Yoga Sense

Hello, let me introduce myself, my name is Lynda and I shall be giving Tuesday's practice session, so find a comfortable warm space to place your mat and lie down with your knees bent up, making sure that your head is in alignment with your spine with your hands resting on your belly and relax.

Each day we are aiming to provide a balanced varied practice using the breath to enable the poses to flow in a progressive, smooth manner. However, you may choose to pause at certain sections to focus further on particular asanas. It is only when you truly practice that you can discover what yoga is about. It is like calling a truce with yourself – allow your practice to feel like going on holiday. Continue daily, just a little bit – staying with it, that is important. It is being attentive and true to yourself, not trying to emulate what other people can do.

So, resting, letting the weight of your body drop into the support of the floor, tuning in to the feel and weight of your head, shoulders pelvis and feet becoming heavier and observing your stillness as the muscles start to let go of the hold on the bones.

Thinking of the breath as it comes in through your nostrils, filling and swelling the chest cavity - Feel your belly under your hands, let it rise and inflate on the in breath. Feel the warm out breath exit your nostrils, drawing the back of the body heavier into the floor, letting the chest cavity deflate, becoming aware of the belly sinking back under your hands and watch this process again, feeling the action of the breath on your body under your hands. Hearing the sound of the breath flow in and out following the ebb and the flow, rather like a huge expansive ocean - watch, feel and hear this continual process happen, without impinging upon it or placing any kind of control on it - observe and enjoy the wave of the breath, and if you feel like sighing or yawning here, do so and know that they are audible sounds of release.

As you feel your spine more and more on the floor, exhale and let the legs float up towards the ceiling – the heaviness of the legs drops down into the back of the pelvis, feel it open to accept the floor and also become aware of the feet feeling very light. As the legs balance, there should not feel any kind of holding in the stomach.

Give your legs a shake, to shake tension out.

Then allow your arms to float up, bend at the elbows and give them a shake and get a sense of the back of the shoulders opening. So arms and legs balance with feet and hands floating – thus making it easier to differentiate the different segments of the spine – feel the length of it along the floor.

If you have a belt handy, lasso your right foot with it and place your left foot down on the floor, use the belt as a support and a stirrup and stretch the left arm out onto the floor, dropping the shoulder blade down, holding the belt in your right hand exhale and draw the leg in as close to you as is comfortable, without the knee bending and using the rotation in the hip, release the leg down towards the floor, out to your right side.

Breathe to keep the back of your pelvis on the floor and take your leg back to the centre. Change hands let your left leg straighten down to the floor and holding the belt in your left hand, as you exhale, take your right leg over to your left side, stretch out your left arm along the floor and look at your right hand to complete this twist.

Change sides and repeat.

Bend both knees in towards you, cross your ankles over and hold around your shins as you rock gently from side to side, massaging the back of your waist. Have a huge yawn and a stretch, before rolling over into the pose of the child.
Keeping your toes and knees together sit on your heel and rest your head on your forearms. If after a while, you feel your bottom on your heels, you can take your fingers to your toes and feel the arm drop off the body, as though your shoulder blades are sliding off your back ribs.

Have 5 breaths here before coming on to all 4’s, with your knees directly under your hips and your hands spread wide and under your shoulders.

Feel and hear your breathing as you go into the cat pose, allow the heavy sacrum, which is the triangular bony part at the back of your pelvis lead the way as you breathe out. Feel the movement along the spine and when you get to the end of the out breath let the head drop, the belly is drawn back and the spine arches gloriously.

When the in breath happens let the sacrum lead the way until the chest comes through and the head comes up – making sure to not ‘fall’ into the arch at the back of the waist.

Repeat this at least six times, synchronising the movement of the spine with the breath, arching like an angry cat on the out breath and letting the in breath come naturally as the chest comes through.

Now staying at the end of the exhalation and in the arch of the next cat pose, bend the knees down and sit down on your heels.

As you start to breath in bend the elbow, come off your heel back to an all 4’s position – exhale allowing the spine to arch from the back of the sacrum, head drops, rest in the pause of the out breath as you sit down on your heels and wait for the in breath. Again focus on the movement of the spine with the breath, you can move as fast or as slow as you want in this one, have fun here – its rather like being on a Ferris Wheel, the movement doesn’t have to be slow and constrained, it can be free and flowing.

Download or view transcript of the whole class - Practice