Quick Morning Yoga Stretch

Start your day with this 15 minute sensory-friendly yoga designed to gently wake up the body and ease morning stiffness. Suitable for all levels, this class is perfect when you want to move your body, clear your mind, and begin your day feeling more awake, balanced, and refreshed.

Transcript

Hi there and welcome back to this quick sensory friendly yoga flow. Before we start, I invite you to create your environment to really support your sensory inputs to a level where you find it to be the most easeful. So, Wearing comfy clothes you really feel cozy in. Turning the lights to a degree that feels supporting, Maybe dimming the lights or putting the shade over the window and so on. Also the volumes that you're listening to, Adapting so that they support you in finding more ease when it comes to sensory stimulation and perhaps resetting some of those inputs. So, Once you're ready, Slowly get settled in, Find a comfortable seated position. We're going to start with some sensory stimuli of the skin. So you can keep the eyes closed. You can also keep them open. As something perhaps neutral, So maybe the floor in front of you, The wall, Something that doesn't invoke a lot of information. So, Slowly getting started, Palms come to your face, Very gently, Lightly pressing over your skin, Your cheeks, Your back. Forehead, Your temples, Anywhere else. You want to slowly bring some wakefulness on your face. And you're gonna tune into how this feels and you're gonna adapt so that it always feels really good for you. So maybe light tapping, Light touching doesn't feel good. You can start light tapping. So using your fingertips to tap onto your skin. And moving the lungs. Wherever you feel called to do that, Maybe the tops of the cheeks. Temples again the forehead maybe in between the brows the brows themselves So either tapping or light skin stimulation or changing between the two. Tapping over the nose, Your mouth, Your jaw. And now we're gonna slowly turn this into a little face massage. Again, Either do the first version, The second one, Or try the massage as you slowly massage your cheeks. Next your ears and then moving in circular motion all the way to your temples. And maybe going over the forehead, You can also use your knuckles here. All over your bra, Brows, Not bras. In between the bras. And anywhere else you feel a little bit of a massage will feel really good for you. Then just using the same idea from your face, Moving down to your neck. Either light stimulation or tapping or a gentle neck massage. Listening to your body and giving yourself what feels good. And from the neck, Massaging the right shoulder or perhaps more the area between the shoulder and the neck. Towards your scapula. And slowly switching sides. All right, I can slowly open the eyes and we're just going to continue with the same idea. So skin stimulating the rest of your body first, Maybe starting with the ribs. The side ribs, The back ones, Maybe using both of your hands from up, From down. Reach as much of your ribcage as you can. And then down to your belly, Your sides, Your lower back. Spending some time on your lower back. Gently stimulating, Massaging. And then coming onto your palms, So as though you're washing your hands. Spending some time here. And then from the palms moving upwards along one arm. Your shoulder, Spending some time on each joint. They're putting on a really nice body lotion and then the other hand And if you know already that certain areas of your body feel tenser, You can spend a bit more time there. So just giving your body a little bit more of an input of what's going on. All right, And then slowly make your way to your hips. You can untangle your legs, Bring them in front of you. From the hips, Moving along your thighs. All sides of them. So back, Outer Inner and front. And then some time on your knees, Back and front. The side. And then your lower leg. Your shins, Your calves. Then we're going to spend some extra time on the ankle. So first starting with one ankle. And then moving along your foot, Your toes. The back of the foot and the front of the foot. You're being really, Really thorough with your hair. Simulation of the feet. And slowly moving to the other foot. Starting with the ankle, The heel. Back of the foot, Front toes. And then once again, Just all over your body. Wherever you want to add a little bit more information. All right. And then we're going to slowly stop doing that and make our way to tabletop. Your palms are gonna come beneath the shoulders, Knees beneath the hips, And we're just gonna start with a couple of cat and cows. Slowly waking up the spine as you arch the back with the inhale. And then round it down with the exhale, Chin to chest. Aligning the breath with the movement. Again, An option to close the eyes here. All right, Slowly coming to spine neutral. You're gonna curl up the toes. Next exhale, Sit bones are gonna lift high towards the sky as you find downward facing dog. A couple of pedal first to soften the legs. Then maybe you find stillness or you can keep pedaling, But focusing on lifting your sit bones high towards the sky as you really lengthen the spine and wrap the armpits in, Pushing the mat away against your palms. If you're in stillness over time, Knees are gonna start to extend, Heels. Towards the mat. But all of that will come in. Again, Here eyes can close, Feeling into your body. Your breath. And then let's walk the palms towards the feet, Bending