Resting Within

Welcome, so happy to be here with you and our babies. This practice is an invitation to rest within. It'll be a floor practice that'll primarily target the pelvis, the hips, the legs. At the end of our practice, we'll find an inversion bringing our legs up. For now, it'll be nice to have a blanket, a bolster, or a couple pillows, and a block.

And let's go ahead and meet in a wide child's pose. So get yourself super comfy, might set up your blanket under your knees, bring your knees nice and wide to make space for your belly, your baby. And then with the bolster out in front of you, slowly begin to ease your way forward and down. You might turn and rest one cheek towards the bolster, the forehead down, and you can adjust the bolster so it feels just right. It's maybe supporting your upper chest and sternum, and just allowing the weight of your belly to release towards the earth, looking to create space through the pelvis, through the hips, allowing the weight of the body to soften and release towards the bolster, or towards the support.

It might even feel nice to let the eyes soften inward, and allow for a nice, full exhale and be a sigh out of the mouth. It's going to be a nice practice if you don't feel like practicing at all. From my experience in pregnancy, it's a bit of a roller coaster day to day, depending on your energy and your mood, giving yourself permission to really rest within, nourishing our inner resources. If your head's been turned to one side, you might kind of switch and bring the opposite cheek and ear towards the support, or forehead down, letting your attention rest on the breath. You might even get a sense of breathing, or feeling the breath down and wide into your pelvis, into your low back, up into your kidneys, and softening the jaw.

You might stay where you are a bit longer. When you feel ready, bring the hands underneath you, under your shoulders, and just slowly press yourself up, and then bring your bolster so it's facing the other direction, and you might bring your hands, your forearms, onto the bolster, and extend back through your right leg, and let's just stretch out the back of the leg after that flexion, rolling forward and back, and then switch, tuck the toes, just rolling forward and back, and again, your forearms might be down, you might be up on your hands, whatever feels best for you. And then from here, we're going to turn around, so we're facing away from the bolster, facing away from the pillows, you can bring your blanket off to the side, we're going to come into a figure four shape, so rather than coming onto our back, you're going to walk your feet forward, lean back, and bring your right ankle across, so this is a nice, kind of casual figure four shape, and you might rock a little bit forward and back, make sure there's a lot of space for your belly, or rather rocking from side to side, it's kind of like a figure four windshield wipers, where you're cruising onto the inner outer edge of your left foot, and feeling that sensation through the right hip joint and outer hip. If you want to feel more, you can walk your left foot in a little bit closer, of course you can stay on your forearms if that's comfortable, or you can choose to bring your hands behind you and just lift the chest and work on extension. You might experiment with flexing your right foot, a few more moments here, easing in the eyes and the jaw, nice, inhale, exhale and release, and then we'll switch, bring the other leg on top, so maybe that's the left ankle over the right leg, and you might start by rocking from side to side, kind of rolling onto the inner outer edge of your right foot, and again depending on your body, your wrists, you might stay on your forearms reclining on the bolster, you might choose to come up on your hands and really lift and open the chest.

