Balance

Welcome back to the daily dose. Today the focus is balance, but balance can mean so many different things. So here I want to focus on how you balance work and play and stretching and rolling within this 21 minute workout. Let's go ahead and get started. So I'm going to start and ask you to do the same. Lying on my back in a completely restful position like Shavasana from Yoga and settle in. Let go. Find your breath. Breathing in. Henne breathing out, slow down.

One thing I like to do while I'm here is bend my knees and push back just a little bit. Pushing my shoulder blades, just a bit down my back, giving me a feeling of ease through my neck and shoulders. And then I'll slide my legs back to straight and find that restful but grounded position. Yeah, continue with your breath and begin to think about your pieces a little bit. Fill your head. Where is it resting on the Mat beneath you? Feel your shoulder blades, your rib cage, your arms, your hands. Since where your pelvis is in this moment, do you feel it evenly weighted on both sides? How about your legs?

Are they restful? And are the backs of your legs touching the mat in any way? And what about your feet? Your heels sense? What do you feel breathing in and breathing out. Begin to wiggle your fingers in your toes and awaken your body as if you're getting out of bed in the morning. Perhaps you wiggle your Scapula, you wiggle your arms. Do you give yourself a feeling of a yawn? Maybe just start to bring yourself into a position that allows you to think about moving into [inaudible].

So settle with your two knees bent and your arms bent so the backs of your arms heavy. And imagine that shoe at this moment can almost like hold something between your two hands and just allow your legs to relax to one side. It doesn't matter which side. Feel the ease in your hip joints and your breath. And then draw those legs back through with some engagement from your abs. But more ease. Go the other way. Let your legs relax.

Let your spine release. Just sense your hands kind of creating an energy and then pull back through just one more each direction. Feeling the ease of movement, the release of your spine, of your hips while still grounding your upper body. Come back through. And one more time. So we've done two on each side. Feel free to do more if you need to. This is your time, your self come back through to center. And now I'm going to ask you to hold your head with your hands.

I like to hold just behind my ears and just gently roll your legs to one side and then roll your body over to follow. So you're in a position like a fetal position where you feel restful, your body responds and reacts to this movement. And then we undo it by rolling the body open first the legs follow along and then the other side legs go first and body kind of curls over and urs. Now option one, you can keep your feet grounded to the earth. Option two, you can have your feet floating up, kind of like a baby pose. And we take the legs over and we take the body over, we take the body back and we take the legs up.

Just sensing what you feel. The balance between the two sides. As you roll the body leads the way back the upper body. The lower body follows. The lower body, leads the way into the twist. The upper body follows. So I find that one side feels significantly more grounded and comfortable than the other notice. Do you feel the same?

Do you feel balanced on the two sides or do you feel an imbalance? Sometimes I like to massage a little bit, um, into the ground, into the mat. In that sideline position, I get a nice little release, a nice little stretch in my hips or my shoulders. So that's why you see me wiggling around a little. I'm just going to do one more and that's going to make me even, hopefully it makes you even as well. That's a nice little release here. And then come back through. So this real calm beginning to our workout today.

Hug your legs deep into your chest. Hold one leg in, slide the other leg out. Take the leg out to the side. Take the leg across the body. Back to center. Straight knee. Flex the foot. Point the foot. Pull the leg in and change sides. Hug the knee in one leg is long. Take the leg out to the side, across the body. Back to center.

Straight leg. Flex your foot. Point your foot. Bend the knee and change. Breathe. So Nice, easy start to this leg goes out, leg goes across, comes back to center. Straight knee. Use Your hands to help you. Flex the foot. Point the foot. Bend the knee. Change last one out to the side.

Letting your body respond and feeling this as you need to. Remember, it should be pleasurable. Straight leg. Flex the foot. Point the foot. Bend the knee in. Draw the other leg in and give yourself a hug. Feel free to lift the head and chest and see if you could make a connection for his knees maybe, and then rest there for a moment.

Settle your legs at a tabletop position. Reach your arms behind you. Inhale here. We exhale into our a hundred shape. So lifting the chest, stretching the legs to straight if it suits you, lowering down. If it suits you more. Breathe, inhale and exhale. Keeping the breath consistent. The pumping shouldn't cause tension, so if it does for you, simply take it away. A lot of Palladio's is really just about breathing.

See if you can hone in on your breath here. The leg should be in a position that allows you to maintain the height of the curl. So if you need to bend your knees to keep the height, go ahead and do so. If your legs need to be straight up, that's always okay to make sure you can keep the breath void of tension and the height of the curl. Let's call it one more breath. Not sure if that's 10 but I'll take it. Exhale all your air out. Draw your legs into your body. Feel that curled spine, that rounded spine, and just gently rock and gently roll until you find yourself in a sitting position, massaging out the spine.

