Good morning,
Everyone.
I'm so happy to practice with you this morning and we're just going to start with a little bit of moving the body,
Waking the body up,
A gentle morning awakening practice.
So,
I would invite you to stand,
Actually,
And you're going to plant your feet far into the ground.
If you can spread your toes out,
Maybe.
And just notice the tall Tadasana,
Mountain pose,
Strong standing pose.
And maybe first just become aware of your breath,
Where you feel it in your body,
Or intentionally start creating some deep breaths.
And as we do this morning awakening practice,
You're going to want to follow your breath as it's your guide,
And you can always come back to your breath.
And now we're going to bring in some gentle movement.
The first movement we're going to do is we're actually going to swing our arms side to side.
So we're just waking up the spine a little bit.
So the movement should be moving our shoulders,
Moving our arms and our hands will follow and maybe bounce on either side of us.
So we're just creating a twisting movement.
And you can go as far or as heavy as you want.
But also if you just woke up,
Then your spine is going to be a little stiff,
So just be gentle with yourself.
But we're just waking up the body and you can remember to feel your feet still grounding.
Good.
Now maybe you want to increase it just a little bit.
Feel wherever your body wants to go.
If you feel you want to twist a bit harder,
That's okay.
But just make sure that your feet are still planted into the ground here.
And as we take a big breath,
We'll come back to center.
And now on an inhale,
I want you to bring your hands above your head.
Stretch,
Long stretch,
Your feet stuck in the ground,
Your fingers reaching towards the sky.
And your right hand will grab the left and we'll exhale here.
And inhale,
Pull the left hand over towards the right side.
So we're creating a side body stretch here.
You are bending your body to the right,
But you feel the stretch in the left side of your body.
And inhale,
Come back up.
Maybe release your hands,
Move your wrists around.
And inhale,
Grab your right wrist with your left hand and bend over to the left side.
And you can feel right body stretch.
Inhale,
Come back up.
Slowly release your arms down.
And now maybe you want to widen your stance a bit.
And we'll bring our hands to our lower back.
And we're just going to do a little baby back bend.
So opening up.
So holding your hands on your lower back,
Inhale up.
And as you exhale,
Lean back,
You can drop the head or not.
Again,
Just waking up the body.
So feel whatever feels comfortable for you.
And as you inhale,
Come all the way back up and keep going all the way fold forward.
And maybe your hands touch the ground and maybe they don't.
You can put your hands on your knees or on the floor or ankles.
And we'll just stay here for a few breaths.
Maybe you want to bring your feet a little bit closer again.
And maybe you want to again sway side to side,
Waking up the hamstrings.
And you can let your head fall.
You don't need to hold the tension in your neck anymore.
And slowly,
Vertebrae by vertebrae,
Come back up.
Now we're back in Tadasana,
Mountain Pose,
And we'll do this flow one more time.
So inhale,
Bring your arms up.
Right hand grabs the left,
Bend over to the right side.
Inhale,
Back up.
Left hand grabs the right,
Bend over to the left.
Inhale,
Back up.
Hands at your lower back.
Exhale,
Fall backwards.
Inhale,
Come all the way back up and slowly start bending forward.
As far as you can go,
Waking up your hamstring.
And now from here,
I want you to slowly come up just so that your back is at maybe a 90 degree angle with your hips.
You can bring your hands onto your hips.
And now we'll do what's called Elephant Walk.
So when we're at a flat back,
And this can be wherever it feels good for you.
So it doesn't necessarily need to be a 90 degree angle.
It might be bigger.
Your back might be a bit more straight standing up.
But wherever it feels comfortable for you so that you can feel a little bit of tension in your hamstrings.
So we just want to wake up the nerves a bit.
So what we're going to do is we're just going to bend our right leg and our left leg stays straight.
So you might feel just a little bit of stretch in the left hamstring and then the other leg.
So now we're going to bend the left leg and the right leg goes straight.
And we're just going to walk without moving our feet,
Our legs.
And you can feel here just a little bit of tension.
A little bit of stretching with our back is straight,
Bent over.
And we're just waking up the nerves.
And we can slowly bend our legs to come back up to a standing posture.
And if there's any other movement that your body feels that it wants to do,
Now would be the moment.
And if you can go into a meditation practice,
Now would also be a perfect moment or a longer yoga practice.
And if not,
You're also ready for the day.
Thank you for waking up your body with me and we'll see you again soon.
