Pigeons that Walk and Slide

Hi, welcome to my yoga deconstructed class called Pigeons that Walk and Slide. Oftentimes pigeon is taught more as a flop and fold, nothing wrong with that, I like my flop and fold. But we're going to balance it out with a little bit more activation in the pigeon shape. So for this practice, prop wise, all you will need is a blanket and two blocks. We're going to start lying on our side.

So I like to use a little bit of cushion for underneath my head, and I'm going to start lying on my right side. Feel free to prop up your head so you're comfortable. The nice thing about having a prop is there's more room for your shoulder. Once you're on your side, go ahead and bend your knees and straighten your elbows with your arms out from your shoulders, palms together. And let's initiate the movement by taking your top left hand and reaching a little bit further towards the floor, you'll feel your chest roll towards the ground as well.

And then from there, you'll lift your arm up, but think of your arm more as an icon for your ribs. So my knees are still together, and that's about as far as I'm going to go. Sure, I could flop my arm, but you know we're not flopping today. So let your ribs sort of direct you as to how far you turn. And then we'll explore pelvic rotation.

So lifting your top leg up, keep the bottom leg on the floor, go till you feel kind of a nice stretch, and then pick up the right leg, and follow connecting your palms together and your legs. And then we go back the other way. So initiate from the upper body, right arm, ribs twist, right leg, pelvis turns. And you carry your left leg across from your obliques through your center, and then connecting on the other side. Reach a little further, it just feels good.

And upper body turns. Once you get stuck, you initiate through the top leg, and then carry the right leg across from your center. Exhales connect, stretch, turn your chest towards the floor, a little overreach, and then lifting up. Upper body turns, I got a nice little pop there, leg, and then use your center. So rather than just using your left inner thigh, can you carry your leg across through your center?

One more time, inhale, reach, exhale as you lift up. Top leg lifts, and then rather than just moving your leg, try to initiate the roll through your center. Palms connect, overreach, get that nice stretch, find the spot where you get stuck. Top leg lifts, carry the left leg across through your center. And then just pause and move the blanket out of the way, and come onto your back in constructive rest position.

And take inventory of your breath and your body, and your body and your breath. If your eyes are closed, go ahead and open your eyes, and let's come to a figure four. So cross your right ankle above your left knee, keep your left foot on the ground. Arms go out to the sides. And again, rather than just flop, I want you to find some muscular activation.

So I'm pushing into the ground with the inside of my right foot. I'm modeling that with my hand. I'm pushing into my leg with my right ankle, but my left thigh is also pushing back. So there's resistance happening in my lower body, but also my upper body. And you're attempting to elongate through the left hip flexors, but again, without, this would be just kind of collapsed, right?

Everything doing nothing versus a lot of activation here. Then coming back to center, go ahead and switch sides. So left ankle crosses above your right thigh, and take your time going over. Find that sweet spot where you're not totally collapsed. There's some energy, and push into the ground with the inside of your right foot.

Push into your leg with the outside of your left foot, but keep reaching long, stretching out of your right hip as you breathe, and push into the floor. What I'm hoping is that you're noticing the internal rotators of your right hip and the external rotators of your left hip, because that's the shape that they are both in. And we're going to be in that shape throughout the rest of the practice quite a bit. Let's do one more on each side. So figure four, and taking your legs across.

Again, there's work here. Work happening, pushing into the ground, back of the head, backs of the arms. My left glutes are firing, active through the feet, and then coming back center. Left ankle above the right knee. Think of turning, but also reaching.

So hip extension. Push into the ground, back of the neck is working, back of the shoulders, the posterior kinetic chain event, whole back body, and then coming back center. And cross. Bring one hand to your belly and the other hand to your ribs. Take a breath in, and then sigh it out through your mouth.

As you inhale, let your belly swell. The ribs expand front to back, side to side, and then you empty your lungs. Let's do that one more time. Two part inhale, let your belly rise. Ribs blossom.

Take the breath all the way up into the heart space. Exhales, and then exhale. Okay, let's revisit the figure four, more of a pigeon-esque shape. So right ankle is above your left knee on your left thigh, and this time you're going to bring your left leg to tabletop, and the same resistance is happening. So I'm pushing this leg away from me, but I'm also pulling my left thigh towards.

