Moving from Within

Welcome. I'm so happy that you're here today. This class is designed to build some energy through some rhythmic standing postures. We'll move through a simple hand balance, a back bend, and a forward fold sequence to close. Let's begin on our hands and knees. Once you arrive on your hands and knees, get oriented to the touch of your body on the ground. Move your hips in some circles. Switch directions when you feel happy to. Let's come into the center. Press your right knee and your left hand down. Hover your right hand. Hover your left knee. Elongate away from the middle of yourself. Pause. Come back into the center. Right hand and left knee. Press down. Hover right knee and left hand. Elongate away from center. Pause. Breathe. And ground. From here, we're going to flip our wrists. Do a few cat-cow curls with your wrists flipped. Curl your spine. Tuck your chin. Widen the back of your neck. Un-curl your spine. Widen your collarbones. Look forward and a little bit up. Curl. And uncurl. And then find the center and do one time where you curl from your tailbone. So start from your tail, curl down, and let it ripple up your spine all the way to the roof of your mouth. And then again, start at your tail. So arc your tail up. Let your belly descend. Let the movement roll up through your thoracic and the last thing to come forward and up is your neck. Beautiful. Curl the same way one more time. Tail guides you. It's like your head is following your tail. One more time. Arc from your tail first. Catch yourself if you jump and kind of skip areas of your spine all the way through to your crown. Beautiful. Find the middle of yourself. Turn your hands back to point. Ordinary direction. Tuck your toes under. Downward dog. Stay a few breaths in downward dog. Move your hips a little bit side to side. Play with coming to your tippy toes, elevating your pubic bone, rocking on your feet. Feel the energy from your calves through to the bottom of each foot. And then when you're ready from here, rock forward to plank pose. If your dog was a short dog, sometimes I take a short dog as my first dog.

So you come forward to plank pose, lengthen it a little bit so you can find the center and not feel like your heels are way behind your toes. Pause. As you're ready, come back and up to downward facing dog. Downward dog, drop to your knees. Spinal waves. Curl your spine back. Uncurl upward dog on your knees. I'm going to keep my toes tucked today here. If you want to have the tops of your feet down, that works too. Curl and uncurl. One more time. Curl and uncurl. Roll over your knees. Lift up and back. Downward dog. You can walk, step, or hop your feet forward to your hands. Inhale and exhale. First forward fold. Elbows on your knees. We'll cross reference to find the center. Press your left foot down. Widen your right hip to the right. As your right hip widens to the right, widen your left armpit to the left. As your left armpit goes left, widen your right ear to the right. So you're kind of zigzagging up your body with your awareness. Go the other side. So right heel presses down. Left hip widens. Left hip widens. Right armpit widens. Right armpit widens. Left ear widens. From here, bringing your hands down, hooking index and middle fingers around your big toes and folding any amount. Pause. Feel the touch of your feet on the ground. The touch of your breath on your body. Inhale and exhale. Release your hands. Lightly step or hop back. Downward dog. Downward dog forward to plank pose. Pause in plank pose. As you're ready from plank pose, lift up and back. Downward dog. Downward dog drop to your knees. Curl your spine back. Uncurl upward dog on your knees. Maybe reach out through your heels. Tucked toed up dog. Press through your right hand. Reach out through your left heel. Press through your left hand. Reach out through your right heel. Roll over your knees. Lift up and back. Downward dog. As you're ready, bend your knees. Lightly walk step or hop your feet forward to your hands. Inhale and exhale to fold. This time in your Uttanasana you're going to bring your hands under your heels and cup your hands under your heels. Feel the weight of your heels just gently spreading out the bones of your hands. Bend your knees as much as you need to to feel your thighs and your belly close together. Let go of the mindset that the legs need to be straight. Widen your armpits. Let your head release any amount. Then just gently tip your weight slightly forward into your toe pads. See how much weight your toe pads can take. It takes a little bit of trust.

