Relaxed and Determined

Welcome. My name is Robert Sedoti. Some of you already know that. If you have, you kind of know my way, where I like to go in the practice. If you're new to practicing with me, welcome. Nice to meet you. First and foremost, make this your own situation. All right. This is your body, your experience. If something doesn't feel quite right, like I really mean it. Just back away, reset, figure out what works for you. All right. So welcome to my home. If you're practicing now with me live, this is awesome. Or maybe you're watching this and practicing as it's been recorded on the site. So either way, welcome. So I'm not going to get into a big discussion right now because this is about movement for the most part. Okay. So let's start in a child's pose, child's pose, and we'll start moving from there. All right. I like to take my knees relatively wide and bring my big toes toward one another. If you'd like to bring your knees a little closer, do that. I feel like within knees wide, it provides more space for, uh, you know, my midsection torso to, uh, to draw down. It opens up the inner hips a little bit more. So groove your way and find your way toward a comfortable position. Uh, rest your forehead on the mat or on a block or on your fist or a pillow, whatever you'd like. We'll take a few moments here. It's important to, you know, take a few deep breaths and arrive. There's two ways to approach today's practice from the mindset standpoint. One is, is there's so much coming at us these days. Um, if you want to start to kind of block that out and just clear some kind of peace and calm environment within yourself, get that extra focus on the feelings and sensations in the body and your breath. Start to entertain thoughts that aren't quite, uh, too savory at the moment. Just acknowledge it, set it aside, move back to breath, move back to your body. But given the state of these times and all aspects and just in your personal life, if there's something worth setting your focus on your intention, this would be the time as we take another three or four breaths together. You might take a deep exhale. I'm not bringing my head down just so I want to have clarity with the mic. You can hear me. Exhale it all out again to, as you take another clearing breath, stretch the arms out as far as you can. So fingertips, reaching hips, pushing back. We will revisit this several times in the next couple of minutes. So bring yourself into tabletop. Okay. When tabletop, keep those arms stretched out nice and long. And when you inhale into table, maybe bring the hands back a little bit, keep the arms straight and start to drop the hips, untuck the toes, drop the hips forward. So it's like a, an upward facing dog, but with the knees and thighs and hips down and just a little rock from side to side. So it'll open up the hips and bring some, hopefully some healthy attention to your low back and a little strength in the arms and shoulders. The next part of this move is to bend the arms. Okay. So bend the arms so that now your waist, your belly, your ribs, your chest come all the way down. So it's a nice, potentially healthy way to roll down. Keep the hands there. Inhale up through a cobra pose. And then as you begin, if you've got the space, straighten your arms back to where you were depends on your low back and then exhale all the way back. I told you we'd visit it all the way back to child's pose. Yes, stretch, be mindful of your knees and everywhere, right? That's like a little three or four part movement. So you inhale back into table, exhale the hips down, bend the arms and lower down. This whole series just gets all the joints. So think of this as just a nice little warmup. Breathe in, come up through your cobra, a little lazy up dog