Content and Container

Welcome, great to be here with you as we take another journey into the principles of alignment. I'm really excited to share this particular principle because it takes us, you could say, from the periphery of our body deep, deep, deep inside to feel so many different things happening in our poses. Often when we're doing yoga poses we might think, I'll just take this shape, I'll take that shape and this is great and we get many benefits from it. But as we start to apply the alignment principles, especially this one here where we're working with the contents of our body surrounded by the container of our body, the outer shell and the inner shell, shall we say, we can really begin to feel some deep and amazing things. So I ask for your patience as we go through the first part of this routine and we build awareness of the inner body that we'll be working with today. I have a blanket with me and a yoga block that we'll be using later in the routine that I'd love for you to have as well as a just-in case. To start out we're going to lie down on the back and I'm going to choose to keep my blanket for a little head prop. Please join me. We'll start with knees bent and we're going to bring the awareness to the spine. In this pose, we'll start by doing a few easy pelvic tilts. That means I'm going to rock my pelvis towards my face and rock my pelvis towards my toes, curling towards the head side and rolling towards the foot side, back and forth. And what I'm hoping to draw your attention to is the sensation of your spine moving in a wave-like fashion as we do these pelvic tilts. And then I'm going to ask you, where do you feel the spine the most clearly? What's most prominent in your awareness as you keep doing your pelvic tilts? What stands out? Is it your lower back? Is it your middle back? Is it your cervical, your neck spine? For me, I feel about right at the base of my ribs down to my lowest spine right there because the motion is primarily there. I do feel my mid-back a little bit because it's contacting the floor but it's that lower spine that I really feel most prominently. And there's no right or wrong answers here, just drawing your attention to what you feel. And hopefully you also feel that the spine is pretty much right in the middle from the left and right sides.

Okay, let's change it up a little bit. Arms relaxed out to the sides, drop both of your knees to the left and see if you can keep an eye on your low spine and notice it's being pulled or dragged off to the left. Come back to center, two knees to the right and feel how your lower spine is being dragged over to the right. And this is supposed to happen totally normal. We're just paying attention to it occurring. Legs left, coming back over, legs right, watch that lower back. Take a little journey over to the right side, following the legs and left side, following the legs. One more time with mind on the lower back, feel it follow the legs, come back to middle. Keeping your attention on the spine, the midline of the body, we're going to raise and lower the knees and feet off the mat about six inches. Keep going, lifting and lowering, feet and knees about six inches. We get a little warm up with this but we also get an awareness of the spine. This time the spine isn't moving, you'll feel it staying nice and stable as the legs go up and down. A new awareness of our friend, the spine. Keep it going, a little warm up for the core, warm up for the hips and warm up for the spine. A couple more times.

And again feeling, probably now you'll feel mostly your mid to lower back as our primary source of contact to the spine. Then let the feet down. Now pull both knees into the chest and hug the knees with your arms. Here we have a symmetrical pose. Let's change it up where we hold both hands around the left shin, right leg straight up. Attention and awareness down into your mid and lower back as you lower the right leg down to your yoga mat about six inches from the floor. Feel the two sides of your spine. Notice the right side has a little bit more space, left side feels a little bit more compacted. Come back up with that leg, let's do the same thing again. Left knee held in, right leg lengthening. One more time. Left knee held in, right leg lengthening and we're feeling, yeah there just seems to be more space on the right side of my lower back, left side of my lower back feels more compressed. Makes total sense for where the knees and legs are for this pose. Second side, holding the right knee, left leg up. Awareness on your spine. When a call that's the spine that we're following, the content in the body, the bones, the muscle, come back up, lower the leg again, hold it six inches off the ground. And we feel the left side of the spine, that is more open, right side is a little bit more compressed, less space there. Come back up, do one more time, lower the left leg about six inches off the ground, feel the two sides of the spine. Bring the leg in, let that go, relax your arms, wobble your legs left and right and this is just a refresh movement, that's all it is. We felt the spine now in a number of different positions and we felt what we're going to call the content of our torso, that spine, we felt it in a number of different actions, positions and so on. Let's try a new one, hands down alongside your hips, press your feet and gently and easily roll your back up off the mat and then lower back down. Let's do it again, roll your back up, easy bridge, no force and back down. Now can you bring your awareness and feel again, like a wave, how the spine gets pulled up and spine goes back down. New awareness coming, ready? Hips come up, we're in an easy, easy bridge, nothing forced. Now observe your spine with your awareness, feel your lower back compared to the middle back that's touching the floor and you may feel that the lower back feels more drawn in thanks to the muscle activity around your lower back. Whereas the mid-back you feel it compressed near the skin, near the container of our body, the skin and pressed into your yoga mat, come back down. Let's try that one more time, lift up, hips come off the ground, close your eyes on this one and feel, feel the bones of your lower back compared to how you feel the bones of your mid-back, come back down. Let's take the blanket away as we're going into a little bit deeper back bend, we want the neck to be nice and free. Holding the sides of the mat, lift your hips off the ground, we'll go through the same question, same experience, lower back feels a little bit more drawn into the torso compared to the mid-back which is pressing back into the yoga mat.

