Come to rest on your back.
Reach your arms up overhead,
Bend your elbows as much as you need to so that you can feel the backs of your hands down on the floor.
Connect to the flow of your breath and start to pulse with your breath like this.
Inhale,
Stretch your fingers and toes away from each other.
And exhale,
Go really soft.
Muflack.
Maybe these breaths go into your nose as you arch your spine,
Feel stretch across the front,
And out through your mouth with a.
.
.
As you soften and slacken three more breaths Inhale.
Great big stretch.
Exhale.
Yeah,
I'll get asked.
One more.
Oh.
Now move your torso toward the left corner of your space.
If you're on your mat,
Your head might be near the top left edge of your mat.
You can add more stretch along the right side of your body by putting a tug into your right wrist or your right elbow with your left hand,
But you also could keep your arms detached and spread.
If you wanted a little more,
You could move both feet toward the left as well.
Option to cross one ankle over the other,
Doesn't really matter which,
Or an option to bend one leg if that feels better for you.
Feel your breath moving more in the right side of your body.
Take about three more rounds of breath.
Start to work your shoulders and head back up over your hips and your feet back down underneath them.
Before we go to side two,
We'll spend some time here.
You could simply rest in stillness.
You could pulse your breath like we did before and inhale to arch,
Maybe even hook your thumbs together,
And then exhale.
To go past it and slacken,
Where you can start to bend one knee at a time.
Inhale,
Stretch your arms out.
Exhale,
Hug one knee in towards your chest.
Inhale,
Stretch long.
Exhale hug the other.
You could keep that up for two more rounds,
Or you could do both knees at once.
Inhale,
Stretch long.
Exhale,
Scoop in.
You can even make this slightly bigger.
As you inhale,
You'll stretch long.
And as you exhale,
You can scoop your head and shoulders up to hug your knees in.
Let's all meet down on our backs again.
And take a side stretch with your torso moving toward the right.
Head,
Shoulders,
Head,
Shoulders kind of push and shimmy over.
Remember,
You have the option to add a tug or to keep your arms really relaxed.
And if none of this is working for your shoulders,
Move your arms down lower.
Totally fine.
One or both legs could move toward the bottom edge of the mat.
You could cross an ankle over the other,
Bend one knee.
Settle into your breath and especially feel it moving in the left side of your torso.
Hold on this side until it feels personally even for you.
When you feel like you're getting there,
Work your shoulders back up over your hips.
Work your feet back down beneath them.
Options include just lying there and enjoying it.
Include inhaling to point your fingers and toes get really long and exhaling.
To slacken.
Or you could pulse one leg at a time.
Inhale,
Reach long.
Exhale,
Hug one in.
And the other.
Or both.
We've got two more breaths.
One more.
Then we'll return to our backs again,
This time with knees bent.
Your hands can frame your body either down by your hips or off of your shoulders.
We'll start to sway our knees from side to side.
To do this,
You might look for about a 90-degree bend in the back of your knees and have your feet roughly shoulder or mat distance apart.
You can coordinate this with your breath,
However makes good sense to you.
And it could stay really casual with your feet down on the floor,
Rocking to the pinky toe of one side and the big toe side of the other.
You could also make it super,
Super casual and let both knees go down to the right and stay.
Or if you want to build slightly more heat,
You can lift your knees up and start to sway them side to side.
Here it could be useful to flip your palms down so you feel like your shoulders are staying well grounded.
Whatever you're doing in time is going to bring you into a twist with your knees down to the right.
Next time your knees are heading that way,
Let them continue all the way down to the floor.
Now,
If they're bent,
They could stay bent,
And your knees and ankles could be near each other or could slide off each other.
If you had your feet down on the floor,
You've come into the twist from a slightly different approach,
And that's a fine place to stay too.
Other options include from bent knees crossing your left knee over your right or your right over your left.
And from up here,
With your left knee near your right foot,
You could cross your right ankle over your knee and see how that feels.
If you don't like it,
Don't do it.
Arrange your arms and your head however you like.
Sometimes it's nice to face away from your knees.
Take a few big breaths.
If it's just getting good,
Hang out here a little longer.
Or if you want to move straight to side two,
You can do that.
Otherwise.
.
.
Join me in a return to the sway of your knees from side to side.
Remember,
This could be really casual.
There's a whole lot of value in this,
Internally rotating one leg,
Externally rotating the other.
Another good choice is to lift your knees up.
Glue your knees and ankles together.
Sway them side to side.
If you're looking for even more space,
You could do this with straight legs,
But it gets really exciting really quickly when you straighten your legs.
I can't go all that far before I lose the connection of my shoulders to the floor.
So one way to make this harder but not quite top level is to straddle,
Then tap,
Straddle,
Then tap.
We'll take another pass or two.
You know we're winding up in this twist with the knees going down to the right.
And it doesn't need to look exactly like your twist on side one.
So get there in your own time.
Remember,
It could be knees and ankles loosely or tightly stacked.
Your right leg could cross over your left leg.
Or if you came in from your feet down on the floor,
You could stay exactly there.
Option to cross your left ankle over your right thigh.
Option to do whatever suits you on this side.
Fettle into your breath.
So far,
We've moved our spine left and right and also round and round.
Now it's time to spend a little bit more time in flexion and extension.
For flexion,
Lift your knees up toward the ceiling and hug them in.
This is where we'll end the sequence in a few moments.
But first,
We'll take a few rounds up into bridge pose and back down.
Now,
If that doesn't feel good for you,
You can instead focus on a pelvic tilt.
That's where we'll all start.
So take your feet roughly underneath your hips.
And let your hands frame your hips however feels good for you.
It's like cat and cow,
But down on your back.
As you breathe in,
Let your belly lift up.
Create some space between your low back and the floor.
And as you breathe out,
Smush that space down.
So if your hands were where mine are underneath your low back,
You'd almost crush your fingers.
Inhale,
Belly up.
Forward tilt of the pelvis.
Exhale,
Belly down.
Remember,
This is a fine place to stay just with this rocking.
You're lightly extending and flexing your spine,
Especially in the mid-back and lower back.
Or we'll let this last rock bring us up to bridge pose.
So as you exhale,
You're backward tilting your pelvis.
Hold that backward tilt a little.
Now inhale,
Press into your feet.
Elevate your hips.
Exhale,
Take them down and keep going with that.
Inhale,
Your tailbone scoops toward your knees.
You roll up.
And exhale,
You come down.
You could stick with that or also layer on movement of your arms.
Inhale,
Your hips lift and your hands lift.
Exhale,
Your hips lower and your hands lower.
As we do three more rounds,
You can work on the pacing here.
So it takes the whole inhale to get your hips as high as they want to go,
Plus the backs of your hands tapping,
And the whole exhale to come down.
One more round.
Once your hips are down,
Keep them down.
Hug your knees into your chest,
And we're back in spinal flexion,
Where we'll finish this sequence.