and exhale back through child's pose. Breathe in tabletop, hips down, breathe out, lower down. Nice. Inhale cobra upward, pull the shoulders back at that chest opened up and from your belly strength, your core strength, pull back into child's pose. Boom land, stretch the back out the hips and back into tabletop. Okay. From tabletop, exhale your way into cat pose. So round out the back as much as you can. Draw the gaze towards your thighs. You get the full, what's called flexion in your spine. And then you release that, you drop the belly, arms are straight, drop the belly and hold the chest forward. Lift the tailbone. You get this nice arch and extension in the spine and exhale back into your cat pose. Round it out, spread those shoulder blades apart. Inhale, cow facing pose. I think it's cow facing, right? Cow pose. We can just say cow. Exhale cat. What a gift to be able to move one more time. Moving in whatever way you're able to now. And exhale cat. We'll revisit this in a moment. Curl the toes under, lift the knees downward facing dog. Stretch the legs out. The alignment I prefer in downward dog is for many purposes and it's a long conversation, but just give it a shot. Come into plank pose and set your elbows and shoulders over your wrists. Feet about hip width. You can go a little wider if you'd like. And without necessarily moving your hands and feet too much to shorten or lengthen, bend the knees a little bit and send the seat high and push, push, push the chest back toward the thighs. So that basically is really helpful in all the movements from in a sun salutation. So if I say inhale into plank, you're right there. Boom. And then downward dog. But if you had a really short stance in downward dog and you kind of preferred that and I said plank, that's going to be a little uncomfortable. So it's better for flow purposes, but you do you. Okay. Bring the knees down, stretch the left leg all the way back toes down for now. You can keep them down the whole time. Drop the left hip and reach the right arm through. All right. Pull up through the core. So stable through the abdominals, left arm starting to work a bit. Make sure your shoulder feels all right. Spread your fingers out in the right hand and left hand. Feel free to lift the left foot up. I know this as bird dog. You may know it as something else. And I like to lift the chest a little bit more. So you give it a little bit of cow pose in the spine. And we're going to move into cat pose in the spine by drawing the left knee toward the left elbow and the right elbow toward the right thighs. You kind of keep things square. You don't need to cross anything up. Inhale, extend out. Exhale. A little extra love to that core. Extend out, inhale. Exhale. See how I'm rounding the back? Good. Inhale, extend. Exhale. Contract and flex. One more time. Exhale. Nice. Now extend all the way out one more time. Bring your right hand down. Left foot down. Slide, ground the whole left foot. Slide it over to the right side of the mat. Slide your right foot over too. And then draw that left arm up. I hope you're facing me. I can see you. You can see me. So you're in this side kind of plank stretchy thing. Slide that left foot over a little bit more so you can access a side stretch. Then open that left arm up a bit. You can bend your right arm to get this side band action. Open the chest. Rock through some shoulder movements. Nice. Lift the left leg. I'm going to move up a little bit. Got some plant interference. Nice plant though. I like it. Grab hold of the foot. Pull the left heel toward the seat. Open up the hip flexors, quad. If that's not accessible, just kind of find your distance. Or if you're not able to actually touch it, keep it extended out. Big benefits there also. Boom. All right.

