Restorative Yoga with Bolster

Hello, welcome to restorative yoga with a bolster. This is my bolster. My name is Angelica. I have been teaching yoga for 17 years. I owned 3 yoga studios and now I teach entirely online. I teach online yoga teacher training for 200-hour, 300-hour, and 500-hour. I only teach one-on-one. I don't do group trainings, so when you take my online yoga teacher training It's just you and me. Every week you'll get released new content, and then at the end of the week, you'll turn in your assignments and you and I will meet together on Zoom. We'll go over all your assignments and we'll make your dreams happen and completely be focused on you. And that's what I love about teaching online, is that I have clients all over the world and it's really incredible. And I get to actually really get to know you very deeply. So if you're looking to become certified in yoga or you want to get your next level, your 300-hour, and become a 500-hour yoga teacher, I have an incredible 300-hour program where you can learn how to teach yin yoga, how to teach restorative yoga, Ashtanga yoga, vinyasa yoga, chair yoga, and there's a whole bunch more. There's a lot of marketing in there. You create a YouTube channel. I teach you how to do search engine optimization. It's really pretty awesome. Anyhow, I don't want to spend a lot of time on that because I would like to get into this practice today while my husband is gone because he is off working, and if I don't get this in, then we won't be able to do it. Uh, so for today's class, you're going to need a bolster because it's restorative yoga with a bolster. And if you have a mat, great. If you don't have a mat, you can just use a blanket because we're not doing a lot of, like, heavy moving around. It's very relaxed and chill. I do not play music in these classes because I want you to choose your own music because I would want to choose my own music. If you want any suggestions, just leave some comments and I'll be happy to make suggestions for you on music or make you a playlist or anything like that that you want. I'm happy to do that for you. Um, it's just a lot easier if I don't include music in the video. But with all that being said, if you don't have a bolster, You can still do this class. Take a pillowcase, fill it with like 2 or 3 pillows, really get it in there tight. That is a homemade bolster, or you could get a big pillow, like a big pillow and use that, or you could get a couch cushion, that works as well. I do have the link to this bolster in the description. This is an incredible bolster. I got it on Amazon and I actually, it's the same bolsters that I used when I owned the yoga studios. Uh, they are also from Amazon. It's not very expensive. I just checked it this morning. I think it's $39, so it's not super expensive and it's definitely worth it. I really like this bolster a lot, and this one has been washed. All right, without further ado, let's get started. Set your bolster to the side. We're just going to come into a nice easy seated pose. Now for you, maybe that's sitting like me, maybe it's sitting like this. Maybe it's sitting with your legs extended. However your body feels, it's really important that you sit the way it feels best for your body because— I'm just making my tea— because we can't be together. I can't be with you right now. We're together virtually and you can comment and you can tell me all kinds of things, but I can't know how your body feels. So I want you to really take the time to get to know your own body so that you avoid any type of injury and so that you feel really comfortable and enjoy your practice. Remember that everything that I say is a suggestion, it's not a rule, so do what makes you feel good. I'm not there, so I won't know if you're doing something crazy. You can do whatever you want. I won't even know unless you tell me, so just do what makes you feel good. We're going to start with some what we call ujjayi breath, but we're not going to do it very forcefully. We're just going to do it real light. So taking a deep inhale through the nose and then exhaling out the nose. Maybe let your eyes close, maybe keep your eyes open but focused on a point. Whatever feels good to you, just kind of come into that space, breathing in and out through the nose. We always breathe in and out through the nose in our yoga practice because it starts to lower the fight-or-flight response. See now if you can bring your breath so that it is the same amount of inhale and the same amount of exhale. So for instance, if we're breathing in, we breathe in for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If we exhale, we exhale for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Inhale for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Exhaling for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And