One Hour Hatha Yoga All Levels #yoga #yogateacher #yoga4eatingdisorders

Hello and welcome to yoga. Today we'll start in easy seated pose with our legs crossed, and bring your thumb and first finger to touch for Gyan Mudra. If you would like to feel grounded, you can place your palms down on your knees. If you'd like to receive energy, you can place your palms up. Begin to sink and settle into your body and into your breath. You might want to close your eyes, or you can find a soft gaze on the floor in front of you. Just notice the texture of your breath, the quality. Begin to relax into your body. Maybe loosening up your neck a little bit, softening your eyebrows and your cheeks, allowing any tension to melt from your upper shoulders and upper back, finding length in your spine without any tension. Allowing your arms to hang heavy, finding ease in your legs and your pelvis. Begin to lengthen the exhale slightly longer than the inhale, which will calm your nervous system. And bring you into a relaxed state. And perhaps notice the slight pause at the top of the inhale and the bottom of the exhale. Consider that change takes place and just a very moment. So consider all the possibilities that exist within that infinitesimal pause at the top of the inhale and the bottom of the exhale. And in this state, as we prepare for our yoga practice, set an intention for your practice today. What would you like to cultivate? How would you like to feel after the practice? Maybe one word: presence, gratitude, love. Whatever resonates for you, seal that in to your heart. And when you're ready, you can blink your eyes open and we'll begin. Let's begin by just kind of swaying back and forth, warming up our spine, pretending we're seaweed in the ocean, just gently moving back and forth, getting our neck loose a little bit, allowing that to soften and move with our bodies, you know, enjoying deep inhales, letting the oxygen move through our bodies, refreshing us. It's a beautiful day here in Minnesota. We're enjoying the summer. So hopefully it's beautiful wherever you are, and even if it's not, enjoy the rain or snow or whatever, whatever is showing up for you. And we'll continue warming up the spine by doing stirring the pot. So gently come forward with your spine and then circle around back, coming forward. And you can make this as big as you want. Like so, or you can make this a small circle if you prefer, just kind of stirring around slowly, allowing our back to warm up. This also activates our root chakra, which is the color red. And it's about safety and groundedness. Just breathing in and exhaling all the way. And then you can reverse directions. Nice stretch on this side. Couple more times this way. And come to stillness. I will get some lateral stretches. So inhale, bring your arms up. And exhale, and let's stretch to the right. And inhale, arms up. And other side. Inhale, arms up, back to the right. We'll do it dynamically for a couple times first, then we'll static. Inhale, arms up and to the left. Inhale, arms up. And then on an exhale, we'll bend to the right and we'll hold and breathe. If you'd like, if it's better for your neck, you can look down or you can look up. I prefer to look straight forward and just breathe. We tend to pop our shoulders out and reach like this. But if you can, keep your shoulder in its girdle. And one more breath here. And then on an inhale, we'll come up, and exhale, let's stretch to the left. Again, you can look down, you can look up, or look straight ahead, and keeping that shoulder in the girdle rather than stretching it up into your ears. One more breath here. And we'll come on up, arms up. This time we're gonna fold forward any amount and then just relax here. Taking in some nice deep breaths. Now walk your hands over to the right to get the back, the side, the left side, and you can place your left hand on top of your right hand to get a deep, even deeper stretch. And hold and breathe. And then we'll walk our hands over to the other side and place the right hand on top of the left. One more breath here. And then walk yourself to the center, and you can then push yourself on up. Now we're going to do a seated cat cow. We're still warming up our spine. I'm going to sit this way so you can see. So grab onto your shins, and on an inhale, we're going to bring our heart forward, arch our back a little bit, and look up. On the exhale, we're going to round our back look towards our belly button and kind of pull on our shins. And then again, on an inhale, reaching the back, heart forward, look up. And exhale, rounding the back and looking at the belly button, chin down. Continue this on your own breath. Several times, getting a nice stretch in the back. In yoga, we want to move with the breath, actually allowing the breath to lead the movement. And one more time. And we'll allow our back to come to neutral, and we're going to do a twist so that we get that direction of the back. So we will inhale, arms up, and then we're going to twist to the right. So we'll bring our left hand onto our right knee, and then our right hand, we're going to tent our fingers, bring that behind us, and then on an inhale, we'll straighten our spine On an exhale, twist from the belly button towards the right. And then on an inhale, slightly unwind, straighten your spine. On the exhale, twist a little bit further. Once more, on an inhale, slightly unwind, straighten the spine. And then exhale, twist as deep as you can, and we'll hold here, making sure that you just still get the deep breathing. It's a little harder to breathe when we're twisted, so make that effort. Twisting is really good for all of the inner organs, especially good for the digestion. One