you may not know this but there are actually eight limbs of yoga the physical postures or ASA being only one of them this week we will begin to explore the first limb of yoga yamas yamas are one's ethical standards and sense of Integrity they are how we conduct ourselves with the world around us and there are five of them the first one is AA nonviolence or non-harming SATA truthfulness AA non-stealing baharia right use of energy and oper rraa which is non-grasping we'll start with AA nonviolence we will learn a breath called Diga pranama and for our ASA practice we will be exploring seated postures a book we commonly refer to in the yoga community is the yoga sutras it's a practical textbook said to guide your spiritual journey of remembering who you really are the yoga sutras were composed by a man named patan there's not much that we know about him except that he was presumably Indian and lived somewhere between the 2nd and 4th Century BC in ancient times most heene was done orally and students learn by way of sutras the word Sutra comes from the same route as the medical term suture meaning to connect or hold together so when the teacher expounded on a piece of knowledge the student would be given a short phrase that would later remind them of the greater body of material this is somewhat equivalent to modern-day Q cards the challenge now is that even knowing the sutras you can never be certain as a greater meaning today you will find many different variations of of the yoka sutras with commentaries from different authors they say pretty much the same thing but with slight variations the yoga sutras contain 196 sutras divided between four chapters discussing the aims and practice of yoga the development of yoga powers and finally Liberation like a gentle guiding hand the yoga sutras warn you of the possible pitfalls of your spiritual journey and offer the means to overcome them so what is Yoga necessarily yoga is often translated to Union or yoke together some think of this as uniting the self with that which is divine some also like to think of it as uniting the mind and body together the yo the second yoga Sutra says yoga Choda which is Yoga is the stealing and controlling of the fluctuations of the mind asaa is only mentioned in three of the 196 yoga sutras so it shows you how vast this practice is how so much more than the physical practice the first ethical principle a HSA asks us to restrain against violence or harm towards others a himsa is the basic Act of being kind it is easy to understand how this can apply to our treat treatment of other people but it goes far beyond that and looks at all of our thoughts deeds and action towards ourselves as well if we turn the restraint around we come to understand it is to live your life bathed in kindness towards yourself firstly and this first action naturally seeps out into the world so your practice on the mat should be about love not harm for yourself as you move into postures can you do so peacefully can you be in the pose peacefully or are you forcing and saying negative things to yourself are you judging yourself so as you practice today and hopefully every day see if you can do so with a little more self-kindness and compassion a couple of things to keep in mind as you practice is that you are only a beginner once but I encourage you to show up to your mat each time with a beginner's mind even if you have had experience with yoga before postures shouldn't hurt so postures can be challenging demanding even awkward but they shouldn't hurt so if a posture hurt hurts it's either being done maybe incorrectly or maybe it's just wrong for your body at this time so take a step back and feel free to ask me to help troubleshoot the issue Integrity of movement is more important than range of movement so developing flexibility is valuable but also developing strength spal awareness and Mobility is just as valuable instead of focusing on how far you can stretch one part of your body in a pose focus on how your whole body is working together like a well conducted Symphony next there's nothing to prove but you have much to learn so when you practice ASA you have nothing to prove to yourself or to anyone else you don't no one's there to judge you you have countless things about your body and mind you have to learn so be open to this process of discovery you will get confused at times and it's not a problem you're learning something that may be completely new and you don't already know it so if you find yourself getting confused probably even completely lost it can be frustrating it can be normal and it's natural in even a beneficial process so let yourself be a beginner most importantly it's your body and your body know knows best so the most well-intentioned experienced skillful teachers cannot feel what you feel in your body teachers are enthusiastic guides and helpers but you and only you are the authority on what feels appropriate in your body you make the final decision on the postures you practice and how you practice them so listen to your body rest when needed modify when needed also using some props if needed next Simplicity and consistency so simple postures done well are always beneficial and in order to learn refine and grow we need to be consistent it's natural to desire the ability to do bigger more visually striking postures and perhaps those postures are in your future for now though learn the alphabet play your scales there's no rush we will often do the same warmup and end to our