MBSR Lying Down Yoga - Trauma Informed

This is a lying-down yoga sequence which can be used as part of the MBSR programme. It uses a mindful movement trauma-informed approach and has been specifically designed for people wanting to explore their bodies using mindful movements, but who perhaps experience difficulty with physical pain and/or movement. Guidance is invitational and encourages curiosity and investigation of one's present moment experience as it is felt in the body. This can be a lovely introduction to the practice of embodiment

Transcript

Welcome to this practice of mindful lying down yoga.

This mindful yoga is focused on learning how to be present with the sensations of your body and your breath as we move through a sequence of lying down postures.

Everyone will have their own version of the posture so it's important to honor your own version of the posture with acceptance and kindness and just remembering that if you need to move out of the posture for whatever reason,

If it's not feeling like it's supporting your intention of connecting with your body and inhabiting your body,

Then please know that that is what you should do is to gently move out of the posture.

So starting off this practice by taking your position on your yoga mat or on the floor in the lying down position.

In yoga we call this the corpse pose.

So the corpse pose is literally lying down in the corpse position,

Your legs slightly apart allowing the feet to roll gently outwards and then resting the hands on the floor next to you slightly away from your body with the palms pointing upwards.

Lying in this position feeling into the floor behind you or underneath you rather and perhaps noticing how the breath moves in and out of the body without you needing to do anything or change anything.

So watching the breath as an observer as it comes into the body and as it goes out of the body and perhaps sensing into how the breath seems to somehow connect the body to the ground.

Seeing if it's possible to sink your body deeper into the floor as you breathe out letting go of any tension that you might be holding on to every time the breath leaves your body.

So every time the breath is leaving your body seeing if it's possible for the muscle tension to also leave your body.

Looking for areas of tension and tightness and then seeing if it's possible to let go of that tension and tightness by directing your breath to that area.

And then moving to the first movement of the yoga practice which is the body stretch.

Gently bringing both arms up above your body so that your hands are resting on the floor above your head with your arms stretched and then stretching both the arms and the legs as far as they can go so that you elongating your body as much as you can.

Breathing into this feeling of stretching your body you might even want to point your toes and stretch your fingers as much as you can and then taking one or two breaths in and out and then on the second breath out relaxing the stretch allowing the body just to fall back into the floor and then repeating that one more time stretching up so pointing the toes and stretching the fingers up above you with your hands resting on the floor above your head holding stretching and then as you're breathing out this time bringing your arms back down next to you so that your hands are next to your hips again and you are relaxing into a normal breathing pattern.

