Love Warrior

Namaste, welcome to Love Warrior. So in this class we're going to work with the spine, we're opening the spine and creating more and more space in the heart. This particular sequence allows for a warming to the spine but also a freedom to the heart. This will include a mudra and the mudra is often via mudra. I'll show you the mudra but if you want to go to the previous episode, your heart's mudra, you can check that out. It gives you a chance to take the mudra, come out of the mudra, into the mudra and a nice little practice about 10 minutes long. But let me give you a little refresher. Look at your hands for a moment. You're going to take your index fingers and curl them into the thumb pad. Then you'll take your thumb and touch the middle finger and ring finger and let the pinky finger extend. So just look at your hands for a moment, go ahead and open the hands up again. Let's do that one more time, just a little brief practice. Index finger curls in, thumb, middle finger and ring finger touch. This is up on via a mudra and it is a mudra for your heart, for your mental heart, for your emotional heart, for your spiritual heart. It will be an accelerant to this practice. It's also, if you don't want to do the mudra, you don't have to do the mudra. It's still a very empowering practice to your heart but anytime you're doing the mudras with intention, it helps to build what the intention is for and we want to set the heart free today with this practice. So we're going to start from kneeling and you're going to take a blanket. Later on you're going to need a chair and a sandbag as well but for right now just a blanket will do. So I'm going to take this blanket and roll it into a tube just like this. Okay so now we're going to come to standing, take your blanket with you and from standing you'll tuck this behind your knees. Now if you're one of my Florida students you're starting to snicker because you know what this is all about.

Hold the blanket firmly behind the legs until you catch the blanket and then you're going to slowly lower yourself down and sit back on the blanket. Now if you feel the need to adjust you have to stand all the way back up again to adjust. You can't like wiggle around from here. If it feels uncomfortable it means it's doing its job. What is it doing? It's causing an opening horizontally in the calf. We're used to having an opening vertically right from the knee to the heel. This is kind of squishing it open the opposite way. It's freeing the gastrocnemius and the soleus from one another so they can function independently. Also one of the beautiful things about working with your calves is in Chinese medicine they refer to the calves as as the second heart because so much blood is pumped through the calves. That was we're ambulating as we're moving forward. The calves are squeezing and helping to push the blood back up through the body. So it's an amazing part of the practice in a heart practice. You can add it to any of your other practices. If you're feeling super uncomfortable you probably look like this. Over time you'll be able to sit back and actually allow for some nice compression to happen in the calves. Take a few more breaths here. Breathing, breathing. Oh I know let's practice up on Vayamudra. Index fingers roll in, thumb goes to the middle finger, ring finger joins the thumb in the middle finger. Up on Vayu. Get a feel for that. Open the hands again. Practice it one more time and release. Now to come out of this posture we're going to do it in a little bit of a system. You're going to roll forward, plant your hands, keep rolling forward so you can curl your toes under. The pressure is starting to be relieved and then you'll just go right into Uttanasana and the blanket just just falls to the side. Allow the body to completely surrender for a couple of breaths so that the calves reorient to functioning again and then bring yourself up to standing. Alright let's get that blanket out of the way. Remember you want to place your props neatly to the side. Don't be chaotic with your props. It's helping your mind to center the more thoughtful you are with everything in your life right. So here we go we're going to start working a little bit with the heart. Step to the front of your mat. So we're going to bring our arms all the way up and once your hands are overhead take up on Vayu mudra. Take the heart to mudra. Get nice and nice and along in the spine and then let's move into Vodakshasana. Nice warrior pose. So part of warming the heart includes warming the legs because we need a stability underneath us to make our heart strong and to make our heart free. Straighten the legs. Arms release. Back up they go. Back into the mudra. Back into Vakshasana. Warrior pose. Sit a little deep maybe. Go ahead and lift your eyes and look at your mudra. Understand that this mudra is not only assisting the body, it's assisting the spirit. Inhale. Releasing the arms. Here we go. Back to mudra. Back to our beautiful Vakshasana warrior. This is a warrior pose. Can you feel it? Sit a little deeper maybe. Bring the arms up a little bit more but don't strain. No straining. Just beautiful effort. From here we'll go up one more time. Release the mudra. Fold all the way forward now. Now my hands are going to come to the calves. Pressing the hands into the calves I'm going to slide the hands slightly up. Releasing the back of the neck. There's a couple of breaths here. And now bend the knees. Arms are going to go all the way up. Hands are going to go back to mudra. Back to the heart mudra. Get a little length to the spine. Release the mudra. Folding back down. Hands on the calves. Press and pull the skin of the calves up.

Bend the knees again. All the way up. Hands go to the heart mudra. And now join the palms. Unfurl the hands. Coming to anjali mudra. Let's draw a straight line down the spine. All the way down. Hands wrap around. Holding the calves. Lengthening the spine. Bending the knees. As the arms come up. Back to apamvaya mudra. Back to the heart mudra. As the palms come together. Anjali mudra. Back down. Holding the calves. Last one. Bend the knees. Hands go into heart mudra. Hands come into anjali mudra. Final folding forward. Hold the calves. Release the hands now from the calves and let's step into downward-facing dog. And feel where the heart is sitting in the chest. We want the heart to feel like it's floating in between the front and the back body. There's a lightness there.

Don't overemphasize the shoulders. Keep it nice and quiet between the two. Walk the feet up now. Roll yourself up. Hands back to heart mudra. And let's go back to virkshasan. Back to that warrior essence. Take a breath. I'm going to take some little twists now. Bring the palms together right at the heart and let's turn to one side. Take a little bit of a twisted virkshasan.