practice and yoga is a lifelong practice that will grow evolve and change just like everything else in your life your needs abilities interests and values will evolve the way you practice ASA will reflect this natural process just like everything other aspects in your life are rarely linear your postural development capacity and skills will fluctuate some days weeks and months will be marked by increased capacity other times you'll feel like you've taken a step back but Be steady this is normal let's begin our practice so there are a couple of items that you might want to have nearby As you move through your yoga practice the first being a yoga blanket or a kind of a thick towel the next is a yoga strap and if you don't have a yoga strap a belt or a scarf make a great um alternative next is a yoga bolster and if you don't have a yoga bolster a firm pillow maybe a cushion from a chair or a couch can work too and last but not least are our yoga blocks so you can find these fairly inexpensive from Amazon uh Walmart TJ Max Marshalls you can almost find them in any any store nowadays um but if you don't wish to purchase them or just want to use something that you have you may already have in your home or your space you might use either a thick book um I've used water bottles before uh even cans of food so a big can of crushed tomatoes might uh be a good substitute anything kind of around this shape so at the beginning of our practice we usually take a few moments to Center ourselves so we may have been running around doing errands doing work school work whatever it may be and as we come to our mat just taking a few moments to bring ourselves here into the space that we're in and into this moment so our first posture that we'll come into is our seated posture is super kasana so Suka means easy and Asana means pose so I'm actually in it right now now for some of us this not may not feel very easy we might have really tight hips or in our back and I'll kind of turn here to the side so for some of us if we experience tightness in our hips or our back we might feel our spine's kind of round so it takes a lot of effort to to kind of find a nice tall spine it we might be having rounding here so if you notice my pelvis is kind of tilting backwards it's posteriorly tilting and that's where I will find kind of a little roundness to my spine now in order to find more length to bring out this roundedness to my spine I need to take my pelvis and I need to tilt it and bring it more into a neutral position in order to do so now I'm really working these muscles in front of my hips my hip flexors I'm having to use the muscles in my back that's all good but if those are already tight this can feel like a lot of work so with our practice we're trying to find kind of that balance of ease and effort so we want to work to put effort in but also where can we find ease so in order to find ease here in suasana you might take your your blanket and sit up on your blanket the great thing about using a blanket is you can play with the the height of it so you might have it just folded about this way if you want it a little bit thicker though maybe you want to lift the hips up a little bit higher you can continue to fold your blanket making it thicker so I will bring it underneath my sit bones so I bring myself to sit up on it but I'm going to scoot my way towards W The Edge where the sit Bones come just off of it now this allows my legs to kind of sink down and my pelvis to come to a more neutral position and I'm not required to have as much effort in order to find that length now you may notice I don't have my angles underneath my knees but I actually kind of open my knees a little bit wider and I bring one ankle in front of the other you might find that more comfortable for you maybe this this variation feels comfortable for you so it's finding which feels comfortable for you so this posture may not look like someone else that you're practicing next to go ahead and adjust to modify as needed once you feel comfortable um then bring your hands to rest wherever they they feel at home so it might be on your knees or or maybe you bring one Palm resting it inside of the other next we find a dristy so aishy is a focused gaze so it refers to where we place our attention so this doesn't necessarily mean a physical gaze it can begin there but is meant to help you concentrate to focus your practice so bring in your eyes maybe to rest on a spot on the floor or mat in front of you maybe it's a spot on the wall or you may close your eyes bringing your dhy inward if you close your eyes you might think of bringing your gaze your focus to that point between your eyebrows when we find a dushy it helps to eliminate the stimulus around us so instead of looking around as we practice noticing what's going on we can actually bring our awareness inward more so go ahead and find a comfortable position if you need to we might lift the hips up a little bit higher too so if that blanket if you're using a blanket or whatever you might be using if it's not high enough maybe finding a different prop continuing to lift yourself up finding a length to the spine so we think of rooting and extending in yoga so in this seated posture think of rooting your sit bones down into the Earth so imagine maybe little roots coming from your sit bones growing all the way down towards the center and then maybe as you inhale think of your breath kind of coming up through those roots through the sit bones through the