Head, Neck, and Eye Relief

Hi, everybody. Welcome. And I'm so delighted you're here with me today. We're going to work today a little bit on the head and neck and the eyes. So I'd like for you to find a very comfortable seat. We're going to work with just getting up on the sit bones, maybe moving out a little bit of the flesh here. And then just finding the ankles right underneath the knees. And just relax the shoulders softly down the back. Yeah. And very carefully, I want you to look directly in front. We're going to play with some neck movement. So I want you to do this very slowly and carefully and be very mindful of what's happening. So with a nice deep inhale here, look directly in front. And with the exhale, just drop the chin towards the collarbone. And just feel that deep, deep stretch in the back of the neck. And with a deep inhale, allow for the head to come directly up, slowly through the cervical spine. And with an exhale, come all the way down with the chin towards the chest. Inhale, go ahead and bring it back up. Look directly in front. And exhale, bring it back on down. So with each time you come down, perhaps bring new breath, new inhale to the back of the neck, so that you can feel that little stretch, that little relief. And we're working towards a double, triple chin, whatever feels good. And when you're ready, inhale, go ahead and bring it all the way up to center. Nice. And we're now going to roll the head towards the right shoulder. So inhale, looking forward, and exhale, roll the head over towards the right shoulder. So we're just moving the neck and the eyes. The shoulders are not moving, hips not moving, waist not moving. We're taking a moment to look over the shoulder. And inhale, go ahead and bring the head all the way back to center. We're going to go directly to the other side. Exhale and let the head and the neck look over the left shoulder. Inhale, bring it on back to center. And we're going to do that one more time. Exhale, rolling it out, rolling it out over the right shoulder. We're going to pause here for a minute and take new deep breath, new deep inhale into this stretched out left side. Maybe you'll twist a little more. And take a new inhale and bring it all the way back. Exhale, go over to the left side, taking your time, following the gaze over the left shoulder and taking a little bit of time to find the inhale and the breath and the stretch into the right side of the neck. Breathe here. And when you're ready, inhale, come all the way back to center. Nice and slow. Beautiful. We're going to do another little neck turn, but we're going to drop the right ear to the right shoulder. So inhale, look directly in front. And as you exhale, tip the ear, the right ear to the right shoulder. Nothing else moves, just the neck. Nice and slowly, with the exhale, deep down. Beautiful. And then when you're ready, inhale, bring it all the way up and exhale. Let's take it over to the other side. So we're moving very, very slowly here, but we're coordinating the movement with the breath and the breath with the movement. Inhale, bring it all the way up to center. Let's do that again. Exhale, take it over to the right. Inhale, bring it on up to center and exhale over to the left. Beautiful. Inhale, bring it on up. Stay here for a moment. As you exhale, drop the right ear to the right shoulder. We're going to take a moment here and have a new fresh breath into that stretched outside. Now be very, very careful. Getting a little deeper here and inhale, bring it all the way up. Exhale over to the left side. Remember, it's just a neck movement. Taking a new fresh inhale into this right side here, nice and stretched. Maybe the ear will dip a little more, but you're going to be really careful and listen to the body as it, and respond to the body. Inhale, go ahead and bring it all the way up. We're going to add on from here. So we're going to exhale, tip the right ear to the right shoulder. Feel that and land. Yeah. And then when you're ready, new inhale into that left side. And very slowly and carefully, take the right jawbone to the right collarbone. The eyes can look downwards and you're very carefully releasing the chin to the collarbone.