Let's bring it on down. Before we do the other side, left forearm, right forearm to the mat. Shoot the legs back up onto the toes and big toe mounds. And we hold a forearm plank. So shoulder stacked over the elbows. You can grab hold and interlace your fingers. You can palms facing up. I like this as like a receiving. Receive the strength. Receive the receive the kind of like in awe of everything. And so why would I complain about a forearm plank? There's too many things to be incredibly grateful for, even with everything going on. Pull up through the belly. We've been holding for an undetermined amount of time as far as like how much is left, right? So why don't we go in another five seconds? Four, three. Good job. Nice and firm and strong too. And one, knees down, back up onto your hands.

Get a little heat there. Nothing wrong with that. Shoot the right leg back now. Toes down for now. Strong right arm, left arm reaching. Square the hips. So drop that right hip down. Now feel free to lift the right foot up. Push through the right heel. You might even feel your right glutes activate. Lift the chest a little bit. Five quality movements here. So left knee toward the left thigh, right knee toward the right elbow, cat pose and the spine. That's one. Inhale, extend. Exhale, two. Inhale, extend. I'm right there with you. Exhale, nice. Exhale, two more. Last one. Inhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Now extend both outs. Left hand down, right toes down, right heel down as well. Slide both the left foot and the right foot over and open up that right arm. Same thing. Big circular motion through the right shoulder might feel nice. You can bend your left arm and reach the right hand out toward the front of your mat as you push the right heel down. This is so many places to find the more curious you are. Lift the right foot up. Good. That right leg is strong and committed. You can also bend it. Grab hold of the foot. Pull to the right heel toward your seat. Good. Make sure you're opening that right shoulder. It's like a side plank and upward bow combination. Kind of nice. Extend the right foot out. Right hand down, right knee down. Very nice. Table top. Curl the toes. Nice downward facing dog. Good work. Very nice. Walk your feet to the front of the mat. You can keep the palms down as long as you can. It's almost like a little bit of a handstand prep, right? So the hands stay down and you tip toe, tip toe and you keep pushing the earth away. Push it away like you're trying to tap your toes to your wrists. Bend your knees. Half lift. Inhale and exhale fold. Keep the feet where they are. Bend the knees like you're sitting your seat down on your heels and then straighten. Still kind of warming up. Bend and straighten out. So it's from this forward fold down into a little improvised squat pose. Very nice. You can send your hips over to the right and over to the left. Straighten the right leg, bend the left, slide up about halfway. All right. So right leg straight, left leg bent. Take the left forearm planted into the left thigh or left leg. Right hand crosses across the upper chest to twist open to the right. Right arm flies high. Push the right hip back and get long in that right hamstring. Obviously always breathing well. And then switch sides. As you're switching, you're bending the right, straightening the left, finding the arm placement, lengthening the spine and then rotating and smiling. There it is. There it is. Something to smile about. Ah, over to the other side. Bend the right, straighten the left, lengthen the spine, twist, rotate and smile. Good work. Kind of cheese ball of me, but whatever. I walk the feet out toward the edge of the mat, open the feet out about 45 degrees and drop down into a little squat. Again, right? This is just the beginning. We're about 15 minutes in or so and just been kind of stretching and getting some mobility. So you're in your squat, press the palms together at the chest, elbows into your inner thighs. This will help to give you leverage to lift the chest, lengthen the spine. Okay, good. Driving through your heels, mindful of your knees, lift the seat, stretch and straighten the legs. Heel toe your feet back toward hip width or together. Bend the knees, half lift, strong core, rise all the way up on the breath in. Take a standing long back bend. That could be a half inch back bend, two inches, three inches, four inches, a little side bend added to it. And exhale the arms down by your side. Good. Inhale the arms high and exhale. Track the hands right down the center line, pass your heart. Thank you, heart, for beating. Bend the knees, hold forward and down. Stretch the legs. Inhale, half lift. On your exhale, walk back into plank pose. Lower yourself down all the way or halfway. Inhale, upward facing dog, a little sun salutation, a downward dog exhale. Quality breath. Make it a priority and see if it feels good for you to focus so deeply and intently on your body and breath that everything just kind of falls away for a little while. Self-love, self-care. Look forward, inhale. As you exhale from your palms or fingertips, maybe jump. Let's try a little jumping. Nice. Land softly.

Inhale half lift and exhale full. Inhale rise up and exhale hands to heart. Inhale the arms down out and up. Exhale, forward and down. Inhale, half lift. Good, long spine. Exhale, walk it back into plank. Lower yourself down again. Good care of your elbows and shoulders. Inhale, upward dog. Pull the shoulders back. Lift the chest, strong core. It takes you to downward dog. Lift the right leg up. Walk your left foot towards the center of the mat. Ground your left heel. Doesn't have to touch, just strong and committed. Lift the right leg up and let's open up the hip a little bit. You can let your right foot and a calf kind of dangle there. You can do some big circular motions. Nice. And as you square off your hips, right knee took the right elbow, core strong, upper back strong. Good. Push the ground away. Every time you do this, it's cat pose and plank combined. Pull the knee up. Push the earth away. Inhale it back up. Exhale, same thing. Two more. Let's go three more. Make it five, three, strong, four, five and step. Okay. Finish your exhale. No need to enter high lunge feeling stressed out. So finish it. Shake out the arms a little bit and then when you're ready, foundation first, rise up. Big breath in, takes you up. We'll come back here, but exhale the hands down. Step back into plank. Lower. Inhale, forward. Exhale downward. Right foot is right center. Left leg lifts. Open the hip. I can look under my arm and say hi. I'm right here with you. Here to give you the guidance, right? Give you the sort of the structure. What's important is for you to be the best possible teacher for yourself. Not as some yoga cliche, right? All right. Five times. Knee toward the elbow. Push the earth away. Determined, strong, committed and relaxed. Inhale it up.