spine all the way out through the crown of the head so that extension as you exhale thinking of that breath turning around going back down to the center and go ahead and continue inhaling lengthening the spine and then as you exhale keeping that length but seeing where you can soften so it might be the jaw it might be the shoulders down away from the ears we'll take a few moments here just notice your breath feeling the breath entering in through the nose you might feel it in the back of the throat until you can't feel it physically but you feel the sensations the movements of the body so maybe the belly expanding the ribs expanding and then feeling the sensation of your exhale and then finally you might feel it in your throat you might feel the warmth as it crosses your upper lip so the fourth limb of yoga is prama it's mindful breathing today we'll explore the concept of the threep part yoga breath called Diga prama so through diaphragmatic breathing feeling the belly first then the rib cage and then the upper chest chest and then emptying from the chest to the rib cage to the belly so we use this breath to help calm the mind to relax the nervous system and to support your yoga practice this is how we're going to do it so still finding that kind of comfortable position for the first part go ahead and inhale through your nose allowing your belly to expand Softly As the breath moves into your lungs and then exhale through your nose tightening your abdominal muscles and drawing your belly button towards the spine allowing as much air as possible to escape from your lungs go ahead and continue that so inhaling through the nose bringing the breath all the way down into the belly expanding softly and exhaling through the nose tightening drawing the belly button back towards the spine few more moments here few more breaths and then for our second part much the same but with an added step we're going to think of inhaling in through the nose allowing your belly to expand and then allow the breath to expand up into the rib cage as well when you exhale through the nose squeeze the air out of your rib cage and belly until they are empty so inhaling into the belly feeling it expand and then feeling the ribs expand outwards the front the side the back as you exhale feeling the ribs contract and the belly button come back towards the spine again a few more breaths belly to ribs and then ribs to belly emptying completely next we'll take it a step further so inhaling through the nose allowing your belly to expand as the breath moves into the lungs and the rib cage and then invite the breath into the upper chest to the pectoral muscles and the clavicle and then exhaling f so from the chest the ribs into the belly there should be a thorough emptying of the breath inhale into the belly the ribs and just slightly up into the chest so this we're not bringing so much into the space and then exhaling down continuing that a few more times and you can continue to do this breath on your own maybe as you might be sitting in traffic or if you're at work or um at school using this breath to kind of bring your awareness to the present moment so we can't breathe in the past or the the future when we're focusing on our breath it helps to draw the Mind into the present moment into the present space so let's go ahead finding our easy pose if you've kind of moved out of it finding that length to the spine we're going to start to kind of do our uh a warm up so kind of bringing a different movements into the spine go ahead and take your fingertips bring them down to the mat next to you as you inhale float the arms out and up towards the sky if it feels okay on your neck go ahead and drop the head back bringing your palms to touch and then as you exhale lower the hands down bring the head back through neutral and then as the fingertips find the ground drop the chin down towards the chest keeping the collar bone spread wide we'll do that two more times so inhale floating the arms out and up and then exhale slowly release down as the chin drops to the chest fingers find the Earth One one more time inhale float the arms up this time as you exhale we'll lower the right hand down towards the mat as a left arm reaches up and over now we want to keep the sit bones connected to the ground so as you come into this lateral Bend if you find that left hip kind of coming up off of the ground think of rooting it down pulling the arm pulling the ribs away from the left hip and you can bring your dushy maybe it's up towards the arm maybe you're looking straight in front or maybe it's down on the ground whichever feels most comfortable for your neck and then inhale back up toward Center take both of your arms reach them up towards the sky as you exhale lower the left hand as the right arm reaches up and over again thinking of the rooting and extending so rooting down through the sit bones and extending out through the fingertips and seeing where else you might be able to to extend so maybe thinking of out through the crown of the head maybe making more space between your your collar bones inhale back to Center this time as we exhale let's go ahead and twist towards your right side so twisting bringing the hands down that left hand might come to that right knee as your right hand comes behind now for our twist here think of rooting down extending out through the crown of of the head and then as you exhale using your core so not necessarily your arms to twist you a little bit deeper keeping that