Hip Opening Prenatal Yoga

Join Sarah for a 25 minute gentle yoga flow helping to open our hips during pregnancy. Any trimester is welcome to join, or anyone not pregnant. Find some props such as blocks and bolsters if you have any (thick books or rolled up blankets can be a good substitute). We start with a breathing practice, gently open up the neck, then move into opening the hips and ending in a modified savasana.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to your hip opening prenatal yoga sequence. I am Sarah. I'm so excited to have you. I'm about currently. . . 27 weeks pregnant expecting my third Child. You're welcome to do this practice at any point in your pregnancy. Say for all trimesters. Just listen to your body and what you're feeling and experiencing. You can do less, You can do more. Just be aware that there is the hormone relaxing flowing through your body, So we never want to push too hard. We don't want to find any pain. Comfort is okay, We can breathe there, But any pain you just move back and use props and modify. Right now i'm sitting on a bolster you're welcome to sit up on a cushion a pillow anything just to elevate your hips a little bit. I also have blocks. So I really like using blocks. If you don't have blocks, You can find a really thick book. People don't really have phone books these days, But you can find them. A stack of books even. Something square in your house. The idea is we'll sit up our hips up on something and then we'll actually place the blocks underneath our knees or our thighs. To help support our hips, Like I say, We can relax in our body. And so if the hips open too much, Or if any joint were to open too much, The nervous system can grip a little bit and feel unsafe. And so we allow the props to support us, Our nervous system and our joints can actually relax. A little bit and feel more safe. So I definitely encourage us throughout your pregnancy to use as much support as possible. And if you have a history of hypermobility, That's really important to keep in mind as well. So find your comfortable seat. You're welcome to place one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and close your eyes. Take a nice deep breath in through your nose. Out through your mouth. Another deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Now bring the breath. In through your nose and out through your nose. Let the belly be soft and loose. Let your breath and air expand your belly. Inviting more oxygen. Into your body letting that breath massage your baby and all your organs. Letting whatever has come before this fall away. Just finding the awareness and presence in your body connecting to your baby now. Maybe bringing a wish or an intention to this good you can let your hands fall back to your knees you can adopt a mudra if that feels good pointer finger and thumb together. Just take a few more conscious breaths here so again breathing fully into the belly for the count three. When? Three and exhale two three Bye. Inhale two Exhale, Two. Three, Four. Inhale to. Three. Exhale. Two. Inhale to. . . Exhale two Three. Feel free to inhale and exhale normally now, Letting that go. Knowing that when we extend the exhale as we just did, It helps to relax the body, Relax the parasympathetic nervous system. A great practice to use if you're having trouble sleeping. If you want to use it during labor, During contractions, Or even when babies arrived and on your chest. Can help regulate together. So I invite you to bring your palms together in front of your heart. Take a nice deep breath here. We're going to rub our palms together creating some heat and some friction. And then place the base of your palms against your eyes so we're covering our eyes Let your body relax into this. You can wiggle if you need to. Relax your neck, Shoulders. And then maybe opening your eyes into your palms. And slowly you can use your hands while they're here to massage your face. Taking your hands. Away from your eye massage down there. Jaw, The cheek. And when you get to the neck, Slowly use the fingertips just to stroke down your neck. Keeping the breath. Nice and long and relaxed. We're going to do what I like to call the teacup stretch. So place one hand like a teacup. Palm face up and then drop your head away from that hand Now, If you have a lot of tension in your neck or in your trapezius, Can stay here with the hand or if you feel like you're not finding much you can totally extend the arm away. To whatever degree you find a comfortable stretch. And breathe. Again we don't want to go too far into any stretches when we're pregnant. Just finding gentle comfort. All right, Then bring that palm in, Bring the head back up to center. Bring the other hand like you're holding a teacup. And then drop your head to the other side Again, If you find tension here, That's totally fine. Or if you need to extend the arm. And find where you find it have a lot of tension as you can see I can't get quite straight and that's totally okay. So just bring a nice deep breath here. Good, And then we'll bring that back through center. Roll your shoulders a few times forwards. Good. And a few times. Now we're going to come off of our props so you can Put the blocks to the side for a moment and if you're sitting up on something you can come off of it. We're going to put our legs forward for a moment. If your belly's big like mine, You can have your legs a little bit wider. If you're earlier in your pregnancy, You can have your legs a little closer together. I like to prop my hands just beside my hips, Behind my pelvis a little to keep my spine straight. Depends how