Lighten Up

What happens in those days that you feel dull, that you feel that you don't have energy or just there is strong emotions of sadness or or you feel just lethargic like you don't want to leave the sofa and you just want to be there all the time that you feel super lazy. So how can your yoga practice help with that? So there is a principle in Ayurveda which is a brother science with yoga which is do the opposite. So if what you feel is lethargic what you have to do in your practice is to bring a little bit of movement, something that helps you to build up some energy that then you can use. So that's the reason why my suggestion for this sequence which is a sequence to light up and it's not starting I really like starting on the floor laying down but if you are this kind of person that has a tendency to be on the sofa on the couch all the time or if this is just how you feel today so that's not what you have to do you have to either stay start standing or you know I know if you come from the sofa maybe it's standing it's too much so I'm suggesting that we start sitting. So let's bring the mind here into the body so just breathe into your body allow yourself to root through your sitting bones and your hips and your pelvis just feel the breathing in the body so just feel the movement of the breathing in the body this observing the movement of the breathing in the body helps you to move from the thinking mode to the feeling mode to the sensations so you're really here present in your body and then from here let's start playing a little bit and building up this energy so let's bring some movement and what we will do is simply circling so you're circling with the whole body so you're allowing your pelvis to move you know the base it's moving you see that's the movement that your pelvis is doing but you're allowing the whole spine to play and you're allowing the shoulders to be in the game as well as well as the heart and the head and the neck so bring some playfulness into the game explore these little spaces in your body how does it feel there is a spot here or a spot there so you're really exploring inside and if you play with the breathing as well so when you go to the front you are inhaling and when you go to the back you're exhaling and that's even better because you're allowing the breathing to work in a natural way with your movement and you can change the pace so you can bring the speed up a little bit if you think that that's helping but maybe if I bring a little bit more of freedom I will build up a little bit more of energy so do it but keep on being mindful of the movements you're doing and the sensations you're having in your body and then you can move as fast as you want there are no rules for this really just play with it maybe your body starts cracking I just heard the crack that's good something is falling back into place then maybe you feel like slowing down again it's up to you if you feel like slowing down just do it always combining your breathing with your movement and now let's change sides so you roll on the opposite direction because there is a whole new landscape to explore when you do it on the opposite direction and that brings me to another thing that we do in yoga you know we explore all the time so you have to go to each new movement with a child's eyes so you can really find new things so really play now I feel like I want to go a little bit faster because I really want to build up a little bit more energy that feels good yeah it's not a big effort I'm having fun I'm creating energy being aware of my body and the sensations in it and when it's time to stop maybe you want to slow down make the circle a little bit smaller and then you can finally find the upright position and wow feel all the movement really my energy is still circling so now you have the first sensation the first school of just with a little bit of movement you have put a lot of energy in motion enjoy this okay then from here we can go to all fours and we're gonna keep on moving the energy so find the right alignment which means wrists just below the shoulders and knees just below the hips and then usually we would do only this opening and closing but we will because we want to bring a little bit more of movement you know because we have this inert inertia and we want to keep the movement flowing my suggestion is that we do this circling so basically we do the same but we circle down after exhaling we go all the way down and then bring the heart closer to the ground and when your heart reach your hands bring the arm stretched and again exhaling arching rounding going back sitting on your heels bring the forearms on the floor inhale move forward bring the heart open and draw the arms straight and opposite movement circling meditating in this movement there is nothing else than this and the sensations and be aware that for this one I'm keeping my knees a little bit wider than my hips because I want to move backwards sit on my heels and that would make it much easier so why do I want to make it hard if I can make it easier and if you find it hard to keep your mind with the movements you are doing just be with the breathing be aware be mindful of every inhalation and every exhalation you're doing my suggestion is that you try to be with the sensations in the body but sometimes at the beginning that's a little bit hard so be with the breathing it's always easier okay and you finally stop and let's pause and let's pause sitting down on the heels forehead down arms relaxed and again here there is all these sensations available to you right now in your body this is the energy in your body that it's moving so it's there you see it's right there difficult to feel it when you are in your couch but it's there okay and from here bring the hips up now maybe you bring the knees hip width apart and then you bring the arms forward keeping the hips at the level of your knees and allowing your heart to open and the forehead to move down to the floor to your mouth and here because your heart is opening you are helping this energy that rounds the chest and the head area to be really powerful this is what we call Prada and it's responsible for all the energy that we take into the body but not only the energy everything that comes from outside to inside so feel this like an opportunity to be humble and allow the energy to enter your body and then bring the hands down to your face and pause one more time but you don't want to pause for a long time because you already know that then your mind starts wandering so let's go to plank and this is a really interesting posture here because this is demanding a little bit of effort so the tendency is to bring the buttocks higher but can you bring them lower down so they are really in line basically when you look down if you can see your thighs it's okay you know so yeah they are in a line now bring the head in line with your spine again and now we're going to move the energy but we're going to do it mindfully so what we want to do is to move the energy from the top of the head towards the heart and then from the heart towards the top of the head so inhale at the top of your head and bring it to your heart and exhale from the heart to the top of the head you are redirecting all this heat that you are generating in the posture moving it between the heart and sahasra the crown chakra and then from here bring the hips up push with your hands down on the