Stretch Your Back

Hi. My name is Olivia, and this class is for you. If your back is feeling tight and you have a more sensitive Barry. We'll do some stretching, but combine it with some toning so that at the end, you feel balanced. Let's begin sitting on blankets. You could have 1 or 2 blankets or a bolster under your hips, and we'll open the legs out apart into upa Vista Konasana.

So two straight legs split evenly apart. Flex the feet, reach out through your heels, and firm your quadriceps, so actively straight legs. Release down through your 2 sit bones. Inhale. Take your arms to the side and up. And then exhale leaned to your right.

Inhale coming back up, two arms up, and exhale leaned to the left. So we're starting to stretch through the sides of the Barry, going back and forth on the breath, And you might notice that the side of the body stretches more towards the front or more towards the back. And so one way to get a little more into the back body is just gently rotate your chest towards your right leg when you lean. Right? And then let's take that on the other side. Leaning left and a little rotation towards the left leg and come up.

Now that said, go back to the right. Take your left hand behind your head. It's oftentimes, though, when actually we lean the head back into the hand, we lean back that we get a more intense stretch of some of these postural muscles that when we slouch, they get tight in the front, And that over time contributes actually to the back feeling tight because the back is can be chronically overstretched from from rounding the spine. Inhale. Both arms up. Let's try the other side, exhale lean to the left.

Take your right hand behind your head, and then lean your head back into your hand. Leg stable, firm the thighs. Reach out through the heels. Deep breath in long smooth exhale out and coming back up with the arms. Both arms up. Lift through the side ribs.

Release the upper trapezius down out of the ears. On your next exhale, also bring your palms down, but keep lifting up through the sides of the ribs. Lower the gaze or close the eyes. Again, feel the sit bones is one higher than the other. If so, release that tall one down as if the lower back could do that.

So if the right sit bone, for example, feels high, release the right lower back so that the right sit bone drops down to the height of the left. And then from between the sit bones, pelvic floor inhale up to the crown of the head. Stay tall, exhale, soft, and the face. And then gently open your eyes. Release your hands.

Take your hands to your inner knees. Lift them to bend them. And we'll take both knees off to the left. So this next sequence, you can do this up on one blanket, two blankets. You could do no blankets too.

So it's it's up to you. Come on up. One reason more blankets would help is if the right hip is very high when you take the knees to the left and you're on the mat. If you bring the blankets up, that sit bone can be a little more rooted. And then we'll take the left hand behind, right hand on the right hip, and start to lift the right hip and then put it back down. And so we'll inhale lifting the hip up and exhale back down.

Alright. And then as you lift your hip up, you firm the right buttock to help it be up And when you come down, you firm your belly to bring the sit bone down. So inhale lift the hip, exhale firm the belly back. Hips come down. It's a little bit like a cat and a cow, but sitting. The next time you lift your hip, bring your right hand to your left shoulder and look back and then come around with the right hand to your sacrum and hug the belly towards the sacrum towards the hand. Inhale, wrapping the right hand to the left shoulder, look Barry, exhale right hand to sacrum firm the belly, inhale coming back around and exhale firm the belly, belly towards hand.

One one more time, inhale come around. And exhale. Firm the Barry. Come back, and then we'll release that to neutral and start to walk your hands towards the left leg. Now the hands could go down. You could put your hands on blocks if they're not reaching. Your elbows could go down.

You could also put your forehead down, take the head to the floor. Another option here is to straighten the right leg and roll onto the top of the kneecap So you're in a kind of a pigeon pose here and breathing into the back body inhale. Soften between the ribs, exhale, soften the neck. And keep your legs wherever they are. Walk your hands in and coming up onto your fingertips, start to lift the chest and gently look up.

Inhale lifting the side ribs, the chest, exhale soft, and the brow line. Another inhale here. Exhale. Shift your hips back and take the right leg. So it's the right foot goes just in front of your left ankle. Inhale. Lift your left arm up while you hold on to your right shin with your right hand, lifting the chest.

And then exhale, it'll take a either your left hand to your shin or the elbow or hook the left elbow outside the right knee. And coming into a deep twist where you press your right leg and your left arm against one another to help you bring the left ribs around. Bring your left ribs towards your right leg. Stamped down through the right heel anchoring through the right heel and the 2 sit bones. So the right hip probably is higher than your left.

Let's see again if you can make the sit bones more level by releasing the right waist, releasing making space in the right waist so the right sit bone releases down. Through the crown of the head, inhale, up Exhale. Turn look back over the right shoulder. Roll the right collar bone back. Inhale. Where it feels tight and your spine. Make space on the inhale.

Like, there's a little water balloon where it's tight and you're putting water into the balloon, it gets bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And then as you exhale, the water going out of the balloon, more space. And then gently release. And I'll take that sequence with the knees to the right. Both knees to the right.

