Grounded Balance Flow

Hey there, welcome to yoga anytime. Thanks for joining me for this 20-minute practice where we'll work on your core, your leg strength, some mobility, flexibility, and who knows what else we'll get into. But when you're ready, we're going to start standing. All right. So I'll stand in the middle of the mat. If you'd rather start at the front of your mat, go for it. And if there's anything that, you know, doesn't feel quite right and I don't offer a modification, please take good care of yourself because that's ultimately what we're doing here, right? We're on this mat moving around, taking good quality care of ourselves. So let's make that pledge together. I'll do the same thing. So while we're starting standing, take your feet out, like, you know, toward the edge of your mat and open up your feet a little bit, and you can do this with your heels up or down. I'm going to lift my heels and we're going to drop down into a little cozy casual squat to start off with. What you can do here in squat pose is kind of rotate from side to side. Like we're just starting that adventure, right? To open up the hips or you can fold forward a little bit, ground your heels or lift the heels, fold forward and round out the back and start to listen, pay attention to how your body feels. You can lean to the left, reach the right arm open. Nice. Lean to the right. So you're bending into the right side, the right knee, pushing the right elbow into the right thigh and then lifting the left arm high. Okay. Before we overcook that lift the seat, point the toes forward and come into a forward fold, loosen up the low back, stretch it out, put a generous bend in the knees, straighten the right leg, bend the left, rotate and twist open to the right. So you have the right leg stretching long, pull that right hip up and back, right arm reaching. Good. Switch it up to the other side. So bend your right leg of a good wide stance here, bend the right leg, straighten that left out and rotate open. Perfect. Fold forward, bend your knees quite a bit, loosen up the neck, find a good breath pattern that supports you now and supports you throughout the practice, then rise on up. You can take the arms, stretch them overhead and exhale the hands to heart. I'm going to move up to the front of the mat here. Take your feet wide. You can keep them off of the mat or just on the edge. What you're going to do here is send your hips back. I like to call this like a rocket chair. All right. Stretch your arms forward, stick that booty back, lengthen your spine, engage your core, sit nice and low. So you start to feel a stretch through the hips on the exhale, come all the way up to stand and bring your arms down by your side. Your legs are good. Squeeze your bum, your arms. We'll do 10 of those. All right. Inhale, rocket chair, strong, kind of doable squat. Exhale, warm these legs up a little bit and exhale, sit low and back.

Reach forward, exhale four, exhale five, exhale six, exhale seven, eight, and nine, and ten. Bring your feet a little bit closer to one another, maybe hip width and reach the right arm nice and high and over to the left. So let's get a side bend. Let the left arm kind of drop down toward the left side of the body and reach up, access some good feels up that right side and bring the right arm down. Lift the left arm up. Same thing, but other side. Reach, stretch. One more to the right, up and over. Okay. With the left arm, stretch it up and then side bend. Back to center. Good. Arms overhead. Breathe in. Exhale. Once again, kind of seal the hands at the heart, at the center of your chest, feet are hip width. We're going to prepare for a little balance series thing. Okay. So let's start by grounding into the right leg. Lift your left knee nice and high. All right. So you start here for a few moments. If you need to use a wall or some kind of support, by all means do that. Hips are square. Hands for this version right here. This is where new, we'll call this neutral.

All right. And what we're going to do is put a soft bend in your right knee. Warrior three, you can keep your hands at the chest or stretch your arms all the way. Long, long, long, like Superman, superwoman, super human. Good. Back up. Knee high. Hands to heart. Warrior three, super human. Let's go. Push, push, push through the back heel. Soften that left hip down. That's good. Back up. Neutral. Hands to heart. Knee high. Let's do one more. Stretch that left leg back. Hands to heart. Super human flying pose. Step back into high lunge. Right on. Good. So a nice powerful lunge. Feet, hip width, arms rising, and then we'll take rocket lunge. So same position in the legs. Hinge at the hips. Pull the right hip back. Lead with the heart and chest. Arms in that super human position again. So the more you lean forward without resting on the side, the more you've got to recruit in the core, right? And that's when we want to strengthen our core. Perfect. Rise up straight in the front leg. I'll turn towards you. We're going to get into a little wide leg forward fold. Seal the feet down. Soft bend in the knees. Hinge at the hips. Forward and down. Hands on the floor, a block, a pillow, maybe a little bend into the right, little bend into the left. Good. Just feeling it out. Listening to your body, right? 20 minutes is short. It flies by, but you can be really efficient and effective. So let's go for that today.

