Earth Energy

Hi, how are you? Today we are going to work on the root chakra. So let's get grounded in our bodies, in our strength, and pull the energy up from the earth through our feet, through our legs, through our hips and spine to enliven our whole body. Right? Grounded, rooted, earthy energy. Okay, so we're going to start standing up. Okay, so here we are at standing and let's do a little full body stretch. So I'm going to reach my arms over my head and just give myself a nice big stretch, grounding into the earth with my feet, reaching up to the sky with my hands and just drawing a couple of big circles, opening energy up in my whole body, releasing, maybe circling out the wrists and come on down. So let's now start with some malasana squats to get the energy down into the feet. Here we go. I'm going to do five of these squats. So take a deep breath in here, nice wide stance, toes turned out slightly, and as I exhale I'm going to squat all the way down and inhale, come on up, using the core. I can bring my hands into anjali mudra if that feels good or hands at the waist. Take a deep breath in and exhale, squatting down, inhale up and exhale and inhale. Let's do three more of these, deep breath, exhale, inhale, two more, exhale and inhale. Last one, deep breath here and exhale down and inhale back up. Nice job. Let's come right down into malasana. Here we go. I'm sitting on my block here with my hands in prayer. Let's do a little side stretch while we're here. I'm going to bring my right arm out, kind of pressing into the inner knee and pressing that knee into the arm. Take a deep breath in and exhale, opening out to the side, maybe lifting the heart up. Let's take about five deep breaths here. Relax your neck. Reaching that left arm up and over my head. Take another big breath in and exhale coming all the way back to malasana and back in prayer. So I'm pressing down into the block here just to feel the earth grounding down but lifting up with a heart. Other side, so left hand into the left knee, left knee into the left arm. Reach that right arm up. Take a big breath in and exhale opening out to the side. Inhale, lift the heart up towards the sky. Relax your shoulders. Two more big breaths in. Last breath here. Nice. Coming back into malasana. Hands back in prayer right at the chest. Now you can stay here in this gentler variation if you want to lift up and really use your legs. Come right up into the legs here. Come out of the knee.

So I'm using my quadriceps. We're going to hold here for a moment. Pressing down into the earth, lifting up through the core, up through the heart. Relax your neck. If you get a little tired you can sit back down. We're still grounded. We're still lifting up. Still pressing my legs into my arms and the arms into the legs so I feel that energy in my roots. Let's take one more big breath here. Exhale with a sigh. Good. Nice work. So coming out of this, I'm going to come down to the earth. I'm going to move my block out of the side. Grab your strap for this next series. We'll need it in a moment but let's do just a couple of moments of some nice transitions. First time down in the earth. So let's bring our knees into our chest and do a little rock side to side here. Maybe circling your knees around to warm up the low back. Massaging out the spine and the hips. You might want to relax your hands down, palms up and do a little air bicycle just to acquaint yourself with your core strength. Nice and slow. Maybe arms out to the side, palms up to do a little rock right and left here. This is a nice massage here again for the low back sacroiliac joint. Hips. Good. Nice work. So grab your strap. Here we go. I'm going to do a little foot massage with the strap. So I like to keep the strap held kind of double like this and I'm going to bring the sole of my foot right into the strap and doing a little massage at the sole of my feet here. It feels really nourishing, really nice. Give our heart our feet work, holding the weight of our body and carrying us. So just kind of massaging back and forth and I'm pulling the strap from right to left. Up and down the foot a couple of times. Good. So I've got it now kind of evenly balanced on either side. I'm going to start to warm up the back of the legs, right, the hamstrings. So take a big breath in, relax your shoulders and then bend your knee in towards your chest. Let's take an inhale here and exhale straight leg up towards the sky. Inhale here and exhale knee in towards the chest. So just doing this a couple of two, three times starts to warm up the backs of the legs, the hamstrings. Should feel pretty good. And your left leg is totally relaxed on the earth here. Last time. Let's bring this leg straight up towards the sky and pull your toes in towards you. It's going to bring a little spicy sensation into the back of the leg. Relax your shoulders. Take one more big breath here. Maybe even pressing the heel up towards the sky and the toes again towards you. And gather the strap with your right hand here. Bring that left arm out to the left. Take a big breath in and as you exhale, opening that right leg all the way out to the right. Keep it straight. Keep it flexed. Relax your shoulders and then bring your focus to the left leg, the standing leg. Pressing your left hip and your left heel deeply into the earth. Deep breaths here. Good. This is a powerful hip opener. Strengthens the whole body. Feel that strengthen both legs. We'll be here for about another minute. I'll keep tuning back into the grounding. I just noticed the sensations. Sensation says information. It's an opportunity to lean in, deepen the breath, soften something. Relax your jaw, your brow. Yeah, let's take one more big breath here. And as you exhale, come all the way back up to center. Gather that strap back in both hands and let's pull your right leg towards your face. Another moment here to seal in all this length and strength in the right leg. And as you exhale, remove that strap. Now I like to just put the strap down my side and circle my right knee, right hip, all the way around. Just to encourage this energy to move all the way up into my hips, up into the spine.