Exhale two. Inhale up. Need elbow. Exhale three. Exhale four. Exhale five. Step. Okay. Foundation first. Feet hip width or so. Shake the arms out. New breath takes you rise high. Take another breath here. Exhale takes you down. Plank. Pause. One pushup. Use your knees if that's better or hold plank if it's not for you. Downward dog. Good. I want to do before we continue, give you two options here. The first option is plank. When you come back to downward dog, tap your right fingers toward your left toes. Cross it over a little bit. Left fingers, right toes. Okay. If you want to juice it up a little bit, you come from downward dog. In the plank, lower, push up, back, right fingers, left toes. Plank, lower, push, left fingers, right toes. Wherever you've, whatever you've chosen, I gave you two options. Do two more on each side. Here's one. Right fingers, left toes. Left fingers, right toes.

One more on each side. Good work. Right fingers, left toes. Left fingers, right toes. Good job. Take a deep breath. Clear it all the way. Walk, skip, jump, whatever you'd like to the front of the mat. I like to mix it up personally. Half lift, breathe in, strong spine, hips back, downward dog, exhale. Downward dog, really? We could have done that. Rise up, inhale. Exhale, complete it with hands to heart. Take a moment, take a breath. Take another two breaths and either revisit the intention. Maybe it's morphed into something else, something came up. Breathe your whole heart into it. One more time, breathe in. Exhale, let it all go. Let's continue to move. Breathe in, reach the arms up and breathe out, forward and down. Half lift, inhale. Exhale, walk back, jump back into plank. Lower yourself down that chaturanga. Upward dog, inhale. And downward dog, exhale. Right leg lifts, inhale, exhale, step it through. Finish the exhale to rise for high lunge here. Arms up overhead for now. Keep them up overhead as we move into what's called rocket lunge. So I like this because you get out of your low back and you can really straighten out that left leg. So straighten out the left leg and as you do so, push your hips back and reach long through your body, your upper body. So you're kind of lingering about 45 degrees. Push a little extra love into that right heel. You can bring your arms back like you're flying, like a jet airplane kind of thing, or keep the arms up overhead, build some upper back and shoulder strength. Either way is a win. Okay. Hands to heart. Breath steady, committed. You stay here. As you exhale, don't force it quite yet. Exhale, rotate and twist to the right. Keep the left elbow hovering for a moment. Pull the low belly. This is kind of like your real natural mobility here. Sometimes it's nice. You stay here. Sometimes it's nice to go a little deeper. Left elbow crosses the right thigh. Get it there. Wedge it and press the palms together or a palm to fist. Whatever you're accustomed to. Draw those palms toward your chest. The neck is free to move. You're breathing and falling and, well, I'm falling. Right leg, probably feeling it right about now. Get long and stretch in that left side. Okay. Transition is kind of about the hips here. Okay. So come out. Ooh, straighten the right leg. Good job. That feels good. Left heel spins down. Now you're going to open your hips. It's a two part hip open. We were closed off before. That was triangle pose with the hips open. All right. Ground like mad into the feet. Especially the big toe on each side. Big toe mound. Hips open. Smile on your face. Reach long through the right arm. So it's through the fingertips, through the elbow, through the side body. When you find your length, bring the fingertips of the right hand toward the shin or the ankle or the floor. What's most available. And then the left arm can come high. And this one just tells if you can get it. Oh man. Look, everything's long, stretched and open. Smile. Half moon.

All right. So start to bring your left hand to your left hip. Look down at the mat, bend your right leg. I'm going to move back a little bit. Okay. Find your spot, your gazing spot on the floor for now and then lift that left foot up. Maybe keep the left toe down. Left big toe has some stability if your balance is really challenged. Lift, lift, lift. Fingertips to the floor, block, couch, whatever you've got available or hover and kick strong through that left heel. Keep gazing down. If you'd like to advance it a little bit, left arm rises high and your gaze to the side. You can also look up. I'm going to continue gazing to the side toward you. And also because when you look up, it's a little harder. Okay. Good work. Good work. Good work. Balancing is so tough. Sometimes be easy on yourself. Left hand to the left hip, bend the right leg and with control. Look at that. Smooth. I'm sure yours was just as smooth, peaceful, devotional, as I learned earlier, it could even be called emotional. Emotional warrior right now. Open up. Maybe even take your left hand to your chest for your heart beating near your heart. Right arm reaching up and you're open and exposed and stretched and on the exhale, windmill the arms toward the floor. Spin the left heel up. Runner's lunge. Open up into a twist to the right. Right arm reaches up and open. Good hand comes back down, step back into plank, pause and plank or stay on the knees. Okay. We're going to hold this position and tap our right knee to the right elbow or higher and left knee. We're doing 20 total. Two, two, three, three. You can bring it on the inside a little bit more. You can cross five, five, wide, six, six, seven, seven, inside eight, inside eight, nine, nine. That's 20, but we're doing 20 the long way. You're welcome. 12, 13, 13, 14. Good job. 14, 15. Don't give up on yourself. Don't walk away. 16, 16, 17, 17, 18, 18, 19, 19, 20, 20. Downward dog. Good job. Good. You can take a child's pose or stay in downward dog. We're going to be in one of those poses for about five breaths. There goes one. A little recovery time. The long exhalation is going to help to recover just in short. It's going to help you to recover and bring that state or sense of calm back.