So it's very active, and then go ahead and take your hands, cup your skull, rather than flopping your elbows, if you sense a theme with the no-flop here, you're going to lift them up a little bit so that you get a hollow armpit connection, shoulder girdle, into your core. Take a breath in, exhale, curl up, head, neck, and shoulders, and then go ahead and straighten your left knee. Go as low as you can without losing the connection of your spine, and then come back, switch, and reach. Exhale pull, switch, exhale to reach, inhale to pull, and then switch. Get your little stretch, reach out long and low, whatever that is for you.

Other blades try to lift up off the floor, and start to lose it there. Let's do one more on each side, reach, exhale pull, lift up a little higher, switch, reach, exhale pull, and then coming to tabletop, lower your head, lower your feet, and check in with your breath. So one hand on your belly, one hand on your ribs, and notice the pace of your heart and the pace of your breath, and how they both have probably sped up, and you get to observe how they both together slow down. Go ahead and open your eyes if they're closed, and roll onto your side, come on up. I'm just going to move this blanket out of the way, and we're going to move right into what I call sit like a lady stretch.

The other one was sit like a dude, or whatever you want to call it, figure four. So coming onto your back, cross your right thigh over your left thigh. So instead of this shape, we're going into this shape. Make sure you have support under your head if you need it. Your arms are going to go either in a low V, or a T. I'm going to do the low V. Take a breath in, and as you exhale, lift your legs up, pull your knees toward your chest.

And this can be, we'll start with it controlled, and then we'll make it floppy, how about that? So for the controlled version, you straighten your legs, it's like a whirly gig, and then you cross. Straighten and cross. Now if you're getting hip clunking, that's not the greatest thing. So keep your knees bent when you whirly gig, because that's a shorter lever, which means there's less load, and since this is open chain, it's more likely to have clunking.

So you're either straightening your knees as you go around, or you're not. And did you see how I just started to get a little more floppy with my whirly gig? So many images are coming to mind right now. So I'm thinking of the fountains at the Las Vegas Phoenician. Is that right?

Yeah, where they go, whoo, or the sprinklers. I grew up in Oklahoma, people would hook the hose up to the one sprinkler. Or this just can be your share in stone moment, basic instinct. Whatever helps you move in a triplanar way, this is three dimensional, and it's often a struggle for people. What I see happening is they cross, open, cross, open.

But see if you can make it more circular, because our hips are a ball and socket joint, and we have what's called circumduction. And I don't know about you guys, but hopefully you're getting a little tired. So let's cross the other thigh on top, and lower your foot to the ground. From here, keep your arms out to the sides, palms can be up or down. And with your left thigh crossed over your right, use the weight of your left thigh to take your legs over to the left, and enjoy a little stretch here, in that tensor fascia lata, outer hip area.

Take a breath in, and then as you exhale, use the side of your right waist, and then exhale to come back center, and we'll switch. Right thigh crosses over the left, legs timber over. Change a nice spot, take a breath in. As you exhale, think of a reach, so that you can get into an opening through that outer left hip area. As you breathe in, let your belly and ribs expand, and then sigh it out.

To come back up, initiate from the left side of your waist, and an exhale. And then uncross your legs, roll over onto your side, and come on up to seated. Okay, we're going to move into constructive rest slides and bridge slides. What you'll want to do is fold your mat, so that you have padding from your head to your tailbone, and then you'll take your blanket and set it up at this end. That's for your feet.

You'll also want to grab your block. So for the first part, make sure you're seated on the mat, feet are on the blanket. Go ahead and place the brick between your feet. We're going to play with different positions for the brick. And go ahead and lie down on your back, and rest your arms on the floor.

So the first part is take your thumbs to where you can feel some ribs poking out, and then bring your middle fingers to your ASISs, your two frontal hip points. What you want is to keep this distance the same. So if you do this, the distance gets bigger. If you do this, the distance gets smaller. So we're trying to stay in neutral, and this is your touch feedback.

Then with your feet on the blanket, hug the brick. Go ahead and slide out. Your toes and the balls of your feet will lift off the blanket, so it's just your heels. And then it's an exhale to slide back in. Let's go for two more of those in parallel.

Breathing in as you slide the blanket away, staying steady through your torso. And then exhale, hopefully you feel a little bit of work in your hamstrings, to come on back. Okay, external rotation. So turn your feet out so that you can feel the brick with just your heels. But again, you don't get to flop your legs open.

