Day 7: Feet and Front Leg

Chapter 1

Tutorial

Hey guys, welcome to day seven tutorial. I love this practice. We'll be working with self massage, which is essentially just some time to practice self love and self care and a really wonderful front of the leg stretch, which can also be really intense. So I wanted to talk about that a little bit. And then we'll be ending with legs up the wall, which is the greatest restorative posture in my humble opinion ever, because it not only energizes you with this break for the heart and this flush of the lower limbs, but it also really relaxes you.

It can be a very potent nervous system relaxer. So we'll start off with taking a look at that intense lunge that we'll be doing. And in these practices, I already had so many props going on that I didn't use these two thick blocks, but I just wanted to say that if you do have them lying around, they can be very helpful in the lunge variation that we do today. So I just want to show you how to use them in case you do have them lying around and it might give you a little bit more ease and support in the shape. So it's pretty important for me, even if your knee is happy being on the ground, that there's a blanket to support the center ligament of the knee when you're putting the back leg up.

So we do do that in the practice, back leg up against the back shin up against the wall and the knee on the blanket. And then the blocks would just go on their highest height to support this awkward movement of bringing this left leg through into this lunge. And then we stay here for a little while. But with the blocks, it just gives you a little bit more space, a little bit longer arms to allow that to be not so awkward. You could even use them to get into it and then come down onto your fingertips.

They're also helpful on the dismount. So it's just a little bit easier to bring your front leg into child's pose and then your back leg and come out of the shape. So I just wanted to show you that with the self massage that we're doing today, you can be super creative and spend more time in it. You might just love this stuff. You might not feel so connected to it, but it's just a really nice way, especially if you're short on time, to give your tissue some love and release.

So the pressure work has just been so amazing for me in my own practice because we don't see it that much in classical yoga classes, but in my experience for athletes and for people that are really bound up, it's sort of like you can get a lot done in a short amount of time with this pressure work. You can get a lot of release in a short amount of time, and it can also be really relaxing if it's done correctly without overdoing it. So just watch that overdoing it. The point is that it's a positive experience for you. And then we put our legs up the wall, so lovely.

Really if I get a great quad stretch like that and I get my legs up the wall for five to ten minutes in a day at the end of my day, it's just my favorite practice. So legs up the wall to release, and you could stay there for the meditation part, or you can come up and then we also do a meditation today. And we focus on the breath and hone our focus, relax our nervous systems. And so all in all, it's just such a lovely practice, but let me know how it's been going for you. I want to reach out in the forum, I'd just so love to hear from you, and it's been such a pleasure to be here with you with the seven-day active recovery challenge.

So thank you for being on board, and I'll see you in the practice. Namaste. Hi. You made it, day seven.

Chapter 2

Practice

Awesome job showing up for yourself.

And just in spirit of that, of showing up for yourself, this practice will have a little bit of self-massage, self-love in it using the dowel. And don't worry, if you don't have a dowel, we have talked about it, but you could always use a broomstick or anything that's lying around, a vacuum cleaner attachment, something like that, and we're going to place that down on the mat. And we'll start with opening up the plantar fascia of the feet. So if you've been on your feet all day, this is so wonderful, or if you have trigger points in the plantar fascia or sore feet. So we'll start with one foot at a time.

You can take one foot on the dowel and just start right underneath the ball mounds under your toes, and start to lean forwards and back on that, and just check in to see how tender it is. If it's way too tender, just leaning your weight a little bit on like that, then you can take the blanket and blanket your dowel. So let's just start to lean pressure through the center of the arch, and through the base of the arch, and be careful with your knees here, but you can also roll in and out, and towards the inner arch and the outer arch of the foot, and you might just find all of these little spots that could get some love and attention. Breathing with it, maybe you find a really special spot and just rest there for a couple breaths. Nice.