Besides that, it feels really good. Yeah, and then maybe bring your foot up towards the sky and circle out your ankle, wiggle your toes. Come back down and take a moment here with both legs down in the earth to rest and let the energy soak into your body. Notice the difference between right and left leg. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, good. Once that energy continues to flow, we'll come to the other side. So I'm going to bring the strap into the left leg. Again, I'm giving my left foot that little massage so I'm kind of rocking. I'm going to move the strap over to the other way. Here we go. So I'm gonna rock right and left here, massaging out the soles of the feet. Yeah, you can really move deeply into the soles of feet by using the strength of your arms. Coming up towards the ball of my foot. Feels really good. Like a foot massage down towards the heels. One more full round here. Nice. So let's start to warm up the hamstrings. I'm gonna bend this knee, take a deep breath in, relax your shoulders, and then slowly straighten your left leg up towards the sky. Take an inhale and exhale, knee in towards the chest. Inhale here, keep that knee as close to your chest as you can as you exhale, right the left leg up towards the sky. I'm just following the rhythm of your breath. I notice my body really enjoys kind of riding the waves of my breath. Keeps the mind really calm. One more time. Yeah, and here we are with your left leg up towards the sky, right leg down towards the earth, and then start to pull your left toes towards your face. There's that sensation in the back of the leg. The heel, the Achilles, the calf, back of the knee, all the way up into the hamstring, and then start to energize your right leg. Feel that right hip and right ball of my right foot really grounded down towards the earth. Feel the energy there. Relax your shoulders. Be guiding your left leg a little bit closer to your face. Keep pressing your heel up towards the sky. Let's take another breath here. Yeah, gathering the strap into your left hand. I like to bring my left, my right arm out towards the right, palm up, take a big breath here, and exhale. I'm reaching all the way out to the left, Supta Padagusthasana on the left side. So again, grounding your right hip down, back of that right hip, right thigh. Left heel is reaching towards the earth on your left side, wide across the collarbones. Yeah, mm-hmm. Nice deep breath.

