Good. Grab one more breath here. When you breathe in, lift the chest, soften the shoulders. On the exhale, lower all the way down. Same shoulder stretch, left arm reaches up, roll over onto that left shoulder.

Maybe today you just like roll over, you grab one breath and then we create more of a flow. We flow right through the center of the body, stretch the right arm out and roll onto the left or over to the left, over to the right, right, left. Doesn't matter, does it? All right, cool. Come back over, slide the hands in that cobra position for the transition through cobra.

So inhale cobra, exhale table, good. So cat-cow, breathe in, cow pose, breathe out, cat pose, breathe in, cow pose, breathe out, cat pose. Breathe in, tabletop, add this little stretch. You may feel it, you may not, but give it a shot. Knees together, feet together, ankles together.

Now keep this shape, but let the hips lift the right knee up off the mat and let the hips come over to the left. Keep stable and strong in that left arm. The sensation that I feel is through the left waist, left hip. Try the other side. So I feel it quite a bit on my right side, a little less on the left, but I do feel like it's very useful for me.

Feels good. Good. Now come back over to table, curl the toes under and push back into downward dog. For this one, try the knees bent quite a bit. Knees bent a lot, push the chest towards your knees or towards your thighs and at the same time lift the sit bones up to try to gain as much length in the spine as you can.

You should have pressed into the knuckle pads, wrapped those elbows down in the direction of the mat. You might even be able to see when I release my elbows out wide versus pulling the elbows in the direction of my toes or down toward the mat, you might see in my upper back side body more muscular sort of attention. Beautiful. From here, let's walk. You can come up onto your fingertips to make it a little bit more user friendly.

Walk your feet up to the front of your mat. Put a generous bend in the knees, slide the fingertips up your shins towards your knees, lift your chest, breathe in a little extension here, the spine and exhale, fold over your thighs. Bend your knees, draw your tailbone down and roll slowly up to stand. Your head and shoulders are the last thing to arrive. Let's find some good alignment in mountain pose.

So draw your feet down, down into the mat, strong legs, tailbone draws down, right? Neutral pelvis, core engaged. Take the arms up overhead, interlace your fingers, draw your index finger long, cross your thumbs, reach up, creating equal length on both sides of the body. Let's come over to the right. This is very similar, if not the same exact thing as the child's pose version, right?

So lateral flexion, keep reaching up, hold the left shoulder back, tailbone down still, stretch up through the left side of the body and then you use your inhale to come up to center, realign and exhale over to the left side. Good job. Bring it back up to center, breathe in, maybe even take a gentle little back bend. So draw the tailbone down, keep your legs strong, push the hips forward, reach up, up, up, up, up. That's that back extension.

Now bend the knees, hands toward like the heart, fold forward, bent knees like really bend them a lot, almost like you're in this standing child's pose, right? Belly resting on the thighs, stretch out the low back. Inhale, lift up halfway, drive the hands, the heels of your palms into your hip creases, fingers on the thighs. Lift your chest, pull your elbows back, so the elbows kind of pull back to strengthen through the upper back, stretch across the chest, pull the belly in. So knees are bent, spine long, breathe in, exhale, fold over.

One more time, breathe in, this time press the hands on the shins, lift the chest, get as long and flat in the back as you can on the inhalation, and on the exhale, fold down. Walk the feet out toward the edge of the mat, you've been in squat before, so set up your squat, send the hips down, little side to side. On the exhale, bring the hands down toward the mat or the fingertips, lift the hips, bring the toes forward, so we'll cycle in and out of forward bend and squat. Exhale, squat, pause here, breathe in, exhale, wide forward bend, inhale here, exhale, squat pose, step the left foot back, cycle in and out, keep that right foot in that squat position, just kind of come back and forth, this is similar to another movement we've done before, and once you kind of work your way into this space, set the back knee down, support yourself, that left hand and left arm, and roll the body open to the right, point the back toes back, hand, right hand on the inner thigh, and maybe you continue this little movement cycle here in and out, right, you come on to the outer blade of the right foot as you sink the hips down, good, so it's just finding a rhythm, finding a way to search out new and interesting places in the body that need attention. You can reach back, like I feel like my left quad could really use a stretch, so I'm going to bend the left leg, reach back with the right hand to the outer edge of the left foot, open the right shoulder and kind of lean into it as I draw that left heel toward my seat.

