Dynamic Core Flow

Hey, how's it going? This is Robert. Welcome to Yoga Anytime. This is going to be what I guess what I would call, like, a powerful vinyasa flow. We're going to add some push up variations, some forearm planks, you will be asked to do some squatting, alright?

That's about it, you know? We'll see how it goes. If I do not offer you a modification, a variation, an option, something, and you find as you are doing the movement or holding the pose that it doesn't feel right for you, please adjust. Please make the adjustment. So, without further ado, get your mat, come to the front of your mat, and we'll start with some sun salutations.

I'll move slowly and deliberately, see how it goes, come on. Alright, feet hip width. Why don't we do this, come to mountain pose, palms to your chest. Close your eyes, take a few breaths here before we begin. Acknowledge that you showed up and you're going to move your body appropriately.

Appropriately, but, in those moments when you want to, sort of, tap out, give up, you know, stop, maybe you can check in, why am I doing that? Is it because I'm lazy, is it because I don't really like this, is it because it's too hard? Think about it, feel your way through it and see if it's safe for you, you can actually, like, just go one more breath or one more movement or one more second, alright, because that is what we're going to work on and that's where the change starts to happen. That's where you get a little stronger, maybe you get a little bit more flexibility that way. Something, something happens, something will change.

Give yourself the opportunity to make that change, alright, and I'll get you going along the way. So, feet hip width, make the pact right now. I'm going to work outside of my comfort zone and not work in that default mode as much, it's going to be new, alright? So, palms together, take one deep breath in, and a nice deep breath out. Inhale, circle the arms out and up.

Palms together, all the way down the middle line of your body, bend your knees, forward bend. Release the arms down. Bend your knees. Palms into your shins, inhale half forward bend, half lift. Exhale, step back into downward dog.

Spread your fingers wide. Soften the elbows a little bit, and then turn the elbow bones back toward your thighs, your biceps forward. This will, kind of, open up the shoulders a little bit. Soft knees, long spine. Inhale into plank pose.

Exhale, lower down with control. Elbows right over the wrist. Point the toes back. Inhale cobra pose. Little extension, little mellow back bend here, and exhale to table top.

Curl the toes under, breathe in, and exhale down dog. Walk up to the front of the mat. Inhale half bend. Half forward bend, should I say. Exhale, fold.

The way we'll come up us hips back, arms forward from the ground, all the way up, big breath in. Exhale the arms down by your side. We'll build on that, inhale. Exhale. Inhale half bend.

Step back into downward dog, exhale there. Inhale, plank, pause. Inhale, lower down halfway, we'll call it low plank. Exhale, press up and bring the right knee to your right elbow. Send the foot back as you lower down, inhale, exhale, left knee, left elbow.

Shoot it back, inhale, exhale, lower down all the way. Point the toes back, cobra pose, inhale. Exhale, table. If you're accustomed to doing cobra or up dog right into down dog, try the table transition, it's really nice. It's a nice little, anyway, try it.

Downward dog, exhale. OK, we're going to transition to the front of the mat again. Inhale, half forward bend. Exhale, forward bend, through the chair, right? So butt back, chest up, arms forward, drive through the heels, use your legs.

Inhale. And exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Forward bend.

Inhale, half forward bend, get that length, feel your back flat, maybe there's even a little bit of cobra going on there, and exhale, downward dog. Inhale, plank. Exhale, try half way down this time. Inhale upward facing dog. Hang here for just a moment as you pull your shoulders back, chest forward, long spine, plant the palms down.

Now here, what I want you to do is either set the knees down, table, then downward dog, or use your thighs, like, grip your thighs and brace your core and move all the way to downward dog. Take a deep breath in here, and let a deep breath out. Take the right leg, lift it up, inhale. Step it up to your right thumb, exhale. Feet are hip width, come up high, crescent lunge.

Relax the back leg a little bit. Extend the tailbone down. Brace the core. No lumber, right, compression. Nice neutral pelvis.