right hip forward we'll take one more breath inhale release Take Your Arms Reach them up extending out through the spine as you exhale now twisting towards your left side allow your shoulders to drop down away from your ears chin lifted level with the Horizon and we're thinking of our torso twisting not our pelvis so our pelvis stays stable that left hip still staying forward almost like we're ringing ourselves out like a wet rag and then your gaze might come over the back shoulder inhale go ahead and take the arms reaching them out and up and then as you exhale bring your palms to touch and down towards your high heart maybe drop dring the chin down towards the chest often times at the beginning of a Class A teacher might ask you to set a sanpa or an intention so a sunala or an intention is more grounded than a wish it's more serious than a resolution it's less complicated than either of those so it has little or no regard for the outcome but it's about how you want to be right now in this moment so intentions can give you purpose as well as inspiration and motivation to achieve your purpose it might be something we want to cultivate on our mat it might be just you want flexibility however however whyever you might have shown up to your mat that day and then once you have your intention your Sona you can release your hands down and then make your way to tabletop position so we call this uh it's our hands and knees and when we come to our hands and knees when we bring our hands down to the mat we want to engage what we call hosta Bond hand lock so hosta means hand and bond means lock and how we do that is we're going to spread our fingertips nice and wide and we're going to press into the fingertips the finger pads and then also the top of our Palm so usually when we come to hands and knees we would bring our hands down onto the mat our fingers aren't very active our hands aren't very active and we bring a lot of weight into the heel of the hand we bring a lot of weight into our wrists and that's what we're trying to avoid so spreading the fingertips our hands are very active here pressing into the fingertips and pressing into the top of the Palm specifically this webbing between your index and your thumb and we want to continue that when we have our hands on the mat that helps to disperse our weight throughout the full hand and also to engage the muscles in the arms in the forearms we kind of lift our weight out of the wrist instead of dumping all of our weight there so we bring our wrists underneath the head of the shoulders and and then our knees are underneath our hips so if your knees are together go ahead and open them up a little bit wider also your feet so if your feet or toes are touching go ahead and open them up so they're also about hip distance apart go ahead and take an inhale here as you exhale round the spine bringing your chin towards your chest forehead down your gaze towards your navl so rounding the spine we call this cat pose as you inhale lower the belly down and we lift our gaze and our tailbone see if you can bring this movement maybe a little bit more into the chest and then draw the shoulders back like you're trying to pull your heart through and continue back and forth between cat and then when we drop our belly down we call this cow pose cat and cow and see if you can move all along the spine some all the way from your tailbone to the crown of the head notice what areas of the spine may not want to move as much and then go ahead and invite in any other movements so maybe you want to shift your hips around maybe move the head around the neck getting into the wrists we'll take a few more moments just kind of getting into all the tight areas of your body so for our next next seated posture we will come into vasana or Hero's pose for Heroes pose we bring our knees to touch and we basically come to sit back on our feet on our heels bringing the hands to the lap now if we want a little bit more sensation you might open your feet keeping your knees together toes pointing towards the back of your mat and kind of shimmy your hips between between your heels for some of us which is often the case this may not be a pose that feels comfortable you might have a knee injury or maybe an ankle injury there's different ways that we can modify this so with each one of these postures we'll be going through different modifications and variations of them so if a posture doesn't feel comfortable for you you might take one of these modifications or it may not even be a pose that may be right for you that day so there's some postures that may never be accessible to us just because of the structure of our skeleton or maybe we have an injury and that's okay and each one of us might look a little bit different than the person next to us so for this posture if this doesn't feel comfortable in any way a common modification is you taking your block and bringing it between your ankles and you can great thing about using a block just like your blanket is you can play with the height so you might have it on the lowest height maybe that's enough or maybe you bring it to that second height so this is kind of the lowest this is the second and then this is the highest so bringing that block between your ankles that block is now supporting the majority of your weight so that's not putting pressure on the ankles as much it also has now created a little bit more space for my knees so I'm not feeling as much pressure behind them now if this doesn't feel