We’re going to start by looking at the feet. So if you like you just take a look down at your feet. If you make sure that you’re that your feet are a hips width apart, so that’s your normal standing width. And press down your big toe and then open up your feet so you're going to spread up to make this as wide and spacious as possible so a really, really open feet. And then relax your toes down onto the mat so make sure you relax all your toes yeah that’s it. And then check your heels and take your heels slightly outwards, just the heels so it may feel as if you were slightly pidgin toed, so you're slightly turned out in the heels. And when you stand with your feet parallel like that, it has a really nice softening and widening effect on your lower back so you're very unlikely to get that troubles if you make sure that your feet are usually parallel. And you know not resist the temptation instead of turn them out when you stand and when you walk.
Okay so with parallel feet, and nice wide open toes just let the souls of the feet open up in the heels sink into the mat, that’s great. Okay then check your knees, your knees should be in between bending and straight so they're just sort of nice and loose, let’s just wiggle the knees a little bit to make the knees are nice and loose so the energy can flow open down through the legs through the knees and there’s no blockage and tightness or tension in the knees.
All right then slide your hands down your lower back right down your sacrum and imagine that you have a very heavy long dinosaur’s tail dropping behind you so your sacrum really releases downwards towards the ground. And take your hands and just hold on to the—press gently unto the top of your pelvic bones, either side and press down and see if you feel how gravity draws your body right down through your legs, through your heels from the waistline. So all of this being is being drawn down by gravity, these are like your roots your connection with the ground when you stand and when you walk.
Okay good all right then relax the hands and check that your neck feels free that your neck is long and if you chintle slightly down the back of your neck can relax and just roll your shoulder a few times backwards to open and release the chest. And really, really this is like giving your self a massage in the shoulders by moving your shoulder blades forward and back and rolling the shoulders round lovely. Okay and then were going to bring our hands together into the prayer position with the elbows slightly out to the side. And pay attention to your breathing, to the connection that your feet make with the ground and slowly, slowly let your body turns towards the left. So make a very gentle turn towards the left keeping your feet really parallel. And just go as far as it feels comfortable and then let your right hand gently take your left hand a little further back so really open out that left shoulder. Lovely! Easy breathing and then come to the center and relax and then we’re going to do the same thing to the other side.
So heels dropping into the ground gravity holding you up to the waistline. Slowly rotate towards the right as you exhale just turning, turning,, turning, turning, taking your right elbow back with your left back pressing slightly with your left hand into your right palm. Good and then come back to the center and relax and then just close your eyes for a moment, look down towards your hands and say hello to your baby. Great okay and then let go of the hands and we let the hands hang softly by the side, okay.
Now we’re going to—with an inhalation take the arms up this way and reach up towards the ceiling but with soft shoulders so we’re just reaching up nice and tall. Keep your tailbone moving down. Just think of that heavy dinosaur’s tail behind you, so you keep your belly tack in nicely above the pelvis as you reach up through the spine. And then, slowly with an exhalation really is the answer. Well do that once or twice in a sequence with the breast. So breathing in and let the arms come up and breathing out and let the arm slowly come down. And again inhaling, keep your knees nice and soft your weight dropping through the feet tailbone down, exhaling and again once again reaching up and exhaling. Lovely!
Okay now we’re going to take the right hand up as we breathe in and let the left hand drop out and show you what I mean like this. It’s a sort of lovely side bend. Not too far we were reaching up rather than over, okay and then exhaling down come again, inhaling we got the other side reach up and over and come down again. So now if you like to join with me just swing your arms first relax and release good. Nice and grounded through the feet, nice and grounded through the pelvis, inhaling take the right arm up, exhaling reach just a little way over and let go of your left arm from the shoulder nice and soft just let it hang and you’re reaching up to the ceiling with that arm. So you got a lovely long feeling all the way up from your foot to your fingertips. Exhale come down, inhale reach up with the left, exhale over, relax the right arm and come down and relax and come back into the prayer position, good.
Okay and then take your feet a little wider apart and still more or less parallel so you can tell but if the outer is just a parallel to the outer edges of the mat. Keep the knees slightly bent and we’re going to just do a little bit of hip roll, a little belly dance to loosen up and help to prepare you for your labor. So when you’re in labor and you do this kind of movement as you're having a contraction is going to help you baby to move down through your body and it’s going to stimulate your contractions, okay. So it’s nice to think the thought, my baby is moving down and my body is opening, my baby is moving down and my body is opening maybe you’ll like to say that for a moment okay. My baby is moving down and my body is opening and again my baby is moving down and my body is opening. Great! My baby is moving down and my body is opening. So we’re thinking positively as well. Wonderful! So this is lovely natural movement to make, very gravity effective. Let’s gravity help your baby to move down during your labor, so nice pelvic rolls. Great that’s fantastic. Okay and come back to the center and bring the hands into Namaste. And pause and just let your breathing settle down.
So left foot forward right foot back but it’s really parallel, hands resting on the wall. Now check that your hips are parallel on the wall so you don’t want one hip to pink forward, you just want to be really square to the wall. And then with an exhalation, just gently bend forward from your hips. Don’t—you don’t need to go too far, keep your back nice and long. Just so that you feel a nice lengthening through the back of the front leg and keep the back leg really grounded into the floor which might mean you come up a little bit, just to really keep a sense of that back leg being grounded. Lovely! Then bend the front knee and change feet. So now the right foot is forward, the left foot goes back. Make sure your heel is turning slightly out in the back foot. So you get very, very grounded through the back foot. As you can feel, this quite good for strengthening the legs, so keeping your back heel really going down. And then just bend slightly forward with your hips parallel to the wall, keeping the weight quite largely in the back legs so the back foot is really working to keep you grounded. And you’re feeling this through the front leg as well and then come up slowly.
Good and relaxed, okay so what we’re going to do is were going to put the ball against the wall and lean against it like this but where you position the ball is important so you want the ball quite low down. It’s going to roll into your middle back eventually but right now you want it right down of your tail bone. So quite lower than that, quite low down, lower than that even, yeah, into your tail bone, good! And you want to arrange your feet so that you can press into the wall with your lower back and feet are parallel, okay. And then were going to bend the knees and roll down the wall until you reach a point where the ball is in your lower back and like you’re sitting in a chair and you hold that for a moment, keep breathing and slowly come up.
Okay this is a great way of strengthen your legs and help you squat more easily, okay. So, exhaling down we go. Now stay there, in through the nose, out through the mouth, breathe down into the ground. I want you to do three full breathes, one more, one more, one more, nearly over and come up.
And this time I’d like you to sit on your ball. Make sure it’s not on the mat. Sit on your ball. Now, sitting on a ball is a really good exercise in itself because your hips are slightly higher than your knees, which helps to position your baby well, okay. So what you might think of doing is sitting on a ball instead of a chair when you’re at the table eating or when you’re sitting at the computer, try using a ball instead of a chair. And you can also make movements like this which help to dissipate the weight down into the ground. And this also is a lovely position you can use during you labor.
So imagine now that you’re in your labor and you can use the ball during contractions. You can also the ball in between contractions. So what I’d like you to do is imagine you’re having your contraction. Catch the contraction just before it starts and start moving and breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. Keep going, keep going and by now, the contraction would be going away and now it’s over.
You might have a chair in front of you and/or some pillows on the bed. You can lean forward and rest if you imagine that while you’re on the ball. And when the next contraction comes on, off you go and start moving and breathing just when you anticipate the contractions are about to start. So you’re like a swimmer in the sea that you start swimming before the wave and then you go with the wave and it won’t knock you over. So it’s the same in labor you work with the wave.
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