Progressive muscle release.
This beautiful practice is very effective and accessible in particularly releasing from the body body bound tension and tightness or emotion contracted small emotion.
It's an excellent practice as well because psychically,
Spiritually it's used quite deliberately to loosen our conscious attachment to the material world,
To the physical body,
To our physicality.
And when engaged with this awareness progressive muscle release not only releases the body from pain and tightness but it opens your awareness in a more weightless,
Light way so you can perceive the further reaches of yourself,
The psychic,
The energetic,
The patterned information.
So now our practice of progressive muscle release will begin.
Lying in Shavasana,
Take a moment to adjust your posture,
Feel into a lovely alignment between the tailbone and the back of the head.
Shoulders and shoulder blades evenly placed,
Arms out to the side,
Palms facing up.
And allow your legs just to splay along from the hip distance and outwards and the feet to just effortlessly flop to the sides.
The beautiful Shavasana.
The only action of this asana is to let go.
Allow all of your weight to sink into the earth.
And hold that connection with the immense planet beneath you.
This practice we're going to release tension,
Tightness,
Toxins,
Smallness,
Limitations and release them down into the earth to be recycled.
So breathing now down the whole length of your body,
Allow the inhalation to be slow and long.
And breathing out,
Out,
The whole length of your body,
Releasing all of the breath into the room.
And continue in this way.
And soon I will guide you to put your awareness and breathe the breath into certain muscle groups.
And then to hold the breath and clench the muscle group as firmly as you can.
And when I say release,
Release the breath through a nasal exhalation and release the tension in the muscles.
We repeat this sequence twice and then move to the next muscle group.
So starting with the feet.
Take a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Ankles as tightly as you can.
Hold the breath and release.
Another long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Soles,
Ankles.
Hold and release.
Good.
Take a resting breath.
On the next round,
We're going to include the calf muscles,
The shins and the knees.
When you're ready,
Taking a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Soles,
Ankles,
Calves,
Shins,
Knees.
Hold,
Hold the breath and release.
Now all the air to leave your body,
Breathing down the length of the body once again and flexing toes,
Soles,
Ankles,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees.
Hold,
Hold the breath and release.
Take a resting breath.
In the next round,
We're going to include the powerful thigh muscles and the buttocks against the floor.
So all of the legs flexed and held and released.
When you're ready now,
Taking a long breath down the length of the body and flexing toes,
Soles,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks hard against the floor.
Hold and release.
One more time,
A long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Ankles,
Calves,
Shins,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks hard against the floor.
And release.
Take a couple of resting breaths.
In the next round,
We're going to include the powerful muscles of the belly and the side waists.
You'll have the feeling that you're pulling your navel back towards your spine and curling the side waists around and to the front.
When you're ready now,
Take a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks,
Pull the navel back,
Curl the side waists around,
Hold hard and release.
One more time.
A long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks,
Belly,
Side waists,
Hold and release.
Allow all the air to leave your body and take a few cleansing natural breaths.
In the next round,
We're going to include the muscles of the chest,
The ribs,
The lungs,
And the shoulder blades at the back.
So all of your core and all of your legs held tight and released.
When you're ready now,
Taking a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Calves,
Shins,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks,
Belly down,
Slide the sidewaists around,
Clench the chest muscles,
Your shoulder blades hard against the ground and release.
Take a resting breath and one more time.
Take a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks,
Belly,
Sidewaists,
Chest muscles,
Shoulder blades,
Hard against the floor and release.
Take a resting breath.
In the next round,
We're going to include the hands and the arms.
So the whole of the body beneath the neck will be held firmly and then released.
When you're ready,
Taking a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Thighs,
Buttocks,
Lower back,
Upper back,
Clench the fists,
Pull the belly down,
Clench the forearms,
The upper arms,
The whole of the body beneath the neck,
Hold and release.
Take a resting breath and one more time.
A long nourishing inhalation and flexing toes,
Feet,
Lower legs,
Knees,
Thighs,
Bottom,
Pull the belly down the sidewaists,
Clench the fist,
Forearms,
Upper arms,
Shoulder blades,
Hard against the floor,
Chest muscles tight and release.
And in this next and final round,
We include all of the micro muscles of the head,
Clenched jaw,
Furrowed brow,
Tight scalp,
And the feeling that you're pulling your ears back towards the floor beneath you.
It will be the whole of your body held tight and then released.
When you're ready,
Take a long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Feet,
Shins,
Calves,
Knees,
Legs,
Buttocks,
Belly,
Side waist,
Mid back,
Upper back,
Clench the fist,
Forearms,
Upper arms,
Tighten the chest,
Tighten the neck,
Clench the jaw,
Furrow your barrel and pull the ears back towards the floor,
Hold and release.
Take a resting breath.
One last movement.
A long breath down the length of your body and flexing toes,
Lower legs,
Knees,
Upper legs,
Buttocks,
Waist,
Back,
Shoulders,
Clench the fist,
The arms,
Clench the jaw,
Furrow the brow,
Pull the ears back to the floor,
Hold and release.
All the air to leave your body and deliberately now take huge natural nourishing breaths.
Every exhalation carrying with it what's no longer required into the earth breathe.
Release.
As you're lying here in the aftermath of this beautiful practice,
Take a moment to observe the shift it has created.
Notice your participation in the soundscape,
The bird call.
It's not just with the ears,
It's with every cell in your body.
Notice the quality of your breath,
Long and rhythmic,
Balanced,
Cleansing the nadis,
The front brain,
The lungs,
The inner space of your heart.
Your mental field has eased and is resting.
And that tightness in your heart and in your belly that brought you to this practice is now loosening and swirling and dissolving into its native nothingness.
And now for the next few moments with your breath,
Just be.
Leaning gently now into the contact point between the underside of your body and the ground beneath you.
Feel into the contrast,
The ground and solid and stable and slow and safe.
And yet just hovering in an imperceivable space above it is you.
Feel the difference,
Spiraling,
Swirling,
Interconnected fabric of light and energy and information.
The nucleus of every atom that has organized itself in the expression of you was formed billions of years ago in the nuclear reactor heart of an exploding star.
That atomic material that is now you has cycled through the aeons in inanimate and animate expressions.
The atoms that make up your form have sailed in tails of comets,
In the wing tip feathers of an eagle,
Have swirled through the deepest oceans.
They've slid through moonbeams,
Through primordial oceans.
They've passed through the heart muscle of a lion and the north wind that brings you back to yourself.
You are ancient.
You are multidimensional.