comfortable on your ankles you might kind of lift them up slightly taking that uh that extension of the the toes towards the back of the mat you can also bring a blanket underneath the front of the ankles to support them letting your hands come to rest think of rooting down through your sit bones as you extend up through the the crown of the head and then find your dishy so let your eyes find a place to focus on and then we'll take two more breaths here so each posture today we're going to hold for about three or so breaths feel free to go back to a certain pose at the end of the practice or maybe even hit pause on the video if you want to maybe hold there for a few more breaths and then we'll release we'll go ahead and move into our next posture which is bada kosana so bada is bound Kona is angle so it's very much like sucasa easy pose but instead of the feet being um Crossing in front of one another or underneath each other we're going to bring the soles of the feet to touch so you can grab maybe your shins you can grab your ankles what I like to do is to bring the thumb bringing it to the sole of the foot and using your hands to kind of open your feet up like a book from here we try to kind of press the knees down towards the ground now you might be more like this and that's okay but notice though now that our legs are kind of in front of our pelvis we might have experienced that kind of round ing so the pelvis might be tilting back so that modification that forward f for ucasa if you're finding that the case go ahead and take your blanket bring it underneath the hips shift forward so those sit bones just come off of that blanket and now this feels a lot easier for for at Le for me at least so I don't feel quite as much tension in my hips and in my back and thing you know rooting down through your sitp bones as you extend out through the crown of the head spreading the collar bones drawing the shoulder blades towards one another and if you want a little bit more sensation feel free to maybe start folding forward you might even take your elbows and gently kind of pressing them in towards the knees being very mindful of As you move into the posture we don't want to force ourselves we don't want to remember it's not about how far we go into a posture but how we go into it so being very mindful remembering a himsa the nonviolence we want to be treating ourselves with love and respect with this practice as we come into these postures if you folded forward go ahead and lengthen back up next we'll take our legs and we're going to extend them out long in front of us for dandasana so is translates to stick or to staff so we will usually call this staff pose in English the Sanskrit word is dandasana so with our toes pointing up towards the ceiling kind of imagining a wall that our so of our feet are pressing into you might have your feet closer together for most of us it might feel a little bit better to open the feet so they're about hip distance apart next we bring our hands down by our side spreading the collar bones drawing the shoulder blades together now I have longer arms and I also am sitting on that blanket to help tilt my pelvis forward so I'm going to root down through the heel of my hand if you have shorter arms and your arms can't touch the ground you can use either a blanket like I have you can even use some blocks bringing your hands onto the blocks so when we root down we think of rooting through our sit bones through our hands spreading the collar bones drawing the shoulder blades together and then extend out through the crown of the head so this looks like a very simple pose but as you might find As you move into it my hip flexors are really working here in order to lengthen that spine to keep that pelvis in that neutral position and then see where you can soften so can you soften your jaw maybe the shoulders down away from your ears take one more inhale and then as you exhale releasing so you might bend your knees in towards your chest our next posture is not necessarily A seated posture we are on our our sip bones this is a little bit more active so this is a great posture to work on your core um we call this navasana so navasana in Sanskrit Nava means boat so boat pose for this posture I usually will remove a blanket if I'm sitting on it and we will bring our hands maybe to the front of your knees or maybe the hands behind your thighs and keeping our spine L long so we're still extending out through the crown of the head but we're going to start to lean back so this might be your noasa this is kind of like what I like to refer to as your first bus stop so you might want to stop right here this might be enough you have this core engagement you're still doing there's a lot of work that we're doing see if you can keep the chest lifted the collar bone spread and then your head if it feels comfortable even extending the head back slightly not back up towards the sky but that neutral that natural kind of curve now if you want to take the next bus stop you might release your hands from your legs extending the fingertips forward now if this feels good maybe you want to go to that next bus stop you might take one foot lift it up then the other or maybe both feet lift up now I like to squeeze my legs together and then maybe you extend the legs and shaking is good so taking whichever variation feels the most comfortable this is usually a POS it you're not going to want to hold that long but you might start with one variation maybe you come