Centering Down

Welcome, friends. This is a 30-minute class with a fun sequence of standing postures and some playful twists you can expect to feel grounded, spacious, and awake for your day. Let's get going. So we're gonna start in child's pose. You can find your way, bring your knees as far apart as you need to be comfortable, have your hands out in front. And to begin, just find a place where you can breathe. Notice the touch of your body on the ground and the touch of your breath in your body. And then come to fingertips. Create a little bit of active, an active sensation in your arms. Take a couple of moments. With your fingertips pressing into the ground slightly, widen through your armpits, and feel the volume and dimension of your breath in the inside of your thoracic space. Take a couple moments. And from here, I generally walk my knees a little bit back, let my hips elevate. So it's an active child's pose with energy moving from your pelvis all the way to your fingertips. When you're ready from here, you can transition. Let your hands come to the ground, tuck your toes under, and lift up into downward facing dog. Downward facing dog, to begin, give yourself a bit of freedom to move so you're not following my cues. You're just simply allowing your body to move in the space that you have. You might lift one hip and then the other hip, bend one knee and then the other knee. And from here, as you're ready, gently come forward to plank pose. From plank pose, pause, gently drop to your knees, curl your spine, move your hips towards your heels, and then uncurl your spine. It's like a spinal wave upward dog on your knees. Widen your eyes, curl back two more times like that. Tuck your chin, look between your thighs, uncurl just like a wave unfurls you, wide eyes. Curl back, little dimple in your deep belly, uncurl upward dog on your knees. Next time you come back, downward facing dog. Downward facing dog, take a couple breaths, bend your knees so your quadriceps move towards your belly, elevate your pubic bone, and widen your left hip to the left and your right hip to the right. So the volume of your pelvis is light, and then gently come down onto your knees. If you need to, bring your feet a little closer together, and we're gonna sit back on our heels for just a brief fascial foot release. So the fascia of our feet is connected to the fascia of our hamstrings and our low backs. There's taking a moment to give a little bit of space to the feet before we move into more standing postures. If this is uncomfortable, you can keep your hands on the ground. I know for some people's feet, this is not an easy place to be. Okay, when you're ready, bring your hands down, lift up and back downward facing dog. Downward dog, briefly cross reference, so press through your left hand and your right foot strongly, notice what you notice, and then press through your right hand and your left foot strongly and notice what you notice. And then press through all four points of contact. You can feel the apex of your belly. When you're ready, step your feet forward to your hands. Uttanasana, standing forward fold. If you need a block or if you'd like a block, you could bring one under your fingertips. If you don't have one hand here, you don't need it, then you don't need to use one. With your fingertips on the ground here, bend your knees and move into the space behind you, so you feel your bum actually move behind you, so you're metaphorically in the space behind you, which you could say is the past. And then move yourself in front, so the eyes of your heart move in the direction that you're going, which could be your vision or your dream, metaphorically the future. And then center down, so your feet press down into the ground, right underneath of you, the present moment here and now. Press into your feet, widen your left hip to the left, widen your right hip to the right, so you feel some space and connection in the center of your pelvis. And then as you like fold inward, if it's comfortable drape your arms. As you press into your feet, left hip goes left, right hip goes right. And feel the space in the center of your pelvis all the way through to the space in the roof of your mouth, the connection from pelvis to throat. From your hang, when you're ready, bend your knees a little bit, bring your hands down, step back downward facing dog. Downward facing dog come forward to plank pose, plank pose pause. And your plank pose drop to your knees, curl your spine back, widen through the back of your diaphragm, uncurl upward dog on your knees. And this time option, if you like, start by pressing out through your left heel and then bring your left knee down, press out through your right heel, bring your right knee down, and then maybe press out through both heels into a tuck-toed upward dog. Gently drop your knees, roll up, tuck your toes under if they're not already, lift up downward facing dog. Downward dog come down to your knees. On your hands and knees, briefly cross reference, so