Flow - Day 8 - Relax

Hi everyone, welcome back to FLO, your 30 day yoga journey. You are in the right place at the right time because it is Day 8 and on Day 8 we take a load off. So if you have a blanket or a pillow you'd like to bring to this practice, go ahead and grab it. If not, no worries. We're gonna relax a little bit today, stretch things out and get ready for Week 2 the proper way. So hop into something extra comfy and let's get started. Alrighty, let's begin on the ground. This is a floor practice so it's gonna be nice and yummy. If you brought a blanket or two to the class you can use it in any way you like. I like to put one down just to kind of tell my brain, okay, today we really are practicing rest and this is important for me to be able to know what my flow feels like and to access that, right? So it's not always checking the boxes and moving and grooving at a fast pace. Today we're gonna slow it down. I also made a little pillow for myself. You can do what we're doing or you can do your own thing. Also, you can access this constructive rest without these props. All right, so we are gonna end on our backs. So let's start seated here, just dropping in to our breath, lengthening through the crown. And then bring your left hand to the center of your chest, your heart center, and then place your right hand on top. Tuck your chin slightly, lengthen through the back of the neck. Take the deepest breath you've taken all day in. And as you exhale, just feel the warmth of your own touch here. Feel the shoulders relax, the skin of the face soften. And maybe if you're open to it, if it feels safe and all right, you can just allow for a little tenderness for yourself, toward yourself. Whatever that means to you. Try a little tenderness. Inhale in deeply, exhale completely, bat the eyelashes open. We're just gonna send the fingertips gently all the way up and out, all the way up to the sky, and then exhale, float them down and allow the fingertips to be, sorry, to come behind, I already got relaxed here, to come behind you so we're opening up through the chest. And it's soft and it's easy. It's inhale, reach, and lift. And it's exhale, maybe wiggle the fingertips and bring the wrists behind the hips. One more time, inhale, reach. Exhale, release. This time, keep the fingertips behind your hips here, keep the chest lifted, and we're just gonna drop the chin to the chest and hold it here with the sternum. Breathe deep, and then slow and steady, initiating from the nose, you're gonna start to draw circles. One way, breathing, and then the other way, reverse the circle. Nice, and then allow your left ear to rest over your left shoulder. Bring your right palm to your left knee. And if you like, bring your left palm to gently rest on your right ear. Relax the shoulders, soften the skin of the face, and breathe easy. If this is much too much, you can take the right hand, bring it back down to the earth. Now last bit here, slowly lift the chin up towards the sky just a bit, and then release, and we'll take it to the other side. Left hand comes to the right knee, right ear over right shoulder, right hand gently placed on the left ear. Again, if you're feeling an uncomfortable, unsafe pull in your trap, just release that left arm. Lift your heart, notice if you've collapsed in the spine. It happens all the time. Let's take the chin up just a bit, breathe in, sync up with your breath, and then exhale, release everything. All righty, we're gonna come on to our backs here. I'm gonna hold off on using my pillow, and I encourage you to do the same just while we do this floor work, but have it close by. All right, coming down to our backs. As you're ready, extend the legs out long, and inhale, reach the arms all the way up and overhead. Exhale, cross your right arm over your left. Give yourself a big hug here. Flex the feet as if you were standing in mountain pose, inhale in. Breathe into all four sides of the torso, exhale out. Inhale, reach the arms up. Exhale, cross the left arm over the right, and close your eyes here, feel your own embrace, whatever that means to you as you breathe in. Nice, wide, lateral breath, feeling, yes, more feeling. All four sides of the torso expand. And then release. Palms are gonna press down gently at our sides. We're gonna bend the left knee, then the right. Prepare for bridge posture, Sattu Bandhasana. Press into the palms, press into the feet. Toes are pointing forward. Relax your shoulders down. Tuck your chin, and when you're ready, slowly begin to peel up from the tailbone, inching through the low back, and the mid-back, and the upper back, breathe. Pause at the top, take a breath in. Then on your exhale, soften through the collarbone, sternum, make your way slowly down until the tailbone releases, and then we'll repeat. We're gonna do that twice more in your own time. And then after you're done, you'll send the right toes up towards the ceiling, and you can keep a nice, generous bend in that right knee if you need to. Everyone can keep a nice, slight bend. And then we'll interlace the fingertips and bring them behind the thigh, behind the shin. If you have a strap or a dish towel, you can use that here as a little extension of your arms. And if you do a lot of flexibility and mobility work and you wanna start grabbing towards that ankle, that's available to you. Right ahead, breathe deep, sending some love into the belly of that right hamstring. Let's actually take this right thumb and bring it to the top of the right hip crease. Pull that right hip crease down, and slowly slide your