Surrender to the strength in the front of the foot. Moving in the direction that we're going. Breathe from the inside of your body to the outside of your body. Feel the shape of your legs hugging the bones of your legs. Release your arms. Lightly step, walk or hop your feet back. Inhale and exhale. Pause. Forward to plank pose. Pause. Stay an extra breath. Find that edge of comfort you can always drop to your knees. Roll up over your toes. Downward dog. Downward dog drop to your knees. Unfurl. Upward dog on your knees. Upward dog on your knees. Press into your right hand. Reach out through your left heel. Look over your left shoulder. Bring your left knee down. Look forward. Press into your left hand. Reach out through your right heel. Look over your right shoulder. Back into the center. Press out through both heels. As you press into your hands, you can even bend your elbows a little bit and kind of move a little bit side to side. There's no hyperextension happening in our elbows. Nice work. Roll over your knees. Lift up and back. Downward dog. Downward dog. Bend your knees. Lightly walk, step or hop your feet forward to your hands. I'm going to get two blocks and bring them in front of my feet. Blocks in front of my feet to start and just use a little bit of elevation in your with your hands a little bit higher. You can open the fronts of your hip joints and maybe elongate your legs if you've been doing these folds with bent knees. Pause. And then I'm going to move my arms a little bit further forward. Press my hands down into the blocks to keep some integration. So it's almost like I'm in downward dog arms. A little bit of space between my armpits and my ears. Let your head relax. Charge your legs. If I press my hands down and lift my gaze, sometimes I just push my blocks a little bit further forward to elongate. And then I press my hands down into the blocks and let the eyes of my heart open forward. Shift my kneecaps forward. And then hang. Stay a couple of breaths. The touch of your body on the ground, the touch of your breath on your body. And play with the different positions of your neck. So sometimes if you press down into your hands, you can look forward. See how that feels. Looking where we're going. Sometimes letting our head release. Looking behind us. Seeing how that feels. Then we'll bring our blocks in. And just one block for this next part. The block right in the center. Bring your left hand to the block. Let's do right hand. We'll bring right hand to the block. Left hand to your sacrum. And just pause here in this twist.

The primary twist is to the left. And as you do that, press from your right hip into your right foot. So you keep the right hip on the right side of your body. Beautiful. Bring your left hand down. Right hand to your sacrum. Same thing. Primary twist is open to the right. See if you can bring some energy into your left hip and keep your left hip on the left side of your body by pressing down into your left foot. Beautiful. Come into the center. And hang. You can hang sometimes depending on the depth of your hang. You can let the crown of your head rest onto a block. And take a couple of moments. From your hanging forward fold, you can take your time as you're ready and inhale. Come all the way up to standing. Once you come up to standing, we're going to take a few balancing postures starting with trees. So stand on your left foot. Bring your right foot up to your left inner thigh. Hands there. Sometimes here I just like to press my hands down to feel my feet touching the ground. Feel grounded. And then inhale. Let your arms come up. Sometimes I'll clasp my hands, press palms up towards the ceiling. Stay a few moments. Feel all of the movement inside of the stillness, which is kind of the gift of staying a little longer in some of these shapes. Bring your arms down. Bring your right leg up and over your left. This might be reasonable or you might hook your foot. Snuggle in. Get your right arm underneath your left arm. Maybe hold hands with yourself and hold the center line. When you're ready, stand. Other side. Stand on your right foot. Bring your left leg up. Tree pose. Any height.

And our knee and our thigh and our shin. Also just tippy toe on the floor. Again, start by just whoomp, pressing your palms down. I sometimes think of pressing balloons underwater, the energy of like really grounding, like your roots are going under the surface of the earth. Arms come up. Clasp the non-habitual way. Get taller. Widen your eyes. Feel again the little movements inside of the illusion of stillness. Like watching an old growth tree in the forest. Bring your arms down. Bring your left leg up and over this time. You can hook your foot. Bring your left arm under. Hold hands with yourself. Widen your gaze. Again, find the illusion of stillness by noticing the micro movements without reacting to them. And then release your arms. Release your leg. Nice work. Okay. Trikonasana. I'm going to find a block for the sequence again. We're going to start with a little balance play. So stand on your left foot and just step your right foot back and I'm going to reach my right arm forward. Tap your right big toe. Reach your right arm forward and then come up and do that one more time. Reach your right arm forward. Tap your right big toe and then come up. Last time, let your right leg land slowly behind you. So your right foot comes down. Line up the left heel with the inner arch of your right foot. Pause and just like a butterfly on a flower. You're going to bring your left hand down either to block your shin. If you want to go lower, you can and land it really quietly. Let your right arm open. Stay for a breath. You can spin your gaze if you like towards the sky. Exhale, look down. Momentarily hover your hand and just feel that you're integrated through the legs to support the arm lines in the torso and then come up. Then I'm going to step my right foot out to the right and spin towards you. So here we go. I'm going to bring my right hand down to the block. Higher is nice here, I find. With the hand on the block, bring your left hand to the sacrum. Widen your right hip to the right, your left hip to the left. If you want to be lower, you can lower your block no problem. But keep the space so it feels really breathable. And then as you like, you can keep your hand on the sacrum or you can float your left arm up. And sometimes I play with just swimming the arm forward, following it with my eyes, spinning it back forward and bringing it up. So I'm not over-muscling my shoulders to perform the pose. I'm allowing the pose to find itself from the inside. When you're ready, coming up, step back to the front of your mat. Other side, stand on your right foot. Left arm goes forward, left big toe taps. Come forward to the center. And again, left arm forward, left leg back. Coming up. Last time, let the leg land. Line up your right heel this time with the inner arch of your left foot. Feel that the quality of your descent is like a butterfly landing on a flower. So it's light. Come up and down a few times. Find the right height. If you want the block or use your own body for support, bring your top arm up. Check in. Hover the bottom arm. Bring it down. Allow yourself to use the bottom arm for support without collapsing into it. Spin your gaze.