That's another class. I'll have to teach you a class called flop. But for this one, we're going to rein in the range of motion so that it's active. As you slide the blanket out, you'll feel the outsides of your feet on the blanket at first, but then they'll move away. It's just your heels bracketing the brick.

You're in turnout. And then you pull the blanket back in, again, steady through your center. Two more of those, external rotation. Notice if one foot kind of wins the race, I'm right leg dominant, so I can feel the right leg trying to boss my left leg around. And then exhale, lateral hamstrings to come back.

One more time. Breathing in, sliding out. Keep the connection through the mid-back. You can imprint your low back or have a neutral curve there and return. Okay, the last one is usually the hardest.

It's internal rotation. So for this one, let's take the brick and place it between your inner thighs with your feet out and your knees in. And then otherwise, it's the same. You'll peel the base of your feet up, slide the blanket out. I can't straighten my knees all the way.

That's pretty much impossible, I think, for everybody. And exhaling to come back. Let's do two more, but bring your thumbs to your ribs, your middle fingers to your frontal hip points to maintain kind of like a little box or a square so that you don't let your ribs flare out or your back arch. And as you drag the blanket back, you don't tuck your tail under. You're staying really steady, hugging the brick.

Okay, I think that was three. Go ahead and remove the brick and just pause for a moment with your feet on the ground before we move into the bridge slides because those are harder. Take a little moment to just check in because what you might want to do is actually repeat what I just did, what we did together, rather than progressing. If you want to try the progression, let's go for it. We're going to take the block and place it between your upper inner thighs.

And again, it can be the skinny way or the wider way. I think I'm going to do this this width. Arms are down by your sides. Take a breath in and then bridge up. Then slide the blanket out.

It doesn't need to be all the way or it can and pull the blanket in as you lift your hips up. Two more. Slide the blanket out. Your hips will lower as your toes peel off and then drag the blanket back. Boy, this is a lot easier on the reformer.

One more. Inhale out, exhale back. Holy moly burning. Okay. So that's a neutral.

We're going to do external and internal rotation. So for external rotation, you'll turn your feet out. We aren't going to use the brick for this one. Arms come to the floor, push into the ground with your hands, your arms, and then lift up in this externally rotated position. Then slide out.

Pull back. Two more. Three is the magic number today. Slide out, pull back. Hopefully this one's a little bit easier because you have more glutes to help pull back and lower down.

All right. Last one. Internal rotation. I think I might be sore tomorrow. I think, yeah, skinny way with the brick like we did before.

Remember, you don't have to lift your hips up. That's why we did it with hips down. Feet are out, knees are in, hug the brick, arms down by your sides. Lift up into your internally rotated bridge, slide it out, and then pull it back. Two more.

Slide it out, and pull back. Last one. Slide it out, and pull back, and lower. Wowza. Okay.

That's that little fire emoticon that everyone uses on social media. Definitely feeling the fire. Come either into your shavasana or an art of shavasana, and rest your hands, one on your belly, one on your ribs. And check in with the sensation along the backs of your legs, the outsides of your legs, the inner seam of your legs, and in your center. And hopefully, there's a little bit of a humming going on of connection from your center all the way down to your feet.

After your next exhale, opening your eyes, go ahead and roll over onto your side and press yourself up to seated. For these mermaid rolls, I'm going to open my mat back out and move the blanket out of the way. You can do this on a bare floor or as I'm doing it kind of partially on the mat. So what we're going to do to start is come into the mermaid in Pilates, I guess you could call it a side sit or a Z sit on the reformer as an exercise, it's called the mermaid. And it's a transition, so this also comes from some of the Laban Bartenieff Fundamentals where we use the floor to move.

So I'm going to take my right hand, place it on the ground, and then lower to my elbow. Then I start to roll down as I reach my left arm up. I maintain contact with the floor, with my hands and arms, and then I'm going to push into the ground with my left hand to come up. So there's a little bit of palm flipping that happens, you might want to watch one or two times before you try it. So left hand, left elbow, and then I flip the palm up, that's my left palm, as I circle around windshield wiper, I'm going to anchor through my right hand, forearm, and elbow.

So let's pick up the pace, lowering down, roll it across, and come up. Lower down, transfer your weight, spiral up. Let's do a few more, because once you get the rhythm, it feels so lovely. One more. Okay, and you might have noticed that one side felt a little stickier than the other, and that is normal, we're usually not equally strong through both sides of our waist, so you could play if you play a little bit with doing extra repetitions on the side that's more challenging.