little support you need. Then we're going to inhale. Sorry, We're going to exhale and point the toes. And we're going to inhale and bring the toes towards us. Inhale, Point the toes. And exhale. If you have a lot of cramping, Don't point the toes all the way because that will induce more cramping. We're just trying to move with our breath here and invite the feet back into our system. So we're going to do some circles as well. Than the other way. Good. Now keep one leg extended. We're going to bring the other foot in close towards the pelvis. Find those sitting bones underneath you. Inhale the arms up. Nice deep breath exhale tilt from the hips forward Place the hands on the floor wherever they fall. There's no need to push anything in pregnancy. Like I said, There's relaxants. We're going to micro bend that back of that straight knee so we're not pushing into any of the ligaments. We're just gently stretching back of the hamstring, Maybe feel it in your lower back. Sigh. Have some nice deep breaths here. Now we'll gently. . . Bring the torso back up and switch legs. So again, Once you get the foot in, Adjust so you find your sitting bones underneath you. Inhale, The arms up. Nice long spine. And then exhale tilting from that spine coming forward. And there's no No pressure, No rush in preneal yoga. Micro bend the back of that straight knee. We're not overstretching any ligaments. Breathe into whatever. Tension you might be feeling good and then you can gently bring your torso back up So now we're going to go into deer pose. Do some diagonals so you can see. So both of my knees are bent. I like to bring a bolster in front of me. Again, You can bring a pillow, A couch cushion, Whatever you have. Just so I can reach if you have blocks you could also use that because with the belly you can't reach as far to the floor. So we're gonna start by actually activating the muscles a bit. So we're gonna try to lift that back knee. Again, Trying is all you need to do. If it grows, Great. So you can see mine lifts a little bit. Just gonna do that maybe four times. If you have any cramping just relax and start again. And then we're going to try and lift the back foot. Good, Again, It may or may not actually go. That's totally okay. Trying is enough if you need to, Just relax that out. Going to mobilize the hips we're going to move forward and move back so it's like i'm lifting my sitting bones off the ground and putting them back down on the ground Just finding a little bit of movement here. And then again, Now we're going to come into a more passive stretch so you can come forward onto your bolster or your block. If you need to be elevated more, You can put more props in front of you so you can really relax into it. Try to relax your neck, Your shoulders. Your jaw, The muscles in your face. And then take a deep breath wherever you want. Ah. Our hips shift so much when we're pregnant. Doing so much work to allow the portal of birth to open. So often you might find tension in your hip. Your little back. Totally normal. Doing some gentle stretches and gentle. Strengthening is really, Really important. One more nice deep breath here We're going to bring our. . . Torso back up. Leave your feet where they are. Place your hands behind your pelvis and gently let your knees fall. Side to side like windshield wipers. Just wiping that out. Good. And then we'll go to the other side. You're going to find that deer pose or that double bent knee position on this side. Bring your props in front of you here. And then again, We're going to start by trying to activate these muscles. This side doesn't work so much for me, But try to lift the knee up four times. Again, If there's cramping. And just relax you can come out of it good and then try to lift the foot up about four times Good, Okay, And then we're just gonna mobilize that hip, So. Finding the sitting bone going back. Sitting bone going forward. Just a few times. Working that out. Finding the space. Good then bringing the body forward again finding what props you need on this side knowing you're different on both sides your hips are asymmetrical and that's totally okay Maybe you go lower, Maybe you stay higher. Again, Relax the shoulders, Relax the neck, Relax the jaw, Relax the face. And then breathe. Connect back in with your body and your baby. Maybe remembering the intention you set at the beginning of this practice. One more nice deep breath here Yeah. Then bringing your torso back up placing your hands behind your pelvis again leaving your feet where they are and just letting your knees fall side to side. Finding that internal hip rotation and external hip rotation. Good, And then we're gonna move into hands and knees. And I want you to have, If you have blocks, Have them up towards your hands or your. . . Stacks, Whatever. Good, So we'll find our hands right underneath our shoulders, Our knees right underneath our hips. We're going to inhale, Lifting the head and the tail. Exhale around the spine. Inhale. Inactive. One more. Ugh. Then find some intuitive movement. Maybe you want to go side to side. Maybe you want to do some circles or some hip circles. Just listen to your body and do what it wants you to do. The best thing we can do in our pregnancy and birth. Is to listen to our body and our intuition. Beautiful. Okay. So now we'll do a little bit more hip. Opening so grab your blocks to place them underneath your shoulders or maybe a little bit wider I'm going to place mine up on to the tops of the block Bring my right knee forward. I'm going to start by doing a little a few little like hip circles here. So I'm going to do a