see if you can maintain that nice steady rhythm of breath throughout your whole practice today. The breath is what's really going to help us feel calm. The breath is what's really going to help us be in a state of restore. It's not so much the poses, it is the breath. You're just sticking with me through the whole practice today, taking this time to really rejuvenate yourself. Taking this time to find quiet. It is in stillness that we can find the answers for our lives. So if we're experiencing any stress, tension, anxiety, coming into the stillness will actually help us to create more peace in our life. It'll help us to get the answers. All the answers to all of your problems are within you. We just need to find that stillness to get to those answers. Good. And then go ahead and just slowly open up your eyes. We're going to take our bolster for our first pose. You'll take it and just put it off to the side and just put it right at your sacrum here, right at the hip. Alright, and then I got my tea. I don't know if you like to drink tea, but I'm a big fan of tea. I love it. It's very good for you. It's good for your soul. You're gonna just bring this Soles of your feet together in kind of a baddha konasana. If you have a couple of blocks— I have these eggs— you can put them underneath of your knees, and then we'll just lay back just like this onto our bolster. If you have another block and you want, you could take it and just put it behind your head here. If that feels comfortable to you. But you don't need that. I'm just using it because I have it. I actually got these from The 3 Minute Egg. They are so fabulous. He— oh, there's my heater. He does not make them, uh, as much anymore, so he has a limited supply, but they're really incredible if you go on to his website, the link is in my description, and see if you can get some of them that he's still making because they're really awesome. I apologize about the heater, it is really cold, it's like 30 degrees outside, it's freezing. But just let that sound become part of your practice today and just breathing in and out through the nose. If you want, you can let your palms face up to receive, or you can bring your palms onto your stomach to hold in. Really what we want to find is a spot that feels comfortable for us individually, a spot that you can maintain and hold and just breathe into and start to feel some rest. Just letting your eyes close if that feels comfortable. If it doesn't feel comfortable, you can choose a point in the sky or directly in front of you that you just kind of zone out on. The point of our yoga practice is not to completely get rid of thought, but it's to be able to control our reaction to that thought. So if you have a thought, not reacting to it right away, and that really just brings us a lot of self-discipline throughout our whole life, and it allows us to create a life that we want. The thing is that over the next 10 to 20 years, the people who are able to cultivate self-discipline, who are able to control themselves, control their minds on a higher level, are going to be the more successful people in reaching and establishing what it is that they want to create for their lives and to manifest for themselves. Because there are so many things just pulling our attention away from that self-discipline, from creating and manifesting. There's so many things that want to keep our attention spans smaller. And I know that we're doing this on social media, but the more that we can get away from social media, the more that we can get back to the roots of actually living life as just a human animal being. The more we're going to find satisfaction with our lives. So letting ourselves come back to the breath, non-judgment. If thoughts do come into your mind, it's a practice. It's a yoga practice, not a yoga perfect. And then from here, just kind of slowly coming onto the soles of your feet, bring your knees up. If you have a block behind your head, just move that out of the way. If you have any blocks under your knees, just move those out of the way. You're just going to roll over onto your right side, slowly walking up to get the bolster out of your back. All right, we're going to go ahead and come into a bolster support. Supported Child's Pose. This is a really nice posture, and, uh, I find it super relaxing. You want to take your head from one side to the other. It doesn't really feel comfortable to me to bring my face flat on the bolster. If you have your tea, grab a drink of tea. Ki for you and me. Oh my goodness, I wish I could show you outside because the snow is really coming down. It is very snowy here. All right, we'll let our knees come into the outside of our bolster, and then we'll just walk down and let your head fall to one side, whichever side is more— most comfortable to you.