Just enjoying all the strength and the length that's opening up in the legs. Hmm. And staying curious with the different sensations that are evoked between the right and left side, between the front and back body. Hmm. Like for me, I'm feeling a lot of sensation up that right quadricep. It's good. Let's take about three or four more deep breaths here. Each exhale, just notice what you can let go of. You can scan your body, your brow, your lips, soft lips, soft jaw. Just letting go of tension as you're gathering up strength and energy and awareness. Take one more big breath here. Side out. And inhale coming back to center. Let's bring that right hand back in, pull, encourage your left foot, toes, leg in towards your face. Nice big breath. Relax the back of your neck. Nice. Ooh, that feels good. Remove the strap and draw those big circles around with your left knee. It's massaging out deep into the knee joint and the hip joint. It feels really good. Bring in that leg up towards the sky one more time, circle out the ankle, wiggle those toes. While my left leg is up there, let's bring the right, bring your right leg up to join it and just circle out both ankles. Notice how your legs feel. Good. And come on down. Okay, that felt great. So while we're down here, let's do a couple of transitions before we get to our next pose, reclining butterfly. So I'm back with my knees into my chest, just drawing those nourishing circles with my knees all the way around my body. Massaging out again, the low back and the hips. You might want to air bicycle the legs. It'll probably feel really good after our last pose. Yeah, and bring your legs and your arms up towards the sky. Massaging out the ankles and the wrists, bringing all that synovial fluid, stimulating circulation, nourishing the organs. Yeah, good. Okay, so let's come up and we'll set up for our next pose, reclining butterfly. So I'm going to move my strap out of this out of the way and use a bolster. So grab your bolster. A couple ways to do this. I like to sit on the bolster. This is a really nice hip opener. It's going to feel really good after our last pose. I'm going to sit right on the bolster and I'm going to bring myself all the way down to the earth. So I've got it right kind of right on my low back hips here. And you might want to bring your knees into your chest and come back to these little circles one more time before we settle in. And reclining butterfly is a really nourishing pose for the inner thighs and the hips. So I'm going to bring the soles of my feet together and let the knees just melt out to the side. So if this feels a little spicy for you, I'll give you a gentler option which is basically to lift up and bring the bolster right under the knees. So I've got the same variation in the pose. It's just a little bit a little bit gentler version. So I'm going to come back to the spice. So I've got my feet together, my knees apart, your arms in cactus.

And that's a nice way to open up the chest and the heart. And we'll be here for about two to three minutes. So if it for whatever reason is uncomfortable or a little too much, then slide that bolster right down underneath your knees. Yeah. So tune into the weight of your legs. Let the weight of your legs start to traction out the inner thighs up into the groins, into the hips. So we're using our body and the energy of the earth, gravity, to support us in deepening into this pose. Drawing energy up from the earth to support strength and length at a deeper opening. And as tension starts to dissolve, there's more space for breath. So notice your breath. Notice if it will feel good to deepen your breath into those newfound spaces in your body. And as space opens up, sometimes imagery, emotions, sensations, churn. Let's be very curious, patient, interested in what is revealing itself, releasing. Yeah, scan your whole body. Notice what you notice as you're shedding those layers. Perhaps a softening, a warming sensation. Let's take another moment here.

As we release tension in your hips, sometimes that tension likes to find its way into different parts of your body. So scan your jaw, your brow, your thoughts. Let's take three more deep breaths here. Again, focus on your exhales, focus on letting go. And this last big breath in, you might want to let out a sigh. Nice. So take your hands right outside of your legs and help yourself back up. Good. You might want to just take your hands and massage out the outer hips here, upper thighs, hip flexors. Just to bring a little bit of warmth and circulation into this joint, we just worked. Good. Yeah. And to come out of this pose, I'm going to ground my feet down into the earth and lift my hips up into a bridge pose and bring that bolster down underneath my knees. And take a moment here and let things soak in. Notice what you notice. For me, I feel a lot of warmth, a lot of energy, a little buzzing and tingling up my thighs, up into the hips, into the core, and it feels good. Good. So let's move on. Let's come up into the heart area. So for this pose, I'm going to stay on my back.