to a next and then each time you come to it maybe you hold for one more breath when you're ready to come out of it see if you can come out with control instead of collapsing down shake out so in between any of these postures if you want to move in a particular way kind of windshield wiping the leg side to side is always a great kind of movement to help bring the spine back to neutral the hips and back so our next posture is another posture that some people might find difficulty because of a knee injury or um another type of injury it's called AG stum stum basa so it's fire statue or uh Fire stack it's also known as double pigeon or Square pose so Agy is fire or ignite and stamba is log or statue so for this posture it's a great hip opener but we do want to be mindful of the knees specifically the bottom leg so we take the bottom leg and we're bringing the Shen bone parallel with the front of the mat so your lower leg is parallel with the front and our foot is flexed so your toes are also pointing forward next we'll take our other leg and bring it on top of the other so the foot toes are still pointing that the lower leg is also parallel so they're parallel just like they were fire logs stacked on top of one another so this ankle is on top of this knee and this knee is on top of this ankle toes pointing forward now this is pretty intense on the hips and you might this is a posture that is great to hold for a longer amount of time so three breaths you really don't get to uh start kind of opening up the hips I like to use this posture if I'm watching a movie or TV at home or even just sitting with friends and talking as you hold the posture you might start to notice that the hips begin to open up and you might find your knee starting to sink down as you can tell as we've been holding this my knee has already started to to go down so this can be a great posture just to kind of stretch while you're doing other things you can bring your hands to rest wherever they feel comfortable again think of the pelvis in a neutral position so it might be kind of tilting back using a blanket underneath if you need and then we'll go ahead and switch sides so you can take your legs go ahead and bring them out in front do any kind of movement that feels comfortable for you and then take your other leg bringing it parallel with the front of your mat and then other leg on top now we may not do both sides we're not our bodies aren't as symmetrical as we might think they are so one we might have an injury on one side than the other so we can also extend maybe the bottom leg so if it feels uncomfortable on the knee a nice way to modify this is to extend that bottom leg toes pointing up towards the ceiling top leg still parallel with the front and you can hold here allowing the knee to kind of drop down so modifications are extending the leg it's maybe bringing a blanket underneath the hips or maybe it's a different way so you might find another way to modify each one of these postures now if you come into this posture maybe you have hyper Mobility maybe you just have really open hips if you want more sensation the next bus stop would be to fold forward so you can start to hinge forward think of that folding action coming from the pelvis so so the pelvis starts to tilt forward instead of kind of bringing the head forward kind of diving in folding in on yourself we want to think of the pelvis extending forward as the spine stays nice and long and then bringing yourself back to Center go ahead and take the legs go ahead and shake them out so a common pose that you might think of when you think of yoga often times lots of different um statue or pictures will show someone in Lotus pose which are the feet up on each one of the thighs so this one I can't for myself I can't actually do full Lotus because I have a knee injury so I'm going to show you half Lotus pose so padmasana podma is uh the goddess who all the Lotus is kind of her her flower and the the repres represents her so we're going to bring our left foot in and the right leg coming in drawing the foot close to the body bending the knee and then we start to open it up so dropping the knee down we can bring that ankle kind of towards that upper thigh and you can kind of shift around so for this posture I like to have my knees open a little bit more you might even bring your foot kind of to the crease so being mindful of how this is feeling in your body now if you want to uh come into that full Lotus pose then bringing the ankle little bit closer so your heel kind of comes into that hip crease and then your bottom leg is going to come out and across and again that heel into there so this is a again I have a knee injury so I can I could force myself into the posture just so I could show you but it's not worth injuring myself more so uh remember you can adjust as needed you might bring yourself to sit up on a on the blanket if You' like go ahead and take your legs and extend them out so a common stretch that we'll do towards the end of our practice and a lot of these postures we actually will do towards the end so seated postures um we usually begin our practice in a seated position but a lot of these po press we do at the end because we have our legs extended in front of us we have this flexion to our hip where because we might have tightness in our body sitting or doing kind of this forward forward fold action doesn't feel very comfortable so we will do them towards the end of our practice where we've moved through