Okay, we're going to come on to the mat into mermaid, and let's start with your left shin, I guess you would call this perpendicular, and then the right hip is in internal rotation, left hip is in external rotation. If this doesn't feel right anywhere in your hips, you can lift up with a little bit of a blanket underneath you. Then dorsiflex your ankles, so that just means put on your flat shoes, and try not to use your hands if you need to use them. I'm going to shift over a little bit into my left hip, and then lift my right leg up. So if it feels like a cramp here, or pinching, or whatever, yeah, that's kind of what we're doing.

We're finding our strength, and the end range of motion, and internal rotation. And then from here, take your leg behind you, and place it back down. Then we'll do it again. So a little bit of a weight transfer. This is more, they call like a 90-90.

I'm doing left fist, right hand, so creating some tension, lift up, come forward, and lower down. Okay, I'm going to do one more thing with this left hip and internal rotation before we move into the other leg. So what I want you to look at is the outside of your right ankle, and it's going to depend and vary, of course, from person to person, but you're trying to create some open chain internal rotation. So you're lifting your foot off the ground from here, and then lowering back down. And then we'll take it a little bit further back, more to the 90-90.

Again, if you need the floor, use the floor. If you're okay, try it with no hands, lifting up, and lowering back down. Okay, and then we're back into our mermaid. Let's actually trial that on the other side before we move into the front hip, because God only knows I might not remember what I did. All right, so we're here in mermaid.

Okay, and the very first thing we did was just a little weight transfer and lifting up. And then lowering back down, go further behind, and see what it's like there, lift up. I can definitely tell this side is not quite as strong, and lower back down. Then we did a lift, a move, back, and down. So let's try that.

So lifting up, come forward, and lower down, and then lift up, go back, and lower down. Let's come back up, into your Z-sit, and focus on the internal rotation. So again, dorsiflex the ankles, wake up your toes, your feet, it's not just your hips, it's everything, and try to lift the foot up using the internal rotators of your hips, and lower back down. Then come more to the 90-90 pinwheel, and lift up, and lower back down. Let's do one more.

So in yoga, there's so much external rotation, and this is really important to balance things out, just in case you're hating what we're doing right now. There's a Y. All right, try to lift up, find your internal rotators, maybe for the first time ever, or not, and back down, and then again, sending the legs slightly behind you, internally rotate, and come back. Okay, if you want to show off your Jedi skills, you can switch with no hands, and we're going to focus on the front leg. So first let's actually use our hands.

So lean back, fingertips behind you, you're in your Z-sit, dorsiflex the ankle, and try to lift this leg up. So this is kind of the front leg of pigeon, but it's active rather than passive, right? You don't get to use the floor, you're resisting and working against gravity. And then lower back down. This time, try to push down into the floor.

So work the external rotators, you can't see what I'm doing, but if my hands were pushing my leg down, that's what I'm actually doing with my muscles right now. And then one more time, lean back just a little bit and try to lift up. And notice how if you push down with this leg and foot, it helps leverage through ground force reaction to lift the front leg up. Okay, last one. You're pushing down with your hands, but you're not because it's active.

You're using the external rotators of your hips, the abductors to push down into the ground. And then we'll do our little fancy switch or get there any way you can and do the other side. So hands come behind you, dorsiflex the ankles, flat shoes, and lift. And then lower back down, try to use all of this stuff on the outside of your leg to push down. You can see I'm shaking.

And then one more of each, lift up, maybe no hands, you can also play with your range here. You can talk to your foot, come, come, come, and then back down. And then last time, push everything down without using your hands. And release. Okay, let's do a little bit of transitioning up to tall kneeling from this Z sit or mermaid.

So without my hands, I'm going to come up hip extension, and then back down, switch. No hands or hands, hip extension, and coming back up. So this is wonderful for mobility through the hips, the ankles, the knees, and strength. Getting up and down off the floor without using your hands is helpful, especially as you get older. Other side, coming up.

Let's try this. We'll see what happens. So I'm going to try to swing my lower legs around and down. Maybe maybe not. And we'll try the other side.

So here's your Z sit to tall kneel, swing around, oh, that worked much better, and back down. We'll try it one more time. It's always interesting, I encourage you to practice and play. It's fun to see movements and then try to copy them. But then always ask yourself, like, well, what would happen if I tried this?

