Day 6: Pecs & Hamstrings

Chapter 1

Tutorial

Welcome to day six. Today is a practice focused with some normal sticky areas on most people. It's a total go-to practice with the pectoral area and the hamstrings and some other parts of the legs that will work with opening. We introduced the strap today. It's not like we don't have enough props already but you may have a strap in your yoga toolkit and if you don't it's not a big deal. You can use a towel or pants or pretty much a scarf anything that's lying around that can act as a long enough loop to put your foot in for the hamstring stretches. We're working with the pectoral area and then also with putting our arms up above our head in some postures and lengthening the thorax, this upper back part of ourselves that can get so compressed. And I wanted to just say a couple of things about when your arms are overhead like this and we're stretching the side of the body that it's actually okay to lift your arms up and lift your whole side body up and let your shoulder come up and around your ears. So you may have heard in yoga classes to continually bring your shoulders back and down. Well in this particular practice with your arms up above your head targeting this side of the body and the side of the shoulder you can let your shoulders come up and around your ears. And the one thing for that is you don't want to be rolling your shoulders in towards your ears and creating a lot of tension as you might see there in the upper back. So we want to get that external rotation wrapping the shoulder blades wide on the back and then bringing the arms up and then lifting and then as long as there's a little bit of softness there in the base of your neck you can do that and it feels really good to get some space and length into that area. Also I just wanted to speak to a little bit to see if you're feeling pinpoint sensation in some of the leg stretches. I know many of you are probably really active and maybe you are battling with tighter hamstrings or you're feeling some pinpoint burning sensations or hot points around the sitting bones or around the backs of your knees. And if you are feeling that just a little tip for you is to come in and out of the posture. So when you're when instead of pulling one joint away from the other and really just going into that a hundred percent if you ease into it like say it's your leg instead of just trying to stretch stretch stretch and if you ease into it by bending and releasing bending and extending then you're you might actually get a little deeper in the pose even though you think that just stretching as hard as you can will get you deeper into the pose. Your body is so smart and I think about it like a little toddler who really knows if you have an agenda. So if you have an agenda your toddler will make you late for everything. So in your body if you introduce yourself to the shape you kind of sneak around having such an agenda and having ambition your your body will most likely ease into it too. It's the whole energy around it that might give you more length and space in your tissue. Meditation we do come into a meditation practice this is so wonderful that we have the time to do this today. Meditation will help you with your focus. So if you're scattered or your thoughts are all over the place I definitely have that these days with two young children on the road. If I have the time to do even five minutes of tuning into what's really happening like the breath, sound, sensation, feeling in the body then even just five minutes can really hone my attention and it can transform the whole rest of my day or if you're doing this at night it can segue really nicely into sleep into a relaxed sleep where I'm not lying there thinking about the million things I have to do the next day. So we could talk about that more. We will be doing a meditation in day seven as well and if you really love meditation then there's lots of other opportunities to meditate on yoga anytime. So stay in touch and I can't wait to do this day six practice with you. Namaste. Hey guys

Chapter 2

Practice

welcome to day six. I'm definitely wondering how you're doing hope it's going well and this practice we'll dive right into will be a nice pectoral opening which will support any forward postural habits and also a hamstring and outer leg and sort of a whole leg flush for being on your legs all day. It's one of my favorite practices so hope you enjoy it. So we're gonna set up at the wall and the short edge of your mat will go up against the wall like you can see here and it'll be useful for you to have a blanket and then also we haven't used this prop yet but a strap and you don't need a strap if you don't have a yoga strap you can use a belt or even a pair of pants or a towel or anything so you can grab that and then come back and meet me here. And we'll start off by being near a corner of the wall so you can even walk over and listen to my voice if you're not there right now and we're gonna open up our arms in this T position or kind of goal post position and lean into the corner of the wall. This wall is not perfect but it'll work so that your elbows lean into the wall and walk your feet back a bit so that you can lean your chest in and widen your elbows so that you get a nice stretch across the collar bones, the front of the chest, the pectoral area. It might feel good to let your head hang here even roll it a little right and left. Try not to arch too much in your lower back like that so you can always bend your knees and involve a little bit of your abdomen to support your low back. Let's take a few deep breaths here and you can even walk a little closer in and lift