Yin Yoga for Chakras

Today's class is Yin Yoga for Healing. I'm so glad that you're here. Let's get to it.

Hi, I'm Angelica. I've been teaching yoga since 2005. I've been practicing yoga since 1985, and I do online yoga teacher training. I teach vinyasa, ashtanga, yin, restorative, chair yoga, and a few others. If you're interested in becoming a yoga teacher, check out the description below and join me. I teach one-on-one, so it's just you and me in our Zoom class, and each week you'll get new videos, new reading assignments, and you'll have new practicums to turn in. Then at the end of your week, we'll meet together and you and I will go over your videos, we'll go over your assignments, I'll answer any of your questions and help you become a certified yoga teacher so that at the end of 10 weeks for the 200-hour and 15 weeks for the 300-hour, you'll be able to teach anywhere in the world even if you've never ever ever taken a yoga class before. It's that comprehensive. All right, let's go ahead and get to the class. Today we're going to do Yin Yoga for Healing, and I find that that class does really well because a lot of people need healing. I don't know what it's gonna sound like. It's raining in my yoga tent, uh, so there are little droplets of rain. So I was hoping that that would sound like really calm and peaceful. I don't know if it sounds like really loud.

I hope not.

I hope it sounds like really amazing and you're like here in the wilderness with me and we're really enjoying it together. It's also going to snow this afternoon and it is Almost June now. Okay, um, for this class you do not need props, but if you have them, you certainly can use them. We're going to go ahead and start with postures that help us to open our first, second chakras. These are our main energy centers that help us to stabilize, and they deal with security. So When we do grounding in those poses, that really helps us to find, um, a basis for our healing. So I would like you to start in an easy seated pose, whatever easy seated pose feels good to you. I like to sit in a cross-legged posture, but you might want to sit with your legs extended, or you might want to sit up against a wall, or you might want to sit up against a chair, or you might want to sit in a chair. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just glad that you're here, and I'm really grateful that you're doing something that helps elevate you and makes you feel better. And so if you're doing anything today that doesn't make you feel better, I want you to stop doing that. I want you to only do things that make you feel better. All right, let's go ahead and make this count by turning on the Apple Watch and making it a workout, because if it doesn't count, did it even happen? Did it even happen? Okay, now it's official. Lengthen through your spine, relax down through your shoulders, and let your hands just kind of rest on you wherever feels comfortable. If you want to receive new energy, let the hands and the palms open up. If you want to keep that energy to yourself, let the palms stay down. Whatever you're feeling is perfect and fine. We're going to come here into a short meditation. So I want you to focus on your breath, breathing in and out through the nose. When we breathe in and out through the nose, we are lowering the fight or flight response in the body, and this helps our nervous system to start to calm down. So we're going to do that breath together. We're going to do it really nice and slow. So breathing in through the nose And breathing out through the nose. Breathing in. Breathing out. Really slowing down the breath so that it begins to feel like a wave in your body. Any thoughts that come into your mind, I want you to acknowledge them and just say, 'I'm going to think about them later.' You see, our yoga practice is not about getting rid of thoughts or even controlling thoughts. It's the ability to compartmentalize those thoughts. It's our ability to delay reaction, that non-attachment to the thought. We'll just continue to breathe here for a few more minutes. There are 3 tatvas in yin yoga. So as we go through our practice today, I want you to recognize and use these 3 tatvas. The first one is to come to a point of stress. Now, that doesn't mean to move into the pose to where it hurts. It means to go to where you feel it. If you're in anything and it hurts today, I want you to back off and stop doing that. Please don't, please don't hurt yourself. I can't be there with you, so I'm really depending on you to know your own body and to make sure that you don't hurt yourself. It's really important that you take personal responsibility for your body. That's what our whole practice is about. Our yoga practice is about learning to understand our body. So we come to a little bit of point of stress. That's the first tapa. The second tapa is that we find stillness in that pose. So we come to where we can find stillness and stay in the pose. And then the third tapas is staying in the pose. It's holding the pose for time. All right, go ahead and open your eyes.

Good.

