Day 1: Virtual Yoga Retreat - Meditation

Transcript

hey guys welcome to your practice today one of our virtual yoga retreat hopefully this is gonna give you a bunch of new tools and a bunch of new ideas for how to Pat this in your home we're going to need a wall so just anywhere in your house I'm on your computer right now you can just bring it over when I grabbed and struck that we're going towards the wall it would be helpful to have some props I know recently I went to a CVS and they have these blocks for sale if you're not in a position to buy blocks canned foods work really well we'll also be using a blanket and you can also use a blanket or a towel in place of a block or some of these exercises and I'll kind of give you some ideas for what we can do and then maybe a map if you have one if not number is really don't need a mat to practice yoga practice on the under floor several times many many of times anyways today we're gonna work on meditation on finding a comfortable seat and we're gonna explore how to use props so that we can kind of prop ourselves up there were really great tools to have I highly suggest having some blocks around and yeah just so we'll go ahead and get started so we'll all grab your blocks and we're gonna place them so that they're on their lowest setting you'll hear me reference the Milotic medium setting and then saying we're going to start on the lowest setting first and you can take a blanket or a towel just drape it over you can even like double layer the towel up so it's just a little more comfortable it's really interesting but a lot of different like indigenous cultures they all sit on the ground and then eat and it's so funny because as Westerners we're all so used to sitting in chairs it's really there's a lot of benefits to getting down on the floor and to sitting in different like cross-legged position so we're gonna start by just bringing your seat onto the blanket cross your ankles just one ankle over the other and just make sure you feel really sturdy and like you're sitting up really nice and tall this was really good for some of you people who might have really tight hips also you know if you need to use a chair feel free to use a chair there's no rule out there that says the all meditation practices have to be done on a floor the chairs are super helpful too so if you need to go ahead and grab one so as you come to a comfortable cross-legged position will let your shoulders come down right from the ears lengthen the neck and lengthen your spine let your eyes close or your Devi soft and we want to bring the chin down a little bit towards the chest that move your head back in space so that your head sucks over your ribs and your rib cage you want to stack it over your your hips and the bowl of your pelvis and when you do this and you start to feel it's really nice online is fine it'll take a couple of cleansing breaths together just breathing in through your nose and breathing out through your mouth anyhow slowly to belly the side of the body all the way up into the chest and exhale through your nose from the top of the best down through the ribs and algorithm stomach to the belly side of the ribs up into your chest exhale through the nose from the top of the torso all the way down to the base of your spine do you more like this just really focusing on slowing the breath down there's no need to go through this quickly there's also a lot of really great benefits for breathing with your belly and a good way to see if you breathe with your stomach and with your diaphragm so you can both bring one hand to your low stomach and see as you breathe in through your nose if you can feel the belly lift up and expand outward and as you breathe out focus on really pulling with it using the core musculature to press the air out of your bum a lot of teachers that I study with hips encourage the use of a mantra it does sounds great word that means mind bridge actually that's what it translates literally to but we can use something you know something short and sweet to kind of anchor s care into the present moment like I am loving awareness so very popular one from around dots so did you read that you could say I am and as you breathe out you can say loving awareness and whatever might read is that you come up with it's used to help anchor the mind into the present moment versus thinking about what you're gonna go get to the grocery store or whatever other thoughts arise in your head another really good technique so we have our breathing that we can focus on you have the mantra that you can focus on and there's also mindfulness practices that I find really helpful it's so interesting because our eyes and ears and our skin are constantly picking up on different signals from the outside world but if we heard everything that was going on or we saw all the colors of the light spectrum it would totally make us lose our minds they're probably they're crazy but it's a really cool tool to focus on um stimuli you're not usually focused on so listening to the birds and background you taking a breath and feeling that breath really travel through you you can also bring your awareness to the very tip of your nose and really feel the era that comes in to your sinuses and into your throat you can trace that breath all the way into your lungs you can bring your awareness to your left big toe something that you're probably not thinking about throughout our day but hopefully you can see now how mindfulness practices these like associations can also help to get you out of your head and into your body there's a really fabulous app that's out there in the world called insight timer you can use these little tools that we've learned and bring them to you can start your own meditation practice and with this insight timer app it actually sets you know has a timer for you you can set however long you would like to meditate I highly recommend shooting for about five minutes at first but if that doesn't seem attainable certainly small start with a minute start with you know build up to two minutes it's kind of this like crawling walking running progression just slow and steady and kind of figuring out you know what works best for you and ultimately that's what I really want you guys to gain from these videos is is ways that you can you know feel your own biomechanics you can feel you know be mindful of your game or your other injuries and just take these little skills with you throughout your your life when you're ready we'll open your eyes bringing the hands in prayer and we'll just take a moment to bow your head into your heart and think about an intention you know we don't know how long is it going to be going on that is for sure but we do know that it's gonna be going on for at least you know in the next couple of weeks and we need to use our time wisely by investing our time and things that we love things that spark joy and uplift us and just find an intention for the rest of your week well back to that intention inhale lift your head and exhale release your arms you guys have a beautiful rest of your day we'll start with day two come in a shovel same