your elbows a bit and then lean your chest in again and see if that moves the emphasis point around to the stretch. Breathe deep into the lung tissue at the top right up into the collar bones and lean into your elbows a little bit, nice long spine. One more deep breath, widening the shoulder blades, widening the elbows and we'll slide the elbows down the wall and come more right on top of the arches of your feet standing nice and tall and giving yourself a few shoulder rolls here so one way and then the other. This is a simple way to just lubricate the shoulder joint, one of the most flexible joints in the body. Okay so just lubricating and making sure it's well oiled and then let's take our right hand up against the wall you don't need the corner this time and bring the elbow against the wall and the palm against the wall and then start to turn your body away from your elbow and away from the wall so you're rolling your right chest forwards here and if you have a tendency to arch in your spine then just allowing your front ribs to drop and move into the skin and keeping your lower back nice and long pressing evenly into both of your feet and I really like this one here letting your left ear slowly come towards your left shoulder away from the arm that's against the wall and you can do those head nods if this is really intense like it is for me sometimes it's nice to just ease into it and I was talking about on one of these tutorials that we've been doing and if you have sore muscles from doing yoga for this many days in a row when you're in your practice you can try kind of easing in and out of postures and I think we talked about it I learned this from my friend Kira is introducing yourself to the posture so then you can stay still after you've oscillated in it a little bit and that's really helpful so you can come back and let your arm go sometimes your arm your because there's a lot of nerve tissue coming here it'll fall asleep so if it falls asleep you can come out prematurely there so your elbow against the wall kind of straight out in front of the shoulder joint and turn away and roll your left chest forwards and you can press evenly into all your fingers lean into your elbow you can even take your right hand and grab your rib cage and rotate it and then just be evenly weighted in your feet sometimes bending the knees can help ground you down and your ribs go in and down and then if you want you can take your right ear towards your right shoulder breathe into that and just start to oscillate into the intensity and then just rest there take a deep breath in into the back of the lungs top of the lungs front of the lungs and exhale along smooth steady exhalation there beautiful let that go and then again a couple of shoulder rolls beautiful and then we're going to turn towards the wall interlock your hands it's like a headstand position here so the elbows are no wider than shoulder distance and I'm a little bit away from the wall with my feet so I'm not directly over top of my feet I'm going to slide my arms up the wall and then let my hairline come to the wall so I don't want my elbows to come too wide because if I do that I'll feel pinching in the shoulder so I'm going to keep them shoulder distance or even a little bit tighter than that and then I'll walk away from the wall and there's two things happening here so your upper back is coming into a little bit of an extension just until it feels good there but your armpits have wall repellent on them and they're coming away from the wall so your armpits come a little bit away from the wall and then your upper spine can melt in between the shoulder blades and the width of the shoulder girdle there it's okay to let your shoulders come up around your ears a little bit just ensure that they stay nice and wide the shoulder blades wide and then they can lift and I want you to feel a really nice long stretch in the upper spine the side of the upper spine and the side of the shoulder here so again if it's pinching lift the armpits away more walk in more lessen it and then if you like intensify it walk the feet back let the upper back really melt keep the front ribs in keep the abdomen a little bit supportive the front of the spine moving into the back of the spine so there's a little lift instead of a sag and then getting nice and long so wonderful here one more deep breath inhale exhale press your wrists your outer wrists into the wall and walk your feet up slide those arms all the way up and you can let them come down and away and we'll do a few shoulder rolls there one way and then the other let's put our hands against the wall at about hip height spreading your hands nice and wide and even weight into each one of your fingers and then walk your feet back until you form a rough 90 degree and then for grounding bend your knees a little bit and shoot your sit bones back and then bend your elbows here exhale and inhale and straighten your arms hugging the muscles of the arms to the bone especially that upper arm widen your shoulder blades away from each other bring your front ribs in and shoot back so you're kind of parallel to the floor here with the upper torso you can keep your ears at your biceps and just make your head your skull a continuation of your spine and just get nice and long from the top of the skull out through the tip of your tailbone so it's a little bit more active you've got floor repellent on your armpits this time reaching good let's walk it forwards again shoulder rolls a couple times and let's take it down to the mat so inhale your arms up here exhale and bend your knees and fold clear that wall inhale and lengthen exhale step it back down with dog