Then we'll switch sides. So just starting by warming it up, not putting too much weight on, rolling your way, pressurizing your way from the top of the arch down to the base, and then maybe leaning a little bit more pressure in and rolling inner to outer, and then maybe finding a sweet spot where you can just rest into and put a little bit more weight on. Spreading your toes, you can even try wrapping your toes around the dowel and get a little bit of a stretch through the top of the foot, and then you can keep doing that one more time or I'm just going to offer that you can stand on the dowel with both of your feet, now that you've warmed up the base of the feet a little bit and all that thick fascia there, and then you can just walk a little forwards and back, and likely this is going to be a lot more sensation because most of your weight is coming on, and you can shift left to right. Take a few deep breaths, if you want to exhale through the mouth that's a nice option. This is really great for people who wear tight shoes like high heels, climbing shoes, ski boots, biking shoes.

I really like to get the dowel right in front of the heel, just on the base of the arch and lean side to side there, maybe be still in the center, great, and then just step off and notice how your feet feel, do they feel a little wider, does the arch feel a little bit higher, more spacious, your feet do so much work for you, so it's nice to give them a little bit of love like that, and let's make our way to the ground, so let's inhale, our arms up just linking that breath in the movement, exhale bend your knees and fold forwards here, and you can take a nice deep breath and allow your spine to hang, bend your knees, just introducing your spine and hamstrings to this first forward fold, back of the neck nice and long, walk our hands forwards, step back into a dog pose, pedal out your feet, feeling that shift in your feet maybe, a difference in the tissue there, and then coming down to your knees, and we'll take that dowel now and place it right on top of the calf flush, just below, and snuggle it up with your other hand, right as close as it can get to the back of the knee, and then we'll start to lean back onto that, so I will remind you that if you have a thicker dowel or if you have a thicker prop, it's going to be a lot more sensation, so the density of the prop and the thicker it is will definitely affect, so you might be a little further forwards and just pulsing a little bit forwards and back, some people I've seen can come right up in this posture, but I can't, it's much too much sensation for me, and I don't want to grip around the prop, so I want to feel like I can relax around the prop, exhale out of your mouth, relax your shoulders, okay we'll come forwards and release that, you might lift your ankles up and roll them a little bit, maybe even extension through your spine, and a rounding through your spine, okay neutral spine, we'll take that dowel a little bit lower, or whatever prop you're using, and right near the belly of the calf, and then we're going to lean back and you might pulse into it a little bit, just to get your tissue used to it, and then rest into a spot, breathe, exhale out of your mouth, you can always come out, you can always rest back into it, just check in, see if it's possible to relax those layers of tissue around the prop, let your jaw be a little bit soft, let your tongue be relaxed in your mouth, okay let's come on forwards, and do a little cat cow, maybe you're lifting and spreading and releasing the ankles and the toes, inhale elongate and extend, back bend your spine, exhale and round, and wrap those shoulder blades wide on your back, press into your hands, and neutral spine, then we'll move it down a little bit more to the base of the calf, and we'll sit down onto that, and you might be able to come up now, and if you can come up, maybe you're still forwards, but if you can come up, you can place your hands on the prop, if you have a little bit of the prop sticking out, and you can lean side to side, so you can do a little bit of this shifting side to side, which will give a little bit more to one side and then the other, maybe if it's too much, you stay forwards, and then you can even just shift your body side to side, and it'll give you the same effect, so we're kind of at the base of the calf now, maybe the top of where the Achilles comes into the calf, wiggling, maybe shifting a little bit, one more nice deep breath in, and exhale it all out, soft shoulder, soft jaw, and we'll come forwards, a little cat cow, spread your hands, inhale arc, and exhale round, great job, let's come back to neutral, walk back a bit more, so the calf's now right on the Achilles and likely you can come up into this as long as it's not too much pressure on your knees, in which you could probably keep your bum lifted and work with the pressure on the del with your hands, or maybe even with a blanket on top like that to give you a little bit of extra height, so that's no problem, but this time it's