Phase 3: Ovulation

Welcome. Today's practice is designed as a practice that you would do during ovulation. So ovulation, remember, is triggered by the hypothalamic-pituitary axis. So it really starts in the brain. And so some intention will be spent on connecting with that third eye area, which can kind of guide us to the hypothalamus-pituitary. And then our ovaries are located down about here. So the upper frontal hip bones, which you may be able to feel. And then if you just kind of slide your fingers towards midline until they're a couple inches from midline and then just go a little lower, that's about the area of your ovaries. And we're going to use our fists just because then we cover more territory. So we're more in the area of the ovaries. And we'll start out with a child's pose. And we're just going to keep our fists there in our ovaries more than anything, just to kind of guide our intention to that area. So we'll come into child's pose. And if it's really uncomfortable, you can remove your hands and just focus your third eye into the ovaries. So kind of make that connection between your hypothalamic-pituitary and your ovaries. So we'll just set our hands where our ovaries are more or less, and then come forward into a child's pose. And then we'll breathe and just set your intention to promote ovulation and connect your third eye, that light in your third eye. And then breathe that light into your ovary area. And then we'll slowly come up out of that shape. Remove your hands and take them shoulder distance apart on your mat. Lift your hips up, curl your toes under, and we'll take downward-facing dog. Just pedal your feet out and downward-facing dog, opening up the backs of your legs. Then settle in the middle, reaching both heels to the floor and take a few breaths there. And then from downward-facing dog, we'll look forward and walk our feet to our hands. Inhale and lengthen, exhale and fold, and inhale all the way up to the top, and exhale samasthiti. We're gonna take a couple sun salutations just to get our chi flowing. Inhale, arms reach, inhale, hinge the hips and fold forward. Inhale and lengthen, exhale, step back, shift forward and lower. Inhale to cobra or up dog, and exhale to downward-facing dog. And taking three to five breaths on your own, inhaling and exhaling through the nose, neither focusing on that place between your eyebrows, focusing on your breath or your ovaries. End of your next exhale, look forward and walk your feet to your hands. Inhale and lengthen, exhale and fold, and inhale come all the way up and exhale arms down alongside the body. And again, inhale arms reach, exhale and fold, inhale and lengthen, exhale to chaturanga. Inhale to cobra or up dog, and exhale back to downward-facing dog. Returning back to long, smooth, deep breaths. End of your next exhale, look forward and walk your feet to your hands. Inhale to lengthen, exhale to fold, and inhale to come all the way up, and exhale arms down.

One last time, inhale arms reach, exhale and fold, inhale and lengthen, exhale stepping back and lowering. Inhale to up dog, exhale to downward-facing dog. And keep breathing in and out through the nose. Press the tops of the thighs back, reach the heels to the floor. End of your next exhale, we'll look forward and bring our feet to our hands. Inhale and lengthen, exhale and fold, and inhale come all the way up, and exhale the arms down alongside the body. Inhale and open up to your side, right side. Let's turn the right toes out and the left toes in at an angle. Drop your shoulders down your back, but reach out through the fingers. Take a deep breath in and with exhalation we're going to bend the right knee into warrior two. Just try to center your rib cage over your hips, keep your left leg straight, and press your right knee out so that your knee points to your second toes and your knee is directly over top of your ankle. And then from there we're going to take Parsvakanasana. So we'll reach a little more through the right fingertips, pull your right hip back, and either take the right elbow to the knee or the hand to the floor. And then the left arm can go up to the ceiling or it can reach up overhead and breathe. You can either look straight forward or turn to look to your thumb. Keep reminding your left leg to straighten and press the outer edge of the foot down to the floor. Your next inhalation, reach the arm up to the ceiling, press down into your feet and come up. And then we'll parallel the feet and then turn the left toes out, right toes in. Relax your shoulders down your back, but lift your chest up, reach out through the fingertips. And with your next exhalation, we'll bend the left knee out over the ankle and just look down at it. Check in, make sure the knee is pointing to the second toe. Press your right thigh back, lift your chest up and breathe. And reach a little more through your left side. Take your left elbow to knee or hand to the floor. Neither reach the right arm up to the ceiling or up overhead. Continue to press the right thigh straight and press into the outer edge of the right foot. Inhale, take the arm up to the ceiling and press into your feet to lift up and then exhale, parallel the feet and step to the front of your mat. And just take a breath here. With inhalation, we'll open up to the right again and bring your hands to your waist. Press it to padottanasana, forward fold. Inhale, lift your chest. Exhale, range at the hips and set your hands flat on the floor, shoulder distance apart. With inhalation, we'll re-lengthen and exhale. You'll start to lean forward as you fold, bending your elbows so that they're over top of your wrists. And just reach the chest through the elbow space so that you're not rounding your back too much here. Take one more deep breath in and out. With your next inhalation, you're going to come up halfway, straighten the arms. Exhale, bring your hands to your hips and inhale to come up the rest of the way. Exhale. Inhale, reach your arms out to the side. Exhale, interlace your fingers behind your back. Inhale to straighten the arms, lift the chest and tip the head back. Exhale, hinge at the hips and then just unfold your arms and release the grasp. Bring your hands back down to the floor and inhale. Look up halfway. Then turn your right toes out at about 45 degree angle. We're going to start to bend our right knee and walk our hands out to the right as we lift the left toes off the floor and let our left knee and toes spin up towards the ceiling.