left leg out and breathe. Shoulders stay relaxed, soften the skin of the forehead. Relax through the neck, lovely. Now bend your left knee again, and then let's cross the right ankle over the top of the left thigh. Take a second to pull that right hip crease down, and we want to, best we can, try to keep these hips and this pelvis level as we lift the legs up. Really get into that hip socket. So you can even look at your hips, just notice how they're moving. And they can torque here in this stretch, and then find what feels good, and maybe interlacing the fingertips behind the left thigh. You can close your eyes here and breathe. Now keep the right ankle where it is, just lower the left foot to the ground. Then slide your right leg over your left, as if you were sitting at a desk or something like that, and then send your legs over to the left. Arms are gonna go up, kinda like a ballerina, why not? Overhead, as you turn, to relax on your right ear. Now breathe into your sweet belly. So for some, this practice is just gonna be delicious, just the best, and for others, this will be really challenging. So if you're finding this pace and this style challenging, anchor in the sound of your breath, reside in the role of the observer, think about the vocabulary that we've established together thus far, and just continue to notice where your thoughts go, what your patterns are. When things get a little uncomfortable, can we use the tools that we're learning here together to stay with it, and stay focused, ultimately. Okay, let's slowly release, nice and slow. Come back to knees bent, soles of the feet on the mat. When you're ready, we're gonna slowly send that left foot up high. Benji, let me tell you, Benji is stealing the show today. All right, interlacing the fingertips behind the thigh, the calf, finding your stretch here. Notice how this side could be different, feel different, the sensation, pulling that left hip crease down with the left thumb. Stay with it, breathe, find that wave of the inhale, softening with your exhale. Maybe you extend the right leg. Your body will tell you if that's no good for you. So just stay curious, give it a try, and adjust as needed. You gotta bring the breath, keep breathing. Here we go, we're gonna slowly bend the right knee, cross the left ankle over the right, find your figure four. Maybe take a peek at the hips, notice if they are center or not, and then hug the knees up to the chest. Whenever you're ready, continue to breathe. You can close your eyes. Trust that this time is valuable. And as you're ready, slowly slide the left foot over, and we'll release into this twist here, sending the knees to the right, and taking the arms all the way up and over. You can clasp the fingers, or you can take it into ballerina arms, and we grab the wrist, and relax your left ear towards the earth, breathe. And as you're ready, slowly release, come out of the posture, bring the feet to the mat, center your hips, knees bent towards the sky, and then we're gonna allow the knees to fall to the right. You're gonna take your right ankle and cross it over the outer edge of your left thigh. Breathe deep here, deep internal rotation of the left hip. Inhale in, exhale, switch, little glute massage as you take it to the other side. And then slowly release, bring the hips back to center, hug the knees to the chest. Inhale in, exhale, slowly peel the nose up towards the knees. Keep the shoulders relaxed, elbows can bend left to right. Breathe, and from here, hold onto your right knee as you release the spine, extend the left leg out long. So we have one leg in, one leg out, breathe in, breathe out, slowly peel it back up, nose to knees. Left knee comes in, and then we'll extend the right leg out. Relax the head, the shoulder. One more time, inhale in, exhale, hug both knees in. Lift the head, the neck, the shoulders. Breathe, breathe, breathe, and then exhale. Slowly release, widen the knees, soles of the feet come to touch, and this is when you can bring the pillow into the game, if you like. Hands are gonna rest gently on the belly. We allow the thighs to get heavy here. We soften any gripping in the toes, and close your eyes. Nice, easy inhalation, and easy exhalation. And slowly bring your fingertips to the outer edges of your thighs, and we'll close the knees back to center. If you have a blanket here, and you wanna end in a burrito, highly recommended if you've never given it a try, especially if you're a grown adult. You grab your blanket, and you roll up like a little taquito or burrito. So it could be nice to make this moment happen for yourself. If you're trending towards making it happen, go ahead and make it happen now. You know, this series kind of picks up after this, so enjoy it, I'm just kidding. Love you guys, so get comfy. We'll just take a minute here or more together to practice surrender, stillness, and this constructive rest. Let your breath be easy. Give yourself permission here to do absolutely nothing. And just notice, what are you feeling? Do you feel like a little inner smile? Do you feel a release, that tenderness back in the picture? Maybe you're feeling a little fidgety or agitated. It's all good, just notice. Rock stars, all of you, all of us. Way to take some time today to relax, to rest, and check in on part of the flow. Bring the palms together. As you're ready, draw them up to the third eye. You can give yourself a little massage here if that feels good. Breathe in, inhale lots of love in, and exhale to close today's practice. Lots of love out, we'll see you tomorrow. Namaste.