Again, we're getting that double chin action happening. And we're going to take a couple of moments, a couple of fresh breaths, breathing deeply into this new stretch. And you might feel it in the back of the neck, the side of the neck, the front of the neck. Pay attention, be there, feel a little stretch. You'll feel the flexibility and the mobility in a moment. And when you're ready, nice, deep inhale. First, pick up the jaw. Exhale everything. And the new inhale brings up the head and the neck from the ear. Nice. So we're going to move over to the other side. So we're taking the left ear to the left shoulder. Inhale, looking forward. Exhale, drop the ear. Nice and slowly, manipulating and maneuvering the neck ever so carefully. Take an inhale. And as you exhale, we're going to drop the left jaw to the left collarbone. Let the eyes follow the chin or look with a soft gaze towards the floor. Take your time here as you breathe new breath, new space into the right stretched outside. Again, dipping. So you have that double, triple chin. Oh my goodness, that feels so good. And then when you're ready, inhale, lift up the chin. So you still have the ear there. Exhale everything. And then inhale nicely and slowly and comfortably. Bring the head all the way up and look directly in front. Beautiful. Okay. So we're now going to do some circles with our nose and our chin and our head. And we're going to start off very slowly and very small circles at the beginning. And so think about the nose drawing a circle in the size of a quarter. And we're going to take the nose traveling in a clockwise direction. And then we're going to extend that circle into a saucer size. So we're just getting a little taller in our spine. And then we're just moving the nose. And you can feel this a little bit in the head and the neck. And ever so carefully, we're going to take that saucer to be even bigger. And we're bleeding with the chin, nose and forehead. And we're going to a side plate size. This can feel very comfortable and soothing in the neck. We're going to go a little taller, a little bigger. In the circle, we're going to go as big as a dinner plate. Yes. So you might feel that you're moving a little bit in the body. That's quite natural. But you want to really feel it in the neck and the head. So we're going to go counterclockwise here in a moment. So come to a stopping point in the center and stay with the large size plate. And we'll go down to smaller size.

So take the nose, chin and head and just do this nice circle. We don't need to be dropping the head as of yet. And just go in your plate size. And then keep it going or dropping in size. We're going to go to that side plate size. And very slowly and carefully, we're going to the size of your saucer. And then we're moving to a teeny tiny movement to the size of that quarter. So it's basically the nose moving, the head is almost bobbing. There we go. And then just comes with the head directly on top of the spine, right between the shoulders exhale and just feel this beautiful lengthening through the spine, nice and erect the head just sitting between the shoulders. And it feels quite nice. It doesn't feel so heavy. And now we're going to move towards a little turtleneck. We're going to bring the head into the center of the room. And then we're going to pull it back to where it just sits on top of the spine. So take a nice deep inhale. And as you exhale, send the head into the center of the room like a turtle popping out of the shell. Take an inhale there. And then exhale just draw the head and the chin back to where it's just sitting right in the middle of the shoulders. And then take a new inhale. And as you exhale, drop back a little more. So the head goes back and the chin might drop and you'll do that double chin action again. And you feel this beautiful space in the back. Nice. And let's go ahead and bring it back to center. Let's do that one more time. We're going to inhale and exhale. We're bringing the head into the center of the room. Take a nice inhale there. And exhale, go ahead and bring it back to where it's just sitting in between the shoulders. Take a new inhale where you're nice and tall. And exhale, just pull the head back towards the back of the room here. That's what I'm doing towards the window. And take an inhale and exhale, come back to center. Beautiful. Nice. So we're going to now move towards a lion's breath. So this will be very funny. We're going to jot out our tongue. And then after we do our lion's breath, we're going to scrunch up the whole face. So normally we do this when we're lying down and we don't watch each other, but you get to watch me looking foolish. But you can do this in the comforts of your own home. So let's start with a nice deep inhale and get lovely and tall. Feel the sit bones, relax the shoulders. Oh yes, that feels so good. And when you're ready, take a deep inhale and with the exhale, I want you to really throw the tongue out first, right in front. So it's and come on back. So we're going to do that a handful of times and I just want you to feel free, play with it, be okay with it. Just feel that nice stretch at the back of the throat. Feel the tongue thrusting forward and let the eyes open big and large and just feel a whole facial movement, a neck movement, a tongue movement, a throat movement. So when you're ready, nice big inhale and exhale.

