Frail Practitioner

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the introduction to a bone healthy practice. In this class will be putting together all of the previous shorter classes for an experience of movement in your body that feels more like a flowing yoga class. You can do this if you have an injury. You can also do this with low bone density to prepare you for the more vigorous practice or bone loading exercises.

You'll need some props. We'll start with the towel that's about 48 inches long, and that you can use something like a broomstick or a mop and take the mop off the handle and use the handle of those objects for your spine alignment and for balance. Then you'll need a yoga strap, could be a dog leash, a necktie, back road belt, something you have at home that doesn't have a lot of stretch that you can use for feedback. And an elastic band, like a resistance band will be also sufficient for that. And then you'll need a ball. Some type of round object could be a yoga bolster, could be a roll of towels, could be a soccer ball with some of the air taken out of it or a fancy massage ball.

Then you'll need a pillow that's just like a throw pillow from your sofa, that you can use to cushion your ribs and support your head. Alright. Let's get started. Stacking your bones is where we started. And this is where we'll focus on the feet, rocking back and forth, allowing the arches to stay lifted, placing 60% of the weight to the outside of the feet, 40% to the inside, lift the toes as you breathe in, let the shoulders come up. Breathe out, lower the toes, lower the shoulders.

Spread the hands and the feet. Again, lift up, breathe in, and breathe out. Now move your focus to your pelvis. Or you're shifting back and forth. And then talk the tail under.

Lift the tail up. Feeling free to palpate or feel the muscles of your back, making sure they're relaxed and lengthened in the pelvic position. Now bring your hands to your rib cage, letting your rib cage swing forward and backward like a bell. And now stack the ribs over the pelvis. Think of lifting the back of your ribs or your kidneys up off the back of your waist.

And then allow your shoulder blades and your collar bones to be placed on the rib cage just like a coat on a hanger. Now bring your head back, drawing the throat back, feeling the length through the back of the neck. Feeling that sense of elongation from the crown of your head to the sky. From here, let's see if we can lift up rising up on the tiptoes, heels together. If you feel like you need support for balance, You can take your dowel, put it beside you, and give yourself a little bit of support. If you don't need that support, go ahead and pick it up so it's there if you need it.

If you need to space the heels apart, if your knees are kind of bumping into each other, then you can use a tennis ball place it between your heels just like we referred to in the 1st class. Take it up and down. Making sure the alignment of your ankle is right over the middle of the foot. Now place the dial down, lift one leg. So this is our preparation for the tree pose.

Great for your balance. Rising up and down. Exhale to lift and lower and lift and lower. If you can do this without the dowel, that'd be even better. And just put it down if you need it, right, to steady your balance. Switch sides.

Lift that knee to about a ninety degree angle, lift through the pelvis, make sure the pelvis is level. You're not hiking or dropping, and we rise up. And lift, exhale to lift, inhale to lower, lift, and lower. And again, put the dial down if you need it. Now shake it out a little bit.

And now we're gonna practice our hip hinge where we place the dowel against our spine, touching the head, the mid back, and the sacrum. Separate your feet just a little bit. Think of lifting the toes so that your arch is lift You maintain the sixtyforty relationship of the feet, keeping the knees going right over the middle of the foot, thinking of sitting the hips back, placing the thumb in between the stick and the low back to maintain the position of your spine, and then see if you can touch the floor in between your feet. And feel free to take your feet wider. For an easier position to flex the hip. And then just go as far as you can, even if you are unable to touch the floor because your hips are a little stiff, just stop and notice how far down you can go.

Alright. Now bring your feet back to parallel. Take the dial off your back and place it on the mat in front of you. Now let's take one big leap for man and humankind and take it forward. And see if you can maintain that vertical position of your torso eyes looking straight ahead. Again, chin drawn in and down.

Throat pulling back and thinking of that elongation of your spine. So let's take the arm up, lengthening up, drawing that shoulder down and then see if we can bend the knees, keeping that back heel lifted. When I avoid letting it collapse as you drop down and then slowly descend a quarter at a time. So maybe a quarter descent, then half, then three quarters, And notice if your spine is tilting forward, reaching the arm up really helps maintain that vertical position. So then your goal would be to touch the floor and come back up.