really useful for me to use the side to side pressure, because there's even a little bit of space for me there, so I'll use that side to side pressure or even just shifting side to side to get into that thick band of connective tissue there, and I can go up and down, maybe even to right in front of the heel is an interesting spot, side to side, I don't know if you've noticed this, but it's really hard to stretch your Achilles, so I found the pressure work on the IT band and on the Achilles on the really thick, dense connective tissue, that this has really supported me in getting into those areas in a different way, in creating space and relief, so you can go up and down there until you're satisfied, you could always stay with a self massage for longer, but we'll come out of that for now and you can put the prop over to the side, and it's just so nice and warm in there, that flush of fluid, good, hydrating the tissues again, inhale arch, and exhale and round there, great, then we'll take a downward dog with the heels close to the wall, so you can walk your feet back, so your heels are closer to the wall, if you have a floorboard you could put your heels up onto that floorboard, bend your knees, and press from your fingertips into your hips, get nice and long, remember that you can wrap your shoulder blades wide, and then you can actually elevate your scapula, lengthen your sides of your body, and get super long there in the sides, so nice there, okay you can make yourself into a shorter dog here by walking your hands a little bit closer in, press into every single one of your fingertips, look at your hands, it's almost like you're trying to lift your wrists off the floor, so your arms are super strong, and then let's play with tucking one set of toes up against the wall, and pressing into that, maybe a little, maybe a lot, so that you lift your bum up over top of your hands, and bring your ribs in, there's quite a stretch and strengthen there of the arms, and then set yourself back down, come into a child's pose, knees wide, and slide your hands back, palms up, forehead to the floor, slump, break the rules, nice, and then roll back up, and maybe we'll try that on the other side, so press into every single fingertip, hug the muscles of the arms to the bones, short dog, heels up against the floorboard, maybe really bent knees, you might need to walk a little bit more forwards to give you the space to tuck that other toe up against the wall, commit to the wall a bit by pressing into it, you could come up a little bit and come back down, or you could lift your hips right up above, bring the ribs in, maybe even look up at your belly button, long pressurize your hands into the earth, lift your hips, and exhale, come down, right into a child's pose, a little bit of energy coursing through the body there, slump your shoulders, do the anti cue there, and then roll on up, we'll take our blanket now, that's support, and place it right up against the wall, hands out in front, and take your right knee, and bring it close-ish to the wall, it doesn't have to be all the way, and then come up onto your fingertips here, or just onto your left fingertips, if it's challenging for you to do both, and then we'll sneak our left foot forwards, and you can wiggle it forwards, that's a little bit of an awkward movement, but it'll work to get your fingertips on the floor, and your left foot forwards, so that you're in this lunge position, you can also move your knee a little away from the wall, and open up that angle if it's too tight, and we don't have blocks today, but if you had blocks, and you wanted to come up higher on your blocks, that's also a really nice option, you're probably already feeling the intensity of this shape in the quadriceps, so you can kind of lean back, your hips come away, and then you can lean forwards into it, and just oscillate into that stretch, if it's too tight for you to have your hands down, you can bring your elbow up on your knee, and lean forwards and back, like that. If you're not feeling that much, which I'd be quite surprised, but if you're not, you can always kick your heel up, and slide your toes down the wall and kick your heel up, and that will give you a bit more sensation in the front of the leg. So let's be here for five deep breaths, either forwards, elbow up, or maybe hand pressing the knee away, and as you press, instead of pressing your chest back, which will generally over arch your lower spine, think about pressing your belly back through your hands, and sometimes the bones of your feet here, hitting the wall, are not that comfortable, and you could always slip a piece of clothing there. You might find that your left hip tends to jack up a little bit, can you drop that left hip, and shift your right hip out to the right, because it tends to, everything tends to clump over to the left side here, so think about widening the pelvis, shifting the left hip down, bringing the navel away from the knee, and aligning the chest over the pelvis. You could even find a reach here.

