Quiet Depths

Here's a short, sweet practice that will help prepare your body to rest really comfortably for your yoga nidra practice. So let's just start in any comfortable seated position. You can use a prop to sit on if it makes you more comfortable. Anything that's organized for the legs, whatever works for you is fine. You won't be here more than a minute or so.

As you're ready, you can close your eyes. And then let's just float one hand over the other hand over the heart center, the center of the chest. Let the hands have some weight so they rest easily there. We think it's nice to stop before we start. So just a few moments to check in at your starting point.

Just inherent in this gesture, you might start noticing a particular mood or emotion. You might note the beat of your heart or the pulse in the vessels, ebb and flow of your breath. Just this unique moment of right now. As you're ready, just deepen the breath in and out through the nose, feeling the breath rise all the way up to the hands. As you exhale, just a gentle drawing back of your belly towards your spine.

Doesn't have to be any fancy yoga type breath or technique, just a deep, longer, more thoughtful breath in and out through the nose. You can keep your eyes closed and your hands where they are, just slide your hands to the left underneath your left collarbone. You can press in with your hands and slightly down as if you're drawing some of the soft flesh away from the collarbone. And then just turn your head gently to the right. Just an easy stretch of your neck and throat, sometimes feels great if you've been at the computer for a while or on your devices or just life brings a lot of attention to this region.

And slide your hands back over the center of your chest, just neutral head and neck, bringing it back to your starting point. Then slide the hands as they are over to the right on the right pectoralis muscle or chest underneath your right collarbone. Give a little press in and down and slowly turn your nose to the left. Deep breaths again, inhale, maybe you feel it rise under your hands and exhale, you draw your navel back just slightly. Drawing your hands back towards the center of your chest, head back to neutral and bring your chin down to your chest and draw your hands on that breastbone a little bit.

In and down, bringing your chin towards your chest, just letting the back of the neck soften in place where your skull meets your neck, spacious, between the shoulder blades, soft. Keep your head right where it is, just release your hands back down onto your thighs or knees and flutter your eyes open and floating your head back up to neutral. We're going to come on to the hands and knees next, so if we're going to be on the hands and knees for a while, you might want to blanket underneath your knees, sometimes that just makes them feel a little bit better. Come up onto hands and knees, good old regular cat and cow pose, the wrists underneath your shoulders, knees underneath your hips, spread the fingers comfortably wide and then with your breath inhale, breathing your heart forward through the gates of the arms and turn your gaze forward and as you exhale, rounding through your spine, you can point your feet, press the tops of the feet into the earth as you arch your spine, letting your head relax. Follow your own breath, so you take the whole length of your inhale to breathe your heart forward, arching through your spine, if you wish you can tuck your toes under and as you exhale, pointing through your toes, pressing hands and feet to the floor so you can arch away from the mat, letting your head fall.