And let's hold here just hovering off the mat and take three breaths. If you need support here, you can go against a door frame where you're standing in the door frame, taking a foot forward into the space of the door, and then placing the other foot along the wall behind you. Take it up, step together, bring the arm down. Let's switch arms, and then step forward with the other foot and try to get that three foot stride length as best you can, and then allow the heel to lower and lift keeping both legs straight. Imagine your pelvis is just pointed straight ahead. Your collarbone eyes are looking straight ahead, and the eyes of your head are looking straight in front of you.

Now let's lift the arm, imagining our warrior poses, and then slowly descending about a quarter of the way, easing into it, making sure our knees feel good about this, And then slowly descending a little further each time. If you feel that your trunk is kind of tilting forward, Then you wanna stop the descent and maintain that position, and we hover in place, lengthening the arm up, pressing into the dowel, activating that back of that shoulder blade, breathing in, and breathing out. Breathing in and breathing out. Now we're gonna go ahead and take it all the way to the floor. Come on to both knees.

Feel free to use your pillow to cushion your knees if you'd like to, and then find your way to a quadruped position. Let's take the elbows and lock them for a moment and see if you can find your neutral spine position. Thinking of drawing up through the back of the head, draw up through the tailbone, and feel free to use your dowel to check-in with that if you need to. And then take it forward, stretch your wrist, and then hinge back to stretch the toes. Bring it forward to stretch the wrists.

It's usually more effective to stretch the wrist with the elbow straight. And sort of in that locked position. And then once we begin our weight bearing on the hands, We wanna take the elbows into that princess shape, pulling the mat slightly apart, and then let's sink between the shoulder blades and press up. This is our preparation for plank poses, sink without sinking the head. Right? So we don't wanna drop the head down. I want you to move the shoulder blades on the back.

Now let's see if we can perform our modified cat cow. I'm gonna keep the thoracic spine still and then draw the tailbone down and inhale to lift the tailbone. So you're, in essence, moving just the lumbar spine. Tuck the tail under. Lift the tailbone up.

And then again, exhale to tuck the tailbone under and lift the tailbone up. Alright. Now sit back on the mat and then make your way down to a supine position. Lengthening the spine, take it all the way down to your side, and then roll to your back. Let's find length here as much as possible anchoring the pelvis onto the mat, the rib cage onto the mat, and then the shoulder blades onto the mat.

Breathe in. Allow the rib cage to sink and melt into the mat. And then exhale and inhale. Let's take the yoga strap and place it around the rib cage. We'll wrap it around the lowest part to the ribs and practice our costal breathing.

So let's bring the straps together and hold them firmly so you really feel that tightness around your rib cage. And then as you breathe, your attempt to expand the rib cage will result in that opening of the front of the ribs. By about 2 inches. And now this time, let's exaggerate the exhale Feel how your strap will cross over. Getting that 2 inch opening and 2 inch closing.

So notice that your abdominal wall is not moving. Or performing a costal or working breath, not a diaphragmatic breath or belly breath. We'll slide the strap down to the low back. And then you wanna place it right underneath the belly button, you kinda measure off where that is, and then place the hands down by your side. Now let's do a little pelvic tilt back and forth imagining that you're lying on a face of a clock, rolling from the 12 o'clock position to this o'clock position, and you can inhale to roll the pelvis forward like a wheel rolling forward.

And then exhale roll the wheel back. And, again, inhale forward and exhale back. Now let's roll from the 6 o'clock or the, excuse me, the 9 o'clock to the 3 o'clock position. And then lifting one pelvis up and back down. Imagine that your knees are between two panes of glass.

And your rib cage stays fairly still. So you're thinking of bringing this pelvic bone toward this rib, the opposite rib, and the left pelvic bone toward the right rib. Right pelvic bone toward the left rib. Sometimes helps with that performance. Alright.

Now with the feet wide, breathe in, Imagine your spine is taped to the mat, breathe out, to peel up one bone at a time, lengthening up across the room, Make sure the shoulder blades are pressed into the mat. Back of your neck is lengthened. As you exhale, Imagine softening the breastbone and rolling down one bone at a time. This will help to mobilize your entire spine from the thoracic to the lumbar. Peeling up again, taking it up.