Stretch your legs straight out in front of you. Scoop any flesh out that needs scooping and sit up nice and tall for your spine. Stretch. Got actively flexed ankles, grounding through my legs. Exhale to peel forward. Yeah, deep into the stretch. Use the exhale to peel back.

Just one more like that and then we add on today. Inhale. Exhale fluidly, peeling forward, enjoying the stretch through the spine and through the hamstrings. Exhale to peel up [inaudible] in how the arm comes high as you twist around. Exhale. See if you can slice and tap behind you and come all the way back around other side. Inhale, exhale. Inhale and exhale, spine stretch forward. Roll. Inhale here.

Use An exhale to lift up one breath this time. Inhale and exhale. Sit tall and roll forward and roll back up. Breathing and moving. If my breath doesn't make sense, breathe when it makes sense to you. Up and around, up and back. Sit Tall. One more time. Exhale forward. Exhale, back up and around, up and around, and just notice the difference between the two arms. Last spine stretch.

For me it feels significantly different. And, and I'd like kind of work to iron that out. Some days it feels less so. Some days more. Scoot forward on your mat, tip yourself back onto your tailbone and find balance. Open like rock or can be done with Ben Knees or if you're ready to go, we go into straight legs. I feel warm and ready. If you need to work with bent legs, go for it in hell to roll back here. Okay.

And exhale to find your balance in your upper back to put on the brakes. Go again. Oh a flock of birds right now. So fun, inspirational. And again, rolling back. Okay. Remember the movements should be pleasurable to you.

So modify if needed or push through if that's where you need to be. Balancing out. Hold, hold. Release your hands and try to hold it there. See if you can bring your legs together, hold it there, and then bend your legs and take a nice, easy forward folds and come around onto your hands and your knees please. So on your hands and your knees here, round through your low back.

Allow your head to relax and feel that stretch for the back of your spine. Come back through to center. Extend your back, opening through your heart, but still engaged in the core. Do that two more times. Breathing, exhale and inhale. I'm singing. Exhale and inhale back through fine center and we find a plank position to slide back with one leg. Feel that power from your core. Slide back with the other end. Be here for a moment. Breathing in and breathing out, lengthening through the crown of the head. Find one leg, it doesn't matter which, and lift it up. Now I want you to actually flex the ankle.

As you pull that knee in the direction of your tricep or your arm and stent. Send it back. Change sides, so pull in the direction of your tricep or your upper arm. Does it feel different on the two sides? It does for me. Pull it in and go back and pull it in and go back one more time. Pull it in. So nice and powerful here. Calm start, but we're working hard now. Stay here.

Lower your knees down. Keep your toes tucked and push back into your feet. Stretching for a moment. Hello, your head to relax. Maybe you're even touching the mat, but just see if you can keep your neck relaxed. Can we come right back to the plank and add on to that? So shift forward and keep your toes tucked as they were in.

Just shoot your legs up. That should be easy enough to do. And then we take that right or any leg, it doesn't matter. One leg in and then extend the leg out to straight. Bend the knee, shoot it back, pull it in, extend it out to straight and pull back. I want the straight leg. So here's what I'm talking about. Bent.

Reach out straight leg back then did in reach it out straight like back. One more. Bend it in, reach it out. Back. Last one, reach it out back. Lower yourself to the floor. Take a short pause here with your hands outside of your shoulders. We find some back extension.

Inhale to an upper back position, a extension upper back only and lower down. Inhale, feel yourself lifting with your back muscles. But feeling that articulations, so down through the heart had comes back. The hands come into play to pull you forward at this point and lower down adding on in how to that same thoracic extension. If your body says it's okay, you continue to pull forward and begin to straighten the arms, if that makes sense.

And lower all the way down elbows and then allow the forearms or allow the elbows to bend and come to rest. In an exhale we pull forward and we continue going. Ah, should feel good. So notice I'm putting my elbows down but keeping my heart lifted and then I lower down completely. One more line that you now and we exhale forward up and we lower down.

And so go ahead and slide one arm out to straight and you're going to use the other hand to help you kind of roll onto your side. Just be there, feel that position and then roll back to your belly change arms and use your other hand to just kind of help you roll onto your side. So this is a beautiful option. One, we're going to play with this idea of rolling, saying, engaged, hopefully through your core, staying quite engaged. Um, almost as if you're a board is what I want you to think about. Stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board. We used to play that game.

So now what your goal here is going to be to not use your hands. And I'm not positive if it's gonna look good on me, but let's see if we can, oh, that first one was not good. Here we go. It's going to come back through and I'm going to roll to my side, my side and find my balance. I hope. Ah, and then we're going to roll through and find our side balance. Supposed to be fun, have fun with it. Okay. And Roll through and find your balance. Woo.