One more like that, deep breath in into cat pose, what my teacher calls up cat and then exhale rounding your spine down cat. We're just going to free form style cat cow, so you can just make some circles, this isn't a proper yoga pose so don't worry like there's no yoga police here, you can just move your head and your seat in circles, doesn't have to be pretty, just kind of getting into all of the stuck spots, you can pause in a particular sticky point, breathe into that, just rolling your head and your seat in nice big circles, when it feels right you can reverse the circles rounding, moving the spine in all of its various ways. Then you'll come back into a tabletop spine and we'll prepare for a little twist, so you'll take your right arm up towards the ceiling, opening your chest towards the side of the room and if comfortable look up to see your right thumb, nice big inhale across the collar bones, across the back body and then as you exhale just tuck your belly in and take your right arm, thread it underneath your left and if you can bring in your right shoulder and right temple towards the mat, you can breathe here into the space behind your heart, and press down through your left hand, come back up onto your hands and knees, you can do a little wiggle or any adjustment that you need before going to the left side, so inhale reaching your left arm up towards the ceiling, open across the chest, maybe see your left hand and then as you exhale thread the left arm underneath the right, you can bend your right elbow, maybe getting the temple, left temple or ear towards the floor, left shoulder to the floor, just deep breaths every inhale maybe feeling your spine lengthen, every exhale feeling your navel, engage back gently, one more breath here, and pressing your right hand to the earth and come back up onto your hands and knees and we'll tuck the toes underneath and then just come to sit back towards your heels, so I think it's nice to kind of get into the parts of the body that we don't tend to get into in a regular practice, so if you've been wearing some questionable shoes you might be feeling this in the soles of the feet and then maybe taking your fingertips towards you, the heels of the hands towards the front of the mat and just start to bring the heel of the hand in the direction of the floor, most likely it's not going to touch the floor, then keep your elbows soft, you're stretching areas that work quite hard on our devices, on our computers, so it's nice to give them a little bit of love, you might be feeling other things than love at this point but just try to deep breath into anything that feels a little sticky, and then if you can you know undo your hands, bring them back to the mat and then start to sit upright on your tucked toes, now if it's too miserable for you you can untuck your toes and sit on your pointed feet, but if you can handle it a little bit more, sit upright on your tucked toes, take your arms back behind you, interlace your fingers and just drawing the palms towards one another, maybe the elbows towards one another, broadening across your chest, take a deep breath into that space under your collarbones, side ribs, and exhale, draw the navel gently back, and bend at your elbows and sneak your fists over to your right waist, or as close to that as you can find, giving the left shoulder a chance to open, and then you can sneak your fists over to your left waist, giving the right shoulder a little moment to feel some space, and then undo the fists, relax maybe roll your shoulders, free up your poor toes and then we're gonna have a seat on our rear end, we'll take a little ankle to knee, I like to sit up on the edge of a folded blanket, I find that helps set me up better, so you can sit on the edge of a blanket if it works well for you, we'll take the right ankle or ankle bone on top of the left knee, right knee on top of the left ankle bone, you know flex through your feet, with some umph, with some gusto, pinky toe and big toe drawing back towards the shins, just find a nice comfortable seat, comfortable is relative here, and ground down through your hands, ground down through your hips, lengthen your spine, you might stay upright, this is more than enough work here, or if it works in your range, you can hinge from your hips and walk your arms forward, you can take your hands to the floor, forearms to the floor, something that I like is to take my two hands on top of one another and then set my forehead down, take some nice deep breaths as you are here, whatever your ankle to knee looks like, and then just to zhuzh it up a bit, you can walk your hands, your torso over to the left, just a little bit of a twist, if it's in your range you can take your right elbow into your right foot, so lift the right foot, just bow down over the side, softening the right hemisphere of your back, and if you've gone over there to the side, walk yourself forward again, then use your hands to help guide you back up to a seated position, and then carefully untangle your legs, and we'll take that to the other side, so bending your knees, you can set your left ankle on top of your right knee, and your left knee on top of your right ankle, and stacking the shins, keeping your feet flexed, if there's a space between your knee and ankle, you might enjoy a block or a folded blanket in between those two bits, sitting upright, ground through your hips, lengthen through your spine, and then if it works well on this side, the sides can be very very different, if it works on the side you can walk yourself forward, palms to the floor, forearms to the floor, or if you liked that variation of stacking your hands, resting your forehead on your hands, wherever you've ended up, just find your breath. If you wish to take it into that side twist, on the side you're going to walk your arms or torso over to the right, and then perhaps you take your left elbow into the sole of your left foot, and fold or bow down over that right thigh, melting through the left hemisphere of your back. You've moved over there to this side, just walking yourself forward, and use your hands to guide yourself back up to a seated position, untangle your legs out from underneath you, and stretch your legs down the mat, a little Paschimottanasana variation, again I like sitting up on a blanket, I hope it helps me to set my spine a little bit more upright, and we're going to do a very soft version, so you're going to bend through your knees, ground down through your hips, lengthen up through your spine, and a hinge forward until your front body touches your legs, so have a nice deep bend in your knees to make that connection, a little sandwich, take your arms, thread them underneath your legs, give yourself a little hug, and you can relax your head down, if after a couple of breaths you want to scooch your heels a little bit more forward, so be it, if that's not in the cards today don't worry, stay maybe five of your most thoughtful breaths, sometimes I like to imagine the inhale kind of swirling loose tendrils into any part of me that feels a little bit stuck or congested or tight or cranky, and as you exhale just softens those areas, one or two more breaths, you can thread your arms out, hands back to the floor just so you can guide yourself up, back to a seat, come into the most comfortable seat now that will work for you for just a few minutes, so if you want to use your padding you can go for that, any cross of your legs that feels like it's sustainable for you, take a practice called nadi shodhana or alternate nostril breath, so you're going to take your right hand and fold your second and third finger into the palm, then we'll place the right thumb and fourth finger a little bit above the creases of your nose right at the end of the bony cartilage, kind of like where you'd get a nose piercing and slightly above, the right elbow can be soft and when you're ready your eyes can close, left hand can just be easily down on your left knee or thigh, once you settle in just relax the muscles of the face and jaw, neck, even the tongue can fall to the floor of the mouth, gently breathe in and out through both nostrils, apply just a bit of pressure with your right thumb closing your right nostril and inhale through the left side, just a long, slow breath in through the left nostril, the top of the breath close both sides of the nose, just pause for maybe one or two beats of your heart and then as needed you'll exhale through the right nostril, you'll inhale through the right nostril, close, block both and then exhale through the left nostril, continue just like this, inhale through the left, close, exhale through the right nostril, inhale through the right nostril, close, exhale through the left nostril, continue on, if my pace is too slow or too fast, just continue on your own, inhaling through the left, closing, exhaling through the right, inhaling through the right, close, exhale through the left, close, exhale through the left, let's do one more round together, inhale through the left, close, exhale through the right, inhale through the right, close, exhale through the left, keeping your eyes closed, just float your right hand back down onto the near thigh, let the breath adjust on its own, just observe any shifts in the body, the breath, the mind from the beginning of your practice, bring the chin gently towards your chest, allow the eyes to flutter open, just coming back into your space gently, and you can follow this with any of the yoga nidra practices in this series, thank you.