Good, release, the right hand can come back down, step up into a mellow squat, just as a transition, so sit down into the squat, lean, lean, and then right foot comes back in and out a couple times, think about ways to engage the ankle, right, bring the right knee down, and again, so the right knee is down, begin to open the body up to the left, right hand on the inner thigh, outer blade of that right foot, and then you sink down, maybe you coordinate it with your breath, so you breathe in, you lift the hips, you breathe out, you drop the hips and open the knee. You can let the shoulder get a little kind of dumped into the ear, good. Reach the left hand back, take hold of that right foot, outer edge of the foot, draw the heel toward the seat, release that foot, good. Step back into child's pose, so you can start in tabletop, but we're going to push back into child's pose, good, bring yourself up, if you have a blanket sitting around, grab the blanket, not too thick, not too thin either, and place it on the middle of the mat, bring your knees onto the blanket, this is really just to make it comfortable, right, so you don't have to think about painful knees, push the hips back into child's pose, stretch the arms forward, good. Now we inhale into table, and it's like a reverse upward dog or cobra, so what you're going to do is you're going to keep the arms straight for now, let the hips come forward and as soon as it starts to become a little bit too much in the low back, begin to bend the elbows, bend the elbows and kind of slither down.

And then you reverse it, you inhale, lift, cobra, and exhale, push all the way back into child's pose, let's just do that one more time. Stretch it out, inhale, table, exhale, as soon as that, like your thighs, then your hips, bend the elbows, inhale, cobra, and exhale all the way back into child's pose. Inhale table, take the left hand, walk it forward just a little bit, reach the right arm up as you breathe in, find a little trunk rotation to the right, and on the exhale, bring it all the way underneath the left arm, bring the right shoulder down toward the mat, and then you would just bring it right back out and up, breathe in, and breathe out. Slide it over, get the full expression, breathe in, reach it out and up, breathe out, thread the needle, good, inhale, bring it all the way up, and exhale the right hand down, realign yourself, left arm reaches up, breathe in, and exhale, weave it underneath, inhale, send it high, exhale, bring it in, inhale, bring the arm up, and exhale, thread the needle, inhale, send it all the way back and up, and exhale the left arm down. Roll the back toes, breathe in, exhale, downward facing dog.

From downward dog, let's bring the knees down and move into our stretch your back closing. So I'm going to use the blanket still as we set up for bound angle. So bound angle, it's helpful to have the seat up on the blanket, bring the bottoms of the feet together. I like to have my feet a little bit further away from my body here, it opens up my hips a little bit. So the thing with this pose is that you can stay upright, you can bring the hands back behind you and lift the chest of the heart, or if it's interesting to you, you can fold your body forward.

Take three breaths together here, breathe in, you can continuously move, so as you breathe in, you can lift up, lengthen, exhale, and then fold into it. Breathe in, lift the chest, lengthen the spine, exhale, fold. One more time, breathe in, and exhale, fold. Come all the way up, if you're folding forward, come all the way up, good job, cross the legs, so an easy seat, spinal twist. So find a comfortable position in your legs, upright spine, breathe in, as you exhale, rotate, so really like rotate the trunk of your body to the right, left hand on the right thigh, right hand back behind you.

So now you can use a little muscular effort to rotate yourself a little bit deeper while maintaining a nice upright spine. Gaze over the right shoulder, active in the belly with the breath, just a quick little rinse to the right, slowly come back over to center and all the way to the left. Right hand on the left thigh, left hand back behind you, lift the chest, rotate to the left, just like you were kind of rinsing out the spine, your internal organs, I mean really I said rinse out the spine, but what does that mean, right? But it is that concept of kind of ringing the torso out through twisting. Good, bring yourself back over to the center, let's roll down to our back, move the blanket out of the way unless you like to use it, just roll on down like we've done several times already, draw the knees into the body and then bring the feet down to the mat underneath your knees, coordinate the breath in with lifting the hips and reaching the arms up behind you, palms facing up and then exhale, articulate down the spine all the way down to the low back, palms facing down onto the floor and then you lift the hips back up, reach the arms up and overhead, open up the front of the body and then exhale, you coordinate the landing of your low back with the palms landing alongside your body.

Good, one more time, lift the hips, reach the arms up overhead, palms facing up, hold it for a moment, get the full expression of the pose and then slowly from the upper back through the middle of the back, down through the low middle, all the way down, pause, breathe in and breathe out. And as you begin to close out this day number three, acknowledge that within yourself, draw the knees into the chest, stretch out the low back, good. Bring the feet down to the mat, stretch the arms alongside your body, stretch your legs out, so set up this shape, set this shape up, this Shavasana final relaxation for you to be comfortable for the next several breaths. Breathe in, find a full breath and breathe out, a calm, soothing exhalation departs. Breathe in and breathe out.

Last breath together here, breathe in and breathe out. Your choice of coming up, but it might feel nice for you to roll onto the right side. You could even pause the legs bent, head on the right arm and then push yourself all the way up to a seated position. Say hi to me. I say hi to you.

We acknowledge the work we've done together, right? And again, like I said before, we acknowledge that this is day three. You're on your way and I really appreciate you being here. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.