where we've kind of warmed our body up and then we'll come into these and we'll hold them for a longer longer amount of time so the common stretch that can kind of get into the hamstrings and stuff is Janu shasana so Janu is knee Shira is head so this is called head to knee pose so you keep one leg extended taking your right leg go ahead and bring the sole of the foot to the inside of the leg and it can be anywhere so it might be kind of by the knee it might be into the inner thigh we drop the knee down that extended leg is the toes are pointing up towards the ceiling now if you're feeling kind of that roundedness again use your blanket if you need to to help bring the pelvis to neutral it helps to kind of bring the arms and find kind of that extension to the spine first and then we want to think of with our pelvis tilting forward so even though this is called head to knee pose instead the thinking of your head coming towards your knee think of this more as chin to Shin pose or maybe nose to toes so instead of folding in kind of collapsing in actually think of lengthening bringing your chin towards your shin so I don't know if you can see the difference but my head to knee versus chin to Shin so I'm lengthening out here spreading the collar bones and then hands might come to rest maybe somewhere along on your mat maybe they're able to grab the toe or the foot a nice variation is to take a strap or again your belt or scarf if you don't have a strap use that to wrap around your foot and then you can use that that strap to kind of open up the chest and to tilt forward now we want to be mindful that we're not forcing ourselves into something so take your time if you your knee is hyperextending maybe bring a little slight Bend into this now different modifications are just to not fold as far so you even kind of sitting up right here in this neutral position I'm feeling lots of things going on so let's go ahead and switch to the other side so extending the foot out imagining that foot kind of pressing into a wall lengthening up if you want to bring your arms up reaching towards the the ceiling and then hinging forward bringing the hands to rest wherever they are chin towards chin nose towards nose and then keeping that length to your spine if you want to drop your head down you can do so relaxing the muscles in the neck go ahead and come up next now we'll take both of our legs and extend them out long in front of us for pashi motasa so POS POS pashima is the west or the back part of our body and the intense stretch or straight or extended and then ASA is pose so this is an intense stretch for the back part of our body so having your feet out in front of you toes pointing up and it's very much like staff pose we're just now going going to fold forward so this for most of us is going to feel a little bit more accessible it might be more comfortable in our body to open the feet so they're about hip distance apart of course if you'd like to the feet can come together but opening them up a little bit wider usually gives us a little bit more movement in our pelvis to tilt forward you might use your strap again around both of your feet now and pull yourself if you'd like to you might take your Arms Reach them up lengthen the spine and then hinging forward again with the pelvis hands coming to either somewhere along the legs maybe your fingers find the big toes or the feet or maybe they're down by your side now if you're very flexible if your hamstrings are really open you can also use a block kind of behind your feet to bring your hands onto and to fold now if you have a back injury or maybe this doesn't feel comfortable for you I know for often times for a while with my injury I had experienced a fall just sitting like this hurt very much to my back so ways to modify this is to bend your knees bringing your belly to your thighs so this might be your forward fold your seated forward fold and then at you might relax you might even drop the head down towards the the knees and as you start to open up the back body you might find that you can take your feet and bring them out a little bit further a thing that helped me to find that mobility in my back once again was I would do this for a very long u well at least for about 3 minutes or so um and I would use a bolster so bringing a bolster underneath the legs or you could use a pillow and then folding forward over this and it just allows you to to relax into the posture and allowing these muscles to relax we will be learning a little bit more about Yen Yoga which is where we hold the postures for about 3 minutes allowing those deeper connective tissues to open up our next pose is supported bridge pose so again this isn't necessarily A seated posture we actually are going to come down onto our back but it's a nice way to end your practice this is often bridge is what we will do towards the end of class it's a great way to strengthen the back today though we're going to do a supported Bridge so we're not going to use a lot of effort we're actually going to use some props to help support our body so supported Bridge setu band sharang gasana so setu is bridge bond is lock Shara is all and and a Anga is limb so it's kind of a uh bridge to lock all your limbs together so with this posture sometimes it's grabbing the ankles kind of having that bind but we're going to take it a little bit more gentle day we will experience this pose later on in the program so coming on to your back go ahead and have either a block