One more clearing breath. Good. Left leg lifts. Breathe in nice and strong. Step it through as you breathe out. When you're ready, power down to rise up. You can root to rise, power to rise. You've always got to get those feet rooted down, powered down. Let that strength transition into your legs and then the legs that goes into the core and the rest of the trunk of the body. It's like this surge of strength and energy growing from the ground up through you. That's always through intentional pressing through the feet. Arms reach up if you haven't already. Keep the right leg straight or straighten it as you reach your body forward. This is definitely more core because you've got to use your core muscles in the central location of your body to hold your stuff 45 degrees. Then by reaching the arms out in front of you, alongside your ears, your shoulders start to bark at you. That's because you're working them. Tell them it's okay. It's going to be all right. Your left heel presses down. It's like a stake in the ground to get that left side working. You can bring your arms back. Another couple of breaths. Sometimes you've got to stew in it for a little bit. Get the juices flowing. Get the muscles activated. If you need to take a break, take a break, but we're going to go right into that twist. The purpose is to cook the left leg. I like that. They're not too well done. Palms to the chest. Rotate to the left. I love this side because I get to say hello again. You're hovering here and you're trusting that your mobility, your ability through core work and spinal mobility here is enough. You don't have to hook it, but if you'd like to, left elbow or right elbow crosses the left thigh. Pull that belly in a little bit. Hook it, wedge it, press the palms together. A lot going on here. So if you're struggling, man, struggle. Get through it, but breathe. Breathe. Twist. We've got triangle and half moon coming up. Yeah. All right. Come back out. Straighten out the left leg. Right heel comes down. You can even kind of like move around a little bit. Man, that left glute. Hopefully you're feeling it. Okay. Now put a little bend in the left leg so it's not locked out. Little tiny bend. Strong right leg. Again, rooting down, powering down to get all the strength up to the rest of the body and then lengthen up. Your feet and legs are important here. Left fingertips to your shin, ankle, floor, couch, whatever you've got here and that right arm rises up. There are way too many amazing things going on within your body and your experience and practice right now to be focusing on anything like negative. Unless it's a negative thing you're focusing on and you're like, you have a good attitude about it. You're doing the work. You're trusting the process. Otherwise focus on the fact that you can breathe. Bend the left leg a little bit. I'm going to slide back a little bit. AKA get a little rest in the left leg. Okay. Half moon. So I like to bring the left arm out. Right hand to the hip and you can stay here. It's kind of like a, I don't know, some kind of warrior two touche warrior two and I've got a sword here. You can stay there because that's cool. Or you can lift your right heel and come up onto your right toes. And that's cool spot for half moon or lift off, hover half moon. Boom. Find your way anywhere between here and where we entered. Good attitude. Good breath. Gaze down, gaze to the side or up right hand to the right hip. Bend the left leg with control and ease and smoothness warrior two. Breath out helps to clear new moment. Left arm reaching up for emotional warrior. Right hand to the heart. Why not? Just feel it for a moment. Feel it beating. Nothing but love coming from there for yourself and everyone and everything around you. Windmill the arms down. You got to work now. Okay. So step back into plank, but it's a forearm plank. When you walk your toes forward, you come into dolphin, bend your knees to make it a little more accommodating. Push the chest back. Open up the shoulders. Good job. Dolphin. Send those hips up nice and high. You can keep your heels high or push them toward the floor. But now you're going to slide your feet back and come into forearm plank. You need to stay here or we're going to work our shoulders and triceps and core quite a bit. So we're going to do five up and downs on each side. So that means left hand comes underneath. Basically your left hand goes to where your left elbow is and then you push up. Boom. Now left arm down, right arm down. Now it's right hand to where the right elbow is. Push up. Boom. Okay. Right forearm, left forearm, left hand. Bring your knees down if this makes it better. Okay. Right forearm, left forearm, right hand, left hand. That's two. Left, right, left, right.