press through your right hand and your left knee, hover your right knee and your left hand, maybe elongate away from center and bring them down. Press through your left hand and your right knee, hover your right hand and your left knee, elongate. As you elongate away from the center, keep the center in the center so your spine is quiet. Right hand and left knee come down. One more time each side. So you press through right hand and left knee, right knee hovers, left hand hovers, elongate, and then come in. Press through left hand and right knee, hover, elongate, and come in. Perfect. Pause in the center of yourself, tuck your toes under, lift up downward dog. Downward dog come down onto your knees. From your child's pose, keep your left hand where it is, bring your right arm under, pause, and then keep your left hand pressing down slowly, open, and then thread it through again. Do two more like that. Spiral around and then spiral open. One more time, thread it under and open, and then bring your right hand back down into your child's pose, pause, bring your left hand through, open three times. So spiral open. If you can, follow your arm with your gaze and see if you can keep the eyes wide and receptive as you spin around the center, and then meet your hands at the front of your mat, gently lift up downward dog. Downward dog forward to plank pose, pause, and plank pose drop to your knees. Notice the touch of your body on the ground as you curl back hips towards heels. Uncurl upward dog on your knees or you can repeat the tuck-toed up dog that we did previously where you reach out through your heels. Bring your knees down, lift up downward dog. Downward dog short and wide, bend your knees so your thighs come towards your belly. Keep your right hand where it is and we're gonna, if it's comfortable, bring your left hand through either to the outer right knee, shin, or foot, and spin. As you spin to the right, see if you can keep your left hip tall and wide to the left, and then back into the center of yourself. Left hand forward. If you'd like, try the other side. Right hand comes through to the left knee, shin, ankle, or foot, or you can hook your hand around your heel. Spin. As you spin to the left, counter spin by keeping your right hip on the right side of your body, and then gently back into the center of yourself. Drop to your knees. Take a pause in child's pose. We'll move into a sequence for the hips. You're gonna come to hands and knees, and with your left, or sorry, with your left knee, let your left knee lift up a little bit, and just do a few gentle hip circles. I think of like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant, so it's like you're letting your knee lift up and opening through your pelvis, and then maybe play with bringing your knee towards your armpit, and then releasing it, and try the other side. So now your right knee lifts up, and do a few circles with that right knee, both directions. See how it feels, and then when you're ready, see if you can bring that knee close to your armpit. It might not touch your armpit, but see if you can move it in that direction, and then bring it down. I'll try that same thing from downward dog. So take a moment here from your downward facing dog, and pause. Notice the touch of your body on the ground, the touch of your breath on your body. Okay, from your downward facing dog, you're going to press through your left hand and your right foot, and let your left knee bend, so your left knee can come up, and just do some circles with that left knee in space. If you can, think about keeping your pelvis pretty quiet, and in the center, it will want to move to the right, and then switch directions. And something that helps me is allowing my right knee to stay a little bit bent, and then when you're ready, bring your knee towards the side of your belly, so left knee to belly, maybe left knee to armpit, and come forward into your lunge. If you found your own way there, that's fine too. Bring your block underneath of you, so I'm using a block here you don't have to. I'm gonna press my hands into the block, and just floss a little bit through the hips by pressing down through my feet, and straightening up through my legs, and then slowly sliding into lunge. And just go a handful of times at your own pace, bending and extending. Yeah, just keep moving up and down. As you go down, see if you can keep a little lift through your inner thighs, so you're not sagging into the lunge, and you're staying integrated through the center of your pelvis. So even though you have a left side and a right side, that they would remain connected in the middle. Beautiful. The next time you extend your left leg, as much as is comfortable, stay there. Keep your right hand on your block, and bring your left hand to your sacrum, and pause. Here you can press into your right big toe, left big toe, inner heel, and widen your left hip to the left, and your right hip to the right. So you stay centered on the two halves of your pelvis.