OK, bring the arms up, field goal post, fingertips forward, now pull the elbows back like your trying to touch the elbows back toward one another. Feel the muscles up in the upper back begin to engage. Chest open, fingertips up, good strong posture here. Inhale, reach up. Exhale, transition the hands down, step back into plank pose.

One push up. Breathe in, lower, breathe out, press up. Come down to your forearms for a moment for forearm plank. Bring the knees down for one moment, one little adjustment. What you want to stay away from is this, the arch in the back, OK?

Work on, before you even come up into forearm plank, sending your tailbone back, pulling your belly up and in, then lift the knees. Press your heels back, strong legs, breathe. Come back up into push up position, two push ups. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, good.

Now, forearm plank. Hold, relax, the muscles in your jaw and your eyes, all around there, will not help you here. Press your heels back, squeeze your thighs, brace your core. Good, back up into full plank, inhale, and now exhale, lower all the way down or even half way down, move through up dog or cobra, and exhale, downward dog. Take a full breath here.

Big breath out, kind of setting up for the next side. Left leg, inhale, step it up, quietly. Situate your feet about hip width, rise up, get the arms watch the left knee, don't let the left knee come too far forward, keep it stacked over the ankle, soft little bend in the back knee, extend the tailbone down, core, back strong, stretched across the chest. Good, breathe in, reach up, breathe out. Step back, plank pose, same exact thing we did last time, so one push up, exhale.

Forearm plank, if you want to add a little flavor, lift your butt a little bit. One more on each side. Up to a plank, two push ups. Good, forearm plank, hang in there. If you want to bring your knees down for a moment, do it, but remember what I said.

Give yourself that extra second or two to move beyond that edge, like, bump your edges deeper, farther, broader. OK, back up onto plank, downward dog on the exhale. Step up to the front of the mat, you can take, try taking two big steps, so right and left. Inhale, half forward bend. Exhale, forward bend.

Butt back, chest up, arms forward. Sit back. From this point here, we're going to do a little bit of these squats, it's a body squat, right? So from here, just a little lower, and as you exhale. Inhale, circle the arms, so the movement with these, right, you circle the arms back, hips back, so it's this, it's inhale, exhale, OK?

Let's do about 15 here. So breathe in. Keep your chest up, gaze forward. Breathe in. Watch your feet, make sure that they stay hip width and parallel to one another.

Breathe in. Five more. Last one. Arms come down, palms forward, mountain pose for a moment. Press your fingertips, like reach your fingertips towards the floor.

Contract the back of your arms, your triceps, get them firing, alright? Spread your fingers wide, your pull your pinky away from that finger, all these muscles down here become more alive, so. Alright, let's build on that, OK? So inhale, reach up, exhale, forward bend. Inhale, half forward bend.

Step back into plank pose and pause. Tap the right knee on the right elbow. Now hop, if you can, and switch. Switch. Switch.

Good, now find a little rhythm for 30 seconds, and you can go as slow as this. You can be on the knees. Or a little more rapid, right? Hold a solid plank, find your rhythm in your breath. Anything bothers you here, right, if your back hurts, come out, come down to the knees, make some adjustments, five, four, three, two.

Solid here, breathe in, exhale, lower down. Inhale. Exhale. Take the right leg, lift it up, inhale, step into the right thumb, exhale. High lunge, inhale.

OK. We'll get a little twist now, alright, so you definitely got some heat going, I do anyway. So let's actually twist and rotate the spine in a healthy way. Right hand, no, yeah, left hand on the right thigh. The right arm reaches back, in fact, try this.

Take your hands on the chunk of your body. Hold your ribs and begin to actually manipulate your body in a healthy way over to the right. Once you kind of reach your max, reach the arms out. You can rest your left hand on your right thigh. Bring it back to center.