Right, left, right, left. That's three. Two more on each side. Left, right, left, right. Right, left, right, left. Plank, forearm plank. You're still in it. You're walking your toes forward. Now you get a little break. Push the ground away so your head moves away from the ground. Soft knees, seat high, healthy spine. Walk back into forearm plank. Set your knees down and push back into puppy pose. So hips stay up over the knees. I like the palms together. Elbows walk forward. The palms rest behind your neck or your back. Breathing. So with the elbows down like this, it helps to continue to open up the chest and shoulders as well as your upper spine. Upper meaning thoracic, so mid to upper. Now bring your palms down in front of you. Throw your hips forward and down into sphinx pose. So a little low back extension, gentle back bend. Good. Slide it all the way down. Slide the hands where they would be in cobra. Now on your inhale, lift your chest, lift your hands and pull your elbows back towards your heels. You feel your upper back start to activate. Stay lifted. Bring your palms, turn your hands out to the sides, palms to the floor. You can take it really wide or a little more narrow and then look to straighten out the arms. So it's like a little upward dog, but this is super tricky, right? Because we're all different in our little back. So I'm up here. I feel pretty good, but down here might feel like the spot for you or all the way down. Okay. Wherever you were or are, let's come down. Reach back, palms facing down, thumbs out. Now same thing, but with those straight long arms. Lift up. You can lift your legs a little bit. Make sure your pelvis is positioned properly for you. This will affect your low back quite a bit in a positive way if you adjust the pelvis. Lift up, fly high, interlace. Why don't we interlace? See what that feels like. Open up those shoulders, breathe, and lower down. Come back through cobra on the breath in, little upward dog, and all the way back to a child's pose with your knees pretty close together. All right. This will, as you're doing it, if you're not familiar with this, you just were in some good back bend, low back stuff, right? With your knees together, toes untucked, if you can, you push back and you can start to feel the immediate counter pose in the low back by staying rounded, tighten the pose. Not like it was in the beginning of the class with the knees out wide. Forehead towards your knees or to the floor. You might have to do a clearing breath to get there. Reach back, take hold of your heels. There's a pose name called rabbit pose, and all it does is sort of take this position and to a more flexed spine position. So if you're good here, stay here, or drop the top of your head down to the mat, lift your seat up, keep holding onto the heels. Hold the heels, lift your seat, head is safe, neck is safe. This is really more geared for the spine, that full tight cat pose, right? Rounded and flexed. Good, come back out. Wide need, child's pose.

Notice the difference. We can pause here for a few breaths. Hands forward or hands back again by your feet, and you can dump the shoulders forward and let them rest on your legs or the floor. Okay, come on back up. Now let's spin around onto our seat. You're doing amazing, by the way. Whether it's live or recorded down the road 10 years from now, I'm so grateful that you're here. All right. So we still have some time though. Okay, so one of my favorite moves here, as we've just kind of gone from there to here, are these rotational movements. So your feet are either down and grounded like mine, or you're just up on the heels. Either way is perfect. Arms out in front of you, reach your left arm back, keep reaching the right arm out in front of you and kind of manipulate it a bit by rotate. Oh, burp, sorry. Rotate to the right. Exhale, rotate to the left. This is really nice, kind of very accessible and safe core work and spinal mobility work. Prepping, which takes a little bit of balance and a little bit of strength in the core, so you don't feel it in your back so much, is boat. All right. So you're going to come back after this right side, come back to center and remember in boat, you don't want to end the, like, endeavoring to go deep and straighten your legs. You don't want your back to look like this. All right. So let's start first with getting the spine position correct. So that's chest up, shoulders back, spine neutral, coring. You can hold onto your hamstrings back to your legs for a little assist to lift the legs up. And here you can really still work with chest up, spine long. Okay. You can stay here. You can keep the legs bent and reach the arms forward. Keep your feet active, right? That helps to engage the rest of the muscles in the legs.