Left hand on the left hip. Inhale, we're gonna take that left hip up and then exhale back down. And so we're taking anterior pelvic tilt and posterior pelvic tilt. Which starts to articulate the vertebra of the spine. So we have movement for stretching the back.

We have movement of the joints of the spine. We have movement of the muscles of the spine. And so this one is going more at the joints. So we're gonna add all the joints up the spine through the neck, take your left hand to your right shoulder, look Barry, and then we'll take the hand to the sacrum to encourage the belly back, the lower vinyl joints back. Inhale. Left hand to right shoulder look back.

The left hip comes up firm that buttock. Exhale. Hand to the sacrum. Firm your belly. Hollow the belly back. Inhale. Gaze goes back over the right shoulder twist.

Exhale. Look down. Hug the belly back. Inhale. Entire spine rotates to the right and exhale coming back to the left. Again, inhale.

Exhale. One more time. Deep breath in, soft in the face. And long exhale. And then you crawl your hands on the blocks or on the floor on the diagonal with the right knee coming down maybe on your elbows, Again, there's the option of the forehead, as well as the option of straightening into pigeon, straightening your left leg back and turn. So the quadrice up of the left leg faces the floor.

So the internal rotation action of the back leg coming a little bit on the inside of the right backbone with your weight. And so sometimes when the back feels tight, It's actually the neighbors that are tight. So here we have a stretch in the arms, a stretch in the hips. When we loosen the the shoulders and the hips, the neighbors of the Barry, often that's what leads to the back feeling looser. And we're also addressing our back directly.

So to come into a backbend, walk your hands in, come up on your fingertips, and start to lift the chest. Let your spinal bones now melt forward towards the front of the body. As you take your head gently up and back. And that release, and we'll come into our twist. Take your left foot in front of the right ankle.

Inhale. Lift your right arm up and you pull with your left hand on your left leg to help lift the spine, lift the chest. And then exhale the options, hand to the shin, elbow wraps around shin, or right elbow outside the left thigh. And so we'll spend some time here. So we tend to go into twists kind of hunkered down, then we have to lift up again. So take with the breath, the lift of the spine, inhale from the pelvic floor up through the crown of your head, and then exhale using the leverage of the right hand on the left leg, turn turn some more.

And then we have our water balloon image, inhale into the place that feels stuck and tight That seems like it's preventing you from twisting more. Inhale there. Get it even bigger. It will feel almost tighter and then exhale. Like, the water is draining out of the balloon, and then you can move. At the level of the sit bones, again, likely the left one is higher, and it's okay. But any amount that you can release in your left lower back do so that the left sit bone has a downward motion.

It may not be as low as the right one, but it's moving in that direction. And then in contrast, inhale, the side ribs up. So the rib cage like an elevator lifting up off the waist, and you take it up a floor and then twist it, turn it some more. And you can look back over your left shoulder as well. At the end of your next exhale, unwind Release and straighten your legs.

K. We're gonna take our hands behind to the floor. You can turn your hands whatever way your wrists appreciate. Hands out is often more accessible. You can turn your fingers forward for more of a wrist stretch, and then we'll bend the legs, place the feet on the floor and lift the hips up, firming the buttocks up, lift the rib cage up, and then lower back down. Cross our legs now, sukhasana. Take your left shin in front of the right.

And inhale taking your arms up, lift, and exhale side bend to your right or side bending again, stretch, you know, open the side of the body. Let's take the hand behind the head again, lean back feeling how the stretch moves spreads a little bit to the front left waist. Then we're gonna take the back of the left waist. So now turn your chest towards the floor towards your right hand and release also your left fingertips or hand to the floor or You could put something underneath the hand and use your arms, your hands to help you turn more. And you might even hook your left elbow outside your right thigh.

And twist. Now we're letting the back of the left ribs spread. Spreading there, releasing there, and turning the right front ribs, the right collarbone to the right. And that's the twist. Inhale, long spine, exhale turn, and twist.

We're gonna stay low wherever you are. Release the hands to the front. Taking auto moccasin hour forward fold with the cross legged positions. And then inhale and walk your hands in. And exhale will change to the second side. Bring the right leg in front.

Inhale. Arms lift up. Exhale lean to your left. Take your right hand behind your head. Lean your head and your shoulders back.

And then feel feel into where the stretch moves and migrates to when you lean your head Barry. Some of the oblique muscles, the right waist, might even feel some space coming at the diaphragm and the liver on the right side of your body. Then we'll take that stretch and move it into the back of the right waist by turning the chest and the gaze towards the left hand. So you look down towards your left hand and turn the chest to face that way and then take the right arm down too. Coming down onto your fingertips. You could put your hand on a block.

You could put your palm on the floor. Inhale. Make some space through the spine and then exhale twist a little more with the option of right elbow to the outside of the left thigh. And imagine with your mind's eye, imagine the back of the right ribs widening away from the spine. Got huge muscles on the back body, the lats, all the erector spinning muscles going up and down the spine. Let them widen. Let them have some space to spread out.