You can just breathe here in and out through the nose. Oh good, my heater turned off. It's good to have heat, but it's loud. I'll just relax here into the pose. Nice easy child's pose, a really good counterpose to our Setu Bandhasana, Half Bridge Pose. Breathing deep in and out through the nose. Again, trying to get that breath to be the same length on the inhale as it is on the exhale. So I was once in a Rod Stryker class, and he said that people who have longer inhales tend to be more Type A, and people who have longer exhales tend to be more Type B. So your Type A are your people who are really motivated and driven, and then your Type B people are your more creatives who Find the beauty and cultivate and share that. What we want to do is really have our breath be even on the inhale and the exhale so that— I just noticed I'm talking with my hands while I'm in this pose. Um, we want to have our breath to be more even on the inhale and the exhale so that we are cultivating an evenness of temperament so we're both equally driven and equally creative. Allowing yourself to just let go and release into this pose, letting go of any expectations of how you think it's supposed to feel, but just coming into a space where it feels as it feels. So if you stick with me till the end of the class today, I will show you the snow so you can see what it looks like. I'll take you with me to the snow. Just letting any thoughts that come into your mind go back on the shelf for later, later thinking.

And if you have your head turned to one side, just go ahead and turn it to the other side now so that we get an even twist on our cervical spine.

Maybe you can feel your heart beating. I can feel my heart beating in my body right now.

Then from here, just go ahead and slowly bring your hands to the middle of your bolster and just gently push your way up. Really nice, really nice. You did great, you did great. It feels like it's May— it's May 20th here in Colorado. I am not from Colorado, I'm from Las Vegas, but it's May 20th here in Colorado and y'all, I'm I cannot wait to the end of class to show you the snow because it's a lot of snow for May 20th. Okay, we're gonna do one of my favorite, my all-time favorite restorative poses, um, and that is the twist. So, um, I just want you to Bring your bolster right here. You're gonna sit to the side of your bolster just like this, okay?

And then you're going to lean toward the bolster and twist to the other side. Now, just like this, it's a nice simple twist.

Twist. If you have a block and you want to use that to elevate you a little bit, you can certainly do that, or a blanket if you want a little bit more elevation, like a blanket folded really nicely.

But if it feels comfortable just with the bolster this way, you can definitely twist like that.

Now I'm going to turn around and twist the other direction because It's better to twist the right side first before twisting the left side because of the way our digestive path works.

So the intestines— your digestion moves through the intestines on the right side of the body first, and then it moves over to the left side. So we want it to move through the right side of the intestines with our twist, and then to the left side. And if you ever experience pain on like the left upper part of your like stomach area, sometimes that could just be constipation. And these twists can actually help move the toot toot poop patoot poot through your intestines. I know, I'm almost 50 and I just, I don't want to say the word on, on the YouTubes. Anyhow, just rest into your twist. And then go ahead and slowly, you're gonna bring it back up.

Microphone fell off here. And you're gonna really slowly just switch sides, so now we'll be twisting the left side of the body. Moving the digestive system. So bringing your hips all the way up to the bolster and then just twisting onto your bolster, maybe letting your head turn to the opposite direction of your knees.

And I like to just let my head rest on my hand here. It feels good that way. Again, make any modifications that feel good for you. So any way you want to shift that in such a way that feels good for you, definitely do that.

One thing being at altitude is I feel like we're at like 9, 9 or 10,000 feet, and I just feel like I'm always out of breath.

Because altitude is no joke. Just let yourself come to a stillness place. And again, if any thoughts just come into your mind, just acknowledge them and just put them on a shelf for later.

You can think about all that stuff after our practice today.

Restorative yoga class at my studio in Las Vegas.

Used to be the most popular class on our schedule, 9 AMs on Saturdays.

Everybody absolutely loved going to that restorative class. I find that restorative yoga is a really good complement to all kinds of yoga and all kinds of exercise. If you're training for marathon and stress, man, restorative yoga is super good for stress.

All right, we're gonna go ahead and just slowly walk it up. Oh, feeling that nice twist come out. And bring the bolster over to the middle. I feel like we should name our bolsters, and I feel like mine doesn't have a name, and so I would love for you to put in the comments what you think I should name my bolster, and then, well, and then I'll talk about it in a future video. We'll name it something like that. Okay, we're gonna do a nice easy forward fold. Bolster can come onto your legs like this. If you want a little bit more, bolster can come up like this, or with the legs wide. You want to start out one way and then move the other way, that's great too. So go ahead and just lengthen your spine and relax, folding forward onto your bolster. Again, you can leave the bolster like this, and as we hold the posture longer, maybe you want to move your bolster the other direction. It's really just up to you.

Just let yourself come back to the breath, breathing in and out through the nose, nice and gentle. Another option is to use your bolster and maybe take a, a block if you want. You could also do more blankets on top, whatever feels good to you.

If you have— I have a, another pillow here. You can even do like a pillow bolster block thing.

Oh, that's really nice, friends. Just grab whatever's around me and let that be my practice.