It's coming into a little side lunge here. Breathe nice and deeply. One more deep breath in and out and then we're going to come back up through center. Turn your left toes out to 45 degrees, walk your hands out to the left and then lift the right toes up to the ceiling. And then we'll inhale, come back to center and parallel the feet. Exhale, bring the hands to waist and inhale, come all the way up. Exhale, step to the front of your mat. We'll take a vinyasa to the floor, a mini sun salutation. Inhale, reach the arms up. Exhale, hinge at the hips and fold forward. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, set the hands, step back, shift forward and lower. Inhale, cobra up dog. Exhale back to downward facing dog and from downward facing dog, we'll step or jump through to seated. And you'll straighten the legs out in front of you. So Marichasana A, we'll bend the left leg and take the left heel just in front of or just to the outside of your left sitting bone and we'll hold on to that left knee with your left elbow. First option is just to stay upright here, lifting your low back, lifting your chest, relaxing your shoulders. The next option is to take your right hand out to your side. Inhale and lift the left arm up. Exhale and reach forward for your right foot or shin or ankle. With inhale we'll lengthen and exhale we'll fold. If your shoulder comes past your left knee, you can turn this into a wrap by reaching your left arm around and then reaching for your right wrist. And you take one more inhale to lengthen and an exhale to fold. And inhale to look up and lengthen, exhale and release. Coming up out of that pose, straighten your left leg and we'll bend the right leg back. Take the right knee to the ceiling, right foot on the floor. First option is just to stay holding the right knee, lifting up out of the low back or you take the hand to the floor. Inhale, reach the arm up. Exhale, fold forward. Either stay reaching or take this into your wrap. Inhale again, lengthening and exhale to fold. Continue to breathe freely on your own. Inhale look up and lengthen, exhale and release that. Let's just cross the ankles, bring the hands forward, step the feet back and lower down. Inhale we'll come into a little up dog or cobra. Exhale to downward facing dog. From downward dog we'll bring the knees to the floor and we'll step the right foot forward inside of the right hand. And then bring your hands onto your right knee, your shoulders up over your hips. So for some of you this will be enough of a stretch here through the left quad and left hip flexors. Others will start to take the right foot forward a little bit more, bend the right knee. Then we can also turn this into like a King Arthur pose where we bend that left knee and reach for our left foot. This can be done at the wall as well. If you prefer this left shin bone can go up the wall. And even here in the middle of the room you can possibly start to bring the left heel right outside of your left hip. So really focusing on opening that quad and hip flexor area. And just play around with small little movements to see how you can shift where you're feeling that stretch. Relax your shoulders, your jaw and your cheeks. Keep lengthening the tailbone down. And then let's release that left side. Bring your hands to the floor and take your right foot back and bring the left foot forward. Take your hands onto your left knee. Lift the front hip bones, drop your tailbone down. So you may choose to stay here or you might want to bend that right knee and grab a hold of your foot. So also you might need a little extra support under that right knee. So blanket, that towel, pillow.