little bit of movement. One direction Then circling in the other direction Nice deep breath still. Good, And then I'm gonna let the foot roll open to the side and back in so my knee's falling out. I don't know if you can see that behind my block. Yeah, So let the foot just roll open and back in. Again, Moving to your level of comfort. So not going too far if it doesn't feel good for you. Good that's enough and then I like to bring my blocks a little bit closer to me we're gonna stretch that front leg And we're not going to overstretch into the back of the knees, So we make sure it's micro-bent at all times. And then we're going to bend the knees and look forward. So exhale. Stretch and inhale bend and look forward. Exhale and inhale ahhhh good this time we can stretch a little bit more into that leg again we keep a micro bend here Into the back of the knee. Try to keep a nice long spine. Good. And then we'll bend into that front knee. You can keep using your props here or you can feel like you're hugging your thighs together. Squeeze the pelvic floor. Hug those hip bones together so you're activating your core muscles, Your transverse abdominus. And then maybe you can bring your hands up to your knee or in prayer in front of your heart. Take a nice deep breath here, Feeling the strength of your legs. Again, The strength of your core to support you. And then bring your hands back down on your block. Bringing that knee back and then shifting the other leg forward. So we start with our hip circles. Circling that knee in one direction. Sorry, Sizzling the hip. You all know about pregnancy brain. It is a thing. And go the other direction. The gray matter has actually been proven to shrink a little bit in pregnancy. But it's biologically so important. So now we're going to let that knee open so it falls open on the side of my foot. Here I'll move the block again so you can kind of see better. And then. . . Just a few times and then we'll do our stretching and bending so we're going to stretch the leg And bend. Than me. Stretch. Again not going too far too deep we're just mobilizing here And you want to make sure that your knee is never going. . . Over your toe so if you need to take a wider stance you can. Usually in pregnancy we take shorter stances and things just to protect. Our pelvis, Our hips, Everything, Our joints. Good. Okay. So next one we'll come into our nice stretch just staying there for a few more moments and keeping that micro bend behind the knee. Nice long spine. Nice deep breath. And then we'll bend into that. Front knee and so this time i feel like you're hugging your thighs together hug your pelvic floor up And in, Squeeze your hip bones together, Activating your core, Your transverse abdominus. So maybe that lets you. . . Whoa, Put your hand on your knee or maybe your hands in prayer, Heart center. Nice deep breaths, Feeling that strength. Good. Then we're going to put our block Um, Hands on our blocks we're actually going to put our blocks in the middle of our mats we're going to bring our leg out to the side. And then we're going to tuck the back toe lift the leg and bring the other foot up to the outside of those blocks So we're going to inhale. Look forward. Bend the knee. And then exhale, Fold. Inhale. Look forward, Bend the knees. We're coming into an active squat and exhale and fold. If you're feeling lightheaded, You can stay in one position or the other. You're doing less movement if you have heartburn you can just leave your heart lifted higher So you don't have to go so far in the forward fold. So good. Alright, One more. And then you can move the block. The side We'll gently place our hands back down on the floor. Come to our knees. And we're going to come. Two sittings. On our side. We're going to set up for Shavasana. So if you have. . . Or pillows, Whatever you have. We're going to set one underneath the head. And then I'm going to put a bolster or a pillow between my legs, But I make sure it's between my knees and my ankles. The reason being, If it's only between your knees and your ankles are dropped, You're actually finding some external hip rotation which could be aggravating more hip pain. So make sure it's between your ankles as well as your knees so you can see that my legs are still parallel here. And then I can totally relax in and my hips can relax. So this is a nice modified Shavasana. If you're in your first trimester, Maybe even your second trimester, If you prefer to lay on your back, You're welcome to. Otherwise, Get cozy. Close your eyes. Let the breath go. Know that you're totally safe, Totally supported. There's nowhere you need to be, Nothing you need to be doing. Everything is as it should be. Let your body melt into the floor. It's almost like you fall an inch into the floor. If you have the time and space, You're welcome to stay here for much longer. If you would like to continue on with your day I'll invite you to take a nice deep breath into your body. Bring some awareness back to your limbs. And then gently. If you're on your back rolling onto your side, If you're on your side using your hand. Push yourself back up Just seated. And we'll close. Together. And bringing your hands to prayer in front of your heart. Keeping your eyes closed. Remembering the intention you set at the beginning of this practice or the wish you had. Bringing a smile to your face. Just take a moment to notice how you feel in your body now versus before the practice. And then offering some gratitude to your baby for joining you and for your body for carrying you. For showing up. Thanks for moving with me. I hope to move with you again.