St. Patrick's Day Yoga

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with this 45-minute themed yoga class! Join me for a fun and mindful yoga flow where we explore the question: Is it luck or skill? In this all-levels class, we’ll focus on strength, balance, and intention—while adding a festive twist to our practice. Whether you’re working toward pain relief, more flexibility, or simply showing up for yourself today, this class will help you connect to your goals and have a little fun doing it. Wear green, bring your curiosity, and let’s flow together!

Transcript

Welcome to St. Patrick's Day Yoga. Today, As we move, We're going to determine if it's luck or skill. Sometimes we need a little bit of both, Both in our yoga poses and just in life in general. We can't only rely on luck. Some of it needs to be our hard work and our skill to move us forward. Ray Kroc, The founder of McDonald's, Said, Luck is the dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, The luckier you get. So he's bought into the idea that there needs to be some work behind our progress. So let's see if we can make a little bit of that come true today. Not just luck, We're gonna add some skill as we move in our yoga practice. I've got a little bit of green on today, Green lights, Green clothes. For the theme of St. Patrick's Day. Let's see what we can do. So let's just close our eyes for a minute, Pull our shoulders back. Tuck your chin just a bit so that there's length in the back of the neck. And connect with your breath. Nice deep breath in and out through the nose. This is called yu jai breath. And it allows us to deepen the connection between our lungs and our diaphragm and to add a little bit of heat. The nose is just a smaller breathing apparatus than your mouth, So it brings in a little bit more heat, A little bit more energy to get the air moving in and out of the body. Good. Every time we move in yoga, We try to connect with our breath. So if your mind ever strays, Bring it back to your breath. See if you can return to that connection once again. Let's open our eyes. We'll take a unified breath together. Bring your arms by your sides. Inhale, Lift up. And exhale, Release. Only the first of many deeply connected breaths. Come on to all fours and let's just open our knees a little wider than our hips and sit back to a child's pose. So sitting back toward those heels, Reach your arms forward and drop your forehead to the floor. If your forehead doesn't quite reach the floor, Here's where we could use a block. You can place the block on the ground and just drop your forehead on the block. Sometimes that feels nice. Might take a little pressure off of the hips because you don't have to go quite so far down. So play around with. . . Where it's going to be. We might think about genetics a little bit here. Some of us have nice open hips, Just because it's what genetics brings us, And some of us don't. You might think of that as luck. Are we lucky enough to have open hips? But the skill comes into play because we can build flexibility within our hips by doing yoga. Just a little bit of luck versus skill right there, Here at the beginning. Good. Now let's lift onto our hands and feet. We'll raise up into a downward facing dog. First one of our day. So it might feel kind of tight. Feel free to pedal your feet around if you need to. You might feel that release in the back of the ankles, In the calves. And through the hips Just really soft. Kind of moving and easing it out. And then go back to just holding still. There is some value in holding still and holding the stretch. Don't worry there, We have not warmed our body up very much. So if this feels a little intense, It's okay. When we return to it again, It's gonna feel different. Let's walk our hands, I mean our feet, Up to our hands. And let ourself fold forward into the body. Just loosen up your neck, Loosen up your shoulders, Maybe soften your knees, Ease those hamstrings a little bit. And then roll up through your spine. As we come up to the top, Our shoulders roll back, And we're ready to take Sira Namaskara A to warm everything up. So let's reach our arms, Inhale, Lift up to the sky. Exhale, Swan dive down as deeply as we can go. It's okay to bend the knees. You do not have to touch the floor with your hands. Hands to the shins or on the ankles, Look up halfway left. Exhale, Bring your hands down and step back to a plank. Now you decide here if you want to drop to your knees or stay lifted. Take a breath, Inhale. Let's chaturanga. Exhale. Some of this takes skill, Right? We have to build our muscles into these poses. Inhale, Lift up to Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Facing Dog. And exhale, Lift your hips high, Press back into downward dog. Drop those heels down. And just ask yourself. Does this feel different than the first time? It might. It may not feel terribly different yet. Again, We're not all that warm yet. We need to give our body a chance. To warm up. So let's bend our knees, Look forward, Inhale, Step up to the hands. Exhale, Fold down into our legs, Uttanasana. Inhale, Reverse swan dive, Reach up to the sky, Lift. And exhale, Samasthiti. Nice. Good. Let's do a second one. First a little setup. If you have your mat placed like me, Put one block on each edge of your mat. Some of you may have your mats facing forward and that's fine