Bolster Your Love

Namaste. Welcome to bolster your love. So what does bolster mean? Bolster means to create support around something and that's what we're gonna do with our yoga props today. Alana's here to help me so I can show you how to get into this very lovely restorative posture. You're gonna need a few things. You'll need probably four blankets and if you need, if you only have a few blankets you can get like a couple of towels things like that. That'll work whatever you have at home. We're gonna start out taking one of the blankets and rolling it into a bolster. Rolling it into a long tube just like this. That's gonna go right here. That's actually for your knees so your feet will be facing the wall. The next blanket gonna open out until it's at a half fold so it looks like that. It's pretty big right? That's gonna go over the blanket that you just put down just like that. Pretty sweet huh? One more. This blanket also opens to half and you're gonna fold it a couple of times. One that and two. So it's a nice long thin blanket. That's for Alana's head. Oh yummy. The final blanket you'll use to put on your body if you need a blanket on your body to warm you. All right? So Alana if you would lay down so that this is supporting your knees and that is supporting your head. Perfect. Just like that. So her feet are free of the wall but it's nice to set up in this way that you're facing a wall. It's a little more relaxing to the body. Now she's gonna bring her legs together and this is something that you can do at home. From this position you'll be sitting up but the blanket goes across the body and it's a swaddling technique. So you're gonna swaddle your own legs. I'm gonna tuck this under her calves. It's like that and then create a little tension around the calves. You won't feel tension around the thighs. You're gonna feel the tension right up under where the knees are. How's that feel? She's smiling. All right. Now we're gonna create the wrap for the head and this is something also that you can do for yourself. In my studio at Dragonfly we call this the burrito wrap. Thanks Sarah. Sarah coined that phrase. I'm gonna take one end of the blanket. It's gonna drape over her eye but not her nose. So it's kind of crossing at an angle. The other crosses over the other side. So she looks like a little, she looks like a little burrito. The final blanket you'll use to cover yourself if you like or it's kind of nice sometimes to create a little weight on the chest in this posture. It's like this. It's very soothing to the body. You can remain in this posture. You can fall asleep in this posture. 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes. Your body, when your body has reached a state of really restoring, it will it will bring you back up. So you might feel yourself get really deep and then you'll move around a little and come back up. You might even go back down into the posture. Say there another five or ten minutes. Just trust your intuition. If you start to feel a little bit like, I think I'm ready to come out, then you're gonna go ahead and come out and I'll let Alana, I'll talk her through coming out so that you can see how to come out. So the first thing she's gonna do is remove the blanket that's on her chest. She doesn't want to. She's like, no I like it. She's gonna pull it off to the side. That's it. Then she's gonna reach up and unwind the blanket but she's not gonna lift her head. She's just gonna unwind one end to the side and the other end keeping the eyes closed. And then even though the legs are swaddled, it's it's relatively easy to pull your heels closer to you so that your both of your legs are bending. So she's just gonna pull her heels until her feet are on the floor. That releases the swaddling effect and then she'll roll to her side. That's it. Using her arm she's gonna keep rolling towards her navel and then she'll bring herself up to sitting. It's like that. It's a wonderful posture and when you stay in it and stay nice and deep in it for an extended period of time, it brings you to that state of ease in your nervous system. It's quite lovely. It also sort of covers the ears so it kind of mutes everything around you. So enjoy this practice. It's one of my favorite ones. Peace out. Namaste.