pedal out your feet and then we'll ripple our spine forwards into a plank pose and exhale all the way down to your belly walk your elbows forwards to touch the wall similar position to what we just had interlock your hands and then we'll inch worm our ribs and buttocks away from the wall so that you feel like you're getting a stretch in the sides of your body again you kind of walk your elbows back forwards and you inch your low ribs and your buttocks away and this time we're actually gonna try to bring the the armpits a little closer to the floor since we're supported here in the elbows just as long as it doesn't pinch in the top of the shoulder my head is up because I'm wearing a mic but you might take your forehead down like that which would probably feel a little bit nicer hmm we'll take a few breaths into that you might stay there for a couple extra breaths or there's another option here you could let your hands go you know walk my ribs a little bit closer and then walk my hands up the wall and you can do them quite wide to be nice and forgiving and spacious in the shoulders but if you want a bit more of a stretch you can work them together and inchworm your fingers up the wall and press your fingers into the wall and this time armpits are lifting away from the floor low ribs in so connecting legs engaged and you can let your head hang here collarbones are nice and wide sit bones wide lots of space around your spinal column you can also lift your ears in line with your biceps and make a nice long line through your spine beautiful so just let one elbow hit and then the other stack your hands in front rest your shoulders your armpits your glutes good hands by the lower ribs here inhale a cobra and exhale your way back into a child's pose lengthening out your back and we'll just come up and grab our blanket and place that blanket just to the left of the mat and then we'll come back onto the belly and straight out from your left shoulder you're gonna take your left elbow in this same goalpost position and then take your left temple to the floor tend to your right fingers and roll over onto your left hip so you can stack your feet here you can even have your right foot in front because it lessens the intensity around the pectoral area or you can even have your right foot in back and that will intensify it just make sure your sacrum is happy here at the back of the pelvis oh that's a good stretch there you're opening up armpit tissue pectoral tissue little medicine for the forward slump for a lot of activities that involve pulling our hands in front of us picking things up computer if this is too much it's way too intense you could also try this one straight out with your hand a little bit lower and I don't feel much in that one but you might that might be better medicine for you this bent arm position just really targets that front of the pectoral area and without overstretching the front of the shoulder I feel one more breath relax your neck also an option if you like to lift your right arm up okay let's roll out of it stack the hands take a breath notice the space notice the pause hmm okay so let's switch sides we'll take that blanket over the other side choose your arm position lower down less intense maybe less intense straight arm out bent elbow maybe a little bit more roll over onto your side relax your neck also if your head is really straining your neck is really straining in this you could put something underneath your head choose your position of your foot you can press gently with the left hand shoot your pubic bone tailbone away from your head maybe there's a lift of the arm there stretching out through the palm compressing the bones of the arm one more breath and we'll come out of that when you're ready back up into a child's pose you might take your arms behind and just totally let go of that tissue into a slump okay we'll roll up and we're gonna flip onto our back and this is the part where it might be useful for you to have a strap or a towel or a pair of pants so here get your feet to press into the wall so you're a little bit bent knees and then push yourself away and as you push away you might get a little traction your tailbone might get dragged towards your feet bring your right knee in towards your chest and this whole series we're gonna work with trying to keep the top of your left thighbone down so there's engagement through your left leg you can see it all the way down through my toes start to let this leg come up this is where you can take your prop and hook it around the top of the arch of the foot and then grab on to it maybe even roll your hands around so it's nice and soft in your shoulders bend and straighten through your right leg and again we're using this oscillation technique to get the nervous system to be aware of what's happening and to soften and lengthen and then once you're ready then you can start to let that leg come towards more of a straight line a long line it's okay if your knee stays really bent you'll notice that your right hip might want to jack up here and shorten the right side of your back so press into your foot against the wall drop your right hip in line with your left and soften your shoulders you've just done so much work in releasing your pectoral so keep that effect of softness there if you don't have a strap at all or anything you can also put your hands behind the back of your thigh and work in that way no problem okay so then we'll take both edges of the strap in our right hand and let the toe turn out so we're doing that external rotation and bring it out on a diagonal until your elbow hits the floor you might need to readjust a little bit and if that feels