Stay at the top. Breathe in, and then lower right buttock to the mat and back up. Left buttock to the mat and up one more time each side and up. Inhale to lower and exhale to lift. Take another breath here at the top.

Exhale. Really press into your feet to pull that pelvis across the room. Lift the toes. Rolling all the way down, place the toes back down. Now let's bring the knees up right above your hips, and then keeping your pelvis in a neutral position so that you have a slight inward curve under your back. Circle your hips in the socket, letting your feet just be relaxed and dangle.

So good for stiff or arthritic hip, and now reverse the direction. This time, keep your knees together, and you can circle knees in the same direction. And this is gonna give you a little back massage. Moving more through the spine and pelvis and less through the hips. And that can be a really nice massage to your back.

Alright. Now place the feet down this time feet together. And let's rotate the knees from side to side. Again, keeping with that theme of moving the spine. Keeping the knees together, letting a heel lift as you rotate. Rib cage stays down.

And now we're gonna keep the pelvis still and just open one leg. A very different experience there. So now you're moving your hip and keeping your spine in pelvis still. Let's try that on the other side. Rotating open and close. Spine is in neutral.

Have a slight inward curve in your low back. And one more time. Now let's advance that a little bit, give you a little challenge to your core control, and I take the leg to a ninety degree angle, open the leg out to the side, and back to center. So pelvic floor gets to work a little bit here. Open and close.

Alright. Other side, lifting up. Open out. Exhale back in, inhale to open, and exhale in. Oh, let's let that other leg come up. Still in that neutral pelvis position, open out to the right, exhale to close.

Open outright and close. Opposite side, Keep the anchor points of your pelvis. Keep the shoulder blades anchored as you move your hip. Alright. Place the feet down one at a time and renew your focus onto your strap that's below your back. Make sure it's still in place, hold it with one hand, and then we're gonna go into a flat back position, to emphasize abdominal strengthening. So notice if your neck is jutting forward or pushing into the mat, and you're welcome to use a pillow to help relax the neck if you need that.

Now let's bring the feet together and then take one leg up. And then this time, we're gonna really focus on our breath to take a breath in first and then exhale lift that second leg up. That's usually where we need that core support to be able to keep the tail from wagging the dog. Right? And let's touch one foot down. And back up or tugging on that strap to make sure it stays underneath.

This hand is not doing anything. And then we touch and lift. When I call this dip the foot in the pool, and you're just thinking of dipping your toe right in the pool and coming right back up. And you're watching to see that you don't arch your back. And again, wag the dog instead of the dog wag in the tail. Now let's do one more pressing down and then touch and lift.

Touch and lift. And to progress this, you would start to extend outward. Making sure that you can still hold the strap down. And you know if you've gone too far, you just back it up and do a few more repetitions in that shorter range of motion. Alright. Let's take the feet down 1 at a time.

And we'll take the strap out from under the back, roll to the side, And you'll wanna use your pillow to support your head and neck. Place it under the neck and snug it in towards your shoulder and find that good position for the neck so that your neck is in alignment with your body. Imagine a wall behind your mat lengthen your spine, and find that lift through the right side of your waist. Keep the feet and knees stacked to start. And now we inhale to prepare, exhale with the knee for your clamshell.

And, again, exhale lift and lower. And lift and lower. And lift and lower. Now let's change this to more of a fire hydrant where you lift the whole leg up so the shin stays parallel to the floor. Inhale to lower, exhale lift, inhale lower, and exhale to lift.

And inhale to lower. Now let's try straightening the leg out, really reach across the room so much that you feel your waistline lift. And then flex the foot, take the leg forward, and just go as far as you can, and just explore how far you can go without changing your pelvis position. Point the toe and sweep the leg back. Now you're really trying to see how far back can I go without changing my spine or pelvis?

Flex the foot, take it forward, inhale, and then exhale, sweep it back, Inhale forward. Still practicing your costal breath. Maintaining the abdominal wall firm and then take it all the way down. Alright. Now lift top arm, we're gonna go into book opening now where you rotate through the spine. Let's look at that top hand.