Okay. Back to neutral. Turn your toes out a little bit. Kick your heels in. Goddess pose. Also known as a horse stance, goddess pose, god pose. Tailbone down, core engaged. Arms up in this like field goal post. Should feel it quite a bit in the legs and the core supporting you. So we're going to come up and down maybe 10 times. So on the exhale, straighten the legs and bring the arms down by your side. Boom. There's one. Inhale lower. Two. Three and four. Nice. Sit low. Five. Exhale six. Exhale seven. Exhale eight. Nine. Cross pose all the way up. Ten. Heel toe your feet. I didn't say at the beginning, but we are going to explore a little crow pose. So with your feet about hip width, squat width, turn your heels in a little bit. Lift your heels. Sit low. Hands ground. Knees up on the elbows are higher and just flirt around here. Play around with balancing on your hands. Bring forward. Lift one or both feet up off of the mat. Hold. Bring it on down. Sit nice and low again. Perfect. Good. So now you're going to come back over to the front foot.

Bend the back leg down. So the left knee is down. Low lunge. Bring the arms up high. Circle the arms back behind you. Interlace your fingers. Open up the heart, chest, the shoulders. Perfect. Lean forward. Let your left arm come down or place your left hand down. Bend your left leg. Reach back. Grab hold of your left foot. Lean the hips forward and pull gently the left heel towards your seat. Good. Big stretch through the left quadricep muscles, your hips. Release both hands down to the mat. Back into plank pose. Inhale here. Exhale. Lower yourself down. Chaturanga. Inhale. Upward position. Upward dog. Exhale. Downward dog. First time here. Walk it out a couple of steps. Heels high. Heels low. One leg bent. One leg straight. Cross over to one side. Walk up to the front of your mat. Forward fold. Inhale to a good long spine. Half lift. Breath in and fold. Breath out. Rise up. Inhale. Reach the arms overhead. Stretch. Exhale. Hands to heart. Good. Leaning to the left leg now. Bend your right leg and lift it up. Okay. Got some balance going on here. I'm going to shoot back just a tiny bit. Okay. Before we start moving, catch your breath. If it's gotten away from you like it kind of got away from me for a moment there. Center. Balance. Focus. Good. Hands to heart. Soft bend in the left knee. Good. So that warrior three cycle here. So shoot you're kind of hinging at the hips, pushing strong through the right heel, lengthening the right leg and reaching the arms overhead if you'd like or hands to heart or arms out wide. You choose. Now back up to neutral. Hands, heart, knee high. Good. Warrior three your way. Two more. Back up. Center grounded. Warrior three. A little more effort, right? A little more effort. Let's go back to neutral. Right knee high. A little wobble, wobble, wibble.

Good. Okay. Warrior three. Extend right leg. Extend the torso. Extend the arms. Power up. Breathe. Smile. High lunge. Step back. Land. Arms rise. Powerful high lunge. Rocket lunge. Bend forward. Lengthen through the torso again through the arms. Drop that left hip back a little bit. Sit heavy in the left heel. So you work that left leg quite a bit. Rise back up. Now my back will be facing you. Wide leg forward fold. Soft bend in the knees. Engage at the hips. Forward and down. I'll bring my feet a little bit wider. Grip into the feet. Look down and say hello. This one here we're going to go a little skandhasana side lunging. So turn your feet open about 45 degrees. Sit nice and lower to the right. Sit nice and lower to the left. If you want to go as far as lifting your left heel, extending through the right leg. Bending deeply into the left knee. Go for it. If you want a little more moderate, right? Keep the heel down over on that right side. Less ankle mobility. Less knee flexion. One more over to the left. One more to the right. Back to center. Forward fold. Straight legs. Bum in the high, high, high sky. Up onto your fingertips. Left fingertips ground. Lift your heart length in your spine. Twist open to the right. Rotate. Right arm down. Left arm rotates high. Try to keep your hips level. Just turn through the torso. Left arm down. Turn to the front of the mat. Right knee down. Low lunge. Rise up with the body.