All right, let's take the shoulders now underneath by rolling the shoulder bones a little closer together behind your back. Press the shoulder bones into the floor and you start to find that the muscles between the shoulder blades pull the mid-back a little deeper in as well. Hold that feeling and then release the shoulders, come back down. One more time like that, ready up, notice the lower back before you adjust the shoulders compared to the mid-back. Now roll the shoulders under, press the shoulder bones into your yoga mat and use the muscles between the shoulder blades to lift the spine deeper in the body. So now when you hear a request for that action in a yoga class you start to understand, oh I get it, what we're doing is balancing the content, the spine in this particular case, with the container, the outside periphery of the body. And we try to create the most balance that we can and then release the shoulders and rest. We're going to add a little challenge to this, coming up into the bridge, tuck the shoulders, create a balanced feel of the spine being drawn deeper in to the container of the body. Walk the feet a tiny bit closer together, roll your left heel, just the heel, up off the floor. And we're going to try to keep the spine equally placed inside the container. Left heel down, right heel rolling up off the mat, just the heel, as we hold steady with the spine in the body. Release, let the shoulders go, come down, wobble the legs a little left and right. We've got one more to do here, definitely feeling the heat coming into the body. All right, coming to center, last one, hold the sides of your mat again, same beginning, raise the hips, tuck the shoulders. Tuck the shoulders. All right, we've got the lower back drawing in, press the shoulder bones to help the mid back draw deeper into the container of the body. Walk the feet a little closer together, big challenge now, roll the left heel up, can you keep the spine steadily in its place as you bring left leg to tabletop.

Left leg down, right leg up. Holding, doing the best you can, you can feel the challenge to placement of the spine with this for sure. And then come down, release, relax, let it go for a little bit. Wobble the legs a little left and right. And right knee to chest, left knee to chest. This is just as a relieving counter pose for the backbends. Walk your low back out longer and longer, gentle tuck, easy breath in and out through the nose as you lift your head into your knees. Head back down, feet back down, rest with the palms on the ground, take a few easy recovery breaths. And let's continue then with our counter posing by taking the left ankle over the right knee and a figure four stretch. Draw the right knee closer to the chest and capture that thigh with your hands. Let's make this gentle, easy. We're not thinking about any alignment principles right now, it's just to let go and relax, opening up the hips. Soft easy breaths through the nose and then feet down, right ankle on left knee, bring it in. Gentle hip stretch. I love this stretch. It's a little refresher after I've been sitting or working at a computer for a long time. Just love it. And then let it go. Please turn to your side and come up to sitting and then on to hands and knees. We're going to take cat and cow for just a moment and see what we feel with the spine again. We're back into the alignment principle with a good old-fashioned cat and cow. You could close your eyes as you do this. How do you feel your spine? What do you notice? Where does bending happen easily? Where does there feel like there's less motion? Couple more. And once again, let's go into a cow pose and pause and feel here. Where do you sense that the spine is drawing deeper into the container of the body? And again, that's just the periphery, the skin of the torso. We're calling that the container.