Make sure the pillow is far back enough to support your head. And then keeping your hips and pelvis and knees stacked up, rotate as if you're trying to get your shoulder blade to come to the mat. Take it back up. Breathe in. Breathe out as you rotate back.

That's gonna give you more room for rotation, drawing those ribs down a little bit. Inhale, take it up. 1 more in that position. Exhale to take it back. Make sure you can always see your hand and your peripheral vision, and then take it back up.

Place the hand behind your head. Open up the armpit toward the ceiling, open the elbow, and really try to aim that elbow toward the back wall. This is good if you have shoulder issues, and it hurts to reach your arm back like that. And you could just take the whole shoulder situation out of the picture and work on rotating through the spine. Exhale, reaching back, and take it back up.

Alright. Place this hand down on the mat. Now press yourself up to sitting, and we'll change to the other side. Let's place the pillow on the other side and do that same sequence. On our left side. Again, make sure the pillow's far enough back that when you roll back that you don't fall off of it, and then snug it in under that neck so that it supports your head and neck in a neutral or elongated position.

And then stack up your hips, lengthening the spine as much as possible before you start, and then stack your feet and knees. And now with the hand on the pelvis, sometimes that helps to monitor yourself as you do the clamshell lifting the leg up. Breathing in and breathing out to lift. Take it up feel the rotation in the hip, which is a much smaller movement than you realize. If you're not rolling that pelvis back, Now we're gonna lift the entire leg up, and you'll feel a lot more mobility in this position, doing the fire hydrant, And then make sure that your waistline doesn't sag down as you lift the leg.

Wanna maintain that length. And that lift through the bottom side as you lift the top leg. Alright. Now let's stretch that leg out. And then place the hand on the mat for support as you swing the leg forward slowly flexing through the foot. And go as far as you can and explore that range of motion, feeling the hamstring, get a little stretch here.

And then point the toes. You sweep the leg back, lengthening back with your knee straight. And then flex to bring the leg forward and point to reach it back. Really trying to keep that pelvis from swaying back and forth and the waistline from dropping. Also notice if your neck is tense or your shoulder is tense and see if you can relax that neck and shoulder.

Breathe in, and breathe out to reach the leg back. Now stack your knees on top of each other. Hips, feet, and knees stacked up. And let's lift the top arm. Roll the head back and look at the top arm.

And then reach the arm behind you, rotating through the spine, and making sure that you can see your hand and your peripheral vision. Now take it up. Breathe in. And breathe out, rotate back. Think of your breastbone having a light shining toward the ceiling.

Keep your knees glued together. That'll help your pelvis stay stacked. And let's do one more like that. Exhale, reach back, and then inhale to take it up. Now take your hand behind your head, especially if you have a shoulder problem that makes it difficult for you to reach behind you.

And then take it back and really focus on the spine rotating instead of the arm moving. So your arm stays steady. Your spine is what rotates. You're thinking of aiming that shoulder blade toward the mat behind you. Breathe in and breathe out.

And then return to the stacked position. Place your hand on the mat. And then let's press ourselves up to sitting. And then we'll remove the pillow, and let's get the ball. And we're gonna put the ball behind our back.

Now remember, you can use a roll of towels, a foam roller, or another type of ball to do this exercise. Now let's place our hands behind the head and then place the thumbs on the suboccipital muscles. Feeling a little bit of traction or lengthening of your spine. So you're pulling outward on your head. And then your eyes are gonna be looking at the crown molding across room or maybe to the height of a door frame. Let's breathe in as we go back.

And, again, that brush bone headlights are really good image here to think I'm moving through the breastbone. I'm shining the breastbone toward the ceiling. Exhale bringing the ribs toward the pelvis, that's actually what brings your head up as the abdominals. You're supporting your head and not pulling it forward. So let's take it back, inhale stretching back, lengthening here. So good for thoracic mobility.

And then exhale to take it up. Breathe in as you go back. Notice if you can see a little further behind you with each repetition and then exhale to take it up. Now we're gonna lift the hips, move the buttocks toward the feet, put the buttocks back down on the mat, and then bring the elbows forward because now the ball is in the mid thoracic area between the shoulder blades. We gotta get those out of the way. Look at the ceiling with your elbow eyes.