Arms up. Perfect. Reach back. Interlace your fingers. Clasp if you can. If not, keep the arms nice and wide. Open up the front of the body. Your shoulders. Open up the breath. Sending the hips forward and down. Stay here or go for the foot grab. Right arm can come down or the right hand. Move your left foot over to the left a bit. Lean the hips forward. Turn and twist just a bit. Bend the right leg. Grab hold of that right foot. And again, it doesn't have to touch. It's just somewhere in the vicinity. You start to draw that right heel towards your seat. Really nice. Okay. Come back out of there. Back into tabletop. Back into child's pose. We need a little upper body strength here. Just a little knee push up into child's pose flow. So you're going to inhale all the way down into push up. Exhale child's pose. Inhale low push up. Exhale child's pose. There's two. Inhale and exhale. Inhale through table and lower. Exhale. Last one. Inhale. Exhale child's pose. Pause. Okay. We're going to come from child's pose into table and up onto our seat. Little bit more work here. So what you're going to do is slide the heels as much as you can in towards your body so that the knees are, are piped in towards your chest. Hold onto the shins, lift your chest up, pull the shoulders back. So your spine is neutral. Now lean back, keeping the same form, but maybe lift your legs up, hold onto the hamstrings, the floor or hands free.

Let's come into boat pose. Keep those feet active. Maybe point through your toes, bent legs, straight leg up to you. Boat pose. Nice and stable and strong in the core. Do a little reset bottoms of the feet together. Sit up tall, lean into bound angle. Kind of restore. We'll do one more. Maybe two more. Who knows? Come back up, flow right into it. Boat pose. Again, legs can be bent and you can hold onto the ground. Whatever keeps good form best form possible. You see, I'm kind of rounding here. I want to lower legs, pull the shoulders back healthy spine. This one's going to be a different transition. Bring the feet down to the mat, hands back behind you, point your fingers back, mindful of your shoulders. Press up for a reclined tabletop, lifting the hips, opening the chest, the shoulders, kind of like a big straight arm bridge. Lower the seat. Keep your right hand where it is. Feet can be nice and wide. Legs bent. Left arm out in front of you, lift the hips and reach up and back. That might feel nice down that left channel, that left line and lower down, reach it up. Left hand back behind you, right forward, reach up, stretch. Super good. Bring it down. Take now the left foot kind of like bend the left leg. Left foot is underneath your right seat. Pull the right knee in and step that right foot across your left thigh. If that's not doable, keep your left leg straight. Lower to the fishes pose. All right. So really nice spinal twist. Left arm high. I want you to reach that left arm around the top of the right thigh. Now pull that right knee safely in toward you. Feel like a nice stretch in that outer right hip. Right hand back behind you. Lengthen your spine on your breath in and turn and twist to the right on the breath. Okay, really nice. Let's do the other side. But when you come out, if you reach over to the left, lean to the left. Little counter pose. Lean back. I kind of like to lean back and just switch the legs up like so. Right heel underneath the left seat. Ground that left foot across the right thigh. Try to plug that left sit bone down. Reach the right arm around the left knee shin area. Lift your chest. Lengthen the spine. Left hand behind you. Twist and rotate. You can exhale as you deepen the twist. It's become one of my favorite twists. Okay, let's exit out mindfully. Twist over to the other side. Okay, I'll face you here. We're going to cross the legs and our 20 minutes. That's it. So I invite you to sit, lie down, rest, close out however you'd like. But for now with me, you and I will close here. So I want to say thank you for joining me for Yoga Anytime. Peace. Have a beautiful day. Namaste.