Open Your Heart Restorative Yoga Class

We're going to roll them up so that they're a little bit thicker. So the half roll, so take it this, this halfway like this, this, and then roll it from the side of that fold so that they're thick. For this particular thing. All right, put them on either side of you and take your strap. This is still hooked from yesterday. There we go. Hook it around. Make sure you don't have any You can use a block. There's one, one short. Yeah, but I— well, I guess you fucked the pooch on that one. Okay, so, um, make it as tight as you'd like, but know that when you lay back, it's going to be tighter. Yes. You have your Mexican blankets here to support your knees, and then you'll just lie back. Arms will come out. Heart is open. Breathing in and out through the nose, relaxing back onto the mat. Do you have this on the outside of your hips so that you could pull it tight and you can have like nice and tight? Okay, you might want it tighter. Oh, it's because it's— um, you're like really wrapped around here. It seems like really uncomfortable. Straps aren't super— I get another— that's okay. There we go. There you go. Is it better? Do you want a little tighter? Yeah. Okay, and then also sit up for a second because this is just— these bolsters aren't the greatest. Okay, there, lay back now. There you go. Okay, because we want it— what we want the bolster to do is create a back bend. Oh, okay. Here. Yeah, there we go. Okay. All right, we're good here. Good, good, good. All right. So we tap into that strength we cultivated this morning in the Manipura chakra in our meditation. And we transmute that energy into love. Oftentimes the Divine Feminine manifests itself as an energy of love. Women can find power in love. And we're not talking about the sacrificing love that we're all taught, but instead we talk about the ideology of abundance, of love for the self, Love for the world, love for others, understanding that everything is love. We have a sacred and divine right to connect with our mother love. And each of us, whether we choose to have children or not, each of us has that divine motherly love within us, and it manifests in different ways. It may manifest in being with our students and helping to care for them. It may manifest in a deep love for animals. It may manifest in our children. It may manifest in any of the work that we do. And we all deserve to embrace that love. Knowing that you are loved exactly the way that you are. Everything about you has been set forth in the Akashic Record to manifest itself exactly the way that it does within this lifetime. You don't have to worry. You don't have to force things to happen. You can allow everything to unfold. If we choose to think of everything as a blessing of love for our life, then it becomes that. If we choose to fight and try to control and manipulate life, then it becomes hard and difficult. We can truly choose the life that we would like to live and the way we would like to see life manifesting itself. When we open ourselves up to love, it's a choice to open up to love because we can choose to push back against it or see things as struggle We can choose to be open, and in the face of being hurt again, or in the face of being scorned, we can choose to say, just because one thing has happened in the past doesn't mean that that is meant to repeat itself. We can be open to the opportunity that today might be entirely different. That someone that may remind you of another actually is a completely different person, and they're going to react differently, they're going to do things differently, and they deserve love as well. The Yoga Sutras tell us that a truly peaceful, loving being can have nothing but peace and love come to them. So in the face of adversity, we not— we don't blame ourselves for it, but we ask ourselves, how can we transmute this into love? How can we find a way to open up to the abundance of the universe? Oftentimes we hear people say everything happens for a reason. The reality is, is that you decide that reason. You decide the reason for which it happens. And when we look back on our lives and those times in which our heart chakra was most damaged or hurt or inflicted upon, we know that actually those times were the times that gave us the most strength, that tapped into our Manipura that allowed us to then go out and help others. It is through our struggles that we understand empathy and connection. And there are times when we take direct trauma to our heart and we continue to traumatize ourselves through smoking cigarettes, through smoking marijuana. These are direct traumas to our heart chakra. And when we move away from re-traumatizing ourselves and start to open and express and allow ourselves to fully breathe— within our heart chakra is the lungs. Practices like pranayama allow us to breathe deeper, to open further. And we've moved through the stability of the first chakra into the fluidity of the second chakra, allowing ourselves to express creatively. And then this morning we connected with strength, with Kalima with our divine feminine power. And now we move into anahata. Anahata meaning unstruck, because truly everything that has happened to us has only happened to our earthly body experiencing this. What's inside of your heart was unstruck. And we can choose to tap into that energy. From here, bring the knees together and just slip the legs out. Extend the legs straight, but keep the back the same. Continue on in this posture with straight legs. Bending one knee at a time, bringing your feet flat onto the ground. Maybe windshield wiper your knees back and forth very slowly and intentionally. Roll over onto your right side. Use your left hand to press your way up. We're gonna extend the leg straight in front of us. Now you're welcome to use a bolster here or a block or anything to prop you up, or you can just move forward into your Paschimottanasana. So, uh, in yin we call this Caterpillar. If you want to make this a yin pose— excuse me— you can point the toes back towards you, activating the legs. If you'd like to make it more restorative, let the Feet relax. Inhaling, lengthening the spine, and exhaling, folding forward whenever you feel ready. You can do that. You can do anything you want, any way you want to do it. You want to put a block and a blankie up there for your head? Let myself get deeper. How about this? And then you can move