Restorative Tutorial = Savasana / Torso & Leg Support

Transcript

hello my name is carol and this is your step two for restorative shavasana so if you didn't watch my previous video we did the head and neck support with either an angled or i call it a bird's nest type fold to a blanket today we're going to work on more of the torso support so say if you're on a hard floor like i am and also the leg support um there'll be one more video in the series like how much does it take to relax i get it um the final video will be the arm support as well as final little suggestions on eye pillows etc so let's start with the easiest one is just padding your space you honestly don't need to pad the entire length of the mat what you really need is to support from shoulders to pelvis so i'm just going to take this a little bit down because my head and neck support will be here so i'm going to do the staggered blanket so just right at that edge making sure it's nice and smooth even taking the head and neck blanket maybe just a little bit over and this will be enough cushioning so for the legs if you have low back tightness soreness like i usually do um this is going to feel really nice of course if you have any pain in this position just skip the support underneath your knees and ankles but there are two ways to do this so if you don't have bolsters what you're going to do is take any kind of towel and actually i would say take two towels on top of each other like opening it all out stacking them and then rolling them so you need something fairly large underneath your knees and then something a little bit smaller i'm going to show a prana bolster underneath your ankles it's really the achilles tendon so your heels are going to actually float restorative yoga we have the knees about twice as high as the ankles so just keep that in mind we're not going to measure it but just keep that in mind that you're kind of creating a wave like a flexion for the body to relax so i'll show the bolster options in a second hopefully that won't come at me but basically if you're going to go with the towel or a blanket i'll just show you really quick you go about a third of the way and then you roll really tight so it creates a tight solid inner core and it's just going to be nice so this would be for example a good ankle support you need two stacked again to make the knee support so i know because i've done this before shocking i know that my prana bolster is amazing but it is just slightly too low so i like to just take a folded blanket underneath for a little bit more height and i kind of fluff it up so if you have a rectangle bolster what are you going to do is grab a block and we're going to make an angle so the angle is done let's see actually it's this way so taking support so the bolster is on an angle so when you lay down the bolster is going to hit behind your thighs and then the back your knees could i have more worse colored pants for this the back your knees i'll just point to it one finger is on the edge of the bolster obviously now my block is kind of sliding a little bit but hopefully you can get that in place if you do not want to use a rectangle bolster and say you invested these are not cheap say you invest in a round bolster and you don't get much use out of it this is a great place to use it so i'm going to put that underneath my knees it's just a nice curve so let's get into this with moving away spreading out the flesh um any excess um so these are pretty tight pants which i don't recommend for shavasana but making sure you have like if you have looser pants that any of the extra fabric is out from behind your knee and then before you lay down always make sure that you do this so we're kind of in a sit-up it's already it's like oh i gotta earn relaxing just make sure to fluff up prana bolster i kind of turn on end heels are dangling just supporting behind the achilles tendon and then i never get this right i usually end up too close to the uh yeah a little too close that's right so just manipulate the blanket and then obviously i'm not going to show it right now just for time's sake you would do the bird nest effect securing the head and neck and relaxing and just because we didn't get to part three yet you just see up your arms by your sides so this is part two of shavasana we have a head support underneath the body cushion and you can even see the nice wave like effect of the legs to release the low back it's really it's really nice to come out of this i'll show you and remind you to come out of it slowly i'm just going to speed it up for time's sake i'm going to turn so my knees point to the ceiling i'm going to take one foot at a time and rest it on top of the bolster you could stay here for a few breaths kind of make it relaxing coming out you want to stay in shavasana for so long and then pop back up to sitting and then come on to your side your top hand is always going to be the hand to help you up and take that bottom hand in to help as soon as you can letting the head hang as much as you can until you are upright and then the head comes up last so this is almost there it's it looks pretty good right all right so if you have any questions please email me let me know but otherwise stay tuned for three part three of getting into shavasana you