Very nice. It's hilarious to do this. So take a nice inhale, nice and tall. And when you're ready, beautiful. Come on back. Last one and you can have this big lions roar, lioness roar. Inhale nice and tall. Relax the shoulders. Exhale. Beautiful. And come on back. So we're going to have a couple of breaths where we exhale and we're going to scrunch up the whole face and then we're just going to relax the face. So nice deep inhale. And as you exhale, we're going to pucker everything, squeeze everything, pucker the lips and inhale open and exhale squeeze full facial movement, squeezing everything, wrinkling everything, permission to squeeze it all and relax on the inhale. Exhale, squeeze again as much as you can squeeze right in the face. Just the face, pucker the lips, wrinkle the eyes. Inhale open and when you're ready with the exhale, squeeze everything in the face, pucker the lips, pucker, pucker, squeeze, squeeze, wrinkle, wrinkle and release and inhale. So we're now going to move into some eye movements. So we want to really, the eye is an actual muscle and we want to keep the eyes moving. We want to really encourage the movement of the peripheral vision. We want to have the eyes to be moving up and down side to side and at a diagonal. And this can also help with balance, which will be in another instruction later on. So I really need for you to look directly in front. And when we do our eye movements, if you're doing this with someone in your home or in your classroom, please don't look at anybody else when you're doing the eye movements. Just concentrate on looking forward. We'll keep coming back to the central spot as we move through the ups and downs, left to right diagonal. But just follow the instruction and stretch the eyes as much as you can and then we'll just keep coming back to center. So when you're ready, look directly in front and then we're going to roll the eyes completely up towards the ceiling. So make sure the eyes are being stretched but the head is not moving nor are the shoulders or the body. It's just deep, deep eye movements. And when you get there, see if you can stretch up even more. And then when you're ready, just roll the eyes down, come to the center and then drop the eyes deeply down. Like you want to find your chin with the eyes or your chest and you just can't find it. So you have to keep dipping, dipping, dipping. Inhale, bring it all the way to center and lift the eyes up. Beautiful stretch, stretch, stretch. Come on down to center, roll them through and then all the way down to the knees. Inhale, go ahead and bring them on up. And I'd like for you to just close the eyes and then blink a couple of times. Looking directly in front, we're now going to go from side to side. So let's take the eyes and roll the eyes all the way over to the right. So you're really moving those eyes as if they're going into the back of the head and go towards the nose. And then you're going to come all the way back to center and go off to the left over to the other side. So I want you to keep breathing smoothly, stretching through the eyes, but this can be a little disorienting. So keep coming back, take a deep look in the center and then roll it on out. Over to the right, back on into center and then all the way over to the left. Beautiful. And then when you're ready, come on back to center, close the eyes, have a little blink. If you feel a little dizzy or disoriented, just take a breath before you get going with the diagonal action. So we're going to look directly in front and we're going to take the eyes up to the right corner. So I'm going to stretch the eyes all the way up to the right and then I'm going to bring them back to center and stretch them all the way down to the left. Come on back to center, up to the right, stretch back to center and down to the left corner.

Come on back to center. We're now going to take the eyes up to the left upper corner. So all the way up to the left, taking a moment to stretch. And sometimes it feels like, are they really working? But they are, they're stretching and then come back down to center and take them eyes all the way down to the right lower corner. We'll do that one more time coming up to center, up to the left corner, stretch, come on back to center and down all the way to the right corner. Beautiful. Come to center, close the eyes, exhale everything, release any tension and have a little blink. And now we're going to move the eyes all the way around the numbers of the clock. We'll go clockwise and then also counterclockwise. So looking directly in front, we're first going to inhale and bring the eyes all the way up to number 12. And slowly and carefully, we'll take the eyes around the numbers to one, two, three, stretch deeply, four, five, all the way down to six, deep stretch, seven, eight, deep into nine, 10, 11, 12, look in front, close the eyes, exhale, release everything, blink, inhale, bring the eyes up to noon, up to 12 and we're going to go counterclockwise. So taking the eyes to 11, over to 10, to 9, stretch deeply, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, up to 12, stretch it up as much as you can and then come back to center, close the eyes, exhale, release every bit of tension that you might have and blink a couple of times. Nice. We just have one more eye movement to do. So we're going to take the right hand and make a fist and extend the arm completely out in front and show our little thumb here.