straining you can let go of this strap totally and make a little kickstand with your elbow on the floor and just hold your leg you can also bend and straighten through your right leg and your left hand can come on your left hip and just encourage that left side of the pelvis to stay grounded you're using a little bit of the left side of your abdomen here and try to roll your belly button in the opposite direction of your leg give you a nice rotation spiral opposite ends of movement there some people will like to take the leg a little closer to the floor just make sure you're not feeling like a pinpoint feeling of tugging around the joint so if you feel a long line of sensation then go ahead and open it up and play with it play has no expectations it's fun so we'll bring the leg all the way up here and now we're gonna tip all the way over to the left side of the body and switch so that your strap is in your left hand and you can pick up your left tip even and plop right down on the outside of it repress your left leg and I'm doing that kick stand support again by my elbow coming down supporting and you can also if it's too much you can support more near your hip joint and let that go for some people you might have the space to bring your foot down to the floor and even grab a hold of your foot here but if it's jamming your right hip joint keep a little bit of elevation there so a couple more breaths there and you can twist it open right shoulder down all right let's lift it all the way back up center yourself out and we're gonna switch sides so right foot presses left knee in draw it in right hip down and hook or hook behind hamstring bend and straighten totally okay to have the leg a lot bent shoot out through your feet active through your toes and soft pectorals beautiful just allowing yourself also to enjoy also to enjoy so much this time on your back where your back muscles aren't working so hard you might even play with bending a bit and re-aligning those hips so that they're more in line with each other the sit bones are on the same plane and then re-extend big breaths exhale everything out let's take the strap into the left hand choose where you want to hold on do there your right hand can ground your right hip can rotate you can rotate your belly use a little bit of the right side of your abdomen there maybe even look in the opposite direction you can bend and straighten you can kickstand support so beautiful you guys these leg stretches are a staple so if you did these every day they would give you a nice full leg flush circulation ease through the legs and also take strain off your spine by opening up those hip joints a bit leg comes up and across we're gonna shift all the way you can pick up your hip and reground it and then choose where you want to be there you can keep it high so you're turning your right foot all the way out you can hold on to the strap with your right hand we'll spin it open ribs in ribs into the skin jaw soft kick out through your feet beautiful length try not to crunch that left hip too much bring it all the way up the center your hips let that prop go and just take a few breaths they're tracking sensation down the legs hmm rolling over on the one side let's bring ourselves up and we're gonna close with a meditation today so you're welcome to do this lying down if you're feeling really spent and this is the end of your day but I'll show you with a support underneath your your butt to elevate your hips comfortable cross legged hands on the thighs align your spine also if you are close to the wall like this you can even rest your upper back your sacrum and your skull against the wall and this is a nice feedback for yourself to see that your lower spine is not touching the wall and your neck spine is not touching the wall so you have those healthy shock absorbing spaces there hands come a little bit more towards you so that the collarbone area widens and the first step is to just get the alignment right and actually it might not always be perfect so if right is a loaded word for you then just find a place that is comfortable okay if it feels good soften your eyes and close them and take a deep breath in relax your belly and exhale everything out good feeling the breath in the body so a few things we can tune into in meditation are things that are happening right now things that are actually happening so you can feel the breath your body knows how to breathe so allow your body to breathe as it wants to and follow the breath with your attention with your loving attention you might feel the breath in the belly and at first you might get a visual sense of that like what what you think the belly looks like what you think the rise and fall of the belly might look like but then just come into the feeling of the breath so the technique here is the feeling of it instead of tagging anything onto it for now feeling is the best technique long through your spine relax to your shoulders soften your jaw feeling the breath as it is you might grab on to a thought whatever it is just coax yourself back to the feeling that's happening right now and it could be agitation anticipation whatever it is it's okay just allowing yourself to really sink into the feeling of it the texture it's simple just being with the breath last few moments here and just feel sort of this percolating of joy from getting this opportunity to sink into your practice to sink into yourself to listen to hone those skills to drop your nervous system so that your whole body can heal and repair and you can be filled up take a deep breath in exhale it all out let your eyes open and adjust to the light hands together namaste see you tomorrow