Floor Practice

Hello. Thank you for joining me today. We're going to get out of this thing and onto this space. I'm excited about it. Let's get my lovely chair out of the way here. Just in case the world starts spinning around a little more. I don't want it to squeak away from me. I'd like to start today. This is kind of a mellower practice on the floor, but still I have a lot of learning that I'm doing with it. So let's start in Baddha Konasana. Clasping our feet together here on the mat. Being cognizant of where your butt is, making sure that it's on the mat. I have a tendency to double layer my mats or I've bought a thicker mat just to have some more cushion because now I don't have very much cushion on my own in my butt and glued area. So adding to it is nice. I find that when I'm sitting on services that are too hard, I have muscle spasms and they can interfere with a lot of things and make it difficult. So I try to avoid those. I feel a little tight today, so I'm extending my legs a little bit, but I'd like to just come here in this seated position and find our center and our breath and just focus on our intentions here today of just doing some twists and opening up. So let's close our eyes for a minute. Take a deep breath in, filling the space inside and exhaling it all out. I'm going to do a couple more of those. I really like this pose to start with being that you're sitting most of the time in your chair with our legs together. I feel like we don't get a lot of hip opening. So I want to do a lot of opening today and a lot of twisting around just to get these hips in a different, um, different position. So let's just kind of move around a little bit in your Bada Konasana. Inhale in, exhale out. Maybe on your next inhale, let's rise up doing kind of a cat cow motion. And as you exhale, forward fold kind of over the feet, sucking the belly button inside. Trying to do a little bit of a pelvic tilt here, tucking my tail under as I exhale. And when I inhale, I'm kind of rocking back forward. Let's do one more rocking forward. And one last giant exhale, filling the space, almost like you're hugging on one of those big yoga balls. Next inhale, come back to just neutral spine. We'll do some twists here. Let's inhale, and let's exhale, turning our body to the left. Be gentle on these first couple twists, starting from the lower lumbar spine, the lower down points, and then rotating the upper spine, then the shoulders, then the head. Inhale, you can unravel a little bit, and exhale, sink further into a twist. Trying to relax my shoulders. If it's available to me, I can put my hand right behind my sit bone. Inhale, lengthen, exhale, dig deeper. I'm engaging as much of my core here as I can, so I'm not super wobbly, but I feel pretty secure, especially with the hand on my knee. Let's inhale and slowly unravel. Let's do the other side. Let's put the left hand on the right knee. Inhale, extend, and exhale, start twisting with the lower back, mid-back, shoulders and neck. Inhale, lengthen, lengthening the neck, exhale, twisting a little bit more. Inhale again, you might notice this side's a little different than the other side. Maybe it wants to rotate more or less. That's okay. This should be a relaxing pose, not something that is straining. One last inhale and exhale, unwind slowly. From here, we'll come into the half lord of the fishes. I've pushed my right leg away from me and I'm going to tuck my left leg kind of underneath it a little bit. I might scoot myself forward on the mat just to make sure that I'm still on it. We'll cross our right leg on top of my left and then bend the hip up, planting the foot on the ground. What I like to do here is just make sure that my toes are kind of flattened, they're not curled under one another. Make sure my heels on the ground and that my foot is not being limped in any way, which my left leg, when we rotate sides, we'll have to see how that one does. When we're in this pose, you can sit up straight, take a deep breath and we can kind of hug our knee closer to our chest and if you're available to it, tuck your knee right into the armpit of your elbow. You can see I'm wobbling here just a little bit. I'm trying to engage my core and if I need to, I can plant this right hand firmly. Inhale and twist as your body allows. As you're twisting, try to remember or even just as you're sitting in this pose, try to remember to relax the shoulders, calm the eyes, just maintain your balance the best you can while trying to get an outer hip stretch. One last inhale, exhale, twist a little further and then inhale, unfold. When I used to practice yoga before, this was my favorite transition. You can do this little like break-dancey spin move to get up into the next other Lord of Fishes. I haven't figured out how to make it that entertaining yet, but I will. So we're going to switch sides, unravel your legs and let's tuck the right leg in close to you and then we'll cross the left leg over so it's just on the outside of your right knee. Trying to plant the foot firmly, uncurl your toes, make sure your toes are stretched and reaching and then if you can tuck your left knee into your right armpit of your elbow, lengthen and twist. I feel like I have a pretty good amount of pressure in my left hand just to maintain my balance here. Inhale, whoa, inhale, lengthen and exhale, twist.