And what would happen if I tried that? Because all the ways in which your body can move, you need to move them, because whatever you don't use, you'll lose. I know it sounds so doomsday, but it's true. All right. Go ahead and close your eyes, sit in a comfortable position, and notice your breath and the sensations in your hips, your legs, feet and ankles.

If your eyes are closed, go ahead and open your eyes. And we're going to come into a seated straddle, or upavishta konasana. And don't make this your biggest straddle. This is about exploring internal and external rotation with your knees straight. We've been exploring it with our knees bent, but let's explore with our knees straight.

So lean back on your hands and start by externally rotating your left hip and internally rotating your right. And I want you to notice that your right buttock is off of the floor and your weight shifted to your left. The outside of your left foot's on the ground and the inside of your right foot's on the ground. And then you switch, notice how your right, sorry, left buttock is off the floor, right outer foot is on, left inner foot is on. So the gods and goddesses are in the details on this one.

When I teach this in my regular classes, yeah, I found a lot of people struggle with keeping the knees straight or actually getting access to the floor with the inner and outer parts of their feet. So explore that, explore the rolling action and then try it with no hands so it's more active and less passive. Notice how there's a little hip hike that has to happen when you internally rotate, but you still will have one buttock off the floor and one on the floor. And I don't know about you, but what I think is fun about this is you end up traveling a little bit. I call it butt walking because you got two little butt bones, six bones, and that's what you're walking on right now.

I'm actually traveling forward without crawling or walking. Now, going backwards is a lot more challenging in this straddle position. So I'm going to have you come to Dandasana and we'll walk backwards by hip hiking. Yeah. So you're still butt walking, it's just a different kind.

You can even get your reciprocal arm swings. Okay. Come back to your straddle for pancake folds. Want to tie in the upper body strength to the lower. We're going to use the blanket like a strap, which means it's more challenging because it's heavier.

So if you've got anything going on with your shoulders, try it with a strap instead. If you don't have a strap or a blanket, you could also hold a block over your head. I recommend not going to your biggest, widest straddle. Arms go overhead. And this is work pushing down into the ground with my legs because I'm only going to go as far as I can keep my arms by my ears and my back flat.

Obviously it's not flat. I've got the natural curves in my spine, but I'm not flexing, I'm not rounding. So the blanket gets very heavy. There's a ton of work through your hamstrings. I'm feeling my adductors, oh my goodness, spinal extensors.

We can't just stick in a sagittal plane and be stuck there. So do a little twist and pancake fold over your right leg, twist, pancake fold over your left leg. When you twist, can you keep the opposite hip down and avoid letting your hip internally rotate? So when I twist to the left, I really want to do that, but try not to. Okay.

And then we'll go around the world or we'll try to. So let's twist to the right, pancake fold, oh my goodness, all the way around the world and back up. And then pancake fold, toes stay pointing towards the ceiling and back up. One more time. Try to keep your arms up by your ears, shoulder flexion and up.

Do as many as those you like. I'm going to call it a day on that. And let's check in Sukhasana. So closing your eyes, notice your body, notice your breath. Notice the connection through your sitz bones into the floor as you observe the length and the energy moving up your spine and out the crown of your head.

Go ahead and open your eyes and we're going to do some pigeon crawls. I absolutely love pigeon crawls. I learned them in Feldenkrais class and we don't need any props. So you can take your blanket, move it off to the side. And we'll start at the back of the mat.

So you're on your hands and knees and let's initiate with the right leg. So I have to flex my spine to thread my pigeon leg forward and through. And then I crawl forward, point your toes, thread the left leg through. Crawl forward, thread the right leg through. And once that motor pattern gets established in your brain and your body, you can pick up the pace.

Notice how this is very much a core exercise. And pigeons call not just forward, they also call backwards. Oh my goodness. So you'll get a whole new experience of work through your center. Pigeon legs can be heavy.

Okay. So let's come into child's pose. Take a little breather after that. From child's pose, you can roll your way up to seated, articulating through the spine. So this brings us to our kneeling lunge slides.

You'll need your blocks, your blanket, and your mat. You want to take the mat, fold it in half, and then fold it in half again. The blocks can go nearby for later. And the blanket, I generally have it like so. So it looks kind of like a square or rectangle.

It's going to go right behind your mat. We'll start with the right knee on the blanket and the left foot forward in what's called a 90-90. So 90 degree angle at the ankle, the knee, the hip, as well as on the other side. As far as your arms go, there's lots of different choices you have. So if you're feeling a little sketchy about your balance in this position, you can use the blocks, either fingertips or hands.