The first posture we're going to do today is called dangling. So I want you, if you're in an easy seated pose, to just Fold over, walk your hands forward a little bit, let your feet come back. Curl under your toes and walk your hands back so that you come into a forward fold position. Slightly bend the knees, let the weight come towards the balls of your feet, and we're going to grab on to opposite elbows as we hang down. This is called dangling. So the reason why we're doing this pose more towards the beginning is that it helps to stabilize our first chakra, and that's really going to help us with healing any kind of emotional ailment that we're carrying. Our first chakra controls stability, safety home, environment, friends, family, money. So any of those things where we're having to create a stable life, that's what we've got going on here in our first chakra dangling pose. Now you can let your arms fall if that feels more comfortable, or you continue to hold on to opposite elbow, whatever feels more comfortable to you. And as we build that strength, spreading the toes wide and grounding into the earth, we're really building a connection with that creation of stability. We're building up our ability to feel stronger. That helps us to heal. Anytime we can take personal empowerment and Anytime we can create personal strength, that's going to help us heal from any kind of emotional imbalance. All right, we're going to go ahead and start to open up the second chakra. Just bring your feet maybe as wide as your mat. If your heels don't touch the ground, you might want to have them on a blanket. And then you're just gonna come into a squat. You could also sit on your bolster or on your blocks if you have blocks.

Oh, reaching!

If you have blocks, you can sit on the blocks if that feels more comfortable to you. If you don't have them, you certainly don't need them. Yin yoga was originally taught without any props at all, and then we added them. So you don't have to have props if you don't have them, but they're nice to have and I like them. And the link to all of them is in the description if you want to grab some really high quality, good props that you know are going to last. I'm one of those people that doesn't buy a lot of things, but when I do buy things, I like to buy things that that last and that go the long haul, because I think that that's a better use of my money. But everybody's different, and I honor however you decide to live your life. So for some people, this might feel really tough, and for other people, this might feel really easy. If you're ready to come into the dangling pose again, you can certainly move into that, or we can continue to hold this pose because where we're going next is dangling. This is going to affect our hip sockets, it's going to affect our abductors and our inner thighs. It's also beginning to open our second chakra, and our second chakra is the energy center of emotion and creativity. This center often gets stifled, especially when we've experienced trauma. Trauma can be very difficult to move past. And I'm a person that's had a lot of trauma in my life, especially in my childhood, and I used the yoga practice and specifically yoga philosophy to change my whole life. Meditation really helped a lot. And so I highly suggest picking up a meditation practice. Our yoga asana practice, we use this to prepare the body for meditation. So oftentimes our bodies just aren't ready to sit still, and that's what we use this physical practice for. All right, we're going to come back into the dangling now. So if you have props, maybe moving them over to the side and then just placing your hands on the ground. And folding. Oh look, I made my exercise goal! Thanks for being here for that. I should go ahead and turn my phone off. Didn't realize it was on. You can grab onto opposite elbows, or you can let your hands come to the ground, whatever feels good to you. We're playing here with the idea of going back and forth between the first and the second chakras. So we're creating stability, opening up to emotions, creating stability, opening up to emotions. Bending your knees, really spreading the toes wide and grounding down into the earth, getting that strong connection to Mother Earth, knowing that she will help hold you up when you need that. All right, let's go ahead and just walk our hands down. We're going to come into a tabletop pose, so coming onto your knees. Good. Oh my goodness, you guys, it's snowing! Let's do some cat cow. In that time that we were just sitting here dangling, it started to snow. Oh, the wonder of Colorado. All right, take— we're going to thread through the needle. Take your right hand and bring Bring it through, just feeling a nice twist there. Bring it back to breathing in and out through the nose. If it feels good, you can extend your upper arm straight. Everything is an option. So now we're working here with the heart chakra. Our heart chakra is how we see the world, and I mean like how we see the world as an abundant and loving place. Go ahead and switch sides. You can keep that arm bent or extend it out if it feels good. We're just slowly dipping up into those higher chakras. We can move out of the third chakra, Manipura, and into the heart chakra. We move from having any kind of anger or resentment about our need to heal, and we can move into openness and seeing the world in a different way. You can go ahead and slowly roll your way up. All right, we're going to come into what's called Dragonfly or Straddle Pose. So just coming over onto your bum. If you want to sit on a blanket or a bolster or onto some blocks, you can certainly do that. You could bring them underneath your knees, or you can bend your knees if that feels more comfortable. We do one or the other. Just bring your legs as wide as you feel comfortable, like to a point of stress for you, and you— we're gonna hold it for a while, so you don't want to go like too far. We'll go ahead and fold forward. If you have a bolster and you want to use that for your forward fold, you certainly can, but again, it's just optional. We don't need it. We'll just come to that point of stress and then we're gonna hold for time. So find your point where you feel the pose and then we'll We'll just come to where we can be still, and then we'll hold for time. I feel like I should have worn a sweater. I wish that you could see this. You guys keep holding this pose. I'm just going to turn the camera around just for a second so that you can see the snow because it's crazy.

