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Hi Yoga Friends! Let's melt into this relaxing, deep leg and hip opening yoga class. We'll bring in functional movement and mobility stretches in the beginning of class to bring in blood flow to our hips, warm up our glutes and psoas, and then melt into deep hip stretches with longer holds - especially great if you love a long pigeon hold - like me.
This class is for you if you sit a lot, walk/run a lot, work out, or just want more flexible hips! We’ll stretch our hip flexors, get into deep glute stretches, release tight hamstrings, and relax into these stress relief postures.
Whether you’re wanting hip opening emotional release, yoga for leg flexibility, or a safe class to dive into yoga for stress, we’re going to breathe through it all.
This 20 min yoga class for hips is great for beginner yogis with options for more advanced hip stretches for my advanced yoga students. We’ll be holding a few of these hip stretches so be ready to drop into some serious yogic relaxation and deep hip and leg tension relief.
Also - We often store emotions in our hips, as you may experience in our lizard or frog pose. So this yoga class is an opportunity to be a hip opening emotional release yoga class. Let what comes up, come up without judgment.
See you on the mat for happy legs and hip stretches!
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D I S C L A I M E R
Please consult with your physician before beginning this hip opening yoga class. By participating in this deep leg and hip stretch, you agree that you do so at your own risk, are voluntarily participating in these activities, assume all risk of injury to yourself, and agree to release and discharge Yoga with Kate Amber from any and all claims or causes of action, known or unknown, arising out of any content from Yoga with Kate Amber.
Hi friends, it's Kate, and welcome to this deep hip and leg stretch class.
We're going to work deep into our hips and release any tension in our legs with functional
movements at the beginning of class, and then melt into some more yin postures towards the
end of class.
So you won't need anything but your mat today.
Let's go ahead and get started.
We are going to start class in child's pose at the back of our mat.
Take your knees wide, big toes come to kiss, and then walk your palms forward.
We'll make this an active child's pose, so come to your fingertips and sway your chest
side to side.
Reach your hip bones towards your heels, and at the same time, elongate your neck and reach
your head forward.
Start to arrive on your mat now, letting everything else melt away.
Focus your full attention on your breath and the sensations in your body, your touch points
on the mat, your knees, your feet, your hands, maybe your forehead.
Press your hips back a little bit more.
Feel how that stretches through the shoulder, through the side body, everything is connected
here.
And we'll start to connect with our breath and movement.
So click your knees in a little bit closer to each other, and we'll take an inhale, move
your hips up and to the right until you come to a tabletop position, and exhale, send them
back, child's pose.
Inhale your hips up and to the left until you're in this tabletop position, and exhale,
send them back.
That's the movement.
With your own breath, as you inhale, come up, rotating to one side through tabletop.
Maybe you turn it into a little bit of an up dog, and exhale, send it back.
Inhale through tabletop, up dog, exhale, send it back.
One more time, each side, inhale, exhale, last side, inhale, exhale, beautiful.
Tuck the toes, send the hips back first, then up, downward dog.
This might be your first downward dog of the day, so pedal it out here, really bend into
one leg and reach the other, straight legs, heel down to the mat, and switch it out.
Really wiggle it out here, whatever feels good.
And then really slowly, as if you're kissing the mat with your footstep, each time, take
a slow walk towards the top of your mat.
When you get to the top, take a forward fold.
You can have bent knees here, and we'll play with this forward fold.
We're going to get deeper into our hips, we're also going to get into some spinal flexion
as well.
So inhale, to a half lift, long spine.
On your exhale, chin to chest, grab your ankles or your calves, and press your back away,
so you're really rounding, almost like a cat's position.
And then inhale, fingertips can come to the ground, look up, hip bones rise.
This is your cat, or excuse me, cow position.
So just like that, on your exhale, chin to chest, round through the back, you're really
pressing the front of your back towards the front of the room, or rather the top of your
back, towards the front of the room.
And inhale, look up, hip bones rise.
Two more times, just like that, exhale, inhale, exhale, round, inhale, reach your hip bones
up, beautiful.
From here, step your right foot back, left foot forward, heel toe it over to the side
of the mat, come into lizard pose on your hands, sink your hips deep, but the back knee
is rising towards the sky, so we're active here.
We'll take some functional movements to straighten through both legs, wide-legged pyramid, maybe
the front toes pop up as you get that nice calf stretch.
On your exhale, re-bend.
With the breath, integrate it.
On your exhale, straighten, inhale, bend, lizard pose, exhale, straighten into pyramid,
inhale, lizard pose, exhale, straighten pyramid, inhale, lizard.
One more time, exhale, pyramid, inhale, lizard.
Heel toe your foot to the center, drop the back knee, untuck the back toe, inhale, both
arms rise, sink the hips forward, so place all of your attention in the right side of
your hip.
We're going after and stretching our hip flexor on the right.
The hip flexors often get tight from sitting or core exercises, walking, running, anything
that pulls your leg up, and your hip flexor is attached from your spine in the back, it
attaches to one, two, three, and four of your lumbar vertebrae, crosses over your hip, and
then attaches to the inside of either leg, so when we do a position like this and we're
extending from our spine to the back of our leg, we're really opening up and reversing
all that stretching that we do, so it's really good.
Let's take some pulses here, just little movements, getting deeper, keep both hip bones squared
toward the top of the mat.
I like to also add in a little back bend, so we're also getting into the top chain,
or excuse me, the front chain of the body.
That means putting your hands up and back.
Now slowly engage your core, straighten through your front leg.
We're going to do a little balance test here.