You know, there's no set rules for anything.

People feel like, well, I can only do these things if I do them perfectly. I can only do these things if I do it exactly the way it's meant to be. But here's the thing, restorative yoga is 100% Western yoga. Made up by somebody. And I mean, I guess like Iyengar kind of first did restorative yoga, but not like what we do it today, honestly. And, uh, the, uh, restorative poses that we do today are really much more watered down.

So the whole thing is to just really find a point of comfort for yourself and where the pose feels good for you, not where you think the pose should be, but where it actually is and what actually feels good for you. Because the whole yoga practice is really about finding what feels good to you. Not finding what feels good to me or what we think should feel good, but what actually does feel good. So where does it, where does it feel in your body?

How does it feel in your body?

Where are you feeling any kind of sensation? And that's something that's just such an incredible gift of yoga is the ability to get to know your own body and where you feel and how you feel. When we do that, we can actually become aware of any disturbances or dis-eases in our body and areas that might need attention before they become a problem. That's how I knew that I wanted to give up drinking because my body was having a strong reaction to alcohol that was negative. And so I decided I just didn't want to drink anymore. And that's not to say that I never ever drink, but it's like once every 6 months. It's very rare, whereas it used to be every night. So it, you know, and that's just from listening to my body and what my body's needs were. And That's the kind of thing that your body will tell you when, when it wants to do something or when it needs something. Okay, from here we're gonna just really slowly roll our way up. I'm gonna move everything out of the way that you have. You have all these things, I'm gonna move them out of the way. Okay, I do not have a wall nearby. If you have a wall, you can use a wall. I have a table and a countertop. I think I'm going to try— trying to decide here. I think I'm going to move the camera.

I'm going to try the countertop.

