Gentle Asana for Yoga Nidra

So the last thing that we want is for our body to start calling out for our attention during our Yoganidra practices. So here's some gentle, accessible movement where we move our spine in all of its directions so that we can rest really comfortably. So it just starts with us coming down onto our back. Now if you are comfortable, you can have your legs elongated like a Shavasana position. If that hurts your lower back to start, you're welcome to have your knees bent, your feet on the floor, and the knees kind of knocking together so you don't have to worry about holding the legs upright.

And then simply the art of doing no thing. So just giving yourself a minute or so to land in your practice. You can close your eyes and just start by checking in. I like to think of it as a before picture. Like to notice any sensations in your body that you know to be true.

That having to fix them or judge them, just acknowledge. You can notice how your breath is coming to you, its texture, its movement, its quality. Listening in this unique moment of now, your mind, pace of thought, emotion, and resting back are identifying with the part of you that's observing. As you're ready, you'll begin just to gently deepen the breath in and out through the nose if possible. If your knees are bent and the feet are on the floor, just lengthen your legs down the mat.

When you find your next longer breath in, we're going to lift the arms up to the ceiling and to the floor behind your head. Flex through your feet, draw the inner legs together to touch, and draw long through the heels, long through the fingertips, and use your whole exhale to lift the arms back up to the ceiling, down by your sides. Relax the root of the legs, relax through the feet, just coming back to that starting position. I'm going to do this a few times, inhale slightly before the movement, lifting the arms up and over, flexing through your feet, legs together, body long. Take the whole exhale to lift the arms up, back down by your sides, relaxing through the root of the legs.

Continue on like that, using your own breath, so it doesn't have to follow mine. Inhale, lifting your arms up and overhead. Use your exhale, and if possible, maybe add a count to your exhale, making it slightly longer than your inhale breath, arms returning back by your sides, relaxing through the legs. Just do two more like that, inhale, reaching the arms up and overhead, take the full length of the inhale, stretch long through the legs, making the exhale a little bit longer as you return the arms back down by your sides. Relax through the bones, muscles of the legs, let them kind of fall open like Shavasana.

One more time, inhaling, reach the arms up and over, fill the whole body, breathe in, fill the whole body, breathe out as you return the arms back down to the sides, relax through the legs, back to that Shavasana type position, and pause, relax through the breath. Just observe a couple of minutes of movement in your sweet attention, it does to your body, your breath, your mind, then you'll bend your knees, take your feet on the floor, set your feet maybe hip distance apart, your feet are parallel, arms are down by your sides, turn the palms to face down, then come into a floating bridge pose, so on the inhale breath, lifting through your pelvis, press down through your feet, and again, reach the arms up and to the floor beyond your head, and then as you exhale, you're going to lower your seat back to the floor, bring your knees towards your chest, hands float on top of the knees. And inhale, breathe your feet up towards the ceiling, arms overhead, legs will straighten if possible, or just keep them bent if stretching the legs is impossible. And then as you exhale, bend the knees, take the feet back to the floor, arms back by your sides, preparing for a bridge again, such as those four postures, use your inhale to lift through your pelvis, reach your arms up and overhead, just a gentle bridge. Take the whole exhale to lower the seat back, knees towards your chest, hands on top of your knees, kind of like little birds perching on the knees.