too. Just do what you can. You'll see what I mean because of my setup here. So you can follow along with this direction of the mat setup or just do your own course. I'm going to face this way now. It'll make sense as we start moving into our vinyasa. One more vinyasa and then some standing poses. So here we go. Inhale, Lift our arms up to the sky. Same sequence as before. Exhale, Swan dive forward. Inhale, Look up halfway, Lift. Exhale, Hands come down. Step back to your plank. You can drop to your knees here or stay lifted. Chaturanga. Inhale, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Facing Dog. Exhale, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward Facing Dog. Heels drop, Hips lift high, Pull up through the center of your body. Feel that breath coming and going. Good. Now we're gonna move on. So lift your right leg, Inhale, Up and back behind you for a three-legged down dog. Feel that reach into the sky, A little lift through the hips. Bend your right knee, Come up onto your left toe and round your body. Pull up through the middle of your body. Is this luck or skill that we can hold our leg in the air? Maybe it's really hard for you. That just means that we're building our abdominal strength. We do that every time we do yoga. Now let's keep going with that right foot, Step it in between our hands, And drop that left heel down to the mat. Raise up. Into Warrior 1, Barabandrasana A. Good, Good. We'll pull our shoulders down, Send our gaze up. So we feel a little lift through our chest, Through our sternum. Very strong position. For our body. Inhale. Exhale, Bring your hands to heart center. We're going to take this left elbow down toward that right leg. If you can touch that right thigh, Great. If not, It's okay just to hover. But bring your hands down to that heart center and maybe you can push your elbow against your leg in the twist. Twists are a great way to build up that internal body heat. So, Building up our sweat, Like Ray Kroc talked about. A little bit of sweat work. To feel our good effort. Very nice. Now inhale, Lift our arms back up out of that pose, Out of the twist. And let's open, Exhale to Warrior II, Virabhadrasana B. So we still have our right knee forward. We've just rotated our hips. So our heel and our arch are lined up with each other in the same plane. Good, Keep this deep bend in that right knee. Drop your left hand down, Reach your right arm up and over. That strong pull through the torso. Into the shoulder. Through that rib cage. Now come forward and let's take our right elbow to the thigh to start. We'll pull our left arm overhead. Now we're gonna believe that we're lucky. We're gonna believe that our arms can reach under our body and around our body. Now some of it is genetics, Some of it is luck. Some of us have long arms, Some of us don't. But let's believe it for just a moment and see what happens. We're gonna take this right arm in front and pull it behind your thigh. Arm comes behind the back. Can you reach your fingers? Is it luck or skill? It might be just luck because we might have short arms and a long torso. Do your best. If it's too much, Come out of it, Return to here, And that's okay. Because you're building your skill by putting some pressure on the hip and the inner thigh and stretching through the chest. All of that needs to happen before we can deepen things, Right? Good, Let's give our hip a little break. Straighten up. Ooh, It's gonna feel nice to give that hip a little break. Reach your arms back to neutral, And let's come to Trikonasana. Now here, My block is far away. If you have a block, You can take it on the big toe side of your foot, Place it down, And then reach for it. This just allows the block to be close. We just don't have to touch the floor, Right? We don't have to touch the foot. The block can be adjusted to all different heights. So that you can really feel your skill building up. As we stretch through this inner thigh right where we were having that intense position. Now believe in yourself once again, We're going to try it a balance. Look down, Bend your right knee, Take your right hand forward, Use the block, Reach forward and maybe float. That left foot off the mat. Is this luck or skill? We might feel lucky if we can hold on to it. But it is using our skill, Using our muscles, Using our breath. A little bit of determination perhaps. It's okay, We do our best. Take one more breath. Inhale. Exhale. We did it. Bend your right knee, Just leave the block there. Let's come back up to warrior two. Feel that ground beneath you, Strong and stable. And windmill your arms down to the mat. Now let's rotate our hips and drop our left knee on the floor. So we've got our left knee down, Right leg here. Just either lift your hands to your knee, Or reach up to the sky. Feel that. Stretch through the hip flexor. Our right hip is on fire. We did lots of good work for it. It's beautiful. Inhale. Exhale, Hands come back down to the mat. Lift onto your left toe. Let's swing this right leg up and back behind us one more time. Kind of returning to where we started this whole sequence. And then release that foot down to the floor. Good, Now you might feel warm and down, Dog. Just ask yourself, Check in, See how you're feeling. Let's bend our knees, Look forward. Inhale, Step up or hop up to your hands. Exhale, Fold down into your legs, Relax