Hatha yoga refers to the practice of physical postures that help develop focus and flexibility in both body and mind.
The outward aspects of your yoga practice include some basic physical guidelines,
At the foundation the notion of grounding and finding your roots is crucial to yoga.
So find some space in your room,
Bring yourself into standing position and feel the inner and outer edges of the ball mounts of the feet.
The ball mount at the big toe and the baby toe,
And then feel the inner and outer heel in the center of the heel.
Feel the ankle pulled up so that your arches are lifted.
As you lift your arches at the same time,
Visualize rooting down in those areas that I just mentioned,
The front,
Back and sides of the foot.
The next principle that we work with in our Hatha yoga practice is finding our center and creating a sense of length.
So as you're standing,
You can raise your arms and feel a balanced sense of lift,
This uprightness,
Then slowly relax the arms down,
But still maintain a sense of that lift up through the crown of the head,
Perhaps as if there were a thin line attached from the crown of your head all the way up to the heavens.
Tuck your chin in slightly and then lift the crown of your head.
Relax your shoulders down as you stay grounded through the soles of the feet,
But at the same time,
Feel that pull up through the crown of your head.
Your spine is central to your yoga practice and to finding your own center.
Feel the sense of length and spaciousness between each vertebra in the spine.
So with this awareness of centering from the spine,
Creating length,
Let's begin to move the spine.
There are four primary movements of the spine.
The first is the forward fold.
We'll start by moving into a half forward fold.
Lengthen your torso and bend from the hip crease where the legs meet the trunk of the body rather than bending at the waist.
As you bend forward,
Lengthen back through your tailbone,
Bring your hands to your thighs,
Keep your back at a 90 degree angle parallel to the floor and lengthen out through the crown of your head.
As the top of your head moves in one direction,
Feel the energy moving in the opposite direction through your tailbone.
And then,
When you're ready to exhale,
Release down,
Letting go,
Lovely,
Long,
Relaxing sigh and out breath.
Relax in the full forward fold,
Letting yourself dangle.
In your inhalation,
Slowly glide your hands up the front of the thighs and visualize stacking each vertebra in your spine slowly from the bottom up as you come into standing and lift up again through the crown of the head as you tuck your chin slightly.
The next movement of the spine is the back bend.
We'll create this spinal extension by bringing our hands to the back waist,
Resting your fingers down towards your sacrum,
Inhale,
And visualize pulling a zipper up the front of the body from the pubic bone up to the breastbone as if you were wearing a wetsuit.
Tuck your tailbone toward the pubic bone as you inhale and experience that zipping up feeling as you come into a standing back bend.
Take a deep inhalation as you hold in your back bend.
Let the breath out and then to return upright,
Inhale,
Bring yourself straight up,
Reaching through the crown of the head,
Tuck your chin in slightly and feel some length at the back of the neck.
Lengthen through your arms,
Reaching out through your fingertips above the head and straighten your arms and then release the arms to the sides with your palms turned down,
Relaxing the arms and the shoulders as we prepare to move into another one of the movements of the spine.
Next we'll side bend.
Glide your right hand down the right side of the body.
Lift your left arm slowly as you glide your right hand down your right thigh.
Bend over to the right,
Stretching into the left side.
Feel space between each of the left ribs.
On an inhale,
Return,
Lifting back to the center,
Releasing your left arm down to your left side.
Glide that arm down the thigh as you reach your right arm up toward the ceiling,
Aligning your right arm alongside the ear and let yourself bend to the left side,
Feeling the stretch into the ribs on the right.
When you're ready,
Inhale and come upright back to the center and then bring both arms up overhead.
Interlace your fingers,
Press your palms toward the ceiling,
Affirming that sense of length and grounding.
Exhale,
Unclasp your fingers and release your arms,
Letting them float down on either side.
Feel the spaciousness in your spine and torso from doing those movements.
The final movement is a rotational movement where we'll come into twisting.
So you can imagine a coat with long,
Empty sleeves,
Swinging the sleeves from side to side.
That's what we'll be doing with our own arms rotating around the torso.
Begin to rotate from the center,
Your arms sweeping before you and behind you.
Feel your vertical sense of alignment like a north and south pole is running through you.
Rotate from that center to the right as your arm swings behind you,
Perhaps tapping on the left hip.
Your left arm swings across your lower abdomen,
Perhaps tapping on the right hip.
On an inhalation,
Move back to the center,
Then to the opposite side.
Slowly and consciously do this rotational twist from the spine,
Turning first your navel to the left,
Then your chest,
And then turning your neck and head,
Looking over your shoulder.
Inhale into your deep twist,
And when you return to the center,
Inhale,
Then turn to the right,
First turning the navel,
Then the chest,
Then your neck and head,
Looking over the right shoulder.
Breathe and hold.
You can deepen your twist even further on the exhalation.
Repeat this practice,
The slow rotation starting from the low belly and moving up to the head and neck.
Do that on both sides.
And when you've practiced that equally on both sides,
Inhale back to the center,
Take a deep breath in,
And relax the shoulders.
In our practice,
We do these movements to the spine to keep our mobility.
Forward folding,
Back bending,
Side bending,
And twisting.
And we do them equally on both sides to balance the sides of the body,
The back and front,
The left and right,
The upper and lower.
You're ready at this point to begin a longer yoga practice or to end your practice here with hands at the heart,
Having balanced your spine,
And now align body,
Mind,
And spirit as you set your intention.
Thanks for practicing.
The light within me appreciates and honors the light within you.