You can straighten your legs up. That's an option. Keep the feet active. Stay determined. Legs quivering a little bit. That's a reminder that we're doing something. Good job. Feet back down. Now I want to show you the transition. Okay. Now, as we transition forward, you may stay with these rotations, right? But I want to just invite in boat or let's even see what it feels like to hold here as you straighten your legs out, lower down onto your low back into canoe. Boom. Hold nice and tidied up in the core. Now see if you can come back up into a bent knee boat. That's the excellent 10 times. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. You can rock it a little bit if you need to. You can stand your legs up a little bit higher and rock for momentum. There's four or straight out, discipline, chest up, shoulders up. Boom. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Hold boat, rotations or canoe for five, four, three. Keep lifting, lifting, lifting two. Nice. Good job. Feels good. Just to work on that area of your body, man, it's that central location of health and wellness for your physical body. Bring the hands underneath your seat. Mine will be a little abbreviated on the left side because the mic pack there. That's no mystery. I can talk about it. It's right there. You see it. Now leg lifts. Leg lifts with your head, shoulders down or lifted 10 times. You can also do, if you want less weight, one leg at a time. Okay. So the scissors. So we're on to exhale three. Exhale four. Keep lifting the shoulders up a little bit higher, head up a little bit higher. Just helps to engage the core that much more. Six, seven. You want a harder option.

Harder is not always better. Eight, seven, eight. Exhale nine. Exhale ten. Always watch your low back there. Good job. Press up into bridge with your feet right below your knees. Try not to let your knees open up out wide. Keep the knees right above the ankles. And then from here, you don't even have to interlace. What I would suggest is palms up. As you're lifting your hips, lift the shoulders and shoulder blades up and try to walk the shoulder blades closer and closer and closer to one another. And that's enough, man. Look at that. Big spacious front body stretch. And here you can breathe. Open up the abdominals a bit. Of course you can clasp. And of course you can kind of fiddle around with another pose that gives you this sensation if you'd like. But we're going to stay as a team here. All right. For another five breaths. Press through those heels. Press through the big toe mound. Open the hips. Hips meaning those hip flexors right around where your belt line or waist line is. Although yoga pants, they come up to your low ribs. So I don't know how to cue that. Right across your hips. All right. Let's lower down. Before you lower down, just slap your butt on the ground. Undo the shoulder blades. Start to connect to the middle of your back. Lift your heels and then tuck your belly in and roll down. So you feel like you actually are mindfully, not necessarily carefully, but like mindfully and thoughtfully lowering down for your spine. Good job. Okay. Take your left ankle. Cross your right thigh. Right below your knee. Stay here for a moment and kind of windshield wiper from side to side.