it, you can move it to the different levels that you'd like. Does that sound good? Just going to say that, Michelle, try the blanket over the block. It makes it feel a lot easier. You want a rolled blanket, Francesca? No. You're good. You like it hard and difficult and painful. Metaphor for your life. No affirmations of that. Take the easy road from now on. Gonna go ahead and slowly roll your way up, moving really nice and gentle and slow. Take all of your props, move them out of the way except for the strap, keeping the strap wrapped. Slowly roll your way down onto your back. Hug your knees into your chest and maybe just roll around a little bit. Maybe do some circles with the knees. Extend the left leg out and hug the right knee into your chest nice and deep, really squeezing up the intestines. They're on the left— or the right side. Take the strap, hook it around your right foot, and extend the right leg to the sky. Let the left arm come out to the side and just pull the right leg toward your body. So for some of you, you may be able to pull that right leg over your head. But as far down as you can pull that right leg. For some people, it'll be up in the air more like this. Try to keep the right leg straight, really working the hamstring in the back of the leg. You should be able to feel this all the way down to your glute. And we can do one of two things here. You can, if you still have your Mexican blanket rolled, that might be enough for you to just bring that right into the hip. Or for some of you, a block brought into the hip at a diagonal. Will allow you to rest the leg on that block, or combination, combo, like a combo, that allows you to let the leg open out to the side. If you notice that your left hip is lifting, put the props underneath the right leg. We want to keep that left hip down and open up. Now you should feel this in your right inner thigh all the way into the groin area, a little bit on the back of the right leg. Take the strap, bring your leg over your body all the way for a twist. Now your hip on your right side is going to come up as you twist over, and you can use the strap to pull the right foot toward you for a nice twist. See if you can bring that right foot all the way to the ground. So your right hip will have to come off of the ground. See if you can keep your right leg straight as you come back up to center. Pull the right leg toward you. One last nice pull. Bend the knee. And release the strap. Now when you extend the leg out straight, it's going to feel a little bit longer than the left leg if we've done this right. Now if we left you like this, you would walk around with a limp the rest of the day. So we're not going to do that. Take the left leg and just hug it first into the chest, nice and deep. This helps us to move everything through the intestine and out the colon. May release gas in some of you. Now take that strap around the left leg and extend the left leg up straight, pulling it toward you. Take your strap, bring the left leg out to the left. If you want to, you can bring your block and your Mexican blanket, or just your Mexican blanket, or just your block, and support that left leg as it opens so that the right hip does not open up. I'm sorry, the right hip doesn't lift up. I'm going to keep the right hip down. And the left leg open. You'll feel this in your inner thighs of the left side. Go ahead and bring it back up to center and bring that left leg all the way over so that it touches the ground for a nice twist. Bring it back to center. Pull the leg towards you and then bend the knee, release it so that now both legs come out straight, feeling the evenness. On the two legs. Okay, this one's fun. I like this. You're going to take the strap behind your head at the base of your spine. Bend your knees, bring your feet into the strap, and extend the leg straight. Relax the back of the neck. You might have to make your strap a little bit longer. This gives you a nice back of your neck stretch. As well as stretching the legs, and you might get into the glutes here. I'm gonna try it on the occipital bone, right? Take those glasses off. There you go. So instead of the neck, we're on the occipital bone. Oh, okay, that makes sense. It does make a difference. Lift your head, maybe right ears. Not tight enough. You gotta get it higher up, be like right here. Your ear in the way. There you go. And so your head, you should be able to— might even be tighter, might even be better. No, your head will be lifted off. It's going to give you a stretch in the back of the neck as well. Your head might just not be tight enough. Feels good. All right, you feeling it back here? Yeah. Okay, good. Go ahead and slowly release it. We'll come into our final resting pose, extending the legs out straight, feet as wide as the mat, arms to the sides, palms facing up. Take a deep inhale through the nose. Mm. Nice juicy exhale. Deep inhale through the nose. Mm. Let your exhale come out with a nice juicy sound. It's all right to make a juicy sound. Inhale through the nose. Mm. Release down into the mat. Let the sounds of nature become a part of your meditation. You are the light that you've been waiting for. You are the love of your life. You will be here to love, honor, and cherish yourself longer than anyone else will be in your life. Long after you've left this space, you will still be able to love yourself, to cultivate a sense of unabashed caring for yourself. All of the answers are within. Happiness lies within you. The Buddha says that all life is suffering, but all life is suffering because we make it so. All life is actually bliss. We choose to make life suffering, but life is actually bliss. Where can you find the bliss in your body? Where can you find the self-love? Begin to wiggle your toes and your fingers. Gently reaching your arms overhead, getting nice stretch, stretching from your fingertips down to your toe tips. Bending your knees and rolling over onto your right side into a fetal position. Using your left hand to press your way up into an easy seated posture, bringing your hands to the heart center in Anjali Mudra. Take a moment to acknowledge yourself Thank yourself for taking this time to fully express self-love. This is an act of self-love, coming here, doing this, being with all these people. You truly deserve it. We'll seal this class with the sound of Om. Taking an inhale. Om. Mm-hmm. Letming your eyes open.