Hippy Time

Hello, everyone, thanks so much for being here to practice today. I'm excited to share a hip-oriented practice with you all to explore all the different ways that your hips open and to work at creating better range of motion and function through some of these moves. For class today, it'll be helpful to have two blocks, a blanket and a strap. And I'm going to invite us to start on our back with a block and a thin folded blanket for under your head. So if you start with your block in a flat position, and then you've got your blanket for the place where you're going to put your head down, you might explore first putting your head down on the blanket, putting the blanket a little bit more towards the base of the occipital ridge, the base of your skull, and then maybe use your feet to move the block a little bit further away from your hips or closer to your hips.

Whatever feels best, once you rest the pinky edge of your foot on the block, bottoms of the feet touch, and then these drop out to the side. So you'll drop right into your first hip stretch. And then take a moment to maybe let your arms reach out to your sides as a way to try to have more of your back body on the floor. And if it feels like too much hip stretch, you'd maybe tip your knees towards each other and then work more into legs opening if that feels appropriate. All right, so we want to be maybe feeling a little bit of hip stretch, but not at all overwhelmed by that first stretch.

So let's take a moment to just notice what you're noticing. Is it ease, or is there a little bit of doubt or concern, and if you have any of the doubt or concern, please bring your legs closer together so we're more erring on the edge of being conservative. And then the breath can tell us a lot. So noticing does your breath feel deep, regular, or are you noticing a little bit more interrupted shallow breathing? For with the flowing, easy, comfortable breaths, maybe stay where we are, haven't quite reached that place yet.

Maybe again, keep exploring these coming closer together. So with a little bit of stretch in your hips, my hope is that you can start to feed more of your focused attention down into that area of your body. And imagining your breath carrying a little bit more hydration and warmth to help again, create better circulation and flow. So the tissues might not feel quite so stiff or dry. Let's take one more cycle of your breath where you are.

Before we gradually tilt your knees towards each other and think of little one inch increments to bring the legs together if they were all the way open. Then eventually the feet are on the block. Let's take your hands under the back of your head and lace your fingers together here. So I love this next move because it gets your shoulders, your spine, and your hips working together. And it's the one where we drop the legs back out to the sides.

And then as you exhale, we more quickly bring your knees to touch as you curl your head and shoulders off the floor. Roll back down on inhale and use your full exhale to curl yourself up off the floor. Knees touch, roll back down and do a few more. Exhale curl up and roll down. Just noticing how your shoulders, your spine, your core muscles, your pelvis all get a little bit of attention here and we're focusing mostly right now in that inner leg stretch, front of the pelvis stretch.

We'll definitely get to other parts of your hips in just a few moments. Next time you're in that curled up position, let's pause here and then let your head rest on your blanket. And if you can use your feet to lift your block, let's do that and then set the block off to the side. We'll leave your arms out to your side, feet on the ground. Let's tilt your left knee towards your chest first and then take your left leg in the air and start to draw a little circle with your left femur and it might feel like you're drawing a circle on the ceiling with your left foot.

It's one of my favorite things to do every day is to move the femur, each femur individually and noticing if it feels tight or if there's more popping, cracking sounds. Go the other direction. If you get more popping, cracking sounds, make your movements smaller and potentially consider recruiting a little bit more abdominal muscles so that you're more stable in your hip. Maybe sometimes that might promote a little bit more of that popping, cracking. Now let's put your left foot on top of your right knee area and tilt your right leg towards you.

This is the classic figure four leg shape. Please stretch your right heel towards the ceiling and then re-bend your right leg. Straighten your right leg towards the ceiling, re-bend the leg. Some of you might keep going with that up and down and others might use your strap in this moment to put around the bottom of your right foot. If your left knee is a little cranky here, you might want to skip using this strap or maybe you know using this strap actually is safe for this left side.

So if our hip is tight, sometimes it torques on the knee, it makes more tension on the knee, which is not where we want to feel the stretch. So as you pull the legs maybe towards you, your hands might walk up towards your foot, we get a hopefully great stretch in the back of your right leg and maybe a stretch in your left hip, maybe that outer hip area. So the buttock tailbone might lift off the ground. Let's take one more moment where you are and then if you move your legs a little bit forward to bend your right leg and get rid of that strap for a moment, as we reach forward and catch your left foot with both hands, lift your left foot towards the ceiling and then take your right leg straight up in the air. So we'll keep holding this left leg bent as you drop now your right leg down and now we open the front of that right hip, that psoas area, right leg up and then right leg down.

Maybe my second favorite thing to do every day and when I do targeted hip stretches, lower the right leg down, leg up. If you're someone who sits quite a bit, this should feel awesome through the front of that right hip, leg up and then the leg down and then take one pause. Maybe it feels good to lift the head up. Sometimes that actually makes the pose a little easier. So you just want to check is that true for you or not?