the knees however much you need to find a comfortable forward fold. First we're going to get really sloppy in the upper body, Relaxing the neck and head, Relaxing the arms. They're falling down towards the mat, Your knees are generously bent. Maybe a couple of sways left to right here. All right, And then slowly finding your center with the inhale, Halfway lift up, Lengthening your spine, Gazing forward. Grabbing onto the opposite elbows, As you stand firmly onto your feet, You're gonna relax your upper body. Once again, Crown the head towards the mat, Feeling the weight of your head being pulled by gravity. Again, Stillness or rocking left to right, Choosing your version. All right, Relax the palms down. We're gonna tiptoe the feet to the edges of the mat. Toes are gonna point out. Inhale lengthening the spine, Exhale lowering the hips down as though you want to sit on something behind you. Back is gonna stay long. Imagine you wanna grow tall into the crown of your head. Your knees are pointing in the direction of your toes. You can bring your hands in front of your heart space. There's no need to push yourself lower down. If this is where your deep squat is, You're going to stay here. Maybe you're going to bring your fingertips to the mat, Maybe sway left, Right a couple of times. Softening the hips and then slowly again over time maybe lowering more down. Bring the eyes to a close here. So we're going to do a visual reset, Now holding our Malasana. But if this is too challenging for you, You can always just find a normal seated position and do the drill from there. So we're gonna place our palm, This part here, On top of our eyes, Placing the palm onto the bony circle around your eyes. Placing all the way around so that no fleck of light can come in. But you're not pushing onto your eyes, They remain soft, Unbothered. Your eyes come to close as well, You're allowing enough space between your palms so you can breathe through your nose. Holding it here for a couple of moments, Observing. As the flecks of light slowly subside until complete darkness arrives. An amazing reset for our eyes. We're going to repeat this one more time at the end. For now, Taking a couple of more soft breaths here. Now letting yourself slouch into the position so the back is still long. Your knees are still pointing in the direction of your toes, Your legs holding you strong here. All right, Exhale, Relax the palms. Lift the bum up back into forward fold. As you tiptoe, The feet hips distance. And then walk the palms back into downward facing dog. Knees lower as you sit on your heels. And then bring the feet in front of you for butterfly. So feet come together, Knees can stay at about a 90 degrees. With the inhaler, And again, Grow tall into the crown of your head as you feel your sit bones ground into the mat. Keeping the spine long, Hinging from the hips, You're gonna lean forward to whatever point this is a cozy stretch for you, Grabbing hold of your feet. Softening the breathing, The face. All right, And then wherever you are, We're gonna add a little twist to this. So you're gonna wrap your right arm under your right leg, Placing the palm on top of your right foot. You're gonna twist with the chest towards the left. And then reach with the left fingertips high for the sky. Lifting the gaze up as well. Breathing into your left ribs, Feeling the juicy twist. And exhale, Release. Switching sides, Left arm wraps under the left leg. Right arm reaches for the sky as you open your heart up and lift the gaze. And exhale, Release. Amazing. Untangle yourself and slowly find your way onto your back. Hugging the knees and we're gonna massage your back a little bit by rocking left to right. And then an option for you can either stay hugged in like this or you can extend the arms in T. Maybe move the knees a bit further away, Maybe even shins come parallel with the mat. We're gonna do a couple of twists. As you move the knees left to right, You're gonna stay here. In full control of the movement. So with the exhale, Lowering the knees slowly, As slow as you can to one side as you gaze over to the other. Once the lower knee touches the floor, You're going to lift slowly back up. As you're moving through, Honey, And then over to the other side, Keeping the knees close together. And then again, Lifting it up. And to the first side. We're gonna do three full circles, So once you finish the second one, You're gonna do one more. And then slowly, Last one. Inhale brings you to center. Now an option you can just find Shavasana or you can keep the knees bent, Feet hips distance or a bit wider, Letting the knees knock into one another. One more time doing that visual reset, So using the body of the palm to place it over your eyes. Gently pushing into the bony circle around the eye. Closing the eyes as well, An option to add humming breath here. Three times exhaling, Humming out. We're going to do the first one together and then you're just going to continue for two more times. So inhaling through the nose. And exhaling, Humming it out through the nose until all the air is out. And once you can hum no longer, You're gonna just inhale and repeat it two more times. Once you're done, You're gonna slowly lift the palms off your face, Still keeping the eyes closed for a couple of more moments. Hugging the knees in as you blink the eyes open and then rock yourself back and forth into seated pose. That's it for today, I'll see you on the mat tomorrow. Till then, Namaste.