Day 7: Integrate

Chapter 1

So in this practice, we will be using a strap, and two blocks, two blankets, and a strap blankets like the other days, but also a strap, and later we'll put the shins on a chair or you can also use a couch, any piece of furniture. It doesn't have to be anything special, but just something for an inversion with supported legs. All right, we're going to start in child's pose. So have the knees wide, the big toes touching, let your pelvis settle back to your heels and lengthen through the arms, through the spine, let your forehead rest. If it doesn't touch the ground, please put it onto a block and find a deeper breath here.

Lift the head a bit, walk the hands over to the left, so a side bend in the child's pose, heavy through the right sitting bone, extending firmly through the right arm, and extra attention into the breath in the right lung, the lung moving into the ribs, into the skin, and then with awareness in the transition, we'll walk over to the other side, feeling those left ribs open like an accordion, the lung expanding with the inhalation, and softening with the exhalation. Come back to the center, come to hands and knees and have your little fingers on the edges of the mat so the arms are wide, and have your feet also on the edges of the mat and do, I call this a wide dog, and you'll see how it feels to have your connections to the ground a little bit wider apart. Usually there's a feeling of stability with space. Walking hand meditation to the back of the mat, and then we're going to turn the heels in just a little bit, and come to a squat, so bend your knees, you can bend them about halfway and bring your forearms onto your thighs, or if your hips are designed such that you can squat down lower, you can do that, this can be a nice opening for the lower back as well as a deep flexion of the hips and the knees and the ankles, so let your eyes close here, broaden across your chest, and see if you can feel a little length in the front of the body as the pubic bone moves down and the abdomen lifts up, and then from here we'll go back into our wide dog, couple of breaths, feeling grounding, feeling the strength of the legs, softening through the neck, the head, the face, and then float your knees to the floor, get your strap and one block, and we're going to flip over and lie down and take your block and put it right to the outside of your right hip, in a moment we'll open the leg to the side and it will support that leg, and then pull your right knee in towards your chest, wrap your strap around the ball of your right foot and reach the sole of the right foot up towards the ceiling, so you can have as much slack as you need on the strap, don't overdo, don't strain, we're just going easy today, see if you can have a heaviness down through the top of the left thigh and guide your right sitting bone in the direction of your left heel, that instruction is to help both sides of the waist, both halves of the pelvis be even, take a couple of breaths here, staying broad across the chest, let the elbows be slightly wide, kind of like you're holding a beach ball, and then we'll put both sides of the belt into the right hand, from the top of the right leg, turn the leg out, so your right toes will point to the right, and then carry the right leg out to the side, and it will be held by that block, and if you want a little bit more moving to the side, you can take the block further away, but try to keep the left legs pretty steady, so you're not just rolling over to the right side, the left arm extends out to the left, so you feel very vast, like the rays of the sun, all the limbs extending away from each other, and then find your breath here, and sense the breath moving to all, I think it's 37 trillion cells that create you, something like that, of course we're all a little different, but a massive amount of cellular territory to draw breath into. We'll use the strength of the low belly to pull the leg back up to the center, take the strap away, and we'll move the block over to the other side, the props are always meant to help you, if they're ever in your way or bothering you, you don't have to use them.

Left foot into the strap, we'll put the ball of the foot into the strap for today, just check in with your left leg, see how it's doing, normal for one leg to feel quite different than the other leg, try to root down through the top of the right thigh, it's like we're standing on its strong strength through the bottom leg, and then the left sitting bone draws towards the right heel, the shoulders move down away from the ears as well as down towards the ground, elbows wide, throat soft, breathing in, and breathing out. Both sides of the belt in the left hand, from the top of the left leg, turn out, and then carry the left leg open to the left, right arm radiates to the right, keep the top of the right thigh heavy, soften the bottom front ribs down, and again feel the breath expanding to fingertips, to toe tips, to crown of head. With your next exhalation, the strength of the belly helps to pull the leg back up to the center, take the strap away, hug the knees into the chest, and pause here. So, we will move now into Supta Baddha Konasana, and we're just going to prop it up a little bit more than we've done the other days. We'll use the blankets, so one blanket folded like this, so it's like a bolster, and the other blanket just resting on top, so that will be our pillow, and then again like we've done the other days, we'll have the blocks to support underneath the knees, so we sit just at three inches or so in front of the blanket, soles the feet together, knees apart, blocks creating some support, and then as you lower down, lift up, lengthen your tailbones, you lengthen your tailbone, place yourself back down, and then lie down with the waist, the shoulder blades, the head on the, the blanket underneath the head is underneath the neck and head, and then settle here.