your neck, Your chin, Your jaw. Inhale, Reverse swan dive, Reach up to the sky. And exhale, Samasthiti. Nice job. Let's turn ourselves around back to the other side. This is just mostly for me so that I can stay facing you the whole time as we go from side to side. So camera, A little camera trickery. We're going to move to our left leg, Starting with our vinyasa. We've got a block here ready for us when we need it. Inhale, Lift your arms up to the sky. Exhale, Swan dive all the way forward. Inhale, Look up, Halfway lift. Exhale, Hands down. Step back to plank. Drop to your knees if you need to. It's always an option. Chaturanga. Inhale, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Upward Facing Dog. Exhale, Adho Mukha Svanasana, Downward Facing Dog. Very nice. Here we go. Lifting the left leg. Inhale, Up and back behind you. Opening up that hip. Stretching it out. Now bring your knee to your nose. Round your body. We're up on our right toe just a little bit. And we're hugging that left knee into our chest. Building up our strength in our abdominals. Good. Maybe building up a little sweat. Who knows? Now step forward. Drop that right heel down and raise up. Oh, I'm losing my balance. Raise up to that warrior one. Sometimes getting those feet underneath us, Right? Good. So maybe luck is just simply the result of our action. We can be lucky by adopting the right habits. So in yoga, It's making sure we've got our firm foundation beneath us. It's making sure we're supporting with our abdominals. It's making sure our drishti, Our breath, All of that is in line. Good, Now let's bring our hands to heart center and guide this right elbow down toward the left leg. It might hook on, It might not. See if you can press against your body, Squeeze your body. And pull that left shoulder toward the sky. So we can feel a nice twist in our torso. Might feel it through our hips here. Might be a little balance challenge. It's okay. Challenges make us grow. Now inhale, Get your core in line so you don't fall over, Lift up. Exhale, Open up to Warrior II, Virabhadrasana B. Good, Nice. Now let's see if we can turn. Oh, First of all, Reverse Warrior. I almost forgot. Drop your right hand down, Reach that left arm up and over. Let's just stretching out our side body. Feels nice after doing that twist to really pull and lengthen. Through our torso. Good. Now come back. Okay, We're gonna turn luck into opportunity. Drop your elbow to your thigh and pull your right arm overhead. Maybe this is where you wanna stay. Maybe you wanna try out that bind again. You'll take your left arm underneath that leg and pull your right arm overhead. See if you can grab your fingers. Kind of right around the left hip there. If it's too much, Release it. And just go back to that Parsvakonasana, Which is great. You're not losing anything. You're just practicing something different. And that is okay. Good, Oh, We can feel that hip. Are we ready to stretch it out? I think so. Let's lift up, Release, And straighten the knee. Woo, A little relief there. Inhale, Take Trikonasana. Exhale, Reach down. If you're using a block, Grab it, Put it on the big toe side of your foot, And extend that arm back up to the sky. So that left leg stretching out the hamstring through the back of the leg. Through the side body. All of that reaching. Nice job, Stick with it. This is almost like a little bit of a break because we have a balance next. Let's see what we can do. Look down. Bend your left knee, Take your left hand forward, Use your block, Bring it with you. And lift that leg, The right leg, Off the mat. You might feel lucky if you can stick it. This is a hard one. Don't get too hard on yourself if it's not possible today. It's okay, We can try again another time. Take one more breath. Inhale. Exhale, Bend your knee, Put your foot down, Leave the block there. Ooh, We found the ground. We found the ground. Let's windmill our hands down to the mat. Bend that right knee, Square the hips. Left leg is forward, Right leg is back. Either bring your hands to your knee and enjoy this position. Feels really nice. Or give it a little bit more energy, Lift it up. Whatever you choose to do is going to be great. Just keep that breathing coming. Good. Inhale. Exhale, Bring your hands down. Lift up onto your right toe. Step your left foot back. And into Down Dog, Take a deep breath in through the nose. Exhale, Sigh it out. Another one just like that. Inhale through the nose. Exhale, Sigh it out. Very nice, Come forward to a plank. And let's all go ahead and lower down onto our stomachs. Very nice. Take your arms by your sides. We're going to build up a little back strength with Salabhasana. So for this one, You can lift your chest. You can lift your chest and your legs. Just keep your neck nice and loose, Looking down toward the mat. So let's lift up and we'll hold for about five breaths. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale, Keep breathing. Just looking down. Feeling that breath coming and going, And feeling that strength building all across the low back. Maybe feel it in the glutes and the hamstrings as well. One more breath here, Inhale. Exhale, Come on down. Turn your head, Rest on a cheek. I'm not going to do that because it'll smoosh my microphone. But you please relax. Turn your head, Rest on a cheek. And relax your shoulders. Relax your glutes. We're going to go up again. We'll do this in threes, So this will be set number two. Here we go. Let's try it. Inhale lift up. Again, Just look down toward the mat. This is not a neck pose. This is a low back pose. We don't want to be hurting our neck, Straining our neck. Keep that breath going. Inhale. Exhale, Come down, Turn your head, Rest on the opposite cheek. Again, I won't join you in rest just for a moment just because it's smooshes the microphone. Again, Things we have to do for the camera, Right? Good. Okay, We're going to try it one more time and test our luck, Test our skill. So here's an option. This time, If you can, You can reach back and grab your feet. Now again, You may not have genetically very long arms. Don't worry about it. Leave your legs down and just clasp your hands behind your back. So two options, Hands clasped. Or grabbing the feet. Let's lift up and give it a try. You're either pushing your hands, Your feet into your hands, Or you're either pressing through those hands to squeeze your shoulder blades together. Either way, It's still working our chest, And our shoulders, And our back. And maybe the quadriceps if you've got your legs. It's still a challenge, Definitely. Let's take one more breath here. Inhale. Exhale, Let it go. Press up and over into a child's pose. Let your knees open a little wider and sit back. This is needed. After doing three backbends in a row, We need to change the direction of our back. We need to round it. We need to curve it. Give it a bit of a rest. And just breathe. Right at the beginning of our session together. We started in this pose. Does it feel different this time around? You might just ask yourself that. See if you can notice changes. That might have happened simply. With our movement. And then just try to relax. And to be here with a little bit of gratitude for your abilities, That you've worked hard to gain. That's not just luck, Is it? Nice job everybody. Let's lift up. And we'll come around. With our right foot forward. So, Bring your right leg forward. Your mat. I'm actually showing the other side. So since I'm facing this way, Should be this leg. Right leg forward. Okay. So here we're working on our hip. It's pretty intense. You might take a block underneath that hip to elevate you just a little bit. Not everyone's going to be able to sit all the way down on their hip. So feel free to get a block. This is pigeon pose. Then once we've set our parallel to the top of the mat best we can, We're going to bring our torso down. I actually enjoy having my block forward so that I can put my forehead on it. So if you like that too, Try it out. You might have one block under your hip and one block in front. Whatever works best for you. This is another time when we want to try to get our body to relax. And it's hard because the hips like to give us a bit of a fight. They like to hold on to. Tension and that kind of thing. We're just going to be here and we're going to breathe. You might even try counting your breaths. Five counts in. Five counts out. Whatever you need to do to let your body and your mind relax for just a moment or two. I know this pose is not always easy, But we're not going to be here forever, Are we? We always come out of these poses, We move on. To something else. Good. Let's take one more deep breath here. Inhale. Exhale. Wow, Nice and deep. Lift up onto your hands. You might have a block under the hip. Let's move it out of the way so that we can sit down on that right hip. I'm going to swing around so that I can face you in the camera. So my right leg is on the bottom now and we'll pull the left leg up and over the top. Right leg on the bottom, Left leg over the top. Now if that feels really tight, Especially in your low abdominals, Try straightening out the right leg. It's going to just give you a little more space. So if you need to take that adjustment, Please feel free to do so. Let's extend our right arm up. Inhale. Exhale, Hook it onto the knee, Or just hug the knee. Either way, Left hand to the floor, Pull that left shoulder back, And we're in a nice, Beautiful twist. So I'm showing my leg extended or You've got your leg pulled back. Either way, You're gonna get a beautiful twist right deep in the center of your body. And we can even feel it in our shoulders as we pull back on that left shoulder. Very nice. Good, Come back to the center. Good, Unwind ourselves. We'll turn ourselves back toward the front of the mat again and move into the second side of the pigeon pose. So now your left leg is gonna be forward. Pull that right leg back and adjust yourself accordingly. Might need to use your hands to kind of sit yourself square between those two hips. And you might put a block underneath your left hip or you're going to come forward like I'm showing and put your block underneath your forehead. That's where I am today. That's what feels good to me. We seek for a balance between the tension in the pose, Because this isn't an easy pose, Or at least it's not for me. My hips don't like to open up very much. But we don't want it to feel too easy, So that means we add a little more depth. We lower the block a level, Whatever that looks like for you. So that you can feel the stretch. But you can still breathe through it. We're not pushing our body past itself. It's limit. Right, That wouldn't do us any good. Keep that