Sucking in my navel, trying to maintain core strength. One last inhale here and then let's exhale out. We'll come out of the half Lord of the Fishes pose and work ourselves into a head to knee with strap pose. I think that one of the things that we learned at the spinal cord injury hospital that I was at is that you want to maintain as much stretch in your Achilles as possible which seems interesting when we aren't walking but preventing that foot drop is helpful and when you're sitting in your chair so your feet aren't flopping around as easily and so this I have found has been a good stretch to help maintain a little bit of that Achilles tendon stretching but it's also can be frustrating to get into and hard to get into so though but the strap is really helpful. I'm starting with my right leg extended and I make a little loop in my strap and there's two ends of the strap and I find that if because of the way my the way my feet work and the way that they like to be lazy I call them they have a tendency to roll outwards so when I put my strap on my feet I'm aware of how I'm putting the strap on and that when I'm pulling there's this side that you pull or this side that doesn't have anything I try to leave the side that you pull on the outside towards the pinky toe of both of my feet when I'm pulling. So this one can be hard to get into can be hard to get the strap on but we can do that together and then just mess around and you might notice my legs moving a little bit like I said when I have if I'm sitting in the wrong way or sometimes it feels like when I am tensioning that strand that is going from my Achilles all the way up my spine and into my neck whenever that gets stretched I have a little bit of muscle spasms and that spasm is usually generating for me and my glutes so it makes my legs open and close. Putting the strap on and I'm wrapping around the ball of my foot it's not be really tight but this pulling part is on the outside towards the pinky and then I'll let set the foot down if you need other props you can use a blanket here to help protect under the knees so it doesn't feel like you're hyper extending. I try to be as safe to my body as I would as if I could feel it and you'll notice you'll see it soften but it takes a little bit of effort to soften that foot for me. So we can hold this here trying to get more of a straight spine and onto my sit bones gently pulling my foot up just being mindful of how I'm pulling which direction is it the most aligned that it can be. If your feet are softer than this and this works for you to lean over more and get a side stretch that can be available to you go like this you can use the strap to your advantage and maybe reach your arm up long and get an outside twist and lengthening. My foot has rocked out and it looks like I need to adjust. I try to hold this pose for a while and it might take a while to get into and that's okay but I think it's an important one and it feels good stretching the hamstrings stretching the Achilles and just lengthening that whole body. I would like to work towards for me I'd like to work towards being able to grab my foot and no longer have to use the belt to hold my Achilles up. I'm going to switch to my other side but remember you guys if you're still fussing around trying to get into the pose you can just pause and then catch me on the flip side. I don't know if you guys can see but I'm totally having one of those moments where my legs are just muscularly doing whatever they want. So I'm trying to be cognizant of that for me usually some spasms mean that it could be some pain associated or like maybe there's cold water or there's some sort of pain stimulus is what I think I've associated it associated it to so just trying to be more gentle and maybe aware of where I'm sitting if I'm sitting on something or any of those things. So this left leg for me is the more difficult one this one likes to really doesn't have very much tone so I really want to be mindful of when I where I'm putting that pull strap part and how I'm pulling so I'm going to start gently and give myself back off a little bit even with my spine to just kind of lengthen that cord trying to come back to the breath it might not be where you want it to be at the moment but that's okay just be patient slowly she softens I can try to get to that point again where I was extending and getting a little extra twist out of it whoop but she can't roll out come here little lady oh when I can get there it feels so lovely on my shoulders inhale and let's exhale and give this a little bit more tension maybe I can give a little bit of a forward fold just remember to play around with these poses be mindful of how your body is reacting and the spaces that you can take it and how it is today and keep working towards something different tomorrow I'm gonna leave my left leg extended remove the strap and see how it feels to have both legs out in front of me I'll wrap the strap around both of my feet and see if I can do a little it's gonna take a bit of adjusting when the legs are being tense I'd have a tendency to just kind of slow down even more just be patient with how the body is reacting and maybe if it doesn't work it doesn't work we're not gonna go into that pose today all right now we get to turn over so before I started this class today I put all of these tools that might be useful a bolster or two or blanket or three whatever you need so just think about what you might need and have them readily available for me to get on the belly I do just kind of squirm around putting my feet near the end of the mat and then I can just roll over I give a glance back often just to make sure that my legs are kind of in alignment they're not totally