more breath here. And on an exhale, gently unwind. Take a moment to recenter. Inhale, arms up, and then we'll twist to the other side. Right hand on left knee, and inhale, straighten the spine. Exhale, twist left. Inhale, lengthen the spine, and exhale, twist left. Once more, inhale, straighten the spine, slightly unwind, and exhale, twist deeply from the belly, and hold and breathe. One more breath here. And then unwind. Excellent. Now we're going to come down to our back. For an extra challenge, bring your feet flat and then your arms forward and slowly roll your way down. Okay, we're going to stretch our legs a little bit. So bring your right knee in and hug it up into your chest. I'm just breathing. Now straighten the leg any amount. Just hold on behind the knee there, not on the knee, but a little bit here. Or if you'd like, you can hold on up here and just breathe, bringing the leg towards you any amount. So you might be here, you might be here. Or here, or you might be here. Any amount is just fine. Then we're gonna flex and point our foot, just loosening up the ankle joint 10 times. And then roll your ankle 5 ways, 5 times one way, and then 5 times the other way. Now bring your, uh, bend your knee and bring the ankle to the knee of the left leg, and you can either bring your, your other hands through to hold on to the back of that left thigh, or if you want, you can bring them to the top of the knee, and we'll bring that in, and we get a nice stretch on the back of the right buttocks and hip. Just hold and breathe. I like to bring my right leg back and forth. You get a nice stretch on different areas, kind of rocking it back and forth. Okay, let's repeat this on the other side. So right knee bent, and we will take in our left knee to the shoulder. And then extending that leg any amount, you can hold on here. The knee doesn't have to be straight all the way. We're here, any amounts would feel good to you. And then we'll flex and then point. Our ankle. I lost count. I always forget to count, so forgive me. And then we'll roll it 5 times one way And 5 times the other way. And bend your knee, bring that ankle to the top of the right knee, and place your fingers around the thigh, the right thigh, or you can put them on top. The right knee and draw that in towards you. If you want, you can swing that leg back and forth so you get more of a stretch on the left hip and buttock. I like rocking a baby. Or something. Excellent. And we're gonna set up for Bridge Pose. So— technical error. Place both feet flat on the mat. And we're gonna start with pelvic tilt. So make sure both feet are fully grounded. And then place both hands on the ground, pressing down. What you're going to do on an inhale, you're going to slightly tilt so that your lower back is imprinted on the mat. On an exhale, just release so that it's back to where there's a slight, uh, space here between your back and the mat. And then inhale, imprint your back. Exhale. Release. So very slight tilting of the pelvis, and just continue that on your own breath. Couple more times. Okay, now we will prepare for bridge. First, make sure that your feet are fully grounded, and then when we go up for bridge, I want you to think— instead of going up, I want you to think about driving your energy forward. So we're going to go up with our pelvis, but I want you to think about the energy going forward instead of up. And your hands and arms are pressing into the mat. And then on an inhale, we're going to slowly peel our vertebrae up. So on an exhale— on an inhale, our knees are pressing forward and our pelvis slowly lifts. And then on an exhale, one vertebra at a time, you slowly lower down. Excellent. Let's do that again. Knees forward as we slowly lift one vertebra at a time. And exhale. And we'll do that again. Up. This time interlace your arms and your fingers underneath you, and you should be able to get some more height on your bridge. And we'll hold here and make sure to breathe. And bring your arms outside of the body and slowly roll down. Excellent. Now we're going to do a Pilates move, which is rolling like a ball. So bring your shins up and make yourself into a little ball, and then the idea is to roll and come to a stop and then roll back. And, and then ideally you come to a stop without coming to your feet. So we'll just practice that a couple times. It's just kind of a fun trick. And don't worry if you can't do it. It's a little tricky. Took me a long time. So just have fun with it. Couple more times. And then we'll finally plant our feet and we're going to come to tabletop. Swing your legs around. And I better tuck this in. And we will come with our hands under our shoulders. Knees under the hips. We're going to start with some balance here. So after you feel secure, let's extend our right arm straight in front of us and our left leg. Oops. And then just hold here and bring down. Now we'll do our left arm. Right leg. Let's try the right again. Left leg. And then switch. Okay, this time with the right arm, left leg, we're going to do little pulses up. 3, 4, 5. Left arm out, right leg, and pulses up. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Excellent. Let's bring our toes together, and then we will stretch back so that we are sitting on our heels, and our arms walk forward so we get nice stretch in child's pose. Now walk yourself back, sitting on your heels. You're going to do Rabbit, which is a great pose that I think is underutilized. A little tricky. So what you're going to do, bring your hands back and kind of hold on to your heels. And then you're really like Plant your head into the mat as close as you can, and then just kinda bring your backside up and kind of stretch yourself, round your back so that you get a nice stretch in the back of your neck. I sometimes have to even push myself a little further to feel it in the back of my neck. So whatever you need to do, and make sure you don't put too much weight on your head, just enough so you get a nice stretch in the very back of your neck. And then you can come back down, sitting on your heels. And, na-rai-sep. So we're standing on our heels. On an inhale, bring your arms up. On an exhale, kneel forward. Bring your right— your left hand forward and your right hand on your back. Inhale, arms up. This time, as we kneel, your right hand is going to come to your forehead. Your left hand to your back. Inhale, arms up. Exhale, left hand forehead, right hand back. Inhale, right hand forward. I'm sorry, left hand forward, right hand back. I did that wrong, forgive me. Inhale. Exhale, right hand forward, left hand back. And inhale, hands to prayer. That's a little vini yoga, which— and it's about working with the mind too. And granted, sometimes my mind gets mixed up. And it's all good. Okay, step your right foot forward. We have anjali, andre. Step your right foot forward. Inhale, bring your arms up and breathe. If you'd like to, you can turn on your back toes and come on up. To Crescent Pose. And then bring your arms around and foot and step back into Plank Pose. If you'd like to, you can come down to your belly. We're going to do Sphinx. Pose. So bring your elbows in, then walk your hands forward so that your elbows are underneath your shoulders. Then act like you are pulling the mat towards you. Your legs are pressing into the mat. Draw your heart forward and breathe. Come down to your belly and then push yourself up and back into child's pose. And then we'll come back up to kneeling. This time we'll do Gate Pose. Turn this way. So bring your right leg out straight. Keeping your foot facing forward, bring your arms out to a T and then bend over towards the right leg. Inhale your arms up. On an exhale, bring your left hand down, right arm up. Option to lift your right leg and breathe. And come on back up. Excellent. Now we will bring ourselves back to our knees and we will kick out the left leg. Arms up. And stretch on over to the left side. Then inhale, hands over to the right, and option to lift that leg. Notice wobbling is very welcome. And come back up. Great. Now we will turn again, facing forward, and bring forward the left leg for our lunge. And breathe. Stay here, or option to flip on the back toes and come on up for Crescent Pose. And then bring your arms around your foot, come into Plank Pose. And you can bring your knees down or lower yourself to your belly. This time we'll do Locust Pose. So bring feet, press your feet into the mat. Bring your arms around you and interlace your fingers. On an inhale, lift with your arms and your back muscles, your torso. Then option to lift your legs. And breathe. One more breath. And release. And let yourself just rest here with your head down, your fore— on your arms for a minute. Feet splayed out. Take a rest. Switch your head to the other side. Excellent. Now we're going to push our way up to tabletop. Then come into yogi squat. Yes. So your yogi squat might be here, might be here. Or it might be here, and you can bring your hands together and just breathe. This is also called malasana. If you want, you can kind of move back and forth, get some extra stretch. And we can also practice standing up. Coming back down, standing up, coming back down. One more time, up and down. And couple more breaths here. Now we're gonna transition into forward fold. So let's stand up using our strong legs and spread your legs a little bit further apart. Toes, actually, we're going to turn in for balance. Inhale, arms up, then bring them to the side, and we're going to slowly, with a flat back, fold forward any amount. And when you reach the distance, you can place your hands down and just allow your back to fall and your head to fall. And breathe. Forward folds or any inversion are really good to balance our body, reverse the blood flow, good for the heart. And I always think it's good to get a different perspective. Upside down is a new way to look at things. Now place your left palm in the center, twist yourself up so that your right hand is directly above, and you can look You have the option to wrap your right hand around, even catch it on your thigh here to get a deeper twist, or it's just a different variation. Then you can unwind or bring your right hand down. We'll do the other side. So bring your right hand down, or you can bring your— tent your fingers, and then your left hand is going to go all the way up, and you can look up if you'd like or not. And option to bind the left hand. You want to have a slight bend in your knees too. And then unbind, bring your hand down. I'm going to come into a wide-legged, uh, downward dog. So basically just walk your arms forward and kind of lean back into your legs. So it's kind of like a downward dog, but kind of a relaxing into it. I like this pose. And you can walk your hands more towards the center. And then take a deep breath in and out. And on an inhale, raise yourself up with a flat back. Excellent. Now you can heel-toe your feet together. Excellent. And we'll come to the top of our mat. Just a few more poses for us. Inhale, arms up. Exhale. I'm going to step back so I don't hit my head. Forward fold. And then inhale, come up halfway with a flat back. And exhale, fold. Now step back with your right leg. And so we're in a lunge. Just pause and breathe. Inhale and exhale. Now placing your back foot on a 45-degree angle. Inhale, cartwheel your arms and come into Warrior 2. So with Warrior 