strong, Steady breath. In and out, Just through the nose. Trying to get those hips to let go. This hip of mine is stubborn. Let's take one more breath here. Inhale. Exhale. Woo! Lift up. Good job. If you've got a block underneath your left hip, Move it out of the way so that you can sit down on your left hip and bring yourself around. So now, The left leg is on the bottom and the right leg is swinging up over the top. Remember that you can straighten out this left leg. Feel free to take that simple adjustment. Extend the left arm, Inhale. Exhale, Hook it on or hug it. Right hands to the floor. Sit nice and tall. Crack your back. I just cracked my back. I love that. Maybe yours will too. Feel that stretch all the way up the spine. And into the hips, It's lovely. It's lovely. Working on our digestive system a little bit, Twists always help with that. They always bring in that heat into the center of our body. They do such wonderful things for us. Good. Come forward. Nice job. Unwind those legs. We're going to lay ourselves down and please have a block close by you because you might use it for adjustments in a bridge pose. So let's lay down. With our feet on the floor. Knees bent. Arms by our sides Good, Ready for a bridge pose. So from the base of the spine, We're gonna lift our legs up, Lift our hips up, Feet stay down, Lift all the way up and you can either just press your hands into the mat or you can clasp your hands underneath. See if you can pull those shoulder blades toward each other in either case. That's going to open up the front of the chest really nicely. Now this is definitely building up strength in our low back once again, In our glutes, In our hamstrings. And in stretching that front body, Hip flexors, Quadriceps, Opening up that heart space. Right in the front of our body. Good, Take one more breath. Inhale. Exhale, Release your hands, Lower down. Let's let things relax for a breath or two. Good, Now we're gonna do it again, Same way. I'll let you choose the last one. So this is number two. We've got three in us. Let's try it again, See what happens. Go ahead and lift up from the base of the spine, Pressing to the floor or clasping underneath. Whatever you do is great. Pulling those shoulder blades toward each other. Opening up the front of the chest heart space. Long through the quadriceps, Long through those hip flexors in the front. Take one more breath. Inhale. Exhale, Release your hands, Lower down. Good, Now for this last one, I'll give you all sorts of options. You can do that same bridge again. If you'd like to be more gentle, We've got a block close to us. We'll lift our hips and just place that block underneath. I personally like the long edge. I just think it supports my hip bones really nicely. And then that's a way to just kind of relax. So if you want to be more relaxed, Choose this option. If you'd like way more energy, Follow me to a wheel pose. So we're going to place our hands, I'm going to move my hair, Place our hands back by our shoulders. Fingertips facing the shoulder blades and then press into the ground and lift yourself off. So this may be what you need today. It may be more than you need. I gave you those other options. Choose wisely. And just keep breathing. If you need to come down at any time, Tuck your chin. And bring yourself down. Let's hold one more breath, Or maybe you're already down. That's okay. Inhale. Exhale, Tuck our chin and bring ourselves down. That's a lot, That's lovely. If you've got a block under you, Move it out and let's all pull our knees into our chest and just give ourselves a little hug. We did it. We did great. Hopefully we felt the difference between luck and skill. We've got some skill. We've got some luck just because of genetics. But together we combine those and we make a beautiful yoga practice that allows us to grow. Very nice. Now just drop your legs over to the right. Let's take our arms out to a T. And we'll just relax those legs to the ground and turn our head over the left. And just feel our body unwind with a twist. We want to move toward a relaxing breath. As we start to settle towards Shavasana. Yeah. Yeah. Good, Come back to the center. And let your legs drop over to the left. Just turn your gaze over the right. Again, Just twisting and releasing any remaining tension in the low back. Maybe even through the chest, Shoulders, And neck. Come back to the center. Let your legs settle out. One leg to each edge of your mat. Bring your arms by your sides, Palms to the sky. If you like to elevate the back of your knees with your blocks or a pillow, That can release tension in the low back. If you like a blanket over the top of you, Grab it. This is your time to relax. And I will leave you here for a few moments and I'll wake you up with the sound of a bell. Start to wake yourself up. Rotate through your wrists and your ankles. Point and flex your feet. Stretch your arms overhead to lengthen through your whole body. And roll yourself over to one side in Fetal Pose. Press up to a comfortable seated position on your mat. And we can join together with our hands at heart center. I'll leave you with an Irish blessing to send you on your way today. May the Rose Ride rise up. I'm sorry, I'll start over. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. Thank you so much for joining me for a little St. Patrick's Day yoga fun. Namaste.