Meanwhile, the left collarbone lifted towards the ceiling. Or turn it Barry, the front of the left ribs side and up to the left and up as the back of the right ribs fall more and more to the right and down. And then stay low. Walk your hands forward. Bring your torso back into the center.

Walk your hands in and come up to city. Dandasana, staff pose again, extend your legs forward. We'll take the feet hip distance apart. You could also do this with the feet a little wider to give yourself more space. And then we'll bend the left knee take the left knee, lift it up, and bring your heel close to your support, whatever you're sitting on, or close to your sit bone.

We'll clasp that left shin, pull it towards the chest, lift the chest, breathing in sit tall, Exhale, root the sit bones, and then we'll take the left arm tall, inhale, exhale, hook inside the left knee. Hook your left arm inside the left knee. Place the right hand behind you. Floor or block and then roll the right collar bone back and start to look back over the right shoulder. And, again, we're gonna take the left back muscles, the whole left side of your Barry, turn that region towards your left thigh. And if it kept going, it would go towards the right foot.

And so that's next. Start to come forward with your right hand and bring your left hand either to the outer edge of the right leg or the foot, or you could take a strap too. And then begin again, lift the chest up and exhale twist turn the back of the left ribs towards the right foot. Coming up on your right fingertips or on a block, lift the right collarbone back and up. From here now, start to go to the outer edge of your left foot and let your left knee drop open to the side.

I notice how that feels and where you feel the change in what's required from the body to take that movement. You can come back up with the knee. Inhale, get long through the spine, and then exhale, open the knee, and you might just feel it in your lower Barry. Maybe the hip. Another option here, if you have a lot of mobility, you can start to bend the elbows, and go forward. And you can choose.

You can have that left knee open to the side or the left knee up to the ceiling. Where does your back need this? Right now. Where does your back need this stretch right now in choosing the leg position that facilitates space in the back, or you can just alternate also back and forth between the two. On your next inhale, slowly come up and straighten your left leg. Bend your right knee, bring your right heel close to the blankets, catch the shin, inhale, lift your chest, exhale, soften the shoulder blades down the back.

And then inhale a right arm. Lift that too. Exhale. Hook inside the right knee. Take your left hand behind you and turn. And so we tend to connect with where our eyes go.

So we turn. We start to look to the left, opening the left collarbone. We can feel into that a little bit. But if you take your mind's eye to the more foreign place, like the back of the right ribs, the back of the right waist. Let the breath and the attention go there to help unfold that part of you. So the back of the right waist, back of the right ribs are moving towards your right leg.

And then we know ultimately towards the left foot. And so taking a look at the left foot. Now let's see if we can move our right hand in that direction. Hold the outer edge of the foot. Thigh, well, yeah, thigh or shin or foot and start to turn again. There's a bit of a twist to be able to get the right ribs moving in front of the right thigh or in that direction. Inhale lifting up.

Let's see what happens if we make more space. Exhale. Maybe the right sit bone can release down a little bit, the right waist. You can turn some more to get the right ribs in front of the right leg. Tucking the chin a little bit, then you can come more into the the forward bending aspect of this Marchesana one. And then as we shift to the outer edge of the right foot, the right knee drops to the side.

You'll find yourself in a kind of a, and again, you could rotate the hip, the thigh and the hip, go back and forth between the neutral and the external rotation, or just hold 1 and breathe there. On your in breath, come up halfway, and then exhale all the way up, straighten both legs, dandasana. Take your hands behind again. Bend your knees again. Place your feet on the floor table top, lifting the hips, and you're the option of letting the head go back as well.

Release hips down and come forward off of your support. So we'll lie back over the support. You can take the height that provides you with a comfortable stretch. So it could be two blankets. It could be one.

Hips on one side, head and shoulders on the other. Arms either out to the side or bent at the elbows. Souls of the feet together. So from all of that twisting with a slight forward bend emphasis now into the back bend again, and so long it's okay in your spine, you can pile up the blanket so you feel some stretch coming in the abdomen. Or at a minimum, the sense of space coming to the front of the torso.

And often space is best had by relaxing, not necessarily by stretching. So there's a there might just be a hint of a stretch here. It depends on your body. But knowing that just the spaciousness and softness of the front body is contributing to you being able to bend your spine in this way. Similar through the inner thighs, relax the inner thighs from the pelvis towards the knees.

Release the shoulders down, soften the neck. This is a very symmetrical pose and as such, it could be a Shavasana place, but it's also a bit intense. So a couple of options for Shavasana. You could lift the knees and lift the hips and just take one blanket out and then go right back. So you're just not as high so that you can be more relaxed.

Alternatively, you could take that with the leg straight, or you could take both of the blankets out. And it can be nice after stretching the back to weight the thighs. Taking anything you have near you that has some weight and placing it right on the tops of the thigh bones and then rest. If you have more time, please take some time to rest. When you're done with Shavasana, you can come to your side and roll up.

I thank you for your practice.