Sometimes the hips want to push out to the left here, so by widening right hip to the right, you can stay a little more centered. Okay, from here when you're ready, bring both hands back to your block, bend your front knee so you're back in your lunge, and we'll work with some shoulder circles. So you're gonna reach your left arm forward, and then spiral that left arm up, and behind you like you're drawing a rainbow in the sky, and then lift it up, back to the front of your mouth. If you can, follow your arm with your gaze, so arm comes up, and behind you, and up, and in front of you. Do it one more time on your own, and just experiment with a smooth range of motion. The legs are strong and grounded, and we're creating some sort of freedom, mobility space in the shoulders. Beautiful. From here, both hands back to your block, bring your right knee down. With your hands on your block, just gently move your hips forward and back. It's similar to what we did from your pyramid to your lunge, but now with your back knee down, sometimes you get a little bit more space, just a little bit of relaxation in the pelvis, because you don't have to hold yourself up anymore. And then when you're ready, maybe you come forward, you can stay here, press through your right knee and your left foot, and stay long through the front of your spine, and sometimes people like to come forward, can keep hands on your block, or you could bring your elbows down, and then a little play in that front leg that you can try, if you like, is press through your tippy toes, and lift your heel without lifting your sitting bone, and stay there for a moment or two, and then if you drop your heel, you might be able to drop a little deeper into the lunge, if you want. And then from there, when you're ready, bring your hands in, we'll lift up and back into downward dog, walk out through your legs after that long lunge sequence, notice what you notice, occupy the space of your pelvis with your breath, and then gently lift your right knee up into the air, press through right hand and left foot, and do some circles with your right knee, and just go in the range of motion that allows you to stay centered in your pelvis and your spine, so you don't have to be a robot, but you also can just allow yourself to make the circles smaller to stay a little bit quieter in your spine, switch directions if you haven't already, and then when you're ready, you bring your right foot forward into your lunge, find your block, bring it back under your hands, and then just start to play same as we did on the other side with allowing your pelvis to lift and lower. I don't worry too much about whether my leg straightens, rather just thinking about the range of motion that feels smooth and interesting as the leg moves towards straight and then deep into your lunge, and the next time your leg straightens up, pause, press through your right foot, widen your left hip to the left, press through the tippy toes on your left foot and widen your right hip to the right, then left hand can stay on your block, right hand to your sacrum, and the center with your hand on your sacrum can feel the sensation of the middle of your pelvis, sacrum is like a bridge connecting the two halves of the pelvic bowl, and then slowly bring your right hand back down, slowly bend your front knee again back into your lunge, and then our rainbow twist, so left hand presses down, right arm reaches forward, follow your arm with your gaze to sweep your arm up, and the arm rotations just naturally move us through the shoulder girdle, sweeping the arm up and forward and up and back, so the twist becomes more of a spin, more of a circular rotation around our center and less of a linear feeling like you're turning a corner, you're just spinning around the middle, arm comes up and over, bring your hands back, both hands back to the block, drop to your back knee, flossing through that front hip moving back and forward, comfortable range, you can go fast, you can go slow, some days I go fast, some days I go slow, the next time you come forward into your lunge, pause, press your right foot down, widen your left hip to the left, press the top of your left foot down, widen your right hip to the right, and then maybe you bring your block a little bit forward, maybe you want to come lower onto your elbows, that works totally fine, and from there press your tippy toes on your right foot down and lift your right heel, and as you lift your right heel see if you can keep your right sitting bone where it is, and then if you want bring your heel down, maybe your sitting bone drops a few moments or a few degrees, bring your block in, and lift your hips up and back into downward facing dog, walk out through your legs, bend your knees, as you're ready you can step or hop your feet forward to your hands into an Uttanasana standing forward fold, as a little experiment or a little play in your forward fold you could bring your hands under your heels so it's like you're standing on a downhill slope, and sometimes this gives us a bit of a head start, it's a little bit easier to go on a walk downhill and it's also a little bit easier to fold our pelvis is forward when we're on a slightly downhill slope, so you could try it see how it feels, till the weight in your tippy toes, the weight in your heels, and this just extra little support for the anterior tilt of your pelvis forward, and then gently release your hands, dangle your arms, hang and breathe, from your hang you can make your own way to standing, so gently come up, press down through your feet, inhale your arms up, exhale let your arms come down, and we'll stand on one foot and just gently step the other foot out to the long edge of your mat, so you can turn your feet to point towards the long edge of your mat, inhale your arms up, and we'll hold opposite elbows, do a little bit of a side bend to one side, side bend to the other side, then I like to just keep things even, so switch hold the opposite forearm in front, the funny way, go one way, and the other way, then come back into the center of yourself, release your arms to your side, bring your right arm under your left arm, pause, eagle arms, you could try making a fist with your left hand and just see how the energy of the familiar shape changes, and then release your arms, left arm under your right arm, hold your left hand on your right wrist if that's reasonable, and make a fist with your right hand, just feel the energy of your fist in your body, a little bit fierce and strong, release your arms out to the side, and come forward hands