awkward looking this time they landed pretty good now that we're on our belly this is like I love this part of my day sometimes in the middle of the day I just go anywhere and get on my belly just to extend the hips lay in a different position get off the butt is really helpful for the mind and the body so while we're here we can do just a simple little Cobra pose which is putting your hands right underneath your shoulders and placing them gently and the goal here is if you can get a little bit of curve in your spine and engage your belly to bring your shoulders off the mat and your hands off the mat as well this pose is quite hard for me these days being that I have metal from t9 to l3 so I don't have nearly as much bend in my back as I would like but it is still nice for me to engage the core and feel my belly button pressing into the earth and sliding my shoulders down and back down my spine can feel quite straining if it feels difficult for you keep your hands on the ground near your shoulders and just help them to give a little push up as you inhale rise up push the belly towards the mat lift your hands if you can and then exhale forehead to the mat and relax the shoulders can move your hips from here side to side the next pose that I'd like to get to is child's pose and you can do this however works for you I can push back from Cobra on my belly into a kneeled position or you can roll over onto your side which I think is quite helpful I like to have just a bolster between my hamstrings and my calves but if it works for you to have a block or blankets or whatever you need add those tools you can adjust yourself as needed my bolster is a little not centered but that's okay so child's pose what we're working towards here is you're in this kind of kneeling position and you're extending your arms out in front of you your head can be on the mat just kind of opening the shoulders extending the hands reaching the fingertips towards the top of your mat breathing extending the fingers but also trying to slide the shoulder blades down the back shoulder blades are trying to go towards your hips this is a lovely opening pose that I've missed and once you can find yourself in it it feels just lovely to move the hips around open the shoulders in this way take some good calming breaths here just enjoy this pose sinking deeper in the shoulders when we come out of child's pose we can get a little bit of a flow here we're going to return right back to our bellies and the sphinx which is just like cobra but we can come forward and how I do this is just kind of give a little inertia to my hips and my knees yeah if it doesn't work for you to do it that way roll around how you need you can kind of do like a downward or upward dog flow here keeping your hands right underneath your shoulders giving what curve to the spine you have and rolling back down to the mat and we'll do a little bit more of a push-up with our hands we'll actually plant our hands beneath our shoulders and we'll give a little push-up here getting some curve in the spine that one feels like my triceps are tired today but they're probably tired every day let's do one more inhale and push up on that trying to maintain my hips into the ground still and then exhale lower we can play with this belly position a little bit you can clasp your hands behind you opening up your shoulders if it feels good to open up your hands like this just keep breathing deeply into your stretches finding more space paying attention to pain or discomfort and trying to find the spaces where there is a little bit hopefully of a stretch or relief one last inhale here on your belly and then let's roll out of it and I'll meet you back in Baddha Konasana now the pose that we began today in all right we're going to get into our final pose of the day little fire log pose so we're going to take your leg but keep it kind of 45 out from you your left leg is out first and we're going to stack our right leg on top of our left just like they're two little fire logs so my knee is above ankle ankle is above knee if it's available to me to be able to flex both of my I put my hands both around the ball of my feet and stretch both my feet I will but if that feels uncomfortable and you just want to focus on the spine and the back just rest your hands on the knees and on the ankles and we can do some cat cow from here so let's do an inhale lengthening the spine and an exhale forward fold navel comes over we can rock the pelvis a little bit lengthening the head and neck maybe giving them a nod rotating them around inhale pelvis forward shoulders back lengthening the spine exhale arching over chin to chest tucking the pelvis I feel a really nice stretch in my neck here today inhale one more lengthening and exhale one more crunching over inhale coming back to neutral spine comfortable spot let's switch our legs release the right leg that was on top and tuck the right leg underneath you and then the left leg comes over the top stacking my knees over ankles and ankles over knees flexing my feet if I can and again we'll do some cat cow so we'll inhale exhale lengthening finding more space exhale curling over tilting the pelvis stretching the head rotating the head finding space and stretch inhale relax your jaw exhale navel backwards one last inhale and one good exhale folding inhale back to center we can uncross our legs finding yourself in whatever comfortable seat works for you I'm just thinking about the postures that you're in today where you would like to take them how you could get there better what tools do you need or what positioning would work better for your body thank you for joining me and I look forward to hearing what you're doing and how it's working for you