Build Inner & Outer Strength

Hi. This is a class that's going to be short and very strength building. We're going to do a few poses that are timed for a minute, a few strength building, plankish poses. And timing is really a great thing for me. I'm interested in the stories that we have about ourselves and the actuality of ourselves. So I have a story about myself that I'm not strong, and so I come into plank, and if I don't have a timer, that story kind of overwhelms me, takes over, and I come out early. If I have a timer set, it kind of sets a container, and I can breathe and feel other things. I don't have to debate whether or not I'm strong enough to do it. I commit to staying for a minute. And then there are days when my body's like, you know what? No, thank you. And I listen to that. It's fine to not stay for the whole time, but just to give the container gives my brain a little bit of resting space and allows me to drop into the experience of actuality versus my story. So take your arms out to the side to start and feel from the very center of the breastbone and the space in between the shoulder blades, so the very midline of your body, your great central channel, a widening out, like a huge hawk expanding its wings. And keep all that breath across the chest, but take your upper arm bones and just slightly plug them into the sockets. So there's a reach out. There's also kind of a drawing in of the upper arms. And as you draw your upper arms in, see if you can not at all lose the space across the chest. So one of my dear friends swears by the one or sometimes two minute plank to shift a challenging situation. She's a writer. And when she gets blocked and a chef, when she gets blocked or things get too hectic, she drops down to her kitchen floor, her office floor and sets a timer and does her plank. And it's an amazing mind shifter. Turn your palms to face up. Let your thumbs be heavy. Keep broad. Inhale your arms up overhead. As you exhale, slide your hands down together in front of your heart and have a real integrated strong feeling in the chest. Open the arms to the side, expanding through the chest, but drawing the upper arm bones just slightly in. Turn the palms up, firming the triceps against the humerus bone, the upper arm bone. Inhale your arms up and exhale. Slide the hands just one more time. So there's a way I can do this that's kind of unenergetic and unengaged, which is more my habit. But right now I'm really trying to engage the arms. Widen, turn the palms up. Inhale the arms up overhead. And then exhale, slide your hands together in front of your heart. Shift to sit in Virasana. So sitting on your shins. Let's put a block in between the feet. And we're going to use the block for other things. So keep the block right in between your feet and take your feet and press them in the inner edges of the feet. Press them into the block. So right there again, instead of just sitting without engagement, engage the feet in, the shin bones in. Also press your shin bones down so the legs are very active here. Very wakeful. And then bring your arms out in front of you and make fists with your hands and then open your hands and make fists and open. And keep the range of motion big so the fists go small and the fingers go way out like jazz hands. And go faster.

Take your arms out to the side. Keep squeezing the feet to the block, the shins in. Bring your arms up overhead. And then bring your arms forward. See if you can go faster with your hands, in and out with the hands. And for some of us, this is getting very exciting in the forearm muscles. And this is a great exercise for or to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. All right. Faster with the hands. If you can, I feel like I can't, but maybe you can go faster with your hands. And then bring them forward. And then let the backs of the hands just float down to your legs and feel what it is that you feel. I feel tingling in my hands and sort of exhaustion in the forearms, a good exhaustion. Awakeful quality. All right. And then we're going to do our first one minute pose. So you're going to keep your block where it is. You can keep your feet right against the block and walk your hands out. It's going to be a plank position. Tuck your toes under and then straighten your legs, plank. And so keep the ball, the big toe, pressing into the block to engage the legs. Feel each knuckle of your hand descending down and the fingers long. And then imagine there's a big rubber band in between your forearms. Can you draw your forearms in towards each other? At the same time, remember the feeling of widening across the chest that we did at the very beginning of this. The chest is wide, the forearms are drawing in. And then bring your attention right around the belly button and lift slightly up there. And then draw your tailbone towards your heels as your collarbones roll forward. Relax your jaw, your tongue. As I said before, if your body absolutely says you're done, bring your knees down. But if your mind starts to get in the way about some story, drop back into experience. Down dog. It's over. That was our first one minute pose. Walk your hands back to your feet. Hold onto your elbows with the wrists bending to give a little counter pose to your wrists. And breathe here. Maybe you feel your heart excited from the one minute plank. Release your hands. Walk back out. We're going to do our second one minute pose. It's going to be a plank position, but the forearms down this time and the feet, the balls of the feet up onto the block. So you might need to play a little bit with your, the measurements. And then we'll go right into it. Forearm plank. This is a very similar pose, but being lower here, you have more of a foundation of the outer arm, the wrist, the forearm, the elbow, and the transverse abdominals work harder when you're lower here. So it may be a little more challenging. I enjoy feeling the quiver of my muscles. It makes me know that I'm alive. Feeling awake. Feel the legs very turbo strong. I have stripes on my tights here. I'm going to try to lengthen the outer seam of those stripes as the forearms press down. Breathing. And not much can soften here, but you want to soften what can. Step forward. That's one minute. One minute forearm plank. So we're in dolphin now, pressing the forearms down. Usually dolphins are pretty taxing pose, but after a form like maybe you find a little more ease in it. Child's pose.