Okay, so bolster is going to go here up against Whatever it is you're using— your table, your countertop, your wall— if you have a wall, use the wall. And you don't have to use the bolster for this. I'm just using it because that's the theme of the class, is restorative yoga with a bolster. I'm all like, how am I gonna do this? Okay, we want to bring our bum onto the bolster. I think I'm going to slide in, so I'm going to sit on it. So elegant, so amazing, so well put together here. Woo! And you wouldn't know that I've been teaching yoga for 17 years. Just looking at me. Put the legs up on the wall. Now my legs are up on my stove here, and ideally our bolster would be a little bit closer. Let me see if I can move in. Oh, there we go, got it. Yeah. Using the countertop to move myself. You guys, I bet that really was not very ladylike looking. I don't think I'm trying to be ladylike here, just trying to teach some restorative yoga. All right, so you can bring your feet wide like this, you can bring your feet more together, you can bring your legs up the wall straight in front. I'm going to move mine out to the side because I got the stove here in my way. But this is called, uh, Viparita Karani, or legs up the wall pose. A lot of discussion about this in my online yoga teacher training. We've actually been discussing this pose a lot lately. You can leave your arms next to you Or you can bring your arms over your head, whatever feels good to you. You can also just ditch this bolster altogether, like if you don't want to use it, you can just get rid of it and just do the legs up the wall without it. That's really nice too. I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna stick with that right now. But if you want to use the bolster, you certainly can. It adds like an element of, um, backbend to the Legs Up the Wall pose. Let's just find some stillness here, closing our eyes, maybe breathing in and out through the nose. It's interesting because when you teach in person, you just literally never think about how funky you look getting into a pose or how weird it looks. But when you're online, you're like, it's immortalized forever. Someone will be watching this video 8 years from when I posted it. Seeing me struggle to get into Legs Up the Wall Pose. But you know what? It's okay. Like, honestly, you gotta just live your life. You gotta just do the things that make you happy. You can't be concerned overly about every little thing that you do. There is no perfect, you know. Honestly, I just look at it as somebody needed to see me have a little bit of a struggle finding a way to get into legs up the wall in a camper in 30-degree weather with the snow coming down, you know. And that's how you've got to think about your life. So anytime you're struggling, anytime you have things going on that are difficult, it's got to be just in your brain like, okay, how can I twist this into positivity? I have this friend of mine when I was pretty young, I was in my early 30s, and I had just lost a job, and it was really traumatic for me. I really loved that job. And I went to my friend's dad's house for like a picnic, and it was this Jewish family in Miami, and the girl's name was Rachel. And her dad, you know, I never really had— my dad left when I was 2, so I didn't really have like that same kind of connection with, with a man. And my, my friend's dad said to me— I was talking about how sad I was that I lost my job— and he said something that stuck with me my whole life, and it— I just think it's, it's really— it's helped me through a lot of hard times. And he said that Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes you have to create the reason. So as I've gone through struggles in my life, when something happens that isn't really the part of my plan— like losing that job wasn't part of my plan— I have to find the reason why those things happened and how I can use that to transform myself and empower myself. Because honestly, if we don't do that, then we're going to be stuck living lives that we're not entirely happy with and victimizing ourselves our entire life. That's not what it's about. That is not what it's about at all. So let's go ahead and find reasons for anything that troubles us and know that we have the power to transform ourselves through the power of our minds. Our minds are incredible tools. Let's go ahead and— if you want to stay here in this, you can, or you can just bend your knees and just really slowly roll over onto your side. Let's see where we're at. Oh, perfect timing, perfect timing. All right, slowly pressing up and just find your way onto your mat. We're going to come into our final resting pose, so you can just take your self and find your way onto your mat. I'm gonna move all this stuff out of my way. Sorry, my back is to you. That's a camera no-no. Find your way to lying onto your back and maybe hug your knees to your chest a little bit if that feels good. I've been doing a lot of— I've been filming a lot of yin yoga, so I was excited to film a restorative yoga class today because I love restorative. It has— it's a kind of— it's a little bit like yin, but not. There's more poses in yin, and also there's more counter poses in yin. All right, we're gonna come into final resting pose, shavasana. Just bring your legs straight out, let your arms come to your sides. I don't like anything to touch me. I get really weird about stuff touching me in my shavasana. Let your arms come to your sides, palms facing up if you want to receive, palm facing down if you want to keep your energy in. If it does not feel comfortable to close your eyes, leave your eyes open, focus on a point above you that's not moving and just kind of try to zone out with that. We're going to take a deep inhale, exhale it out the mouth. Good. Breathing in through the nose, sigh out the mouth. Relax your shoulders onto the ground. Let your palms face up. Let your feet come as wide as your mat. If any thoughts come into your mind during your Shavasana, just acknowledge them, release them. Know that this is your time. To have calmness and stillness. This is the single most important part of your yoga practice, is this ability to find peace, calm, and stillness. And if we cannot do this, we have failed at the yoga practice. So this is where we're really putting it all into place. That was such extreme talk though. Oh, just let yourself relax. I just want you to stay— I just want you to stay with me through shavasana. Just do me that favor, all right? From here, go ahead and just reach your arms overhead, stretching from your fingertips down to your toe tips. Heater coming back on. Maybe just bending the knees, pointing the toes back towards you, just getting a nice stretch, whatever organically feels like the right movement to you. And then just roll over onto your right side into a fetal position and take a moment there before pressing your way up into your— woo— into your easy seated pose. My hair is Shavasana. My hair is shavasana. All right, coming a little bit closer, friends, coming a little bit closer to finish this class up with you. Let's bring our hands to the heart center in Anjali Mudra. I just want to take a moment to thank you for coming to class today. I really appreciate you for being here. If you would do me such the favor of subscribing to the channel, that would really help me out a lot. If you're watching this live on Instagram or later, thank you for coming. I appreciate you as well. If you have any type of class that you would like me to teach or any special requests, please leave them in the comments. I'll be happy to do that for you as well. The Light Within Me honors the divine and beautiful light within each and every every single one of you. You are beautiful, you are amazing, you are fantastic. And what you are going to do now is take this good energy that we just created and take it out into the world so that the world can be a better place. Namaste. Yay! Thank you, friends. You did great. Don't forget to subscribe. If you want to become a yoga teacher, details are below. If you want to take it to the next level and get your get your 500 certification, get your 300 certification. Details are down below in the description. Love ya! I'll see you in the next class. Mwah! Bye, friends!