2, you want your arms extended and thinking of them— woo— as an extension of your heart. Really put the energy into your arms. And your front knee is at a 90-degree angle. And breathe. Inhale, exhale. Lean your way back. And then inhale, exhale, flow forward. We'll do that a few times. Inhale, exhale back. And flowing forward. One more time. And we'll hold here for a breath. And then one more time up to Warrior 2, and then we'll cartwheel our hands, step back to a plank, and either come down to your knees or you can lower yourself. And then we'll come up to a cobra, which is just lifting up your hands, or you can come to an upward dog. Flip your feet, come to downward dog, and we'll rest here for a moment. Keeping your arms strong and long and breathing. We're going to come to Warrior 2 on the other side. I'm going to flip myself around so you can see. So step forward with your left foot. And I do my left foot. I did. Step forward with your right foot. Back foot, left foot, 45-degree angle. Cartwheel your arms up so we are in Warrior 2, right foot forward. And remembering that your arms are an extension of your heart. So fully open them. Inhale. And exhale, leaning back, opening up our heart. And Exhale, side angle, and flowing a couple times, enjoying the movement. And once more. And then windmilling our arms down, coming into plank, dropping the knees, or coming down. And then we'll come up to cobra or upward dog. And let's come back to child's pose and just rest, integrating all of the movement. Bring your beat— breathing back into normal rhythm. When you're ready, you can come to seated. We're going to do some stretching. Begin by holding our left knee in, extending our right leg. First, we're going to turn our torso towards the right foot. Inhale, arms up. Exhale, fold forward. Any— and breathe. And you can inhale up. Now turn your torso so that it's centered. Bring your arms open and then side stretch towards the right foot. Inhale, come up. We'll repeat that on the left side, extending the left leg, folding in the right first, turning the torso towards the left foot and folding forward. And then kind of squaring our hips, arms up, we'll do a side stretch towards the left foot. And bring that up. Let's bring our feet together in butterfly stretch. If you want, you can kind of open up your feet like a book. Place your hands around that and your thumb in the middle and just breathe. And if you'd like, you can fold forward any amount. And make your way up. Extend our legs long. Inhale, arms up. Exhale, fold forward. A little trick I learned to get more space and be able to fold further is to just slightly lift your head, and then you can go a little further. Slightly lift further. Just a very little lift. Almost can't even feel it. Barely noticeable lift. But for whatever reason It seems to increase your flexibility. And breathe. And release. Come on up. And we're going to come back to our back. So let's try that from the beginning again. Challenge our abs. Arms forward and slowly roll down. Excellent. Now we're going to do a twist, so cross your right leg over your left, and then shift your hips over to the right, and then let your legs fall to the left. Bring your arms out to a T, and if you'd like, you can look towards the right. I love twists. They feel really good on my back. One more breath here. With your legs still crossed, bring them up, then uncross them. Re-center yourself. Cross your left over your right. Shift your hips to the left, then let them fall to the right. And again, you can look towards the left if you'd like, and that feels good in your neck. And breathe. One more deep, deep breath. And then keeping your legs crossed, bring them back up. And then get yourself centered again. Then bring either your knees or your feet into your hands into happy baby. You might want to rock a little bit, or you might want to straighten one or both legs, whatever feels nice for you. Kind of making any last adjustments or movements before we come into shavasana. And whenever you come— feel complete, you can lengthen your legs. I like to wiggle my hips a little bit so I make sure I get all the length I can. And then bring your arms long and place them down with your arms, your hands open. And I like to lift up my neck and stretch it long. Then place my head down with my chin slightly tilted. I have all the length I can in my spine. Then gently close your eyes or find a soft gaze and just think and settle into your body, grateful for all the work It is just done and ready to integrate. Call your mind back to your intention that you set in the beginning of class. Just, just let it be there. Notice what's coming up for you and just allow it. No judgment, no analysis, just be. Thank yourself for showing up, for taking care of you, for honoring your body and your spirit. Know that you are worthy for showing up on the mat, worthy of care, worthy of love, worthy of pleasure and joy. You are love. You are precious. You get to just be. Rest now in that knowledge. Allow yourself. When you feel ready. Rings, movement, rings. Maybe deepen your breath, and whenever you're ready, in your own time, roll yourself to one side, making a pillow with your arm, taking a couple more nice breaths. Before pushing yourself up to a comfortable seated pose. Perhaps bringing your hands together in front of your heart in Anjali Mudra. As I work with my technical difficulties. And giving yourself gratitude for showing up. And striving for imperfection, the fine art of disappointing people, being as authentic as you can be despite everyone else's pressure to not be, and playing as much as you can. The spirit and light in me honors the spirit and light in you. Namaste. Be well.