And then bring your head down, swing your right foot into your right hand. So you're holding both feet, squeeze your feet together for a moment and drop your heels towards your pelvis as now your knees press away from your shoulders and maybe you kind of feel into a slightly different place in your hips than where we've been so far today. Now, put both feet back on the floor and we'll do all that on the second side. So arms out to the side, let's take now your right leg in the air, draw a few circles with your right foot on the ceiling, but what we're really hopefully noticing is how your right femur, the head of your femur is moving in that ball and socket joints. Ideally your hips are neutral, so it's just the femur moving, not your hips.

Let's go the other direction and really celebrate what movement you do have here. And if that repetition is helping to create, again, a little bit better range of motion. Let's hang your right foot over that left knee area and then tilt your legs towards your chest so you're in figure four. Now stretch the left heel to the ceiling, bend that left leg, left leg in the air, bend that leg. So you might keep going that way or some of you will add the strap or on the bottom of your left foot and give yourself lots of room for your hands to wander up.

Maybe your legs move away from your face, maybe your legs move towards your face. Notice what's happening in your left knee. So if the hip is really tight, you feel it in the right knee, we want to really back up or get rid of the strap. For those of you where that feels like a good edge, notice how much do you want to tip your legs towards you as we hold for a few moments and your tailbone might actually come off the floor. Send your focused attention to whatever corner of your body you feel may be the most sensation.

Can we breathe there? Exhale out a little bit of tension or stiffness. If you move your leg forward, if you have the strap, let's get rid of the strap now off to your side and then let's grab that right foot while it's close to us, lift it towards the ceiling and then take your left leg in the air. Maybe your elbows are a little bent, start to drop your left leg down on exhale, leg back up and again the front left psoas area here is where we're kind of hopefully feeling more of the stretch. Lowering down on exhale, lifting up on inhale.

Down on exhale and maybe we're ready to hold the left leg parallel to the floor and see if you like lifting your head towards your right foot. Sometimes that can also give a deeper stretch in your right hip, inner right leg. When you come down, swig your left foot into your right left hand but now let your heels open out wide for happy baby where you might be holding either the front of your shins, your ankles or your feet and maybe rock yourself a little bit side to side. So you're just massaging along the sides of your torso and then as we start to slow down just kind of let the head of the femur settle in the joints, let gravity take the weight of the legs back towards the floor for one of our classic hip stretches. Let's transfer now your hands to your inner knees and move your legs forward so your legs are straight and kind of a big V shape.

Create a little resistance from your hands as you close the legs on exhale and then open out comfortable about inhale, squeeze into the midline on exhale. Open out wide on in breath, squeeze in on exhale and try a few more times. Again, the repetition hopefully helps to create better range of motion. Maybe increases the circulation and those inner legs or hip joints and I love doing the hip opening on the back because we'll often be more successful when our spine has support as we tend to the stiffness that might be in the legs. The legs will stay together, bend your knees, put your feet on the floor and if the blankets under your head still like at this point I'm going to fold that out of the way and have my head on the floor if that's okay for you.

Leave your arms at your side now parallel to the long edge of your mat and let your feet be a little bit closer than hip distance apart. So maybe a little closer than you normally do for bridge pose. Now please bring your left knee towards your chest, stretch your left leg in the air as your hands press down and right foot presses down, lift your hips towards the ceiling and when you look up you're trying to press your left foot towards the ceiling. Now we strengthen the back of that right hip, rebend your left knee, foot down, right knee towards your chest, right leg in the air, press firmly into your arms and left heel and rise up and take a moment to press your right foot towards the ceiling. Come down, right foot on the floor, a little faster, left knee in, left leg up, do your little push up and engage that right glute a little bit more, come back down with your left foot, right knee into the chest, right leg in the air and then lift yourself off the floor.

Come down, right foot down, one more cycle, left knee in, left foot up, look at that left foot and see it get closer to the ceiling, come down, right knee towards your chest, right foot in the air and then press yourself up, look at that right foot and then down we go. Tilt your knees towards you as you hold your knees, let's circle them independently for a moment. One of the ways again just to feel is one side a little bit tighter than the other, so your opposite direction, looking for better flow here in the hips. Now let's keep your knees together and then rock on up or roll to your side and come on up and then we'll turn and face the floor. Now in turning to face the floor, if you're on a harder surface you might appreciate having that blanket about the center of your mat and we're going to keep the hands out shoulder distance apart but let's send the knees out to the edge of your blanket and then bring your big toes to touch behind you.