Bring the back heel down. Heel to heel is pretty safe, OK? Reach forward, fingertips towards the floor, if you need a block, if you'd like to use a block, something to lift you a little bit, that might be nice. Pull the right hip back, back heel down. Get your ground, and inhale, reach up.

Find a few breaths here. Lift the toes, bury the bones down. Bury the bones of your feet down. Left arm comes down. As you bring the left arm down, lift that back heel up.

Tent the fingers, a block, palm down. What I want you to do, though, is get that sensation of staying lifted and long in the spine. Right hand on the left side of the body. Begin to, once again, use your hand, actually feel the chunk of your body twisting. A lot of the times we say twist and it's this.

Actually twist, twist, twist, and then reach up. Or take the back of your right hand to your lower back. Roll the chest open. Breathe. Bring the right arm down, step back into plank pose.

Alright, round two, OK? Here we go, nice and slow. Left, right, left, right. Hips nice and even, spine long and neutral, core strong. Try to run it out a little bit.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, four, three, two. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. When you arrive in downward dog, take a nice healthy breath and an exhale out. Lift the left, inhale, and get your alignment for your feet for the high lunge. Palms to the chest.

OK, hands on the body, and twist. Right hand on the left thigh, gives you a little leverage, left arm back. If you're struggling with the balance, it's totally normal. Set your gaze somewhere, requires and asks just a little bit more from you as far as focus goes. So the exit here is kind of nice, it's palms to the chest, body forward, back heel down, arms out, reach.

See how my left hip, I want you to actually, can you pull the left hip back? Pull the left hip back, reach, fingertips toward the ground, my left arm is pressing into my left leg, and my left leg is pressing in, so there's this counter thing happening. Alright, now get that action. Feet solid, and then... Find your sweet spot in these poses, where is it?

Where is it? Where is it sweet, but not lethargic? You're working here. Right arm down, back heel up. Long spine, left hand on the body.

Peel, like peel, twist, rotate, twist the body, don't let that left knee open up. Keep your left, ball of the left foot buried. I use that word all the time because it's not just enough to place it on top, but bury it, bury it, good. So there's that, don't lose that, don't lose the knee over the ankle, and then reach up. Back of the hand can rest at the low back, chest open, shoulder open, and this doesn't complete the pose, right?

You can look to the side, you can even look down. But if it does feel good to look up, look up. Alright, exit, step back, downward dog. Take a big breath in once again, and a big exhale. Inhale into plank, pause.

Last little set, OK, last little set of those mountain climbers, alright? So here we go, right, left. Find a little rhythm, find a little flow, get that heart rate up a little bit. Remember, you're stronger than you give yourself credit for, including myself. I've got to constantly remind myself I'm stronger and I can definitely do more than I give myself credit for.

Not just on the mat, but in life. Push, push, push and stop. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Step up.

Good, forward bend. Hips back, arms forward. Inhale, exhale. One more set, the squats. OK, the squats, I should have given you this earlier, but it can look just like this.

Breathe in, if you have knee issues, right, they can look a little like this. Those of you who want to go a little deeper. In through the nose, and a powerful exhale out of the mouth. Let go of whatever you might be holding onto, alright, so here we go, 10 solid squats. Breathe in.

Three, two, one. Arms down, look forward, try to stay still. If you need to move a little bit, go ahead and move a little bit. Take a few moments to find some stillness if you can. Take a moment to, like, spread your fingers, spread your toes, feel your body now.

If you've done everything that we've done up til now, there's no way you can't feel a change, you can't feel some kind of change. Doesn't matter what it is, but just acknowledge it and be present with it, and that's it. That's like the perfect practice right there, OK? Take this, awareness, OK, take this connection you have, take it into the next pose, it's a balancing pose called Warrior Three, OK? Also known as Airplane, all these poses have different names, I can't keep up anymore, but I know this is Warrior Three and Airplane.