We're then going to move to the body squeeze so bringing your knees up to your chest holding on to the front part of your knees so your knees are bent and they are squeezing up so that you're in a curled up position keeping your head on the ground squeezing the knees towards the chest by pulling the knees closer and closer to your chest by using your hands making sure that you're not holding your breath in this position but perhaps just sensing into what the breath feels like as we move into more of a fairly compromised posture in your chest because your knees are pushing up into your abdomen and your chest you might even want to explore what it feels like to rock your knees side to side noticing what's happening in your lower back as you rock side to side and your middle back or maybe your hips if you noticing any discomfort seeing if it's possible to notice it the pain or the sensation of discomfort but also making sure that you tune into any emotion that's attached to this awareness of discomfort any emotion or feeling tone that's arising or maybe you've got some thoughts about the fact that you're noticing some tension or some pain and if that is your experience right now noticing it noticing the thought about it and perhaps even labeling it as thoughts or opinion about this pain and bringing your attention and your awareness back to the feeling of rocking your knees side to side bringing your attention back to the sensation in your body wherever that may be and then stopping the rocking and then bringing your feet back down to the floor straightening the legs and returning to the corpse pose in moving to hip mobility so we're going to gently bring your knee just the right knee up to your chest that you squeezing your knee towards your chest and then just seeing if you can really scoop the hip in a clockwise circular direction so you're making a wide circle with your hip and knee with the knee bend and then change direction so that you circling your hip in the other direction as big as you can go with the circles facilitating or helping your need to move by perhaps guiding the movement with your hands and then stopping that pose returning the leg back to the floor and then doing the same thing on the other side so just squeezing the knee up to the chest feeling into that flexion movement as we call it hip flexion and then moving into a circular movement of the hip in a clockwise direction big wide circles as wide as you can go and then turning to the other direction anti-clockwise big circular movements of the hip guiding the movement with your left hand perhaps two more circles and then letting go of the hip and returning back to the corpse pose now we're going to do the lumbar twist or the lower back twist so bringing your feet onto the floor by bending your knees moving into what we call crook lying so you're lying down on the ground with your knees bent and your feet on the floor bringing the ankles together and perhaps now turning your palms so that they're facing down onto the floor and then taking a little bit of a deeper breath than normal breathing in through the nose and then as you're breathing out moving both the knees over to the right side of the floor stretching the lumbar area the lower back area keeping the left shoulder on the ground and if you want to you can even use your right hand to pull the knees even closer to the right side as as you can trying to see if it's possible to twist and stretch the left side of your trunk noticing what the breath feels like as you hold this position and on the next breath out returning back to the starting position and letting go of that pose to that side now repeating that same movement but over to the left side so remembering that you can use your left hand to gently pull your knees over to the left keeping your right hand on the ground and your right shoulder on the ground feeling the stretch in your lower back and your right side of your trunk holding the stretch watching your breath in and out of the body and on the next breath out letting go of the pose and returning to the crook lying position and then staying in the crook lying position we're going to do some pelvic rolls so moving the pelvis forwards and backwards so that you are arching your back you pushing your tailbone down to the ground and creating a little space in your lower back a space between your back and the floor and then doing the opposite movement and rolling your pelvis so that the lower back is flattening towards the ground and you lifting your tailbone away from the ground and just keep repeating that at your own pace forwards and backwards up and down rolling the pelvis curving it arching it flattening it making sure that your breath isn't changing just keeping your own rhythm and adopting a breathing rhythm that really suits you right now so that you're moving with freedom and connection with your pelvis and your lower back and on the next breath out letting go of this movement and moving on to the next movement or the next posture which is a gluteal stretch so the gluteals or your buttocks muscles so we're going to stretch your buttock your right buttocks muscle by lifting up your right leg off the ground so you still you remaining in the crook lying position in the position where your knees are bent you can now lift up your right leg off the ground and place your right foot onto the top of your left knee your left leg is staying with your foot on the floor and your knee left knee is bent so it's like you're sitting in a cross-legged position right now and now you're going to bring your left leg or your left thigh up to your chest and you can help yourself to do this by grabbing hold of your left thigh maybe clasping your hands around the back of your left thigh and then you can even try and see if it's possible to gently nudge your right knee out a bit by using your elbow your right elbow see if that's possible that kind of changes the stretch a little bit and holding the stretch for about three or four breaths you and on that last breath out letting go of that pose and returning the foot the right foot back down to the floor and now doing the same thing but on the other side so lifting your left leg off the ground placing your left foot or the outside of your ankle on the top of your right knee and then grabbing hold of your right thigh by lifting your right leg off the ground and gently pulling your right leg up towards your chest and also seeing if it's possible to gently push the knee the left knee outwards with your left elbow holding the stretch for about three or four breaths and on the last breath out undoing yourself and letting go of this pose by placing both feet back on the ground so now we're going to move into something called bicycling so bicycling is where we make the action of pedaling a bicycle with our legs so keeping your body your top part of your body resting on the ground as it is now you're going to lift up both of the legs so that they're in the air so your hips and your knees are at 90 degrees and starting to cycle with your legs in the cycling motion in the air and playing around with the speed that you cycling maybe some really slow big motions with your feet and your knees and your hips and then faster ones and seeing what it feels like which muscles have to work differently to accommodate the change of the speed noticing what the tummy muscles are doing the leg muscles and perhaps also noticing where the effort is coming from perhaps your heart is starting to beat a little bit stronger now that you're moving into something a little bit more energetic carrying on with this for a few more moments seeing if you can really start pendulating into your extreme ranges and capabilities or perhaps this is really easy for you and so also just noticing what that feels like to do yoga when perhaps you're very experienced yoga practitioner and this feels way too easy for you so also seeing what that feels like and then slowly stopping that movement and then placing the feet back down onto the ground and just allowing the heart to settle back to its normal pace perhaps also noticing what the breath feels like and then coming up to the sitting position so sitting still in the same crook lying position so you're sitting up but your knees are still bent and your feet are still on the ground and this time we're going to move into the boat level one and level two of the boat so resting your hands behind you and seeing if you can lift the both of your feet off the ground so you in the boat pose so the knees are still bent at 90 degrees but now your feet are off the ground and you balancing in this boat pose using your hands as a little bit of support but noticing that there is quite a lot of effort required in the hip muscles and in the tummy muscles and then if it's available to you seeing if you can let go of the support of your hands and bring your hands in front of you so that they're somewhere around where your knees are and see if you can hold the balance now in this boat position and then taking a little bit of a deeper breath than normal and then as you're breathing out letting go of that pose and moving into the frog pose or froggy pose and froggy pose is sitting in almost like a cross-legged position but your soles of your feet are touching and the knees are out to the sides it's quite an intense groin stretch so you might feel a real strong pulling sensation in the groin area seeing if you can support your intention of being alert and aware of your body by taking on a dignified posture with your top part of your body perhaps lifting up the chest somewhat lifting up the back of the neck relaxing the top part of the shoulders breathing into the stretch in the groin and then from that froggy position starting to bring our practice to a little bit of a close we're going to now stretch the right leg outwards so we're keeping the left knee and the left leg bent and we're going to stretch out the right leg in front of us pull the feet up so that you're in the the ankle is in a flexed position and then sliding down both hands down the right leg curving the chin to the chest stretching into the spine and the back of the leg as you slide your hands further down the leg towards the ankle you and then on the next breath out letting go of that pose and swapping the legs around remembering to flex the feet the foot the left foot straightening the left knee and then sliding both hands down the left leg so that the hands are stretching down towards the ankles on the left sensing into the pulling feeling in the back and the neck behind the back of the legs and then on the next breath out letting go of that pose and returning to a cross-legged pose so just sitting cross-legged like a little child sitting on the floor at school you might want to put your cushion underneath your butt bottom just sitting in a cross-legged position to finish off this yoga practice by spending a moment or two connecting with your body now as you observe what the residue of this yoga practice feels like in your body what's the general feeling tone in the body or perhaps noticing what the sensations are in your body moving through the body or noticing what the breath feels like right now having done a little bit more physical exercise than perhaps usual and if your eyes were closed for this last bit of the practice you may open them and just bringing yourself back to the yoga mat and your room and preparing yourself for the next moment that awaits you as you finish your yoga practice and perhaps even thanking and acknowledging yourself for taking the time to spend this last 25-26 minutes with your body and that's the end of the yoga practice