[Music Playing]
…There which is the Liver Gall Bladder. This speaks to a number of different things. The emotions that is connected to it is anger. So, don’t be surprised if when you are going into these poses, you start to feel restless or cranky. Instead of moving out of the pose, try and stay with it.
So, what we are going to do is shoelace, Kim is going to demonstrate ankle to knee—which is an alternative. And, Rick is going to demonstrate eye of the needle. So, he is going to be on his back.
We’ll start with you first Rick.
He’s going to lie down and he’s going to cross his right ankle over his left knee. He’s going to thread his arms through and he’s going to draw both knees towards him. So believe it or not, he holds this pose for up to five or ten minutes and it feels lovely. It targets the liver and gall bladder brilliance. Kim, you are going to come into ankle to knee and she’s also going to show a modification. If you are coming into this pose which looks like this and your knee is high from restriction which is very common, you can place a towel between the knee and the ankle to cushion it so that as you start to melt like Taffy as we said before, you’ll have something underneath to kind of absorb it like a shock absorber. And, I am going to show you the most advanced variation which is shoelace.
So, I am literally going to thread my knees the way you would a shoelace bringing the feet out from underneath me being very cautious with the knees and I am going to pull on this closer together and then I am going to sit upright and pull the top knee towards me. What I am feeling right now is quite an intense stretch in the sides of the hips. It felt really great actually. And, I am going to send my breath to those areas and I might stay in this position for up to five or six breaths—maybe even five minutes. And as I start to melt, I would fold forward the way Kim is bringing my hands down and maybe resting my forehead on my knee, that’s an option.
So, after we’ve completed up to five or ten minutes, we carefully come out of this. Rick, you’re going to switch legs to the other side. And Kim, you and I are going to untwist carefully. Shake the legs out, you can come to child’s pose in between and then you would switch legs. So, you always prep on your hand to get the feet in line, sitting back—once again, making sure that the feet are in a place where you feel comfortable. You don’ want to be in an uncomfortable place. You certainly don’t want to feel anything that’s painful.
The whole in practice is really about an internal observation—an exploration of your internal topography, your landscape—your emotional and your psychological landscape. So, another really nice thing to do while you are in shoelace is to take your thumbs into your bubbling spring point. You see, you can actually activate the kidney meridian while you’re working on your live gall bladder. And the kidney and the liver are friends. Everything in the body needs to work harmoniously. So, we inhale here and we exhale folding forward.
And once again, this is one of those poses where you might start to feel restless. So, instead of just coming out of it “willy-nelly”, it’s a good idea to try to stay as long as you are not in pain and hold space. Really try to give yourself the benefit of breathing through that discomfort and allowing a replacement emotion or sensation to come in, which is usually inevitable. It’s like the weather. One minute, it’s cloudy out and long and behold, the sun comes out five minutes later. So, the same thing happens in your mind.
One more breath. Slowly, roll up out of this pose everyone. Rick, you are going to come out of that eye of the needle.
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