You might take a moment to just pause, offering yourself towards some stillness, breathing into where you feel it, nice, and when you're ready, inhale, and then exhale, release that left foot down, and just begin to walk yourself back up, and let's come into a Baddha Konasana, so you might sit up on the support, it's amazing the feeling of kind of shifting weight around, bring the soles of the feet together and ease wide, kind of a classic pregnancy shape, classic yoga shape, and just rock a little bit from side to side here, feeling your sitting bones, feeling your pelvis, your hips, and you might stay upright, lifting, you might slowly begin to round and let yourself kind of release towards a forward fold, you might even choose to walk your feet out a little further to make space for your belly as you release the weight of your head, softening through the shoulders, just allowing your breath to move and reach into where you feel the sensation, and just slowly make your way up, and we're going to bring the legs wide, and as you bring the legs wide, we'll come into a side stretch, stretching the right arm down, inhale the left arm up, and we're stretching over to the right, and then inhale back to center, left hand slides down, inhale your right arm up, and then side to side at your own pace, opening and creating space through the side body, breathing wide into the ribs, the lungs, now the arm up, and to the other side, let's do one more on each side together, about and over, and about and over, and then coming into the center, you might stay here, you might walk your hands forward, you might have support out in front of you, and finding that appropriate edge of stretch and sensation, pausing, allow for an inhale, maybe an audible sigh as you exhale, you might find some inner sway or seaweed-like movement from side to side, notice what you choose to do with your head, you might support the weight of your head, you might release the weight of your head, when you're ready, just slowly walk your hands back up, lean back, bend the knees, we're going to slide off of the bolster, you can just bring it behind you, and then lean back and we're going to find little windshield wipers from side to side, so feet nice and wide, just cruising on to the inner outer edges of the feet, feeling this movement through your pelvis, your hips, your legs, up through the spine, and we're going to let the knees shift over to the right, coming into a mermaid pose, so you're going to, or a saddle pose, either one, so the right leg is forward, the left leg is back, and the sole of that right foot is towards the left inner thigh, you might even sit up on support for this, and find what feels right for your hips and knees, you might stay upright, you might begin to walk yourself just straight forward, finding that nice sweet stretch and sensation, allow for an exhale to soften, you might come up onto your fingertips and inhale, lift the heart and exhale, bend the elbows, and fold a little bit, like a rolling cobra, inhale, lift up, and exhale, bend the elbows, be a few more like this, lifting the heart, bending the elbows, folding forward, and one more, rounding and rolling the spine, and then slowly come back up, we'll reach the right fingers down, inhale the left arm up, and again feel how you can reach and lengthen and open, such a beautiful stretch here to create space, and easy in the neck, and slow on the inhale, come back up, and then just lean back and switch the cross of your legs, bring that, maybe it's that left leg in front, right leg back, settling in, this side might feel totally different, it does for me, you might stay upright, you might slowly begin to walk forward, inhale and exhale to soften, staying here or finding those rounds of rolling cobra, lifting the heart, bending the elbows, dipping forward and up, feeling this undulation through the spine, inhale, exhale to fold in, maybe one more, and then slowly making your way up, left fingertips down, inhale your right arm up, and we're coming into a side stretch over to the left, breathing, lengthening, finding a place where your neck feels good, beautiful, and then inhale, come back up, and then free the legs, and then go ahead and grab your block, and we're gonna come on to our back, and we're gonna find a bridge pose and bring the legs up, you might even choose to instead bring your legs up wall, so bringing your feet about hips width apart, heels in line with your sitting bones, spread your toes nice and wide, allow for an inhale and as you exhale, press through your feet, curl your tailbone under, lift your pelvis, and then slide your block right underneath your sacrum, kind of at the very widest setting, yeah, lowest, widest setting, and then as you slide the block under the sacrum, allow the weight of your pelvis to rest on the block, and we'll hang out here for a few breaths, this feeling, this support, which in this moment for me feels pretty nice, but how does it feel for you? So you might need to make some adjustments and customize, so that feels really nice, so after all that hip opening and asymmetrical work, this can be a nice way to kind of balance the pelvis and the hips, now you might choose to stay right here, you might choose to lift one knee and the other knee, drawing them both in towards your chest, in fact you might even bring your knees a little wider apart to make space for your belly, and then if it feels good, you might experiment with stretching your legs up towards the sky, yeah, and you might have to readjust your block so that you feel supported, your arms can be resting alongside the body, what would it feel like to flex your feet a little bit, you can bring the feet maybe as wide as your pelvis to make space, what would it feel like to kind of press through the balls of your feet, and just find what feels right for you in your feet, your ankles, here this is more of an active inversion to drain the blood, the fluids from the feet, and we know the swelling in the feet and ankles happens during pregnancy, and draining those fluids down, nourishing the pelvis, the heart, the brain, this can be very rejuvenating, again you might find it useful to bring your legs up against the wall or even bringing the legs on a chair, you might keep the legs stretching up for a bit longer, you might choose to bend the knees, maybe bring the hands onto the knees and just allow the knees to fall away from each other, feeling the stretch and opening through your hips and your pelvis, like a little variation of happy baby, bringing the hands behind the back of the knees, and then drawing the knees towards each other, when you're ready go ahead and bring your feet back down to the floor, finding that blueprint of bridge, spreading the toes, might take a moment to pause here, when you're ready press through your feet, lift your pelvis up, slide the block out from underneath you, and then just slowly roll back down, upper back, middle back, low back, once you're down stretch one arm overhead and roll to that side, so just choose the side that feels best for you, and then just press yourself up nice and slow, we're going to transition into our final resting shape, a sideline rest, so for this it'll be nice to have a bolster between the legs and a blanket, really supporting your upper body and ribcage, fold your blanket and choose a side that would feel best, I'm going to rest on my left side today, bringing the blanket right up against your left hip or your right hip depending on the side, then bring that bolster right in between your legs, so right between the knee and the ankles, and then releasing down, there's plenty of space for your belly, and as you feel into your neck you might bring a blanket or support between your ear and your shoulder, between your ear and your arm, and maybe the top hand is resting on your belly, allow for an inhale a nice full exhale, you might soften the gaze inward, again oftentimes during pregnancy as we're further along, as we become more still as the body becomes more still and relaxed, the baby can become a lot more active, you might feel and sense some inner movements or energy, such a surprising and delightful feeling, and giving yourself space and permission to rest here. So, I'm going to rest on my left hip, I'm going to rest on my right hip, I'm going to rest on my left hip, I'm going to rest on my right hip, I'm going to rest on my left hip, letting your attention return to the breath, you are of course welcome to stay here as long as you'd like, you might even allow yourself to drift off and to sleep, you feel ready to transition, slowly, gently bring your top hand underneath you, bottom hand underneath you and just slowly begin to make your way up, and if you're up we'll take a few moments to sit together, so you might prop yourself up, just finding a comfortable seat, feeling the support beneath you, the incredible support and strength within you, and that invisible support all around you, and arresting within, healing and sensing and celebrating the life within you, this miracle, this gift, feeling the rise of the inhale fill you, and the exhale soften and soothe you, it might feel good to join the hands together at the heart, an offer of gratitude to yourself for being here, allow for an inhale, maybe a soft bow forward and in with the exhale, thank you for joining us, have a beautiful day.