And we're going to look directly at that thumbnail. And the thumb is landing right about where the nose is because we're going to bring the thumb into the nose and then extend it out. And I want you to let the eyeballs move with the thumb. So as it comes inwards, your eyes will go inwards. So when you're ready, take a nice inhale. And as you exhale, just draw the thumb into the nose, bending through the elbow here, just watching the thumbnail. And things get a little off focus and that's okay. And your eyes are turning inward. And then when you're ready, extend the arm out. But nice and slowly, just watching that thumbnail and allowing things to come back into focus. Beautiful. Nice. Release the right hand and let's do with the left hand. We're going to make a fist and bring up that thumb and looking directly at it. Take an inhale and exhale, bending through the left elbow. And this action might feel a little different because you're in a different hand. You're going to look at it and I already feel like I'm doing something different on this side. And then we're inhaling and allowing for the thumb to move away from the eye and fully extend. Release the hand, look directly forward, close the eyes and blink a couple of times. Beautiful. So after all those wonderful eye movements, we want to just give our eyes a little bit of a massage and a little heat. So we're going to bring the hands together and rub them and get a lot of friction going. So we have some really nice heat and you'll feel that between your hands. Might even make a little noise. And then very carefully, just cup the eyes and allow for the palms to just rest on the eyes, gentle cupping. And we're going to inhale into the palms and exhale down the spine, just releasing the shoulders and just feeling a little bit of heat here and just a little pause and a little calm in the eye muscle. And then very slowly we're going to take the fingers down towards the eyebrows and we're going to move little circles. We're going to have these little circles happen with the tips of our fingers coming all the way along the eye socket and coming across underneath into the eye and towards the nose. And then we're very slowly and carefully just going to massage the eyes ever so gently. Nice. And then as you've done that, bring the hands all the way out to the temples and let's just massage the temples. And then we're going to find the tips of these fingers in these small, gentle circles, move all the way along the jaw bone. And we're just going to bring the circles slowly, just a little pressure, you know, feeling the circles nice and gentle. And then we're going to bring the fingers all the way back along the jaw and the cheeks and bring the fingers towards the ears. So we're going to find the thumb and the forefinger and we're going to come to the tips of the ears. We're going to pluck the ears. So really hold onto them and pluck them like you're pulling at the edges of the ears and you're pulling and flicking almost, flipping or flicking, whatever that feels like for you. And then we're working towards the lobe of the ear and we want to gently pull the earlobe in the direction of the jaw bone. And as you pull, I want you to open the jaw. A little bit of a TMJ release here. Let's do it again. Ah, beautiful. And then very slowly and carefully, we're going to cup the ears. So as you cup the ears, you'll hear a little bit of ocean sound. And I just want you to stay there for two full breaths because you may not be able to hear me. So inhale, exhale everything.

And inhale again and exhale everything. Beautiful. And then very slowly and carefully bring the tips of the fingers to the temples and allow for the fingers to move towards the center of the brow. And just ever so carefully, a little pressure, little circular movements. And we're going to take our hands now and we're going to move our hands with these circles. We're going to mess up your hair. We're going to roll the fingers massaging and the thumbs are pressing into the back of the head. And the tips of the fingers are moving towards the center of the skull. Beautiful. And just allow for that movement to just be delicious. And squeeze and press and circle. Squeeze and press and circle. And allow for the fingers and the thumbs to come towards the back of the head. And the thumbs might even cup underneath the occiput right back there. And you can just press a little pressure there and just allow the head to fall into the thumbs. Oh my goodness, it just feels so yummy. Beautiful. And then when you're ready, ever so carefully release the hands from the head and very slowly and carefully press the hands on top of the head and drag the hands like they're dripping honey down the ears, along the neck and out through the shoulders. Put the hands on the top of the head. Here we go. Just feel that subtle energy. Just moving directly down the ears. Drip, drip, drip. Come out through the shoulders. One more time. We're just going to go a little slower through the neck. Let's have the heat come down the ears. Oh yeah.

And hold the neck just ever so carefully. Maybe stretch up through the neck and gently pull the back of the neck out through the shoulders and just allow for the hands to land. Inhale nice and tall. Exhale into your sit bones. Release the shoulders. Beautiful. And let's just for a moment, sit here and just feel the heat of our hands resting on our quads or on the tops of the knees. We're finding that erect spine, soft shoulders and a soft, sweet gaze. Just feeling the benefits of the whole head, eye, neck movements. And very carefully just turn the palms upwards and let the backs of the palms just rest on the thighs. The palms now are open just in this gesture of receiving the benefits of all of that action from head, neck, eyes. And if you like here you can just close the eyes and just stay here for two to four deep breaths. Just integrating that subtle energy. And release anything that might have been stressful or tension. But there's this new sweet vitality and it's vibrating in the head and the face and the neck. And when you're ready let's go ahead and bring the palms together towards the heart in Anjali Mudra, prayer mudra. Let's bow to our hands. Thank you for your practice. Namaste. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti. Thank you.