Look at that.

Like, can you see? Can you see it coming down? It's like really coming down on my side. I don't feel like the camera's picking it up, maybe a little bit, but it's really, it's really snowing on my side. Just maintain that forward fold. Okay. A little bit cold too. Now it's turning into rain again. Okay, so here we are again in our Dragonfly in the Straddle Pose, and we're again dealing with the first chakra. So we're pressing into the ground and we're dealing with all those first chakra muscles, the hamstrings, the adductors. Your inner thighs, your inner knees, your hip sockets. Now we're moving into the second chakra, and maybe a little bit of your low back. If you want to come deeper, you can. You can also rest your head onto your palms. This sometimes feels really good if you have a bolster A lot of nature on my mat. Alright, very slowly, just walking your way up, bring your hands underneath of your knees and just pull your legs up. Alright, we're gonna extend the legs out and do some circles on the knees with your hands. Circle the other direction. Just doing some nice circles there on the knees. That feels really good. We'll move into some windshield wipers. So this is going to be second chakra, first chakra, so stability, but also now dipping into the creative, dipping into emotion. Bringing your hands back, bending your knees, and just letting the knees fall side to side. Nice gentle easy windshield wipers. I think I'm moving a little bit fast, but I'm trying to keep myself warm. Okay. From here, we're going to do a nice backbend. We're going to do the Sphinx Pose. So we're just going to find our way onto our stomach. If you have a bolster, you can use a bolster for this, or you could just come down onto your forearms. I'm going to go ahead and bend the knees and let my feet come up. You can extend your legs out straight if you want, but bending the knees gives you a little bit more of a stretch in your Sphinx Pose. Finding a point of stress here and then finding where you can find stillness, and then we'll hold it for time. So now we're dipping up into those upper chakras again. We're going back up into our heart chakra and opening up there, rolling the shoulder blades back, let the chest open. Bringing it back to the breath, in and out through the nose. If you do have your knees up, see if you can— or your feet up, knees bent— see if you can relax the glutes. That'll move the bend into a different part of the back. So just kind of feeling where that feels in your body, like how does it feel different to relax that area. For those of you that don't know what the glutes are, we're talking about the bum. Release your bum. If it feels good, you can just move your head side to side, start releasing some of the tension in your neck. Now the cool thing about this is that we're actually moving a little bit into our communication center, the Vishuddha chakra, our throat chakra. And communication isn't just about talking, it's also about listening, which a lot of us that grew up in chaos don't really know how to do well. I know, I'm extraordinarily bad at it myself. All right, we're gonna move into Balasana, Child's Pose, as our counter pose to the Sphinx. So go ahead and just come on to your knees, try to find yourself into that really easy. If you have a bolster, you could put it in front of you to come into your Child's Pose, uh, and rest on the bolster. But if you don't That's okay too. You can just fold forward into this posture. You can bring your arms behind you if that feels good. Remember to breathe in and out through the nose. Or you can extend your arms forward, whichever feels good to you. And slowly roll your way up. You're doing really great. You're doing really awesome. Stop looking at the snow. It's, it's so much snow. All right, we're going to move on to the floor now. So just lying on your back, I'm going to go ahead and take my Mexican blanket and bring it the length of my mat. When you get to lying on your back, maybe just hug your knees into your chest. Rolling around a little bit. We're come going to into a half happy baby. So let your left leg come down and grab onto your right foot. You can grab onto the outside of your foot, or you can grab on underneath of your knee, whatever feels more comfortable to you. You can extend this leg out straight, or you can leave it bent, and we'll just hold here. Play with different styles of doing the posture and see what feels good to you, because not everything is going to feel the way you expect it to. We're moving deep here into our second chakra, so really opening up emotions, really opening and releasing creativity. I'mma go ahead and just slowly switch sides. Mm, and then when you're ready, we're gonna go ahead and release that. Hug your knees into your chest, rolling around a little bit. Give yourself a nice back massage. You've made it. Almost to the end of class. I'm super proud of you. A lot of people will give up early. You were not that person, and that— you deserve good stuff. That's where we get the real healing, is by spending the time on self-care. Let your knees fall to the right. Extend your left arm up overhead and just get a nice easy stretch here. Letting yourself melt into that nice twist, working here with the Manipura chakra, with our third chakra, our power center, really just twisting it out and feeling a newness in that solar plexus area. We're going down a different path, we're making different choices based on shifting our minds. Go ahead and bring that back up to center. Let the legs fall to the left now as you extend your right arm up over your head. So from a neurological standpoint, when we we start to make different decisions about what we think, we start to experience different emotions. So when we noticing— when we notice ourself having an emotion that we don't want to continue with in our life, we can choose to think something different. And the more we practice this, the more we do this, the more likely it is that that we're going to shift and change our entire life. And the universe will vibrate to you what you think you are worth. And so when we start to change what we think, we change what we think we are worth, and the universe responds to us in such a way to give us what we now think we are worth. So it adjusts with our thoughts. Alright, let's go ahead and bring it back to center. We're gonna come into your final resting pose, just extending your legs out. Let your legs come as wide as your mat. Let your feet splay out. Let your arms come to your sides. If this feels too much for you and you do not want to do this and you don't want to close your eyes, that's okay.