OK, so, starts off with a steady gaze. Could be straight away, could be six feet out in front of you, it may change as you deepen into the pose, but you need it, OK? So, palms resting at the chest, let's come into it this way, step your right foot back, right foot back, now begin with a nice little bent left leg to tip your body forward. Now, more weight, like right now, it's evenly distributed, you might feel that. As you tip your body forward, more weight is on the left, more weight is on the left.

You're not rounding your back at all, long spine, OK? So, more weight is on the left, more weight is on the left, now all my weight is on the left. If you find yourself right here, perfect, stay here. Flirt with straightening your leg a little bit more, you don't have to lock it out, there's no locking out necessarily, I'd rather you stay a little more bent, stay on the muscle of the leg. Now test yourself, see if some of you can come, see if you can come a little farther forward.

Right hip, I guarantee it, almost every single person in this posture right now, the right hip wants to open. Press it down. Chest up, find a little cobra as you're moving through, changing the gaze. Press, if your right leg is straight, straighten it. Fire through the glutes, press your heel back, toes down.

Arms can come out, forward. Ugh, almost. You probably fell, too, so let's try again. Here we go, right back where we started. Here we go, here we go, here we go, now the exit, let's go ahead and keep that long spine, come right out the same way you came in.

Good, pause, let that left leg rest a little bit, it's probably burning. Take a few breaths to help, kind of like, let that go. That's done. Step the right foot up. Shake it out a little bit.

Regain the focus. It's a skill, it's really hard, it's really hard, so give yourself a break if you haven't been able to just get that focus down. Give yourself a break, it takes time, it's a practice, remember? So, left foot back. Palms together, this helps me to feel a little bit more connected and grounded, at least to start off with.

Thumbs pressing into the sternum, and then I shift. Forward, forward, forward, lift, lift, lift. Brace, long spine, no rounding. Left hip wants to come up, it wants to come up so bad right now, I want to open it up, but draw it down. Good, palms back and step back.

Take a few moments in mountain pose. OK, going to transition through a squat pose, and then down to our backs for a little warm down, OK? So take your feet about as wide as the mat. It varies from person to person, but as wide as the mat works for me and my length. So you're longer, you're shorter, you make that adjustment for yourself.

So, open the feet up, this helps, also, for a lot of people, and then... Spend a couple moments here, you can bring your left hand down, fingertips, left arm pressing into the leg, reach up. Switch arms. Press your elbows into your inner thighs, press your chest forward and up, try to create a nice long spine. Try to stay away from a lot of this stuff, here.

Press to chest, even if it means you come out of the pose a little bit, come out of the pose to get that sensation of lifting in the chest and lengthening your spine, I hope that makes sense. Good, now mindfully exit onto your bottom. From here reach back, I kind of do this little balancing act, I reach my left arm forward, arm back behind me, set it down, spin around, and then roll on down to your back. We'll do some poses to help warm down, OK? So go ahead and roll on down.

When you roll down, for me, anyway, when I roll down, after not being on my back during the practice, it feels really nice, so just take a moment to feel that sensation of being grounded. Now, I say it feels nice. For you, for some reason, in your own body, it might not, so I don't want to assume, but sometimes it's a nice place to check in before we start stretching and warming down. Alright, so check it out. We're going to get in to the hips, we're going to do child's, or happy baby, which is also known as, like, a dead bug, OK?

So first off, what I want you to do is take your hands, and bring them on the insides of your thighs, and wrap your fingers around the shin just below your knee. Now, let your, the legs be lazy and let your knees now open out wide. Your back is flat, you've already maybe done this action, right, so your sacrum, here, this is an awesome place to pause if you find that as we start to build into the bigger, dum dum dum, right, you might go right back here because it's just what you need. The stretch, inner thighs, groin, breathe right into that space. So the idea, right, as we continue, before we move on, the idea with stretching and holding these poses is to use the breathe as a form of communication, right?