See how far you might be able to sit back and everybody's knees are a little bit different so if knees wide pointing to the side doesn't feel safe, have your knees facing forward and whatever amount of wide knee child's pose feels appropriate for you, so it's kind of feeling into that movement. And now let's tip forward with your torso, so strong arms. Let's lift the feet towards your pelvis as you tilt a little forward and get to open a little bit more the front of the hips again as you tilt forward and then as you put your feet back on the ground we tip back, doing that version of wide knee child's pose. Tip forward, let your feet lift towards the back of the pelvis. Knees down the ground, hips back, be willing to make little adjustments with your knees or feet so that this feels safe in your knees.

Last time we'll head into that extended child's pose. Now when you come back to tabletop let's slide your knees maybe close together as close as you're comfortable, hands under the shoulders and I'd like you to lift that right leg up into the air, keep that right leg bent at that 90 degree angle. We'll start to reach out to the right and draw a circle with your right knee out to the side and at first you might want to look out in that direction and that's fine. Once you kind of a sense what you're doing you might look down at the floor. And it's generally not a huge movement, I'm just kind of feeling again how we're flowing on that right sides, creating a little more strength.

Let's keep your knee out to the side and see if you can stretch your right leg now straight out to the side and maybe you have to move a little bit more to the left on your yoga mat. So right toes facing parallel to the long edge of your mat. I like to grab a block here and have it ready to put underneath my forehead. I like my block in the flat position as I walk my hands forward like downward dog, put the block on the forehead or forehead might be on the ground and see if we can do a little bit of lift of your front ribs so that like in downward dog we might be focused on elongation in your spine and torso and if we keep that long torso we try to stretch the hips away from your shoulders and press into the right pinky side of your foot a little bit to wake up the inner left right leg, the inner hip area gets a fuller stretch. One more second here and as you lift your head up walk your hands in and then we'll slide your knees again together and then we'll get ready to if you need to move a little bit to the right lift your left leg at that 90 degree angle strong arms and then start to circle this left leg out to your side and if it helps you to look to your side for a moment to see what that knee is doing look to the side try to keep your right elbow straight oftentimes it wants to collapse when you do this but can you keep your arms straight even if it means you're not moving your left leg as as a far out to the side or up towards the ceiling and hopefully that feels warmed up enough now to kick your left leg out to the side and maybe slide more to the right depending on your space.