or maybe a blanket if you don't have a block and we're going to come on to our back back all the way down bend your knees the soles of the feet are on the ground so for it's a slight back bend and with our back bends we want kind of our our knees over or our reclined back bends our knees over our ankles and we might have our feet we usually start them at hip distance apart but if you're experiencing tightness in your back or you have a back injury I encourage you to open your feet up a little bit wider and then open your knees also so we keep the knees knees over the ankles and we're going to lift up so first just the the pubic bone think of lifting it up towards the ceiling and then gently pressing into your feet lifting the hips up off of the ground go ahead and take your block and then place it underneath the sacrum or the back of the pelvis so we don't want it in the lower back so if you're feeling these lower ribs starting to kind of pop up maybe your pelvis the the sit bone are your tailbones facing back down towards the floor then you need to lower your block a little bit down further so your sit bones are kind of reaching towards your the calves and then you can let your hands come to rest so it might be on your belly one of my favorite things is to bring my hands out to the side Palms facing up towards the ceiling tuck the shoulder blades together and down away from the ears so you can allow the shoulders to relax and we're just hold here for a few breaths so this is one of my favorite postures to do again you might come back to this after our practice but for time sake we're going to continue on so to come out of this posture we'll gently press into our feet lift the hips up remove the block out of the way as we come down from our Bridge we want to think of one vertebrae kind of touching down so coming from going all the way down you can think of like a strand of pearls one Pearl touching down towards the Earth that last little pelvic tuck so we lengthen our lower back and then finally let your pelvis touch down go ahead and draw your knees into the chest maybe Rock side to side and then we end our class with a supine twist so you can let your knees just fall over to one side keeping your knees and ankles crossed over one another stacking hips over one another or if you want a little bit more sensation you might take one leg cross it over the other shift your hips over slightly let those knees come over if you want more sensation you can take your hand place it on top of that upper leg point it down and if you want less sensation you might not cross your legs maybe bring a block underneath the knee or in between your knees now our for our reclin twist we want to think of keeping both of our shoulders rooted down to the ground so as you let your legs fall over did that back shoulder kind of come up off of the ground if so take your arm maybe extend it to the side to help kind of anchor it down so drawing the shoulder blade down towards the earth I like to stretch my hand not only to the side but towards the upper corner of the mat so I can start to stretch into the pectoral muscles into the chest other arm out and then you can also bring the Gaze in the opposite direction as your legs to bring that twist up into the neck we'll make our way to the other side shifting your hips slightly in the opposite direction as your legs are going to go your other arm in the upper corner of your mat you can use your hands to gently pull down if you want more sensation again and keep those shoulder blades rooted down to the ground and then again you can bring your gaze over that shoulder nice long breaths here so you might return to that dero pranama so bringing the breath down into the belly into the rib cage into the chest and then exhaling in that reverse Direction and then legs back to Center we end all of our practices for the most part in shavasana so shavasana is usually the first srit word that people learn because it's a lot of people's favorite pose so shavasana translates to corpse pose which can kind of sound a little morbid but it's the uh pose for endings it's how we end our practice and it's one of the most it can be one of the most important postures that we do because it allows we're giving space for our body to absorb all the efforts of our practice so coming into traditional shavasana it would be on our back taking your legs extending them long the feet a little bit more uh wider than hip distance apart letting your toes fall out to the side then we'll bring our hands kind of in an upside down V allowing space between our arms and our torso lift the chest up Tuck the shoulder blades together and down away from the ears and then letting your eyes rest seeing where you can let go so you might scan from the crown of your head all the way down towards your feet bringing the breath to any tight areas closing the eyes if that feels comfortable and just resting here now as always if this doesn't feel comfortable feel free to take another variation so you might bend your knees knees allowing your knees to fall in towards one another that sometimes that gives a little relief to the back you might also take shavasana on your side on your belly or even in a seated meditation however you prefer to end your practice so I am going to go ahead and sign off for now but I encourage you to stay in your shabas pose for at least five or so minutes however long that you may have I hope you have enjoyed this practice and I will see you again next time