I'm just going to reach that block we used for molestana. I'm going to move the bolster off to the side and you're going to take your block and lift up into bridge and set your block right on your sacrum, right on that wide flat bone at the base of your spine that connects the spine to the hips. It should feel pretty good. Yeah. And separate your feet about hip-distance, maybe a little bit wider if that feels okay for you, and reach your hands down and see if you can kind of brush your fingers right up against your heels. And that should feel very grounded here. Arms either in cactus, like we did in Supta Baddha Gushtasana, or arms overhead. And that's a really nice stretch for your chest. It encourages the energy to move up, up the spine, up into the chest. You can bend your arms a little bit. Now I have the block at my lowest. If you want to move a little bit deeper into this, you can bring the block at the medium, and that actually feels really nice. Opens the energy up in those hip flexors, so try that with me if you'd like. So we'll be here for about a minute and then we're going to add on to this. So stay with this. You might notice your breath can deepen here as we've got all this opening up the front of the body. Relaxing the back of your neck. Feet are grounded into the earth. Even the back of your head is relaxed. The back of your skull. Stay really soft in the eyes, soft in the jaw and the lips. Let's take one more deep breath here. Now as promised we're going to add on. So straightening your left leg out so the heel is on the earth and then straighten your right leg out to join it. Now if your block is at the medium and it feels really good, really nourishing, stay right here if you want to bring it back down and start with that little gentle variation. You can surely do that as well. So this is a full body stretch. So what might feel really good is to stretch the balls of your feet forward pressing out in front of you and then stretch your arms behind you. You can either leave your arms and hands at shoulder distance or clasp your hands and bring the palms away from you. So see what feels good to you for me. The shoulder distance feels really nice. Relax your shoulders, reach from the legs, reach all the way up the side body, out the arms and there's a little internal spiral in the thighs. So visualize your inner thighs spiraling in towards each other and down towards the earth. Should feel really good on your lower back here. Strong in the legs, soft in the eyes, soft in the jaw, deep breaths. Let's take about a minute or so here. Let it stay active for this next minute. Almost a Tadasana Mountain Pose in the leg feel.

You might be feeling an opening and a warming up the front of the body, up the thighs, up along the hip flexors, the hips all the way up to the ribs. A lot of length, a lot of strength. Let's take about five more big breaths through the nose. I'm going to clasp my hands for the last two breaths just to eek out a little bit more. Feel so good. And then let the effort go. Unclasp your hands if they're clasped. Bring the hands back into cactus, re-bend the knees, separate your feet a little bit wider than hip distance and drop your knees in towards each other. And let your body just absorb all this grounding strong earth energy these poses has offered. Nice. Good. So coming out of this and getting ready for our final pose of Shavasana, I'm going to lift up off the block, move it off to the side, come back down, roll over to my side, bring myself up to a seat just for a moment, and then set up for Shavasana. So I need a bolster for this. I'm just going to slide that bolster right under my knees and bring myself all the way back down. So your feet are on the ground, bolsters under the knees, just giving the back of the legs a little bit of support here. I like to take a wide stance, just let let my body absorb all this energy, arms out to the side, but see what feels good for you. Once you've found the perfect Shavasana for yourself, let your body start to settle into the earth. Tap back into the energy of gravity of Mother Earth, as if the earth is rising up to support you in the perfect way. So that you can let go of any last little bit of holding or tension, just let it dissolve down into the earth and fill those spaces with breath. Continue to invite the curiosity of your mind to tether itself to your breath, and tethering your breath to all the beautiful sensations that are stirring in your body, and tethering your body to the energy of the earth. Deepen your breath. And as you start to deepen your breath, you might want to find some little movements, maybe rocking your head from side to side, massaging out the back of your skull, feeling that visceral connection with the earth. You might want to circle your ankles and your wrists, encouraging all this beautiful energy to continue to flow. You might feel good to gently bring your knees into your chest and open your knees out really wide. Give yourself a little variation of happy baby rock from side to side, feeling the whole spine supported, nourished, and all the way over to your side. Take a moment here on your side, slowly bringing yourself up by taking your top hand and pressing it down and rolling up your spine here like a cat coming out of a nap. My head comes up last, coming back to a comfortable seat. I like to rest my hands, palms up, encourages a little bit more energy, palms down if you want to stay grounded.

And take a deep breath in, sigh it out. Thank you so much for joining me. Namaste.