to outer ankles, outer shins, outer knees, and often in a forward fold we think about moving our belly towards our thighs, but see if you can think about moving your thighs towards your belly, so your thighs actually move slightly forward, you might have to bend your knees to do that, and this allows us to be less behind ourselves, so our bum isn't way behind us, but we're centering down through the feet, release your head from your right foot press down, widen your left hip to the left, from your left foot press down, widen your right hip to the right, and then we'll bring our hands down under our armpits and walk them out in front, I like fingertips, if you need, if you'd like a block you could use a block under your hands, let your head release, again move your thighs a little bit towards your belly, and can pay attention to the length and the space and the dimension of your breath between your pubic bone and your throat, keeping your right hand where it is, your left hand can lift up and thread through to the outside of your right knee, shin, ankle, and a little spin to the right, as you spin to the right, press into your left foot and widen your left hip to the left, so it's like a spin to the right, and a counter spin from your left hip to your left foot, and then come back into the center, bring your right hand under, outer left knee, shin, ankle, pause, find the spin, the primary spin to the left, and the secondary spin press down through your left foot or right foot, so you press down into your right foot, stay connected to the right side of your body, and come into the center of yourself, fingertips are forward, pause a couple breaths right in the middle, when you're ready you can walk your hands around to the front of your mat, step back into downward facing dog, downward facing dog forward to plank, pause, linger a moment or two here, downward facing dog, come forward as you're ready to plank, we'll lower all the way to our belly, from your belly come on to your elbows, low cobra, tops of your feet, press down, elbows press down, maybe press through your hands, get a little bit taller into a higher cobra, and sometimes here I'll just look down at my hands and turn them out a little bit like the fins on the front of a seal, and then you can just stay there for a moment, if it's breathable press down through your pubic bone, feel the space and the volume in the roof of your mouth, so a little bit of space in the back of your throat, when you're ready come forward and down, hands under your armpits if you want, before you go back into downward dog you could take an upward dog and then drop to your knees lift up downward dog, last downward dog of today's practice, so if there's anything your body's craving or some flair you want to add you feel free to do that here, when you're ready you could come down into child's pose, sit your hips back on your heels, if you wanted you could bring your block under your forehead, sometimes I love the pressure of the block between the eyebrows, so I just align the block with my forehead, let your arms be a little more relaxed than we had them earlier in the practice, so the elbows can be bent supporting you to the sides, and you can linger here, sometimes I'll just roll my chin a little bit side to side, so you get a little massage of the nerve endings across the front of your brow line, then eventually you find yourself in the middle, chin pointing towards the floor, notice the touch of your body on the ground and the touch of your breath on your body, okay from this place we're going to make our way for a little closing hip opener and our short relaxation on the back, so we're gonna come down onto your back on your mat, however you like to get there works well, and bring your block underneath your pelvis, if you don't have a block you could fold up a blanket that works too, something under your pelvis, your legs up in the air, take a moment here and just again orient to the touch of your body on the ground and your breath on your body, and then bend your right knee hold your right hand on your right knee and reach your left leg up and away from you like you're drawing a rainbow in the sky with your left big toe, and just before your left leg touches the ground pause and reach like you're reaching from the inside of your left hip to the center of your left heel, and then slowly the left heel comes down both hands now on your right knee, squish your right knee in without moving your left heel, and then take your time when you're ready bring your left leg up all the way back up bring your right leg up, now left hand to your left knee, reach your right leg up and away from you, reach from the center of your right hip all the way to the center of your right heel, hover for a moment reach a little longer, bring your right heel down, keep your right heel where it is and bring both hands to your left knee, squish it in, pause, bring your right leg up, both legs come back up, sometimes I like to stay here for my relaxation so I'm gonna offer that you might choose to stay here for the next minute or so, and if you are preferring to come off of your block and come to lie down then that is also a wonderful option so you could bring your feet down, take your time to lift your block out bring your pelvis down, if there's any last little movements that you're craving maybe a little pelvic tilt or a knees windshield wipers you could take that now and then eventually let our legs extend palms pointing up, organize yourself with a bit of formality so you turn your palms up let your shoulders settle into the ground behind you might even blink a few times just being aware of the contrast of dark and light and then eventually even just for a few moments here allow yourself to be free of your doing brain so that quality of being which is somewhere between our conscious and our subconscious mind let yourself take a couple of slightly deeper breaths you might swallow move your tongue in your mouth blink a few times to wake up the sense organs and then roll to one side when you feel ready and bring yourself up to seated and you might find a comfortable seat you might just sit in a posture that works for you this morning bring your palms together as a little gesture of gratitude towards yourself and then as you like bring your palms to the ground and I like to think about this like just an offering of sharing our yoga with the world so that the benefits of our practice get to be spread into the rest of our lives and beyond so yoga mudra fold any amount and thank you so much friends see you again soon