The content being the spine. For me, I feel the low back curve feels a little deeper into the body as compared to, say, up top by the shoulders. This is just a noticing. That's all it is. And then the other direction, cat pose, rounding shape. And then releasing. Coming to sitting, I'll recommend you grab your blanket again. I just love that as a little lift. Helps me get up out of the hips a little bit to get a better twist. We're in simple cross legs. And if you find your knees up here, they don't want to go flatter to the ground. Another blanket would do great to help with that and give you more freedom of motion.

Starting here, we're in the alignment principle, feeling the content and the container. And our focus, the content, is the spine. Feeling the verticality of the spine. Feeling the verticality of the spine and it being the midline of the body. We're going to turn to the left side first. Right hand just on the inside of the right knee. Left hand on the floor or blanket behind you. And slowly turn without distorting the content off its midline. Easy turn. No force. Now, while you're in this twist, can you soften your diaphragm muscle right here at the lower ribs? Let it widen and broaden and relax. Come to center. Same thing. First, feel the midline spine and left hand to the inside of the knee. Right hand just behind you on the floor. Sensing that midline, we're going to rotate right around. Soften your diaphragm from left to right, right to left. And then come to center. Crisscross, applesauce, other way. All right. Turning to the left side again with one new awareness. We've got the midline of the spine. Right hand on the knee, left hand behind. Now, as you turn around, find your limit and start to sense this side of the body, right side, compared to the left side of the body. Is there equal amount of body on the right as compared to the left in your twist? Or do you feel compressed into your spine on the right side and sort of bulged away from your spine on the left? If you do, search for more balance with the content and the container. Come to center. Last twist off to the right. Same thing. Starting from midline, we've got this hand on the inside of the thigh here, inside of the knee, and then rotating.

Super common to feel the left side is compressed in against the midline of the spine. And this side is all out away from the spine. So we'll collect that and then make a good clean twist. And then release. Marichyasana, another twist where we can play with this concept of content and container. I'm going to stay up on the blanket, right leg out straight, left leg bent. Start facing right down the middle of the legs. And you know where we're going here. We're feeling the spine, right and left side. Hook your right arm around the left knee, left hand behind on the floor. And now we're taking an easy twist. Again, watch here. The tendency is to poof, bulge out to the left. And you can feel how that distorts the content and its container, the spine and the torso. Come back to the middle and let's try here to make a balanced turn around the spine where the content is evenly placed from the very lowest spine to the top of the shoulders. Take a look over your left shoulder as you hold your pose. Working like this helps us protect all those joints, muscles and so on that might get really pulled if we push or distort the content and the container. Bringing back the right leg, start by facing right down the middle. And then we're turning to the right side. We hook the left arm around the right knee. And then with awareness, we're going to turn, turn, turn and hold. Easy soft breaths through the nose. And the beauty of the alignment principles is you now have a framework or a reflection from the inside of the body straight to your awareness that lets you know, aha, relative to a balance, a structure that's known, I feel my body has gone off here. I wonder if that's what's bothering my back or hurting my knees or my shoulder. Now I have a reference point. And then release. Cross the legs. Take an easy stretch forward and let the head go. This is just a relief pose. Soft neck. Take a few easy breaths. And then walk back up. I'm going to bring a little bit more action into our pose. Now come down off of the blanket and put the blanket out of your way to the side.