Exhale to look down. Inhale to come up. We'll bring our left leg a little bit to the left so we can spin our belly towards our right big toe. Bring your left hand down to the block. High, low, medium. Right hand on your sacrum. Pause. Widen your left hip to the left and your right hip to the right. You can stay here and work the spin without adding the arm or slowly bring your arm up. Spin your gaze. Maybe you like that arm circle we did where you spin the arm forward. Follow it with your eyes. Spin it up and behind you. Take another breath. Exhale to look down. Inhale to come up and we'll lean into the front foot. Step back to the front of the mat. Move our block out to the side and we'll vinyasa down towards the ground. Feet go down, arms come up. Exhale to fold. Inhale wide armpit, space for the throat. Exhale, step or hop back, downward dog. Downward dog forward to plank. From knees or toes, lower halfway or all the way, inhale over knees or toes, upward dog. Exhale over knees or toes, downward dog. From your downward facing dog as you're ready we're going to come onto our bellies. Once you get onto your belly you're going to come onto your left side. So you can come down onto your left side. And I'm just going to lie on my left side but I'm going to look at my body and kind of imagine that I'm lying on a balance beam. So kind of relatively you can use floorboards or reference points and then just support your head. Lift your top arm. Stay a couple of breaths. Essentially vashi stasana except we're not balancing on our bottom arm. You might even close your eyes here and feel that the illusion of stillness is kind of interesting. When you close your eyes you can feel all the micro adjustments you're making. And then play with eyes open or eyes closed. You can press your bottom foot down, hover your top leg, maybe bend your top knee and maybe see if you can hold your top knee. Some of you might hold your top foot. And maybe it feels interesting to sort of feel the wobbles, see if you can extend the top leg without leaning or sort of falling behind you. And it's surprisingly tricky even though it's simple. And that quietness from within is something that I find really curious to play with in these postures is sort of seeing if we can keep the inner quiet even as we start to extend into more playful shapes. Okay, return to your side. And then we will try the other side. So roll across your belly and you can come onto the other side, your right side. Line yourself up like you're on a balance beam. Support your head. Lift your top arm. Maybe lift your gaze a little bit up. Maybe close your eyes. And you might just notice all of the parts of your body that are touching the ground. So pinky toe side of your foot, outer hip, outer elbow. Feel the little micro adjustments that you're making. You could hover your top leg. Pause. Maybe bend your top knee. Do it all slowly so you feel all those little micro adjustments, all the places where you might tend to adjust by gripping superficially. Maybe hold your top knee. Maybe hold your top foot. Nice work, everyone. Maybe you lengthen your top leg. And just slowly play. Maybe you release your top leg, bend it, bring it down. All the little ways we kind of lean back or find the little ways we can move from the outside rather than the inside. So play with it. There's no perfect pose. When you're ready, come out of it. And we will find downward dog and then move it into Vashisthasana. So downward dog, when you're happy there, just move your hips a little bit side to side. I like to think about drawing a rainbow in the sky with my bum. And then the next time you go to the right side, press into your right hand, press into both feet, and just lift your left hand a little bit. And then you can bring your left hand down, move your hips up and over to the left, lift your right hand, and just play with it for a moment. And this might be a good place to work. You might be happy to just go side to side and start to lift a hand. And if you'd like, the next time your hips go to the right, you can either bring your right knee down and take Vashisthasana, right side, or you can keep your feet down and take Vashisthasana. And if you want to add lifting the foot or a leg variation, go for it. You don't have to, of course. When you're ready, bring both hands down, maybe take a brief rest in child's pose, roll your wrists, and we'll try the other side. So your hands come down, move your hips side to side again. Kind of really imagine that you are a creature, because you are a four-legged creature. And as you go right, lift your left hand. As you go left, lift your right hand. Start to feel the transfer of weight. So it feels less like we're robots and more like we're organic creatures in the ocean. Next time your hips go left, again, you can bring your left knee down, lift your right arm up, or you can go left, bring your feet together, and play with letting the pose expand from the inside of you to the outside of you. Play with that quality of balance, which isn't really about stillness. Beautiful. When you're ready, coming out of it, drop down to your knees, pause, you can roll your wrists, take a few breaths. Noticing the kind of vitality and the energy that emerges through our body from different shapes is an interesting part of the yoga practice. When you're ready, you can come up onto your knees, and we'll take Ustrasana, Camel Pose. So I'm going to grab a block for this one, maybe two blocks if you feel like you might like them. And we're just going to go a little bit side to side. So left hand on your left hip, reach your right arm up. Right hand on your right hip, lift your left arm up. Beautiful. One more time. Left hand on your left hip, right arm up. Left hand on your left, or right hand on your right hip, left arm up. Beautiful. And then if you want, you could bring a block down to the outer heel, or you could go hand on heel. So left hand down on block or heel, lift your right arm up, you can look down here, or look up. And then coming up, right hand to a block or to the right heel, left arm up. And switch sides a few times, you don't have to drop down. So staying high is nice if you get any feelings of compression or it's not breathable to drop lower. Really feel the dimensional quality of this movement. So it takes up space, it's round, it's breathable.