Your breastbone shines to the ceiling. And then if you can take it back a little further, and then exhale, take it up. Usually, you'll have less mobility as you go up the vertebral column. So don't expect that gonna be able to move more and more. You're actually moving a little bit less. The further up the back, the ball goes. Exhale wrapping the spine around the ball, and then take it up.

Let's practice an inhale here as we go back, and then exhale up. Inhale. Take it back one more time. And exhale up. You may notice you have different spots that you wanna work on. Let's lift the hips. And move to a different location, more in the upper thoracic.

Now you have a choice here. You can keep your hips down, or if you want more, a little more pressure up there. You can lift your hips up and kinda hover off the mat and then take the head back. So now the spine is going to stay still. I'm gonna take my hand and put it on my chin just to kinda show you and get my arm out of the way so you can see how I'm taking the head back.

Keep my eyes looking at the ceiling and then take it back. So if you can keep your head steady, you're just doing a retraction, exhaling, reaching back, getting the head closer to the floor. And I think of this like the chicken and the swan. This is your swan neck, and then here's your chicken neck. That's what we don't want. We want more swan.

And then one more time, take it up, and then reach it back. So if you have stiffness in your neck or suboccipital headaches, or forward head posture, if you roll towards the ball so that you're placing the ball into the nape of your neck and place your hands on the mat. And then you can relax on the ball and let your head and neck just melt into the ball. That feels good to you. You can come back to that a little bit later and maybe even do that in your Shavasana position.

Let's roll to the side and come up to sitting, and then we'll put the ball away. And then let's get our pillow, and we can work on our prone extension strengthening work. So what we just did was mobilize the thoracic spine. Now we're gonna try strengthening the muscles of the thoracic spine and in the process, build bone density as well. So you'll want the pillow right under your rib cage, but not under your pelvis or pubic bones.

You want your pelvis to kinda slope downward from your rib cage. This helps to ease the low back, but most importantly, it protects your ribs from excessive pressures from a hard surface. Let's place the hands under the forehead. And before you start, take a moment to get long. So we wanna get long and strong.

Wiggling our pelvis away from the ribs, draw the shoulders away from your ears, and then make your neck as long as possible. Then draw the armpits down and wide. Let's breathe in here. Just for a moment, practice a diaphragmatic breath where you let your belly expand into the mat. Now let's change that to more of a costal breath where you feel your ribs expand outward and upward like bucket handles.

Take your head off your hands. Lifting your face away from the mat, looking down at your thumbs, and keep your forearms glued to the mat. And then lower the head back down, keeping the back of the neck long, lift through the front of the neck, keep your eyes on your thumbs. Press slightly into the pubic bone so that your back doesn't over arch, and then take it back down. Bring the head up, and then let the top hand come in contact with your forehead with your palm down, then press into your bottom hand to help you come up.

So that you're extending through that upper thoracic spine. And then try to avoid lifting your head and your chin. So if you keep your eyes on your thumbs, that's really helpful, especially, you know, keeping your eyes on your thumb of your bottom hand. And now switch hands and then draw that shoulder down of this arm. And then the arm on the floor is helping with the movement. Allowing for you to improve your mobility and your strength, and then take it up.

And down. Alright. Now take both ends against the forehead. Draw the shoulders down and lift and lower. Lift and lower. This may not be accessible to you right now. And if it's not, then you can just use your bottom hand to help for a while until you get stronger.

And then eventually, you would put weights in your hands and provide resistance for this exercise. Alright. Now we're gonna do a mid thoracic focus where we take our arms outward in a goalpost position with elbows bent to 90 degrees. Palms flat down on the mat. Keep the arms in contact with the mat and lift up. And you'll notice that you can lift up a little bit higher because you have more motion in the lower thoracic part of your spine.

Keep your eyes on the front of your yoga mat. Or you can draw a line right between your thumbs and keep your eyes on that line. So if you look up, you'll see that your neck extends and not so much your your back. Right? So eyes down, chest up. And now we're gonna take it up. Hold here and see if you can lift your arms.

Here's your rotator cuff action. Keep your hands lifted and a lift and lower. And lift and lower. Lift and lower. Again, feel free to just perform the chest lift with the arms down if you're not able to lift with the arms also lifting.