All right. We are going to bend the right knee and send the left leg down straight. We're going to charge up the spine a little bit with muscle energy. Again, right leg bent, left leg straight, left arm on the floor, right arm to the sky. Big lift here. Press both the foot and left leg into the floor. Come up and lift your spine into the body. Come back down. Let's stay with his side for two more times. Again, we want a little space about mat width between the feet there. Push down on foot and on the outside of your left leg there, come up. Content and container. Press lower back a little deeper in. But the more challenging part, your mid back. Pushing your left arm, take the mid back in and now reach over the top of your head. Use the reach of your arm to take the mid back deeper in, deeper in. And then rest. One more time. Ready? Foot and outer left foot up. Lumbar spine goes in readily and automatically. Take the arm up and over your head to bring your mid back a little deeper in even with the lower back. And then release. Okay, so you can see me from the other way. I'll just switch legs. Right leg bent. Excuse me. Left leg bent. Right leg out straight. Right hand on the floor. Push left foot, outer right foot. You come up. Drive the floor to help bring the lower back deeper in the body. Arm up, left arm up to take the mid back deeper in and then stretching overhead. So each movement in our asana delivers a new gift and then come back down. All of the positions, motions and actions, they help the pose blossom into an incredible feeling. Let's do it again. Left foot, outer right foot. Lift up. Overhead with the left arm so that we can bring the content, the spine, deeper in. But even with the lower back, come back down. One more. Last one. Ready? Up we go. You know what to do now. You get to feel. Go ahead. Come down and take a rest. Let's sweep the feet back and take another look at a back bend. I'm going to bring the blanket in just for my comfort here on the knees. Please use yours if you'd like to. And right foot forward into a kneeling lunge. You know, I love these kneeling lunges. They just help so much in a much more stable position to feel things. We are going to interlace the fingers behind the back. Clasp the hands. If you can't do that easily or if your arms just feel bound up, you'll need a strap and hold just outside your hips. Okay. Otherwise it will prevent the feeling that we're after here. Lean a little bit forward. And one of our other alignment principles is creating support by pressing down the back of the right heel. That gives us some good stability. Now roll the shoulders back. Take the hands away from your hips and allow that back bend to happen here. Lower back tends to easily bow in. It's the upper back that doesn't do so much. So we have to teach it to move a little deeper into the container. Ease off. We'll do one more time. Kneeling a little deeper. I create my right leg support with the hamstring. Roll the shoulders back. And as you're rolling, you can see the chest. My chest starts to open and my mid-back coming a little deeper in. And then rest. If you think of a slinky, remember those? The spring toy. And you took the two ends of the spring and you pushed it, it would create a perfect arc around. That's what we're looking for in terms of the spine. In terms of the rhythm of the spine and the content and container. Interlace the fingers.

And if you can remember which way you always interlock them, interlock them the other way where the other hand owns the lower pinky. All right. Coming in, support from the left leg. Roll back the shoulders. Dive a little deeper in with the focus on the spine, not the hip flex, not the hip stretch, I mean to say. Low back is deeper in. How about the mid-back? And then release, coming out of the pose one more time. Into the kneeling lunge. Low back, feeling the arch. Now can you make that perfect slinky arch with your mid-back as well? And then coming out. Bring the leg back, take the blanket off to the side. Now one of my favorite poses with the spine for content and container is downward dog. Place the hands, tuck your toes, lift the knees but only bent knee pose, bent knee dog pose. Pressing your hands into the mat, creating a nice stable line of energy in both arms. Begin to press your low abdomen in, towards the tops of the legs. I want to say that again. Press your lower abdomen deeper against the tops of your legs. And from the power of your arms and the energy lines of your arms, you can start to bring your mid-back a little deeper in.

Allow the head to hang. And then come down. One of the gifts of developing the art of content and container, when you balance the content, in this case we said the spine and the torso being the container, the mind drops into the most beautiful meditative quietness. It just stays right with that part that you're working with, into quietness. You don't have to sort of cajole the mind to stop thinking. It just goes, yeah, I love the way this feels. Second time, knees up, go slow. First thing, can you move your lower abdomen closer into the tops of your thighs? Knees are well bent, lower abdomen a little deeper. Now with the power and straightness of your arm lines, use the shoulder blades to take your mid-back deeper in, deeper in from the container, the skin, the outer periphery of the body. Let your head hang.

And then knees down, easy child's pose. A couple recovery breaths. And lifting up out of child's pose. Let's take that dog pose one more time as we transition now into some standing poses. Knees are well bent, heels very high. This gives us the opportunity to fold at the hips. Low abdomen, close to the legs. Power of the lines of the arms, the parallel lines of the arms, helps to move that upper back deeper in. Then come forward over the hands as you step your right leg through to a lunge. Lift up off the hands. We're aiming at a crescent warrior here. This is a moment where you might need to grab your strap again if you grabbed it before to take the hands behind the back.