You can keep with that or if you want to take one time in your strasana, you could take both hands back, play, let it feel playful, accessible, fun. Maybe one more moment. When you're done, just come to kneeling, bring your hands on your thighs, take a pause. And then we will come to seated for Janya Sushasana. So I'm going to find a blanket and sit on my blanket for seated Janya Sushasana, our seated tree sequence. So my right foot will come in, my left leg is out to the left. And you can, from here, your legs are open and then I might close them in a moment, but I'll show you left hand on your right knee, spin open to the right and kind of lean back out of that left arm. So you're opening, beautiful. And then from here, you can lean your left shoulder a little bit to the left and bring your left hand to the top of your left ankle. Some of you might bend your elbow and bring your forearm to your shin. I'm going to look down to start, bring my right hand to the right side of my waist. You could stay here and breathe. If you like, bring your right arm up. And over your right ear, spin your gaze. Take a breath. Parvrita Janya Sushasana. Take a side angle pose and seated. And then when you're ready to come up, you're going to come up and bring this left leg a little bit in and bring your right hand to the outside of your left leg. Left fingertips to the outside of your left leg and spin to the left. Staying high is kind of nice here. You can really wrap your right kidney around towards your left inner thigh. Sometimes this is a perfect place to stay. If you're called to fold, you could bring your left hand to meet your right hand and fold over your left leg. Any amount. Staying high is perfectly fine too. Pause where you are. Take a breath all the way to the end of an exhale. And when you're ready, come up and we'll open our right leg to the right. Bring your left hand to your right knee and lean into it. Breathe for a breath. Lean a little bit more. Bring your right hand to the top of your right ankle or forearm to your shin. Left hand to the left side of your body. Breathe a breath into your left side. You might stay there. If you like, you sweep your left arm up and over, spinning to look down or up. Exhale to look down. Inhale to come up. Bring your right leg in. Left hand to the outside of your right leg. Right fingertips outside of your right hip. And then staying here and staying tall to find your left kidney spinning towards your right leg or folding over your right leg. Any amount. Finish your exhale all the way to the end. Come up. And we'll make our way onto our back. I'm going to set myself up with a blanket and come onto my back. I'll meet you there. From your back, we will take our legs up and bring our hands to our knees. Or if you like, hold the backs of your hamstrings and lift your shins up a little so you're in a comfortable happy baby shape. You might like to hold your shins or your feet. If it's comfortable, draw your kneecaps towards your armpits and maybe open your legs a little bit. And then just breathe the touch of your back on the ground. This is a really nice inversion. Our legs are above our hearts, supporting all the space and energy we've created in our bodies. Just receiving the touch of our breath without micromanaging it actually inquire, how am I breathing? And the offering here is to stay here another moment or two. When you feel satisfied, you can release and you can either today lie in a shavasana for a minute or so, or I'm going to come up and just offer a little seated meditation to close. So I'm going to sit on a blanket, find a comfortable seat and take a moment here in quiet. So you can either be lying down or in seated and I'll just guide us through a short breath awareness practice. So in seated or lying down, just turn your chin a little bit to the left and breathe through the right side of your neck, your right nostril. You might even bring your left thumb to your left nostril and breathe in through your right nostril. Just one breath. Bring your hand down, bring your head to the center. Take a breath right through the middle. Feel the center of the center and then bring your chin to the right. You can do this lying down as well. Feel the left side of your neck up into your jaw. Breathe through your left nostril. You can bring your right thumb to your right nostril. Take a nice breath in and out of your left nostril. And gently bring your hand down, bring your head to the center and breathe right through the middle as if you could thread a needle through the center of the center within you. A sort of quiet place within that is always there as a resource. When you're ready, you can bring your palms together. If you're still lying down, make your way up as you're ready or stay a little longer. Thank you so much for being here today. It's such a joy to practice together. See you soon. Namaste.