A couple more breaths here. You can soften your jaw, your shoulders, your belly. And then we'll release that right foot and take your left foot back. Let's just do a little circle here. We'll take the hips back towards the left heel like you're moving towards Child's Pose at a bit of an angle. Then sway the hips over to the right and then come forward. Drop the hips down like a little sloppy upward facing dog and then go ahead and move the hips back towards the left heel. Then the right and then forward and then our sloppy upward dog. And we'll change directions. Take the hips over to the right and then press them back towards the right heel. Then the left and then coming forward, sloppy up dog. Get a lot of cracks when you do this. Hips over to the right, then the right hip towards the right heel and over to the left and then into center. And then we'll lie down on our backs for Bridge Pose and Urdhva Dhanurasana. If these are a part of your practice where you need a little extra support with a block or a strap, anything like that, please grab that now. Otherwise we'll lie down on our backs, feet pointing forward and about hip distance apart. Arms down alongside the body and we'll press the hands, press the feet and we'll slowly start to lift the hips up reaching the knees forward and we'll wrap the outer upper arms underneath us so that we can lift the chest towards the chin. Have the option to stay here with your hands on the floor or interlace your fingers and possibly lift up a little higher. Firm the knees towards midline and forward at the same time. Push down into your heels to raise the hips up and reach the chest towards the chin. Take one more deep breath in here, lifting a little higher and then exhale, release your hands and lower your hips down and relax your shoulders. So you have the option to repeat that or you can move on to Urdhva Dhanurasana if that's a part of your practice. So we'll set your fingertips up next to your shoulders, hands up by your ears, fingertips pointing to your shoulders and we'll press the feet and press the hands and lift the hips up first. Find that same action you found in bridge where you firm the knees slightly towards midline and reach them forward. Then press your hands and lift up to the crown of your head. You may choose to stay here or press the hands and feet and lift up a little higher. Then if you want to walk your hands in towards your feet, you have that option as well. Or if you've gone in too deep and you want to back off and go back to bridge, you also have that option. And then if you're in Urdhva Dhanurasana, walk your feet out, your hands out if you walk them in. Look to the ceiling, bend your elbows and your knees and slowly lower down. And we'll just bring the hands to the belly for a moment and let that settle. And then let's just bring the knees into the chest, wrap the arms around the legs. And let's take this into a happy baby pose. Grab the outer edges of the feet, let the knees come towards your armpits and start to bring them down towards the floor. Possibly pressing the sacrum area down towards the floor as well. Nice deep breaths. Bring the knees back into the chest, set the feet on the floor. Let's just do a quick little recline twist. So cross the right leg over the left and just move the hips over to the right a bit, then drop the knees to your left. Maybe turn to look over your right shoulder. Now we'll take the knees back to center, uncross your legs and then change left over right and then move the knees over to the right and possibly turn to look over your left shoulder. And then we'll bring the knees back to center, uncross the legs, straighten your legs out. For Shavasana, palms open to the ceiling, legs flapped open. We'll just take a moment to reconnect with that third eye and the ovary area. Visualize that white light, that tingling sensation or that sound. And then let that go and we'll spend the next couple minutes in Shavasana and they're just focusing on soft breathing. We're drifting off into that nice peaceful place. Awesome.

Starting to deepen the breath. Very slowly, reaching through fingers and toes, reaching the arms up overhead, and then bending your knees, rolling over to your right side. From there, pressing your hand to the floor to come up to seated. Cross the shins, cross the ankles, bring the hands to prayer position. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Namaste.