You can bend your knees, bring your hands onto your stomach, and just choose a point point in the sky there above you that's not moving and just try to zone out and focus on that. If you want to get deeper into the second chakra in your shavasana, bring the soles of your feet together, let your knees fall out to your side. This will bring you into a butterfly, a supta baddha konasana, reclined butterfly pose, lying on our back. And again, you can always do the traditional shavasana with your legs straight. So everybody just take a deep inhale through the nose and then exhale through the nose and let your body melt into your mat. We'll just hold here for a few minutes.

Any sounds that come into your final resting pose, just allow them to become a part of that meditation, knowing that there will always be things in the world that are interfering with us doing all of our life. So what we need to do is find a way to allow that interference become non-pulsed, that we are not affected, it doesn't change our mood. That control of the senses is what the yoga is made of. Right from here, go ahead and Bend your knees. If you have your legs extended or if you're in butterfly, just bring the knees together. If you already have your knees bent, you're good. Roll over onto your right side into a fetal position, taking a moment here to thank yourself for doing your practice today. You did really good.

I'm super proud of you.

Thank you so much for joining me. I always love teaching you on YouTube. YouTube. It is— teaching is the greatest joy. Press your left hand into your palm.

I had many jobs before this job, like 30 different ones that I was fired from, and, um, I— this is the one I'm good at. Like, I'm really good at teaching yoga, and I love it, and I'm glad that you're here. So please subscribe and help me spread the word, because, um, the word to the world, because I love doing this. I love being with you, and I'm so glad you're here. All right, lengthen through the spine, relax down through your shoulders, bring your hands to the heart center in Anjali Mudra. We're going to close our class with one sound of Om. Take a deep inhale. Om.

Om.

The light within me honors the divine and beautiful light within each and every one of you. Thank you for such a great class. I really appreciate you coming today.

Namaste.

I'm glad that you are here healing yourself. When you heal yourself, you heal the world. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I will see you in the next video. Please make sure to hit the subscribe button and hit the like, make a comment, tell me how your class went. I always respond to every comment. And yeah, I'm glad to meet you. If you're looking to be a yoga teacher, go to the link in the description below. And, or if you just want to know more about yoga, you want to get into an in-depth deep study, I do train people one-on-one. So it would just be you and me in our Zoom call every week. All right, I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Thank you so much. Namaste.