Just make sure your elbows stay below your hands as you lift. Now place your hands in your cobra or pre cobra position. And then press your elbows toward your feet, lift the heart, up and forward, and then think of pulling your breastbone through the frame of your arms, drawing your elbows towards your feet and then take it back down. Eyes now are going to scan across the room. And they'll look maybe at the wall in front of you, but certainly not way up high so that your your neck is not getting compressed.

You wanna keep your neck lengthened and really focus on that lower thoracic part of your spine, moving, and strengthening. Alright. Now see if you can lift your hands off the mat. Touch your elbows to the floor and feel how this eases the neck in most cases. So now I'll take it down and up. Inhale as you come up. Exhale to lower, inhale to take it up, and exhale to lower. If you need to keep your hands on the floor, that's perfectly fine.

It's also fine to exhale as you come up and inhale to lower. You can change the breathing for what makes sense to you and what feels better to your body. Alright. Now we take it down and back, and Class the hands together, interlacing your fingers, try to stretch your arms down and back, straightening your elbows, see if you can allow those collar bones to open and then release downward. And again, pressing up, open the collar bones, and release downward. Now you can take your yoga strap and place it across your back.

If you don't have enough mobility, you can do the same thing holding on to the yoga strap. Lifting up. Okay. Now take the strap off your back. Place it aside. Place your hands in a push up position or plank position, and then draw your elbows towards your feet.

Keep your back of your neck lengthened. Breathe in and breathe out. Press yourself up and then hinge back at the hips. Remove the pillow and then find your way to a half down dog position. Just widen the hands on the mat.

And then go back as far as your shoulders will allow, lengthening your spine here, keep your head lifted, so that your ears are above your arms and then lift through the thumbs if that helps your shoulders to help you get a shoulder overhead stretch. Breathe in here and breathe out. Place the hands back down. Bring the feet together. And then practice your modified cat cow here in this lengthened position.

Draw the tail under. And then press your tailbone toward your feet for this lovely lumbar stretch. Breathe in here. Feel the ribs expand into your back. Again, breathe in.

And breathe out. Bring yourself back up to all fours. And then make your way up to sitting, and you can use a pillow for under your pelvis. If you prefer to sit in a cross legged, simple position, that works well for a lot of people. But as you can see, my knees are pretty high.

And I would need to be elevated a little bit more in order to maintain a position where my back was relaxed and my hip flexors were relaxed. So I'm gonna choose a parallel position here propping up my pillow. You can use a yoga block here and find your way to that vertical posture. Now we'll close the practice with our final meditation. First, we'll find our best posture relaxing the back, holding ourselves up from those core muscles.

Let's rock and roll the pelvis back and forth. It's always great to feel those hip flexors and feel your back extensors. So place your hand on your low back feel those muscles as they contract and relax. You wanna find that place right in the center where you feel like the muscles are most relaxed. Both the hip flexors and the back extensors.

Now take your hands to your lower ribs, swing the rib cage forward and backward and forward and backward, stacking the ribs over the pelvis, and then bring your hands down, relaxing your hands, letting the shoulders melt away from your ears, Keeping the crown of your head aiming toward the sky, drawing the throat back. Once you find your best resting posture with that vertical support, close your eyes. Imagine breathing in golden healing light. And send that golden light through your bones of your spine. Through the bones of your arms down to your wrists and hands.

Now send that light down to your pelvis. Through the bones of your hips, your thighs, Your lower legs and out to your feet. Imagine that healing, light recycling through all the cells of your body. Stimulating osteoblasts and osteoclasts to continuously recycle and rebuild. Unless repeating our minds, seeing ourselves in our best light, being happy, being well, and being strong.

Let's imagine our family and friends. Being happy, being well, and being strong. And let's extend that message across the planet. Imagining all beings, being happy, being well, and being strong. Let's realize that we have ultimate potential to be strong and healthy and balanced at any age.

As we let the light return to our awareness returning our attention to our surroundings. Imagine yourself in a beautiful orange orchard. Surrounded by beauty and nature, enhancing your well-being. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited that you're on this journey with me to better bone health.

Reach up. The sense of gratitude. Thank you.