This last deep breath, exhale out of your mouth, and then come on out, so the coming out you can take this front leg into a child's pose, and then your back leg into a child's pose, and sink back, and if that doesn't work with your knees, you can come right onto your belly. So elbows are nice and wide, stack the hands, release the pelvis back onto the heels, weight, it allows the body to settle, and we'll come on up, and we have to do the other side I guess. So left leg comes up, close to the wall, right fingertips can come up, you can kind of lean over onto your left side to make this movement happen, wiggle it forwards, and come up onto your fingertips, sink in, pull back a bit, sink in, it's helpful for your knee to be over top of your ankle, pull back a bit, check in if you want to, beam your heel up, see if that helps or direct the stretch into the center of the quadricep, you can always come up here, as you're pressing with your elbow or your hand, press the belly button away, a little bit the lower belly away from the front thigh, you can stay low for this five breaths here, or you can come up a bit, and encourage the belly to come away, encourage the right sit bone to drop, encourage the left hip to move out to the left, and encourage a length in your lower spine, relax your jaw, maybe elevate your left arm, ribs in, one more breath, you can also engage your buttocks muscles to move your hips forwards a bit, last breath, exhale out of your mouth, and come on out, so we're going to come out right leg into the child's pose, left leg all the way onto your belly, elbows wide, hands stack, wait to rest there, feel that aliveness through the front of your legs, the relief of getting into those areas, that you might not always do if you're on your own at home, it's nice to have somebody with you for that one, so we'll come on up, and we're going to come back to our friend the dowel, place that down, and bring that into the center of the quadricep somewhere, and you can again elbows wide, and forehead down, and just wobble a little bit side to side, and you can also come up, roll a little bit, blanket it if it's too intense, and then we did this before, we'll do it again, so you can bend and straighten the legs, you can just hang out there, and move the pressure point around, coming up and down, you can rotate your ankles, move up or down to a different spot, any little movements, free form movements in the legs, how much can you relax your belly, and your jaw, and your neck, and your shoulders while you're doing this, so there's maybe a lot of stuff going on at the front of the leg but not so much going on in the upper part of the body, okay maybe move it to one more spot, circling the leg is nice, just resting there for a breath, deep inhale, exhale it all out, okay let your hands come underneath your shoulders, and come up and back and of course you could be in that self massage for a little bit longer, we're going to turn around, keep your blanket near, and put your hips right up against the wall on the right edge of your mat, and come into a fetal position, and then roll over so that you end up on your mat with your buttocks, and your legs come up the wall, we can take our blanket there dig your heels into the wall, and place the blanket underneath your hips, so you have a little bit of an elevation for your hips, your hip flexors aren't so tight, if your legs are bent that's totally fine, just try to relax them a little bit there, and don't worry about needing to straighten them out and stiffen them, so they're nice and relaxed, be here for about four minutes, three or four minutes with the legs up, and we're just going to relax the legs so that we can actually feel that blood fluid drain out of the legs, so this is a nice flush if you've been on your feet all day, or you've been running or hiking or using your legs in an upright position, getting that nice drain, and it's also a break for your heart muscle, so ease into the heart, if you want to add on a shoulder stretch you can put your arms in this goal post position, or even just take them in a diamond shape over your head, shoulders nice and relaxed, and let's focus on the breath here, so we'll inhale for four counts, and exhale for four, and again inhale for four, and exhale for four, inhale, exhale, equal length breath, inhale maybe for five now, long, smooth, steady exhalation for five, inhale five, exhale five, and exhale five, let's try for six, inhale for six, spread the side lungs, the front lungs, the back lungs, the upper lungs, exhale empty all those parts, upper lungs, back lungs, side lungs, front of the lungs, inhale for six, exhale smooth, steady long exhalation staying long through the spine, keeping the heart open, beautiful, free breath in and out, flex and point the feet, draw the knees into the chest, can hug them in, roll over to a side and come on up, and we're going to sit in our meditation seat again, or you can lie down if you're feeling cooked, no problem, you can lie down, you can use the wall for your back, elevate your hips with that blanket, comfortable cross legged, slide your hands back, deep breath in and exhale it all out, close your eyes if it feels good or look down, let your hips get heavy and come back to the breath, try to stay with the breath for our next four or five minutes here, so the thoughts will come and that's just totally fine, whenever they come notice and come back to the breathing, sensation, feeling of breathing, what's actually happening now, there's no need to put too much effort into the breath here, your body knows how to breathe, and sometimes I think about it's like if you have a child like a toddler who's just learning to walk and you're by a river or a cliff or something and you don't want to scare them away from the cliff or the stream or the lake, but you just gently coax them away from the edge, so each time you catch a thought, just gently come back to the breath, relaxed in a confidence building way. Check in with the feeling of the breath in the belly. Long spine.

Long spine. Taking a deep breath in here. Exhaling it all out. Letting your eyes open and adjust to the light, letting the light come to you. Taking your hands to your heart.

Mmm, day seven. It was so wonderful to spend this time with you. And I hope we get to have more together. Namaste.