Breathing in and softening and dissolving as you breathe out. Walk over with your upper body to the right. Take a few breaths into the length of the left side. And then walk over to the other side. Right arm reaches away from the heaviness of the right hip. Come back to the center. And this one isn't timed. It's a little bit different. We're going to come into plank now with straight arms, feet up on the block. I'll admit that I did three weeks of boot camp a boot camp recently. I could only do three weeks, but this class is influenced by that three weeks of boot camp in a park. Okay. So from plank feet on, uh, on a block, take your right foot, tap it to the right on the floor and bring it back. Take your left foot, tap it to the left, bring it back, take your right foot, tap it to the right, bring your right knee to your right arm pit. Plank. Left foot taps left knee to left armpit plank. One more in the series taps right armpit left armpit plank taps left armpit knee to right armpit plank down dog feet. Stay up on the block. You can walk your hands back a little bit. Let the hips go high. Let the heels sink low and then look forward, bend your knees. Your feet are high. So it's a little bit of lightness here. You're going to jump your feet forward, breathe and lengthen your spine. Exhale, fold, face over your legs. Let's let the knees bend and softly roll up through the spine. All right. Again, get your block and take it to the upper right corner of your mat. Tadasana. Inhale arms out to the side, widen the chest, plug the upper arm bones in, turn your palms to face up. Inhale, reach up. Exhale, fold forward. Step the left foot back to a lunge. From the top of the left thigh, spin the heel down and come up into your Virabhadrasana too. Here in warrior two we're going to emphasize same same chest broad to the fingers but then the upper arm bones just drawing in slightly. With the upper arm bones slightly drawing in it gives a little more support to the shoulder blades so that the chest feels open. So we're going to keep the arms really integrated just as they are. So not losing that stability.

Arms really integrated. Tip at the pelvis to bring yourself into side angle, keeping the arms in relation to the chest. You have your block there. Put your hand firmly onto your block. Reach up, spread the chest. Let the left upper arm gently drop into the socket. The right one has gravity so we don't need to worry about that and from the right one we actually try to lift up and out. From here keep upper body same triangle pose. I'm going to slide my block up. You can keep yours low. Staying really stable integrated through the chest, through the upper arms. Turn your left palm to face forward. Reach the arm up overhead and then bring your hands down. Slide your block over to the other side. Step forward. Right foot back to a lunge. Spin the heel down. Warrior two with a I think of like sort of a superhero in the upper body. Real feeling of strength in the arms. In that strength kind of a clarity and an openness. In that strength even though there's a muscular action the breath can still flow through the channels. And then keeping the upper body steady, pelvis tips to bring me into side angle pose. Okay and left hand onto the block and we're going to do side plank in a little bit, Vasisthasana. And these are the arms of Vasisthasana. So establishing the clarity of space across the chest but right upper arms sinking down. Feel like you're in side plank though through the arms. Keep everything the same but straight in the front leg. Triangle pose. Still a side plank feeling through the arms. Turn the right palm to face forward. Reach your right arm up over your ear. Come down. Bring the block right to the center of the mat and step back into downward facing dog. So side plank as promised. You put the right hand onto the block. Spin to the outer edge of the right foot. Line up the outer edge of the right foot with the block. And then lift your left arm. There's a few options. This is where in side plank. Left foot can be forward or it can be stacked or it can be just behind. So. Legs strong. Side seams of the legs long into the waist. Right hand clear pressing down. And the left arm reaching up. Spread, spread, spread the chest. But let the left upper arm bones slightly drop down into the socket. Feel the right leg supporting the left leg. And I like being high on the right arm because I have that extra sense of buoyancy underneath the right ribs, the right armpit. Turn the left palm to face forward. Reach the arm up overhead for a full extension through your body. We're close to the one minute mark. Stick with it. Find your breath. And stick with it. Shoulders draw down. Legs strong. Downward dog. That seemed a little longer to me than when it seemed like at home. Okay. Last strength building pose. And then we'll start again from the beginning. Just kidding. Left hand goes up onto the block. Tip to the outer edge of the left foot. And then turn. Feel free to use your right foot in front of you as a kickstand. Energize the legs. Reach through the heels. Spread across the balls of the feet. Spread your toes. Feel the core integrated into the legs as well as radiating up to the heart. And then spread midline of the heart to each arm. But let the right upper arm just slightly sink down into its socket. Turn the right palm to face forward. Slowly reach your right arm up and over your ear. And feel the whole experience of this. Feeling, feeling instead of thinking, thinking. Breathing and softening the jaw, the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the throat. Not much else can be soft here. The brain, the thoughts can be soft. Down dog. Knees to the floor. Slide the block back. Rest your forehead onto the block. And then just roll up and sit for a moment. And that practice should set you up well. It feels like a triple espresso coursing through my veins. So I hope that you enjoyed it. This would be a great practice to do maybe daily and see how it gets easier. Probably definitely will get easier if you do it every day. And you could even do it like twice in a row if you want to really bolster up your strength. So thank you very much. Namaste.