Inhale, take the legs up towards the ceiling, flex through your feet, reach your arms overhead, legs engaged straight as it's happening today, exhale, bend your knees, return your feet to the floor, arms back down by your sides, and prepare for a bridge again. One more time, that series, inhale, reaching your pelvis up, bridge pose, arms overhead, take a slow exhale, again, if you want to add a count to the exhale, this just helps cue the nervous system to relax, knees towards your chest, hands perching on the knees, inhale, flexing through your feet, elongate your legs up to the ceiling, arms reach overhead, exhale, bend your knees, feet back to the floor, arms float back down to the sides, stretch your legs down the mat, take what I call supda banana, just making a banana shape with your body, you're going to walk both of your legs over to the right, as far over as they want to go, squish your legs together and flex back through big toe and pinky toe, and then do a little shoulder shimmy also over to the right side, so if you were looking down from the ceiling, you'd look like a banana or half moon shape, take your right hand lightly onto your own belly, take your left arm up and overhead, and just keeping both tush cheeks kind of equally weighted, both shoulder blades equally weighted, and pinning the inner thighs towards the floor, and just breathing, inhale, feel somewhere along the left side of your body, getting a bit of a stretch, and exhale, feeling your belly move away from your hand towards your spine, and stay right here for two more of your deep, slow, full breaths, full body breathing, and to release that, release your left arm back down by your side, shoulder shimmy back to neutral, walk your feet back to neutral, and pause, and go the other side, so walk your legs over to the left as far over as they want to go, squish your legs together like you have one big leg, and then peel back through your pinky toe and big toe, shoulder shimmy also over to the left now, so your banana-ing to the other side, left hand onto your belly, right arm overhead, and both shoulder blades stay down, deep breath in, maybe somewhere along the right side seam of your body, and being touched or influenced by the breath, exhale, you feel your belly just moving away from the hand softly back to hug the spine, we'll stay here two more breaths, just indulging in the breath is there any little stuck spots in the body, just giving them time, and release your right arm back down, shoulder shimmy back to neutral, it's my favorite part, and then walking your legs back to neutral, add a little twist in, so bring your right knee into your chest, and then bring your right knee across the body, you can adjust your left hip back, just so your spine remains straight, you can drape your left hand across your right thigh, and take the right arm out to the side, in a T shape, on the inhale you're gonna, looks like a snow angel if you remember making snow angels when you were a kid, you're gonna snow angel your right arm up alongside your ear, it's kind of tracing the fingers on the floor, and then as you exhale you're gonna snow angel your right arm back down by your right hip and turn your nose away from the working arm, so nose turns to the left, inhale snow angel your right arm up alongside your ear, and neutralize your head and neck looking back up to the ceiling, and exhale snow angel your right arm down, turning your nose away from the working arm, one more time taking the full expression of the inhale to reach the arm up towards your right ear, eyes looking up to the ceiling, exhale snow angel your right arm down, turning your nose away from the arm, this gets into the neck and shoulder a little bit, you're gonna bring the right knee back into the chest, coming out of that twist, you can send your feet to the floor, even out your seat on the mat, and we're gonna go to the other side, so you can stretch your right leg down, bring your left knee into your chest, and bring your left knee across the body, I like to scoot my right hip back so I'm still straight up and down on my mat, your right hand can go over your left thigh, your left arm can open out to the side, and if your shoulder is way off the floor, just come slightly out of the twist so the arm can rest down pretty comfortably here, for our snow angel move, and we'll do that on the left side, so snow angel your left arm up alongside your ear, and then as you exhale you're gonna turn your nose to the right and snow angel the left arm back down by your side, two more times inhale snow angel, the arm up, it can be a lazy movement, it doesn't have to be a perfect circle or anything, exhales the arm sweeps down, turning your nose to the right, one more inhale, reaching the arm up alongside your ear, neutral head and neck, exhale sweeping the arm down, turning your nose away from that working arm, engage the belly so you can bring your left knee back up out of your twist, you can send your feet to the floor and just even yourself out on your space, and give a little moment of love to our hips, so bring your knees into your chest, you can take your knees wide, draw your knees towards your armpit area and then take the soles of the feet up towards the ceiling, a happy baby, you can take your hands to the backs of the knees, making it a little bit more gentle, keeping the back of the seat on the floor rather than curling up towards the ceiling, if you have the range or longer arms you might feel comfortable to reach your hands to the outsides of your feet, a very gentle tug, and just some deep breaths, feeling the spine lengthen against the mat, a little softening around the hips and the waist, take three more of your most effulgent breaths. And scoop your knees back into your chest, and then let's roll over to one side and just lazily bring yourself back into a comfortable seated position, now you can take a blanket so you have something to make yourself more comfortable as you sit, or a pillow, we're going to take a practice called padadirsasana, so it looks a little bit silly if you're new to it, but just try to go with it, try to trust me for a little bit longer, going to take your arms, crisscross your arms and take your hands underneath your armpits, so it's very Mary Catherine, but I promise you it's an actual thing, so hands underneath the armpits, with thumbs resting on that little flush of the pectoralis muscle, and then the elbows just relax down, we'll close our eyes, and really allow the work to be done, so you don't have to do anything fancy with your breath, no special breathing technique, and just become aware of the very subtle movement of the breath at the nostrils, every 88 or so minutes one nostril is more dominant than it switches, in our practice in our energetic body this relates to the dualities, and all the dualities are fun and interesting and definitely needed in a practice like yoga nidra or a deep relaxation, we're moving back to that state of non-duality, of balance, the flow of breath in the nostrils, where that yoga or union becomes possible, there's this tiny little cluster of nerves where you placed your hands, that when compressed will dilate the opposite nostril, just simply by resting your hands here and by your attention, you might even start to notice the airflow becoming more balanced. Once you start to notice that shift, the skin feeling softer, the body, mind, maybe a bit quieter, breath growing more shallow, most hardly noticeable, can release the hands back down to the knees or thighs, and bow the chin towards the chest, fluttering the eyes open maybe just a hazy gaze at one point on the floor in front of you, and then if you'd like to follow this practice with one of the yoga nidra practices to come, Namaste.