So let's try that first and then I'll show you some other options. This is all about strengthening your hanumanasana muscles, right? So hamstrings, hip flexors. So sliding back and then scissoring closed. Let's do a few of those, and attempting to have equal work through both the front and the back leg.

Let's go ahead and switch sides. Left knee on the blanket, right foot on the mat. I have my top of my foot down, but you could use your hamstrings, which is much harder. I'm going to stick with this one. I'm also going to try it with no hands on this side.

See how it goes. A lot of lateral hip stability required. Let's do one more before we move into our pigeon slides. I recommend exhaling on the way back because it's challenging. Okay, we're going to switch sides to pigeon.

So your left hip is the pigeon leg. And I'm very conservative with my pigeon, so I'm going to have it more here than here, just because my knee doesn't like it in the other way, so here we are. Make it a pigeon shape that works for you. And then this would be flop, right? And then I would flop forward.

But we're going to do the opposite. We're going to resist gravity here. So use your hands if you need them. If you don't, don't, and notice how all of this stuff here has to work. And all of this stuff has to work.

And you can swing your arms forward and back if it feels kind of organic to me to do that. And let's switch sides. Right pigeon leg forward. Back left knee on the blanket. Explore with or without the bricks.

It's a whole new side. Again, there's your flop. So try to come out of the flop and we'll add some arms forward and back. You could even do a little, you know, spinal movement here, right? If you watched my class where we deconstructed dancer pose, we did some of this stuff.

It's a nice distraction from the intensity. And then we'll come back to the other side for an open chain pigeon. So I've got my left pigeon leg forward. Here's my flop pigeon. So go into your flop pigeon and then come into a lifted up shape.

Activate your right glutes, activate everywhere to resist gravity. And in that full pigeon pose, right, they reach up, do a back bend, grab their big toe. But the good news is this open chain, you get to work. That one is passive. You just kind of put stuff in places and everything does the work for you.

But here, you're going to have to work for it. So you lift your chest, you reach your hands back, right hamstrings. And then coming back out, flop. Reach sides, again, find your passive pigeon and then we'll make it active. So getting the hamstrings to kick in, reach the arms up, reach your hands back and look at the sky.

Open chain pigeon. That one's a, that side is definitely a little less stable. And then coming out, swing around and we're going to set up our mat back in its regular position so you don't need your blanket anymore. But we will use a block. So a typical way that many yoga classes end would be shoulder stand plow.

And so this is a very active version of those two poses threaded together. It's kind of a rollover from Pilates. So going with that same theme of making something that can be kind of floppy more active. The block, let's play with it between the feet. Now, this is a cork brick, so it's heavy and I'll see how it goes.

I think we'll try one round with it between the feet, one round between the thighs. So you're going to lie down on your back, take a breath in, and then as you exhale, you lift your legs up, push into the ground and go over. You can tap the brick, there's your plow, lift the brick, and then I'm doing cat claws so you can see how I'm articulating down through the spine. Lower the legs, lift the legs, roll up and over, plop, losing my hair, there we go. And then eccentrically control through your center as you lower all the way back down.

All right, I think we'll skip the block between the inner thighs, but feel free to try that. Now we're going to move into shavasana. For shavasana, get comfortable, I'm going to add a little bit of extra padding underneath my head. And you can have your knees bent or your legs straight, go ahead and close your eyes. And take this time to soak up and marinate in all the goodness of your practice.

Everything that your body just did for you. Shavasana is a time to pause, it's a sacred pause. And I invite you to bring your awareness to your breath, noticing the texture of your breath as it moves into your nostrils. As well as the texture of your breath on your upper lip as it exits your nostrils. And each inhalation, noticing the movement of your ribs, your belly, and maybe your chest.

As you exhale, notice the parts of your body that have contact with the ground. And invite those areas of your body to become heavier. If you have more time, please stay and continue to rest in shavasana. If it's time to move into the next part of your day, start slowly, making little wiggles and shifts, reaching your arms overhead and stretching. Find the floor with your feet and roll over onto either side, right or left, pressing yourself up to seated.

And find any comfortable seated position, I always welcome, you know, using a blanket or sitting on a bolster. Rest your hands on your knees and go inward as you connect to the floor via your sits bones. And then connect your palms together and anjali mudra, bowing head to heart, thank you for practicing with me today, namaste.