Already you can see that you're pressing into your feet to stabilize, maybe your right hand
reaches to the ground or your heel, and your left hand reaches into the air, taking a little
bit of a back bend, keeping that left hip down, breathe, slowly and with control, inhale,
come up, keep the front leg straight, fold forward, half splits.
We'll take pulses here, flex your feet, your toes, back at your face, pulsing, just little
micro movements to get deeper into the left hamstring, beautiful.
Relunge into your left leg, toes out, heels in, and we're actually going to come to the
side in your skandhasana, side lunge, so right leg is straight, left heel is on the ground,
and take any variation of this you'd like.
You can have a block under your body or hands on the ground.
I like to anchor my left arm down, reach my right arm towards the sky, and then pivot
my chest open, beautiful.
Walk your left heel, your left foot almost off the mat, step your right foot up for a
yogi squat, malasana.
We've done a lot on our left side, so it should be a little bit more open than our right side.
Just stay here with a long spine, and then plant your hands, step your left foot back,
right foot is already off towards the side of the mat, so we'll replicate that same sequence
on this side.
We're in this lizard pose with our back foot tucked, back knee up, and we'll straighten
both legs, pyramid pose with wide legs.
Exhale bend, or excuse me, inhale bend, exhale pyramid, inhale bend, exhale pyramid, inhale
re-bend to lizard, exhale pyramid, inhale re-bend, lizard, exhale pyramid.
One more time, re-bend, pyramid, re-bend, heel to your foot in towards the center, drop
the back knee, untuck the back toe, inhale, both arms rise, anjaneya asana, focus all
of your attention on your left hip this time, again focusing on the psoas that's being stretched
and reversing the sitting, option to take your hands in kali mudra above the head, all
fingers intertwined except for the peace finger and the thumb, look up towards your fingers
and shift them towards the back of the room.
We'll take pulses here, pulsing just a little bit deeper, little micro-movements, and then
with your core on, pressing into both feet a lot, challenge your balance by straightening
your front leg, I like to flex my foot for added stability, your left hand can reach
towards the mat or your heel, take a little bit of a back bend, feel this opening in the
left side of the hip, the right hand reaches up and back, breathe here, beautiful, with
control, keep the front leg straight, fold forward into a half splits over your right
leg, toes pointed back towards your face, square off the hips so you're really isolating
the right hamstring, and take pulses here.
Little micro-movements that allow you to get a little deeper into the hamstring, but never
staying at a max stretch, full breaths, beautiful, relunge at the top of your mat and come into
a side lunge, skandhasana on the right, right knee is bent, right heel on the ground, left
leg is straight and find any variation that suits you, beautiful.
Step up into yogi squat at the top of your mat, reach both hands forward in yogi squat,
as we round through the back, different sensation in the hips, then anchor your left hand, reach
the right arm up, twist, other side, beautiful.
Now you can come back into downward dog, and then set up for pigeon on the left, or you
can just come into it from here, bringing your left knee and left foot to the ground,
right leg straight behind you, and I like to check behind me too and make sure that
it's straight behind, sometimes it has a tendency to go out to the side.
Now yogi's choice, you have two variations in this pigeon pose, depending on what you
need, if you need a good glute stretch in pigeon, then come on down to forearms, or
all the way down and rest here.
If you're working on that psoas and you feel really tight in this hip, or you feel even
right now that your right hip is coming up, and maybe you stay up on your fingertips or
on your hands, and drive your hips forward.
We're slowing down coming out of the functional movement part of the class, and melting into
these next few postures.
So the structure for this part of class is to find comfort in this pose, settle into
this pose, then focus on the breath, and find a meditative state.
So get comfy, deepen the breath, and relax, meditate.
Beautiful.
We're going to take it on over to the other side, and again you have a couple different
options, you can push back up into downward dog if that feels good, or you can lean over
to the left, bring your right leg, set it up for pigeon, and then swap your left leg
back behind you.
There's no better or worse, just different variations and they work different parts of
the body.
So it's good to incorporate variety.
Again as we're in pigeon on the right, your foot can be closer to your body or it can
be more parallel to the top of the mat if you have the knee mobility and it feels comfortable
in your body, but there's nothing better than or less than.
We're all just looking for a sensation.
You have the option to take humble pigeon and fold forward, or come to fingertips and
take proud pigeon, working into that left psoas, driving the left hip down.
If thoughts come, or you get distracted, then breathe deeper, breathe more fully.
Beautiful.
From here, we're going to press into our hands and move into a straddle position.
However you can get there is good.
So take a straddle as wide as you can, and I like to walk my hip bones out a little bit.
This just feels like it's opening up in a really natural way, and it lets me kind of
get comfortable in this position without having to go into a deep stretch first.
So shimmy your little hip bones out, see what feels tight today, what feels good, where
you feel space, and as you inhale to a really long spine, exhale, fold forward.
All we're doing is looking for a sensation here in this straddle pose, so it doesn't
need to be your deepest straddle, and every day will be different.
Today is different for me than it was yesterday, and that's fine.
Just find your sensation, relax your forehead, relax your jaw, take big breaths to relax
your nervous system, and if you're clenching in your hips or your glutes, try to relax
your muscles there.
Just let everything relax, let gravity do the work here.
Beautiful, slowly, slowly start to come up.
Use your hands to help bend your knees, bring your legs in, sit up to a really long spine,
take a moment, collect your breath, feel the energy that you've created, the space you've
created in your body, and the time it took for you to honor this space.
Bring prayer pose, hands to your third eye, let us honor our thoughts.
Slowly move them down to your lips, let us honor our words, and bring it on down to your
heart center.
Let us honor ourselves and those we hold in our heart.
Namaste, sweet friends.