And Roll through and find your balance. And again, so what I hope is that you could feel the difference between the two sides. Feel free to keep going. I'm just having too much fun with myself right now. Come back through to of our belly position. Push yourselves up to your hands and knees and then sit in a rest pose or a child's pose for a second.

So that's requiring you to use your abs and your back muscles and also play a little bit. We don't do a lot of rocking on our bellies, although there are some nice exercises in the repertoire. This one's just a little outside of the box. Come back to your hands and your knees here. Now we're going to play a little bit with stretching our hips. So I'd like you to bring how about your right leg forward, just so we can talk a little about right and left.

And think of this like the pigeon pose in Yoga. If you need to modify and bend your knees and make it into like a mermaid, that's fine. But if you're comfortable with kind of a version of the pigeon, that's what I'm looking for. In this one, the knee can be a bit more bent. I don't need a 90 degree angle. I want it to be comfortable for you because I want you to explore your stretching. So first lift yourself up and then just kind of bring yourself down and over.

You can put your elbows down, you can put your hands down, whatever you would like. It is about you stretching something that feels good. And I first want you to just roll a little bit with your pelvis in your mind. So it's like you're rolling to one side of the pelvis and to the other. And if you find yourself needing to look at me, I'd rather that you didn't. I'd rather you just explore what it feels like on your body that hurts your knee.

You can always lie on your back and cross one leg over and stretch and like the figure four pose. So now find a place where it feels like a good idea for you to be and see if you can soften your body a little more. Maybe your forehead toward the mat, maybe not. And then start to walk around. So walk your hands one way. Again, it doesn't matter which way and see how far around you can walk your hands and reach straight arms. And what do you feel in the current shape that I'm in? I feel something in my back and my waist. That's really beautiful. And then walk your hands around to the other side. Again, it doesn't matter which way you go, but see if you feel something different on the two sides, let your head be passive and relaxed in some way. And again, I'm not looking for this to look pretty or look the same. It's about you.

So let's do that again where we walk to the other side, whatever side you're on, you just move your hands around. I'm literally walking with my fingers. You don't need to, but that's what I'm doing. It's like a little bug crawling around. And then the other side just kind of sway. And for me, when I kind of go over my leg in the direction of the leg that's forward, I feel the most stretch. I'm not thinking too much about what's happening on my back leg cause I just want to feel that beautiful release in my hip and I'm kind of rocking around a little bit. Rolling around and massaging out that tissue, that flesh.

Come back through to center. Gently come up from there and just shift yourself so your hips are high in the air and like a downward dog pose. Bend and straighten your legs a few times. So you're doing like just a little prancing with your feet releasing. And then let's change sides.

You can bring that other leg forward and just find a place where you feel quite comfortable resting. So again, a lot of times we're trying really hard to keep the pelvis square and what I want you to do is move the pelvis around a little. So keep the leg where it is. Use it against the mat to just kind of feel what you feel. And again, if something doesn't feel good, you bend your other leg or whatever you need to do. Find something that means something for you today that feels like a good idea. Start to bring your body deeper into the stretch. Find a place where you can relax. And this side for me is very different.

I feel a very different stretch on this side. Both of them are necessary, but it's in a different spot. Begin to walk your fingers around to one side. Again, it doesn't matter which side you go first. I'm not worried about that. And then go the other way and just kinda take your time. See if you really reach your arms in the direction of straight, if you feel more stretch, breathing and moving. And then around to the other side.

And just one more time each side, just enjoying that beautiful stretch in your hips. Hopefully you found a place where you needed and you can kind of rock and roll a little bit. So again, it's not about what I look like or what your neighbor looks like or anything. This is really just you finding something by exploring a little, searching for imbalances to hopefully create balance. So make your way up here and just gently shift yourself back onto your back. And we're going to finish the same way we began.

So rest yourself in that Shavasana pose with your two legs straight and your arms open. Perhaps use your feet to give you that little bit of stretch in your neck. That's just divine for me. It's gorgeous. Close Your eyes and relax. Yeah.

Notice what you feel. Does your head feel different? What about your shoulders and your arms? Do they feel more grounded? Breathing in and breathing out the backs of the ribs? How does the pelvis feel? Is it weighted more equally? What about the backs of your legs?

Do you happen to feel a little bit more of the tissue touching the Mat and think about your heels, the connection of your heels to the earth. Breathing in and breathing out very slowly as if you're waking up and stretching first thing in the morning. Move your hands, move your feet, wiggle around, and in your own time you might slowly roll yourself onto your side and then up to a sitting position. Okay. Or maybe you're still lying in that restful meditative state. Either way. I thank you so very much for playing and I'll see you again in a couple of days.