Pyramid

Welcome back. Thank you Winifred and Julie and Matt for still being here. We're going to explore Parshvottanasana, which most people know as Pyramid Pose. And I'll just continue to say this, there are as many ways to do Pyramid Pose as there are people doing Pyramid Pose. And what I'm hoping that with the help of these three lovely yogis is that you can see the sum of the variety that we get just depending on how we came out of the womb. Okay, so my friends what we'll do is we'll start in Tadasana. So find the stance of Tadasana that works for you. Generally, and actually let's try this together, generally feed about hip distance apart. Try this big deliberate inhale and exhale everything. Generally starting Tadasana with your feet about hip distance feels more grounding, more stable. Okay, so if that's what you're needing more of in your daily life, more stability, more sense of support, more sense of grounded, then you practice Tadasana with the feet apart. Now let's try this my friends, draw your feet together. So maybe balls of the big toes towards each other, you know spreading your feet wide. Big deliberate inhale, exhale everything. Okay, so generally Tadasana with the feet together is less stable. Can you feel that? It's a little less stable, therefore it's toning your balance and your accuracy more. So if what you're needing in your life is more sense of accuracy, balance, then you practice Tadasana with the feet together. Okay, we'll keep the feet together because Parsvottanasana is a bit of a balance posture. So together inhale and exhale everything and just press into the feet enough to again remind your heart of her natural generosity. And as your heart finds her natural generosity, if she overdoes it, which she so often does, then you let a little happen in the sit bones. Okay, shoulders are soft and then let your head, beautiful mat, you allow your skull okay to find the proper alignment to the body and when the skull finds the proper alignment to the body then the neck tension is no longer necessary. And you'll get this wonderful expansive feeling in the mind, soft lips, kind eyes. Okay, so you let the Tadasana pose, the mountain pose, cue the alignment that you're going to be tuning when you find yourself in the posture. Alright, so my friends, please bring your hands on your waist, let your left foot stay forward and step your right foot back. Now, as you're establishing your stance, similar to when we explored warrior one, the longer you make your stance, like the further your feet are long ways from each other, okay, the more difficult, the more you'll be working your balance, the wider your feet are, the shorter your stance, okay, the more stable it will be, just like in the Tadasana. So, if balance is difficult, choose a shorter, wider stance, okay, if balance is something that's useful to challenge, then take a longer, narrower stance. Okay, now big deliberate inhale, exhale, let it happen, feel your legs, like feel your feet, beautiful, now press into your feet just enough so you feel, remind yourself of that natural generosity, yeah. Okay, now as we find the arms, I'm going to turn around so that you can see, that you might be able to see a little bit better what my friends are doing behind them, okay, you're going to let your arms come out to the sides, you're going to rotate your shoulders forward, you're going to bring your hands behind you and in this case, just put your right palm in your, the right back of the hand in the left palm and pause. Now depress your shoulders a little bit and send the elbows forward, okay, now for some of you this is perfect, this is the perfect place for how your shoulders work, okay, for some of you of the Spaghetti Club, for some of you are members of the Spaghetti Club and perhaps maybe even were cheerleaders in Dallas, Texas in high school, you might bring your fingertips to touch and then you might wiggle your hands at the back of your body, okay, into what we usually call reverse prayer or reverse namaste, now if you did that and you wish you hadn't, then you come back out, put your hands back like so, okay, ground, blossom, from here now we're gonna fold forward, so you root a little bit through that front foot and you really root through that back foot, you inhale, you let your heart bloom and as you exhale, you'll begin to fold forward and pause for a moment and remember the generosity of heart and remember the ease and the base of the neck and right about here some of you, as Matt is so wonderfully showing, might already be making the intelligent decision to bend the front knee, what some of you are gonna do is keep that leg straight as you continue your journey, the play however is to be attentive to how it actually feels in the back of that front leg, how it actually feels behind you, okay, now I'm gonna ask my three yogi friends to stay where they are and then please invite you to notice, to notice how Winifred's parshvottanasana looks, Winifred again remember, Dallas cheerleader, full-time yoga teacher, to remember how our beautiful friend Julie looks, more of an artist, okay, and our friend Matt looks, okay, so just knowing, knowing that how yours looks is also perfect, okay, last few moments just observe our friends or observe yourself, find out how your shape feels for you, you guys are awesome and then I'll ask all of you to do is simply release your hands down to that front foot, come into the shape of the lunge, so you're gonna come up onto the back right foot, we go back and then find yourself back into child's pose, drop your knees down and rest and maybe your hands are out in front of you or maybe they're down along your sides, okay, and so you can see sometimes we make the mistake that we're supposed to be a certain way and of course this comes from this deep desire we all have to be loved, you know, it's so easy to think that there's a way to be that will guarantee love and one of the things that we're trying to touch in these yoga practices, one of the main purposes of these yoga practices is to help us know that we are already loved, okay, that we're already wanted, that we already belong, they even have a word for it in the Upanishads Priya, that just by the nature of being born you are lovable, so thank you my dear yogi friends, my dear Julie and Matt and thank you let us know what you find out, namaste.