So the body is saying no, it's saying ow, it's saying, you know, wow, whatever it's saying, right, but it's speaking to you through showing you, like, resistance or showing you the feeling of the stretch. Now with your breath, if you are to breathe rapidly through your chest, right, it's just going to create more tension. So what I want you to work on, if you're not already, is notice the resistance. Try not to meet the resistance with just more pushing, more rapid breath, OK? So we're trying to almost, like, diffuse it or put out the fire in a sense.

Deep breathe to communicate. Now, reach up, ankles. Knees wide, feet up over the knees, that's the next progression. Which most people could really just stay right there. Hold onto the ankles and pull the knees down toward the ground, in the direction of the ground, that'll deepen the experience.

Some of you may hold on up toward the outer edges of your feet. If your back, if you become a turtle on your back, like a turtle shell, right, and your head is up and your back is rounded, do yourself a favor and hold lower. A couple more breaths. OK, good, start to exit out of there. Draw the right knee in towards your body, knee to chest posture.

Bring that right foot down, use it as leverage to lift your hips and shift your hips to the right, OK? So what this will do is it will align your spine for what I feel to believe a nice healthy rotation, a nice reclined twist. So left hand on the right thigh, right arm reaches out, open the upper back. When I say open up the upper back, it means most of the time the shoulder blades are drawn toward one another and there's, like, all this congestion, so decongest, open up, find space, and then exhale. Spinal twist.

One thing I learned, you can try it, right, we've got the time here, let's do it. So if I want to bring my knee over even farther, what happens to my arm, right? My arm reaches up and now my upper back and shoulder is lifted, now I'm sort of just hanging out here, but, if I do this, and then bring so much focused attention this area with my exhale, we'll see what happens here, OK? So I'm not going to change the knee, the knee is there. I'm in the same pose, my arm is lifted higher than parallel, now I'm deep breath in, exhale.

I'm working the shoulder blade and the shoulder region down through one breath at a time. Breathe in. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in and breathe out. OK, hand on the body, slowly, what's nice is if you bring your right knee as close to the body as you can and roll slowly back over towards your low back.

Right foot down, shift your hips back towards the center, extend your right leg long and draw your left leg in. Knee to chest, also known as wind relieving pose for those of you at home, so if by chance you pass a little gas, something happens, right? It's probably the first time ever, I understand, this is the pose that will make it happen. Left foot down, shift the hips. Shift the hips over, bring it in, and then bring it over and you can play around with that same thing.

Now, I didn't really express it on the other side, but, like, the difference between me bringing it over and having this out here and just forcing it, it's huge, right? But if I use the breath like I was talking about earlier, breathing in and like literally communicating with the upper left portion of my back, my shoulder blades, shoulder, right? Using that... It's like magic. Keeps a nice deep twist.

Or sets up for a nice deep twist. Remember the head, keep the head long, breathe in, and breathe out. Good, same thing, knee in, mindfully. Transitioning. Shift the hips back to center, lengthen out the back, pull the knees in, feel that stretch.

Can you feel it? When you pull the knees in, can you feel the low back start to stretch forward and up, the sacrum lengthening out? Bring the feet back down. Bottoms of the feet together, lengthen the back of the neck, take a deep breath in, reach up, and exhale the arms down. Close your eyes.

Right away, give yourself full permission to relax. You've done a lot of work in a short amount of time. Allow your body to acclimate, to adjust, to feel what just, what it just went through. And for you to savor the work you've just done, right? It's like the dessert.

But I understand also that many of us have, this is one of the more challenging, the most difficult posture. We got to go, right, we got to go, go, go. Settle in, settle in and relax. Stay here for as long as you'd like. When you do get up, go ahead and roll over onto your right side.

Take moment there, bend your knees, rest your head on your arm. If you've never done it before, it could become your favorite pose, possibly, maybe. And then push up to sit. Any kind of little adjustments along the way. Close out your practice, boom, I just did it.

Showed up for me. Nobody else can do it like I can for me. That's it, that's all you need to know, that's all you need to express to yourself. Namaste, have a beautiful day.