floor you can bend your knees a little bit so you can really lengthen the spine the head is hanging there's a lot of heat in your body right now you can hold the posture here a little bit longer then slowly slowly walk with your feet towards your hands and pause here allowing your whole body to hang arms hanging head relaxed okay so let's bring it up with energy so let's see it like if there is a chair underneath bring the arms forward open the heart and all the way up push with your legs stretch here and slowly slowly bring the arms down just give yourself a sec to feel the standing position how does it feel to be in Tadasana and here in Tadasana we're gonna do a simple karana to work with the different movements of the energy in the body so it's really simple so it's more about tuning with the sensation so you can really perceive the energy I'm gonna guide you on that so we're gonna do it with the breathing so inhale bring the arms up and then interlace the fingers the thumbs and exhale move to the side opening the side of the body and bring it up again inhaling and exhaling change side bring it up arms in an angle and exhale rotation torsion look backwards and go back to the center and do the same on the other side then bring it up inhale and slowly down then your knees a little bit and hanging here soft so put your hand in between both feet and bring the other hand up and follow this hand with your guys so look up and exhaling bring the arms softly down and change side so now it's the opposite hand that stays in between the feet bring the other hand up look up and exhaling now have an angle inhaling with the head with the hands on the floor or either in your legs look forward and relax relax the knees body hanging one more time and this time squat but make a ball with your body and then inhaling up you want to go all the way up to your tiptoes and bring your hands down in a mistake heels down and we're back here so bring it up the energy is moving up and now bring it to the side so the energy is moving to the side and up one more time and the energy is moving to the other side and you bring it up and then you circle the energy spiraling up and then center and spiraling the energy up again and then bring the arms up and allow the energy to go down and then spiral with one hand and down and spiral up and spiral down bring the energy forward frontal and relax with one more time bring the energy forward and this time center your energy inside of the body centering and from here expansion bring it out all the way out and namaste inhale energy up exhale energy moving to one side inhale energy up exhale energy moving to the other side inhale rotation spiral the energy and back to the center and when you exhale rotation spiraling and up and softly energy down the spiral up one more time with one arm and spiral up with the other arm and make it forward top of your head the energy moving away and down one more time and this time center the energy bring it inwards and from here expand and namaste bring the arms down and just allow yourself to be with whatever it is available to you right now so when you stop after akarana there is a tendency to observe the heart beating or the breathing going back to normal but the suggestion is that you stay with this more subtle sensations of the movement of the energy in your body so you start kind of training your mind to feel this subtle sensations in the body because the mind has a tendency to be only in the gross sensations pain there is all these subtle things can you try to connect with this okay and let's go down so we're just simply going to roll down so we can squat okay so from here just see it and then we're just gonna lay down it's the first time you feel your body laying down it feels good huh but we don't want to lose all this energy we have created so we're gonna start doing a bridge but we're gonna do it dynamic today so that helps your nature which is a lazy nature so let's bring again some movement into the sequence with this one so you bring the arms up and then you push with your feet down on the floor you can choose when you inhale and when you exhale this is really up to you there's both ways work so push with your feet and bring the hips up pelvis up and while you do this you allow your hands to move down to the floor go all the way up and then when the other breathing movement starts just bring the pelvis down and the arms up so you want to move slow so you can be really mindful of what you're doing and aware of the effects that this is that that that brings into the body the sensations are rising and you want to keep it in a flow so there is no pause movements there is just movement all the time I'm choosing to inhale when I go up and exhale when I go down but you know what now I'm gonna do exactly the opposite so I pause for my inhalation so I can experiment how it works when I do the opposite exhaling up and inhaling down and this is what yoga is about is about experimenting with your own body how does feel things things feel for you which it might be different of how does things feel for me okay and one more time and this time let's stay in the posture opening the heart push with your feet down on the floor and when your mind starts wondering it means it's time for you to slowly slowly go down mindful of each vertebra touching the floor and just bring your knees to your chest relax here for a second from here we're ready to do an inversion this is it helps this the inversions really help with bringing energy up into the body so bring the hand sides to your body you can do a kick with your legs so you can bring the hips up and then you want to support your hips with your hands because you're really keeping the body weight with your hands here and and and the pelvis is quite heavy try to bring the shoulders that the elbows a little bit closer together and just close your eyes if that feels right if you need to keep your eyes open it's really nice here to look at your navel and just be with the breathing if you really used to do inversions you could do any inversion you could do sarsasana or sarvangasana whatever it feels right for you today then if you're here maybe you can attempt halasana and because we are closing our fire point in the body so strongly so we are acting we are really making an action in our abdomen this is bringing a lot of heat out so only if your feet are touching the floor you can spread your arms away from the body if your feet are not touching your the floor you want to keep on supporting your back really and observe all this heat flowing into your body now then you can go back to viparita and when you're ready slowly slowly bring it down is on the chest and now you're ready to turn to the side and sit to close the session so find a comfortable sitting position hands relaxed on your thighs feel that you're rooting down through your hips and sitting bones just be aware of the breathing in your body and all this heat all this energy but now it's available to you for whatever it's your purpose today and maybe you can even feel that before starting the session your energy was quite low like you could feel that you were kind of super grounded like heavily grounded and now you can feel that your energy is a little bit more up so you're bringing some of this energy up so you feel a little bit more light lighter that's the aim of this session so enjoy all this energy thanks for being here namaste