Take your left hand on your left inner thigh. Push it open and away from you. So recline pigeon pose. This could be done several different ways. We'll see if we can offer up a few options. Lift the right foot up, keeping the left foot pretty active to protect your left knee. It's a perfect example. Try not to talk too much. I'm sorry. By pushing up through that left foot and pushing through the big toe mound primarily, that's the example of pushing into the floor to gain that strength and power up through the leg. So by pushing through the big toe mound on the left foot, I'm activating muscles, ligaments, tendons to protect the left knee. Okay. Hope you got that. Grab hold of the right shin or the right hamstring just to give yourself a little more strength to pull the legs safely towards you for what might be a very effective stretch through the left buttocks, outer hip, rear end, glute. You say potato, I say potano. Whatever you call it, it's right there. Right there to be experienced. You can also stay here or extend that right leg out. Keep the left leg in that same shape, but now you can kind of hold the left hand on the left knee and the right hand on the right foot and you can pull it in like you're in pigeon pose, right? Pigeon pose facing the ground. Good job. Keep the shape of this figure four, slide the hips over to the left and take a spinal twist over to the right. Reach the left arm out. You can put a half, kind of half field goal post in that left arm or you can stretch it all the way out. This is usually that nice pose toward the end that gives you a little relief from the low back. I like to pulse in and out of these poses. So when you breathe in, you move away from the depth or intensity of the stretch. When you breathe out, you go toward the tension. Okay. Come back out. Find the center of the mat, find the center of your back, the health of your spine. Okay. Undo. Shake the legs out a little bit. I don't know why, it just feels good. I take the right ankle over the left thigh. I don't think I've forgotten anything up to this point. Say here for a moment, rock across left and right, right hand on that right inner thigh, activate the right foot to protect the knee. If you're relatively new to this stuff, it seems like an overload, but after a while, these things become automatic and it becomes a lot less heady and a lot more body, a lot more sensations, less thought and frustration. Okay. Right hand underneath the right calf toward the left hamstring or left shin. Left hand wraps around. You find your spot. Doesn't matter where. Just so you can get a little leverage to pull in to deepen the stretch. Stay here or wander toward the one, the other sort of last option. Well, there are several options from here, but they require some adventurous circus bendy stuff. Okay. Now you're in pigeon.

Left hand on the outer edge of the right foot, right hand on that knee area. Safely pulling that leg with an angle on the shin. Then you move it around so you don't want to get stuck anywhere. Good. And then back into the figure four, shift your hips over to the right a bit and a little spinal twist. Left hand on the right thigh, right arm reaches out. Okay. Right arm reaches out, bent or straight up to you. You can take both legs over to the side. You can do the typical single leg over. I find this to be a nice transition. Make sure your shoulder blades are spread out and nothing's too bound up in the upper back. Ultimately, what we're doing with this practice, it's kind of like creating space, mental space, getting rid of baggage, whether it's old stories or emotional stuff, space in the muscles, the joints, energetic space. This way you feel kind of nice and light. Let's exit out. Use your core to exit out. Kind of feel light afterward because you feel like you just kind of let some stuff go. And it doesn't need to have language around it. But happy baby, one of the more final poses here. I like to bring the hands to either the knees, up toward the shins or the outer edges of your feet. Okay. Those options are designed and given so that you can keep your back flat. Or at least just not like a turtle. You want to be comfortable and access some hip stretching. You've earned it. You can straighten and bend a couple of times to the right and through the left. Starting to set yourself up for you can exit out of there and when she'll wipe your legs from side to side, set yourself up for a little relaxation. All right. We have about three minutes, three and a half minutes to go together. So let's take the opportunity here. Even if it's the middle of the day or the beginning of your day, when she'll wipe her from side to side and then begin the relaxation by drawing the bottoms of your feet toward one another. So you have the supine bada konasana. I think that's the only time I use Sanskrit as a whole class and tend to not. I don't know why. Feet together, hips open, arms relaxing, palms facing up. Actually before we do that, take the hands behind the head, grab ahold of the skull in the back of the neck and lengthen. Maybe pull the head back. And then keep the chin toward the chest and neck so that your neck and the back gets long. Take a deep breath with me here and then exhale everything out. Perfect. Eyes relaxed and closed. If you'd rather be seated, you know, I have no idea where you are in your home or it's just more appealing to be in another position, by all means. You can straighten your legs if you'd like. And here's where you just let it go. Let your body kind of melt, loosen, feel heavy, soft and relaxed around your eyes, your jaw. It feels right for you. Place both sides of both hands up on your chest near your heart or your left hand on your heart, right hand on your belly, your heart beating, your pulse, blood pumping through your body, your life.

You can stay here for as long as you'd like. I'm going to begin to talk us out of it. Take the arms up overhead. Roll onto your right side. Push on up. Good. Sit up nice and tall. So thankful that you joined me, whether it was live or recorded, whatever it is, I feel you with me and I thank you, thank you, thank you. But more than anything, thank yourself for showing up for yourself, especially during these times. Namaste.