So, we’re going to uncross through the spine and we are going to come to an exercise called “Saddle”. So, I want to caution those of you with me issues. Be very careful. If this hurts, you can pass and you can go into something very, very simple like butterfly, which we saw on the first level.
So, extend your leg in front of you. Take the other, tuck it behind and you’re going to lean back on your hands. Okay? So, just start this way. Your hands can face out or face in. The in practice is really pretty casual. And, it’s about tuning into your body on what you need. So in this position, because I have been doing a yang workout all day, it feels, my quadricep is quite tight. So, I already feel the muscle body releasing. You guys feel that too? Yeah. So, the breath really helps liberate the tissue that’s underneath the muscles. You can see. It’s called fascia. And, it’s the connective tissue of the body where many nerve plexuses reside. So in acupuncture, when an acupuncturist inserts a needle into one of this meridians or a point on the meridian line, it goes into a nerve plexus. And believe it or not, what we are doing is a form of needle-less acupuncture. So if you have a thing with needles and you don’t like them and you don’t want to try acupuncture, yen macahoz are for you.
So, if you are more flexible and you feel like you want more of a stretch, you can actually go down onto your elbows in this position. You can also release your head back just to experience that sensation. I wouldn’t recommend staying there unless you have a bolster underneath you. And, what I’m going to do is I am going to demonstrate a more advanced variation while my friends stay on this side.
So, I’m going to the other side. I’m going to tuck my pelvis underneath me bringing my legs closer and I’m going to release even further back. So if the knee pops off in this position, you have gone too far. You really want to be in a place where your knee is anchored and the fascia has stretched sufficiently so that you can keep that leg long and released, and you breathe. Two more breaths here, everyone.
[Breathing]
And, you saw how slowly I moved out of it. I was really listening to my body and of course, in some of these more extreme ranges, you have to move with that with much more caution. Let’s come out of it slowly, Jill. Use your breathe. Pull that leg out from underneath you. Massage the patella, you can even get into the other one to prepare it. Take a deep breath in. And then of course, we have to do the other side.
So, as I have spoken about throughout this entire hot body cool mind workout, each side of the body is different. And if you follow this workout religiously, you can really balance the two sides of your body. But the moment where you really feel the effects of yen is when you send the breath to injuries, to imbalances and this is the moment where you will feel quite a different from side to side. So in your life at home, you can actually hold these poses for up to 5 or 10 minutes for our purposes here were really just holding the pose for about 10 breaths. So, if you feel like it, you think you can go lower or you can stay because if this is your tighter side, you are going to want to keep the arms lifted. So let’s take a few more breaths.
So, as Erin and Ahmad take their last few breaths, I want us to segway to one more pose which we visited on Embark in the Journey which is the butterfly. So I’m just going to preview. We are not going to do it in this practice. The butterfly, if you will remember, looks like this. The hands are down, the head is down, and again, you are getting into all of these muscles of the neck which in all likelihood have overworked during the day. So, it’s really nice if you want to finish the kidney urinary bladder segment with the butterfly.
Before our purposes, we are going to come gently out of this side of the saddle. We are going to move with the breath, I’m going to have Erin and Ahmad come to child’s pose. One more time, facing in. So, it’s important for all of you at home to know that in between each Yen pose, child’s pose is your anchor. It’s your home base. It feels lovely. It feels comforting. It’s a reinforcement and it is a way for you to quite your mind. If you suffer from insomnia, yen is the way to go. Makaho practice is the very thing that will slow everything down at the end of the day. As I said before in Embark on the Journey, disc 1, you don’t have to do yen in the evening. You can do it in the morning. You can do it in the middle of the day. You can do it as your only workout.
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