If you can clasp easily and roll your shoulders back, that's the important criteria that you can get your shoulders to go back, then you're good with a hand clasp. First thing, we power up the lines of the legs. Steady balanced lift of the front of the back leg. And then allowing the spine to open, meaning lumbar goes a little deeper into the torso, creating that slinky curve of the spine. No one part, bending more than another. And then ease out of your pose. Hands down, step back. Let's just transition right to the other side. Tuck your toes, back leg lifting, setting up for your crescent warrior again. If you remember how to do the hands the other way, go for it. If not, no big deal. Clasping the hands. Power up the front of your right leg as we now aim for that curve of the spine. Lumbar a little deeper into the torso, deeper into the container. By drawing the arms back, we're allowing the mid spine to start to find its depth in the container, but it's evenness. Perfectly balanced. Low, mid, and upper back. Same depth in the spine, in the body. And then ease out, release. Come down. Easy vinyasa. Bend the elbows, chest to the floor. Soft, gentle baby cobra lift. Toes pointed back. Chest comes down. Chest comes down. To a brief downward dog.

And then walking forward to come up to standing. And we'll take now dancer's pose. Natarajasana, working with all the same concepts. If you'd start with your right foot on the floor and the left toes balanced on the floor there. Bring the left leg up and capture with your left hand. If you can capture with both hands, please do. If not, the single hand capture is fine. Start by pushing your left foot into your left hand. And you can feel that this begins to create the arch of the spine. I'm going to clasp with both hands here. It's just like our warrior pose, crescent warrior we just did. And then as you push more and more with the foot away from your back, the spine is asked to bend with us accordingly. Low back easily goes in, so you have to be cautious not to overdo there, but bring the middle back in. And then tilting just a little bit forward as far as you feel safe and confident to go, but holding the evenness in the spine through your travel. And come out slow and easy. Release the foot. Shake out your right leg. Let's do the other side. Balancing on the left leg. Toes of the right foot on the floor just to create a sense of balance. Bring up the right foot. Hold with the right hand. If you can do both, go for it. All right. Pushing the right foot into your hands begins the movement of the spine deeper in. Allow the shoulders to be drawn back. Think of that slinky curve. As you come a little deeper into the pose, press the foot strongly into your hand. Create your balance. And then slowly tilting any amount forward. How's that mid spine doing? Is it working the same way? Content and container as the lower.

And then come down and shake out the legs. Shake out the body. We're going to turn towards the long edge of the mat. Feet about hip width, maybe a little wider. This is my solar plexus right in the middle and right over the top of the middle of the pelvis. I'm going to take a side bend to the right with this being the center of action. Side bend. And the idea is even though we've got an asymmetrical pose, I want my spine to be same distance from this side as it is from this side. Side. Come back up. Side bending left. From the solar plexus, I keep roughly over the top there. Okay, and again equal distance from this side to the spine, spine to this side. And coming back up. One more time. Side of the spine. And side of the spine.

Good. And coming up. Take a little balance pose, tadasana. Find the midline from the insides of the ankles to the top of the head. See if you can trace all the way from feet to head and sense your balance. Let's take one quick journey into a new content and container that is the thigh. The container and the bone and muscle inside. Bring your left leg up toward your chest and hold either at the back of the leg or the shin. You can feel the more you bring the left leg up, the content all pushes into the front of the leg. So we have to draw that leg back, back. Balance the content in the container and hold. Release. Second side. Drawing up the right leg. Hold behind the knee joint or in front, whatever works for you. And as you bring that knee up, the right knee, can you keep the content balanced within the container of the left leg? Equally touching all sides of the leg. And then release. Let it go. We'll turn towards the short end of your mat. Let's get some movement in. Let go of the alignment principles for a minute as you raise the arms, create some space, bend the knees, take the hands down, plank pose, and we'll slowly head to the floor. Point the toes. Easy Cobra, easy, easy. Curl the toes, hands and knees. And we'll come up into a kneeling pose for camel pose. We've been working towards this all throughout our practice. Take the hands to the upper part of your buttocks and roll the elbows back. We'll start with that lower back awareness. All I have to do is tip the back a little bit, tip the shoulders a little bit backward, and there goes that lower back right in a little bit deeper. Keeping the shoulders back, I draw the elbows also backward to help get that feeling of the mid-back. And then release, come to neutral. We'll call that a first try at this. If that felt like your edge and you want to stay there, please do. If you'd like to take the hands all the way to the feet, to the ankles, you can join me on this one, taking the full pose. We'll start with the hands on the hips, lifting the chest, shoulders going back a little. We create that movement of the spine we've been working with all session long. Going further and further, but not collapsing towards the heels, arching in that slinky arch we've been talking about. Connect to the heels and really drawing that mid-back in. You've got to take that mid-back in so the lower back actually has some freedom. So we're not just compressing all the vertebrae of the lumbar spine, deeper and deeper. And then come up, hands and knees, and just some easy motion of the spine.