Hands walk out like you're doing downward dog putting my forehead on a block and it also again puts a little less weight in my hands a little less work in the shoulders if your head's on a block so please check your front ribs and just give them a little bit of lift into your back so that your spine is as long as possible as you stretch your hips back away from your shoulders and most of us will start to feel something interesting happening in that inner left leg if you're not you might focus a little bit more on pressing into the pinky side of your left foot. Take one more moment and join the hips moving back away from your shoulders the deep stretch for the inner left leg let's lift the head up now if you're ready walk your hands in and then bring your knees side by side or both knees on the blanket and we can get rid of that block for a second as you walk your hands in towards your knees take a pause to stretch your feet for a second and maybe from here we take a moment to roll your blankets and if you have that roll blanket let's put your heels on the on the high end and your toes down on the floor turn your toes out a few degrees as you reach down to touch the floor and try to enter into your squats be willing to adjust the angles of your feet so that you can come down and then stretch a little more through the back of the hips inner legs and finding the right amount of stretch for you if you enjoy the little check into our squat position with the heels up I often find it's a little more accessible to get into that pose let's go ahead and come up to stand use your legs to help you come up and when you step back off your blankets we won't need that for a bit so you might set that off to the side while we're up grab your blocks and let's take your blocks to the long edge of the mat and we'll leave those here and we'll get to those in a moment I'm gonna invite you to turn to the long edge of your mat and separate your feet definitely wider than your shoulders and then if you're comfortable once you're upright and balanced move your feet just a little bit wider apart we're gonna start by turning your right foot out first keep your right hand along the inner leg and guide that right leg out to the right and external rotation as your left arm reaches to the left and then exit maybe looking straight ahead for a moment as you slide right hand along right leg left arm to the left now maybe take a little peek to the left hand and let that left chest open a little bit more as your right hand presses into that right knee and then we'll exit let's do one more guide that left right hand along your right leg look out to the left and while you're opening that left chest now let's tilt to your right and slide your right forearm to your thigh and we'll swing that left arm in front of you and come into a little side angle pose and stretching that right left hand away from your left shoulder as you press more firmly into your left foot take one more second here and then we'll drop the left arm down straight in your right leg and turn your right foot forward bring your feet a little bit closer together as you get ready to transition to side two in case this is a tighter side often it's easier if your feet are closer to start perhaps do a little test to see when you bend your left leg does your knee go way over your foot or over your heel keep going wider until your left knee is more or less above your heel keep your left hand here now straighten your legs slide your left hand along the inner left leg line just to help guide that leg into external rotation right arm sticks out to the sides and then drop your right arm straighten left leg again left hand slides along the leg just to give a little feedback as your right arm reaches to the right release again maybe adjust your feet if you feel you want to sink in more left hand guides the leg to the left now take a moment look to your right hand and if your hand travels a little bit further back can you feel you get a fuller stretch through your chest then stay here as we tilt more to the left and rest your forearm on your thigh swing your right arm in front of you and maybe up somewhere above your cheek or your ear as you reach across the room and maybe your forearm left forearm is helping that left knee stay right above your left heel and if you're not sure please turn your gaze down towards your left knee that's okay to use your eyes here in this practice let's tilt on up as you straighten your left leg turn your left toes forward and now bring your feet a little bit closer together we'll bend both knees and then have a block for each hand when you tilt forward explore moving your feet wider apart once you have your blocks and I'm on a roll of mentioning all the things I love to do every day this pose would be number one my favorite probably yoga pose so I hope you appreciate this stretch with how much ease it creates to open the legs when they're wider and then if you wish you could take your blocks flatter or the same height and walk them a few inches or a block the length forward and when your head maybe drops between your arms and stretch the hips back and maybe tune into a fuller stretch for inner legs outer legs the back of the legs and the quadriceps are still firm so my legs are really engaged from top to bottom and then this gives that nice opportunity for a partial inversion with your head just a little bit lower than the hearts can be quite calming maybe one more in breath one more out breaths and if you're lifting your gaze to look towards those blocks bring your hands back in a little bit wiggle your feet a little bit closer together and now while you're holding those blocks toes turn out at a few degrees heels as wide as your shoulders start to come down like you're doing this squat and you've got your blocks in your hands just to hold on to as you move towards that transition of squatting so some of you will have hips higher some of you might have your hips down and maybe you don't even need the blocks where your hands are in front of your chest okay but they're there they're really nice to hold on to take one more moment in your transition from our squat let's go ahead put one hand back behind you and then sit down right now when you come down to sit I'm gonna have you move the blocks so they're out of your way for a moment and walk your hands back so that your fingertips are facing away from each other and as you tilt back see if we can hang your left ankle like we did on our back around that right knee zone and we might be at a great spot to already get a left hip stretch the outer hip or we walk in a little bit with our hands with our torso and as you lean towards your left leg you'll often get some great feedback down in your left hip corner and again we want to make sure that you're not feeling this in your left knee right take one more moment as you are here and now let's slide that right leg straight as you grab your left foot with both hands and when you lift your left foot up let's take that leg out to the right and to the left you're just kind of swinging your leg a little bit open to the right and to the left and let's take a moment then and plant that left foot on the ground as you hold on to your left knee with both hands and sit up tall and maybe tilt a little bit forward and when you do maybe you get a little stretch to that outer left hip on the sides okay then we'll lean back and put your hands on the floor feet on the ground and then turn your hands so they face away from each other sometimes it's easier in the rest now the right leg goes over and maybe you can already tell one side is a little bit more flexible than the other so be mindful be careful this could be your edge or walk your hands in a little closer towards your hips or your torso leans a little forward if you want more stretch and we're looking for that stretch in your right hip right so playing with that edge where is there something interesting to breathe into and then let's stretch your left leg straight grab a hold of your right foot with your hands and once you lift your foot just do that little exploration your leg going side to side to create again a little bit more movement down in that right hip crease area the right joints all right and then set your foot down right foot on the outside of that left leg somewhere when you hold your right knee with both hands sit up tall and then tilt a little bit towards your right leg to feel like maybe you get a little stretch in the outer hip area if it's not your tight spot you might not be getting that and then we'll sit up and put your legs out in front of you so now if you will reclaim your blocks and stack them side by side so you've got a nice base to sit on and transfer yourself up to that as you find your blanket again so if we can roll the blankets and then put that out in front of your blocks this is really nice if we have tighter hips which then makes the knees feel tight we cross the ankles on that bolster sorry we cross the ankles on your blankets the other B word and have a sitting position that often will bring a little more smile to your face a little more smile in each knee and just see how that feels to sit up and have that support right now as you are maybe getting a little bit more settled let your eyes focus on something out in front of you to steady our attention to help us slow down so maybe tune in to the length of our spine from our head down to our pelvis and when you're inhaling imagining a little bit more softening and widening down through the belly and hips as you exhale imagine a little bit more lift and length and toning from the pelvic floor up toward the diaphragm and widening down towards your hips on inhale and then lifting up on the exhale one more cycle tuning in on inhale widening softening and firming engaging on exhale as we lengthen up alright so as maybe we start to bring the hands together in front of the heart if you like that move a little gratitude for all the ways that our hips are able to move today in practice and I hope as you visit these moves again and again that there's a little bit more freedom and ease in moving in your hips as we move into the seasons ahead namaste everybody thanks so much for tuning in