If there's anything that's not quite right, take time to fix it, it's taking excellent care of yourself, and then let your next breath be long and smooth and deep, pause at the top, and then let it out with a sigh, again a deep, smooth, long breath in, pausing at the top, and sighing out the mouth, just take a few regular breaths, scanning your body, pausing if anything else could soften. All right. We'll move into our final pose now, but if you feel very, very comfortable and moving seems like more of a hassle, then you'd like to just stay still in this pose, you're welcome to stay here. Otherwise, we're going to move into our inversion, which is quite a lovely pose, so you can use your hands to gather your knees if you're moving along, and roll over to your side, and then press down to come up, and take time, you'll need your chair and two blankets. So here we go for this restorative inversion.

This one is definitely on my list of nourishing poses, it can be very rejuvenating after a long day. So have two blankets stacked, you could also use a pillow, any bolster, or you can also do the couch at home, I use my couch, I put my shins up on the couch, and lie back. This can be, and you want to have the thighs at a slight diagonal, it depends on how tall your chair is and how long your thighs are, but you want to have the thighs perhaps at a diagonal, and this can be perfectly fine without a prop, but it adds just a little extra inversion, which soothing if you add the props underneath your pelvis, so the blankets are underneath the sacrum, the shins are supported by the chair. If you have something to cover your eyes, or it's important that you're warm enough, then we can walk the shoulders kind of down, I like to lift the back of my head and lengthen the back of the neck, and then release the hands down, palms facing up, if it's more comfortable for you to rest your hands on your belly, that's also an option. I like the terminology of the poses doing you, so you take the effort to get yourself into the pose, and then you get to just let the pose do its magic on you, your only job here is to soften into the support, releasing the inner corners of the eyes, the skin and muscles around the temples of your head, let your inner ears fall away from the surface, some jaw ungripped from the top, the tongue wide and soft, perhaps dropped to the base of the mouth, if you notice the tip of your tongue likes to be at the top of the mouth, that's okay, but make sure it's not pressing or tense there.

Then the sides of the neck and the front of the throat towards the back of the throat, release each shoulder, upper arms, elbows, forearms, wrists and hands, noticing that your hands are empty, let each finger soften, feel your pelvis resting down onto your prop and the belly soft like a watery lake over the back of the pelvis, let your calves rest completely onto the chair, kind of like water balloons, and feel the feet without a job right now, nowhere to walk to, nothing to stand for, nothing to stand on, let the feet sense your whole body sinking in to this inversion. So take your time. Thank you. Thank you. Notice how your body is breathing.

And as you deepen your breath, make some little movements with your fingers and your toes. Just bringing awareness back to the extremities. Step the feet to the edge of the chair. Lift the pelvis and move the props to the side. Lower the pelvis down. Roll over to one side. Pause there.

And then press down and come up. And we'll see you for meditation.

Chapter 2

And it's hard to translate ancient languages, so there's lots of different definitions. And mindful is one of them, but it's not quite as accurate as it could be, because mindful implies me being mindful of something, so subject-object. A definition that I've heard that I like better is entering into, coming into, entering into an abiding in a state of awareness. So I think by now, if you've stuck with me for these days, you've understood that we are accepting what happens. We're welcoming with open arms, our thoughts, our joys, our sorrows, our pains, all of it. We welcome it all.

And that being said, we enter into this state of being, and we remind ourselves to come back. So we find our anchor, notice what's happening, come back with kindness, with gentleness. I'm going to just get you going and then speak a little bit less, so you have time to have a silent meditation period. But I will get you started. So take time to really decide if the seat that you've chosen is the one you'd like to be in for this practice.

And set up, feeling your foundation, your length, sense of openness, as well as softening whatever can soften within the clarity of the pose. Decide what will anchor your attention and rest there, coming back to that anchor at any point. Thank you. And now for the last little period of this meditation, let the stabilizing anchor for your mind just relax a little bit and allow your awareness to widen, getting less focused, less directed, and more sense of openness and spaciousness, as if the sky is inside of you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. You're always welcome to sit for longer if you have time. Thank you very much for practicing and meditating with me. Namaste.

Chapter 3

Notice if there's been any shift in the way that you're interacting with the world. So you can have a pretty clear view of what impact our time together had. And if it was helpful for you in any way, I encourage you deeply to stick with it. And sticking with it takes some effort. You could repeat this course over and over.

That could be a good way to have it sink in. You could also find a class where you live or gather some people together and practice together. And then all of the homeworks that I offered are off-the-mat practices. Keep them and remember them, the deeper breaths, the feeling of the ground and the feet, sprinkling in what nourishes you, what sustains you. As the world is completely complicated and, you know, life is very rippled with different textures and experiences, we need to be resourced so that we can meet what arises with as much clarity and openness and kindness as possible.

I hope that you are very well, that they feel good and nourished and I'm happy that you spent this time with me. Thank you so much.