A lot of backbends today, so we want to take care to ease out of the pose. Spine moving in all directions, ups now, down, side to side. Good, good, good. And then come to sitting and we'll take the legs out wide to the side. Here we're doing one motion for the spine outside of backbending, like the standing pose, side bending. We'll start by just dropping the spine off to the left side, but think lower abdomen closer to the top of the thigh. Then bend your right knee a little bit so that your right buttock can come up higher. What does that do? It helps us balance the spine, right side and left. The lowest abdomen a little closer to your left thigh, and this is as far as we'll go, holding here. The content and container principle is keeping the spine equidistant from the two sides of the torso. Good. And then coming up, trying the other side now. We'll lean a little to the right, elbow on the inside of the leg. Bend your left knee just a little bit is all you need, but why do we do that? We're going to push that heel so we can lift up the left buttock bone. That allows the pelvis to create a balanced container for our spine. Here, low abdomen, closer and closer to the top of the thigh. This is where we're going to stay, right here. And then coming out from here, grab the knees, pull in, time to lie down. Great time for the blanket again.

I'm going to do a little easy twist to once again unwind the spine a little. Let's start with a little leg wobble. And then knees to chest. Go for that hug again that you learned at the beginning of the session. And then arms out to the sides. Take both knees over to your right side. Simple twist. Once you let the legs to the floor, then relax. Go for soft, easy breaths. Legs to center. Let's do it one more time over to the other side, rolling to the left. Coming back to center. Two feet on the ground. Take a pause for a moment. And we're going to take one more with a little bonus stretch in your twist to help further release the back. Both knees into the chest. We're turning to the right side. Let's do that now. Knees over to the right side. The top leg is the left leg. Sweep that knee closer to the chest. And then see if you can catch that foot with your right hand. So opposite hand and foot connected. And then slowly see how far you can extend and straighten that leg. No forcing. Don't even hunt for a stretch feeling. Just here to create a little extra opening for the low back muscles. Mid-back muscles.

And then bend the knee rest. Center. And other side. Knees to chest. Let's go over and capture the foot again. Coming back to center. Balance your feet on the mat, knees bent, and finishing with a few pelvic tilts. Right back where we started. Noticing your spine again. Okay. To enter Shavasana, take a moment to balance your hips left or right, right or left, so that you feel you've got it perfectly. Your hips making a perfect balanced spine through the right and left half sides of your body. Similarly, place the arms now so that each one is equidistant from your midline. Do the same with the legs. Way to do that. You can bring your feet and legs together and then slide your right leg right on down through the middle and then out a few inches to the side. Left leg right down through the middle and out a few inches to the side. Then let the energy of the legs relax, relax, relax, relax. Balance the head so it's neither looking right or left. And close your eyes. With the eyes closed, you can check in with any fine tuning that you need to do. Allow your breathing to quieten down. Breathing in and out only through the nose. And making the breath so fine that even the fine hairs of the nostrils barely feel the movement of air. Anytime we work with spine in a deep way like this, the body can really enter into quite a relaxed state. So if you're feeling quiet and comfortable and want to stay a little longer and enjoy that quietness, please do. If you're ready to come out, please come out with me and we'll gently wiggle the toes. Draw the hands towards your middle and then stretch over your head. Wonderful little wake up stretch. Get the muscles fired up again. Arms down, bend your knees, turn to your side. Rest your head on the pillow for a minute or on one of your hands.

And then gently press up to sitting and we'll finish together in any comfortable sitting position. All right. Really special to work with you on this deep level through the principles of alignment. And we were working with the content and the container of the spine, creating an equal balanced action all throughout the spine. And I hope you felt some pretty amazing things and I would love to hear what you discovered. If you want to leave a comment in the comment section and look forward to seeing you in the next lesson. Take care.