So in this comfortable position here,
Resting on the floor,
Legs long or knees bent,
Just start to sense the backside of your body resting on the floor.
So that's the back of your head,
The back of your shoulders,
The backs of the arms,
The torso,
The hips,
Down the legs to the feet.
So start to sense your body resting on the floor in this way.
And as you look around your space,
Maybe you still have your eyes open,
Notice how this space is supporting you right now.
Notice the colors that are bringing some warmth to the room.
Notice the wood grain or the soft cushion.
And as you start to bring your attention into the gift of this space,
Notice the warmth of your body resting in this space.
And you might start to turn your gaze inward,
Closing the eyes.
And as you close your eyes,
Start to continue to feel the back line of your body resting on the floor.
This part of your body resting can settle in a little deeper with each breath.
And now we'll move to a sense of touch.
So there might be a sense of touch underneath your hands,
Maybe the floor or your body.
Notice the sense of touch.
So your hands touching the floor or your body,
Maybe even the touch of your clothing on your skin.
So just get curious about how the clothing meets your skin,
The texture underneath your fingertips or touching your torso.
And we're using our sense of touch to draw ourselves closer,
Closer to yourself,
Closer to a space of relaxation.
So let it be easy.
There's no real thing to do here.
Just experience the sense of touch.
And we'll move this idea of the sense of touch to just under the base of the nose.
So as we move our sense of touch to the base of the nose,
We start to feel our breath moving in through the nose.
And so this idea of touch now is a soft touch of the breath at the nose.
It's a little cooler on the inhale and a little warmer on the exhale.
So no expectation with the breath.
Often when we move our attention to our breath,
We want to change it.
That's okay.
Just keep the breath moving here.
And you might start to notice that respiratory diaphragm.
It lives right under the low ribs.
And it's almost right in the center,
Right in the center of yourself.
So start to inhale and feel the diaphragm lift up towards the ceiling.
It might be your belly button lifting up towards the ceiling.
And as you exhale,
Feel that gentle,
Nice,
Soft press downward.
It's a little contraction of the diaphragm.
So as you inhale,
The diaphragm expands right at the center of yourself.
Feel that 360 degree expansion.
And then exhale.
It's like a nice,
Gentle hug.
The diaphragm comes in and this up and in sensation of the diaphragm.
So just like that,
A few more breaths,
Lighting up the center of yourself.
Notice if any tension has crept in,
In your jaw or your shoulders,
And see if you can soften that.
And as you breathe,
Breathe at your center here,
We're going to start to imagine a light here at the center.
So when you inhale,
This light gets a little brighter,
Right?
As you inhale,
It expands.
And as you exhale,
Let this shimmering,
Sparkling light continue to move through the body.
You can almost sense and feel it as it moves towards your extremities.
So this light starts in your center.
As you inhale,
Expand the light brighter.
As you exhale,
Feel the release of that breath as kind of like a shimmer,
A glimmer of light moving through the body.
Good.
Just a couple more.
Feeling this diaphragm expand,
Softening the jaw as you exhale,
Moving downward,
Inward.
That center point is always going to be your anchor.
So you can always come back to your breath or just the sense of your body resting on the floor.
The first point we'll come to is the tailbone.
And so just sense and feel the tailbone.
It doesn't have to be any sort of active movement.
You can just sense where that place is,
The base of the spine.
And then just slowly,
Gently travel up the spine through the center and then to the back of the head.
Now you feel the back of the head a little bit more prominently on the floor.
It's just an easy,
Gentle look here at the backside of the head.
And then back to your center point.
And so we're going to go down our right arm here and light up your right arm from your center down the right arm.
If you need to feel a little bit more sensation in that right arm,
You might wiggle the fingers,
But no big movement needed.
And then gently bring your awareness back to your center point.
Now we're going to move down our left arm here.
And we're just building this sense of ourselves,
Building a skill called interoception,
The ability to sense and feel inside.
So now your left arm,
This another point of your star here,
And then gently bring yourself back to center.
Take a couple breaths,
Anchoring back in your center point,
Remembering no expectation here,
The main goal,
Just relaxing,
Releasing tension.
So we're going to soften down the right leg as you allow the right leg to come into your awareness.
Just feel the warmth that might come in,
Just the sense of yourself as you imagine your right leg long on the mat,
Or maybe that bend at the knee,
And then easy back to your center.
Come down to the left leg,
Just softening your awareness,
Sensing and feeling how the left leg feels today.
And then back to that anchor point,
Your center,
Where your breath moves you from the inside out,
The inhale,
Belly rises,
Exhale,
Belly folds.
Now,
One last moment here,
Just to kind of take a snapshot of your body resting on the floor,
This opening part of practice,
Where you get to check in with the body.
Take an exhale where you get a little softer,
And then think about your hips resting on the floor.
And if your knees are not bent,
Choose a leg to bend first,
Softly bending that knee,
And then bending the other knee,
And planting both feet on the mat.
So now you've found a place where your feet are planted,
Knees are pointing to the sky,
Your arms are resting down by your sides.
And this is called effortless rest pose.
So I really want you to make it effortless.
You might adjust the feet and find that perfect place where the legs don't feel as heavy.
And then we're going to take a moment here just to kind of orient to how our pelvis has landed on the floor.
So as we bent our knees and planted our feet,
Our pelvis rotated probably just a little bit.
So let's take our hands to the bones on the front of the pelvis,
And that can rest underneath your palm and the fingertips down toward the pubic bone.
And this is the pelvic bowl here.
And we want this to be neutral,
So we want this to be as parallel and flat to the earth as possible.
So you could like lay a piece of paper across your pelvis and it would be parallel to the floor.
So just sense and feel how your pelvis feels in orientation to the floor.
Just noticing that for a moment.
This is the bottom of our container,
Right?
This is the bottom of our torso.
Just sense and feel that place.
And then we're going to take a moment here to sense and feel that place.
And then let the arms maybe come rest by the sides.
So during this practice,
We are going to move slow into the torso.
At any point,
If it gets uncomfortable or boring or too intense,
You know,
I want you to be able to come back to a movement.
So this effortless rest pose is a place to come back to.
You might even feel what it's like to just kind of shimmy the hips here,
Swaying the legs a little bit side to side,
Rocking the pelvis.
Just know that your movement is in your comfortable range and you can come back to kind of clean the slate here at any point throughout practice.
So allow any sort of movement to settle here.
The feet maintain planted on the earth.
Let's all give a little press into our feet.
So as you press the feet into the earth,
This is a really stabilizing action.
Bring some energy up the legs to the torso.
And then release the press of the feet.
Press again,
This is a contraction of the muscles of the legs.
So after we consciously contract,
We now want to consciously release.
So as you release,
Let this be a softening.
Let it be like you're practicing letting go,
Right?
When you release the foot press.
So take three or four more of these foot presses.
It's very simple,
Right?
Just a soft press into the feet and then a release.
There's a little bit of activation in the legs,
Up the back of the spine.
So this is also a move you can come back to.
It's a very stabilizing move,
Pressing the feet into the earth.
So after you've explored that,
Notice what heat might've been coming into the torso,
What muscles turned on with that movement.
Take a breath so you can relax any contraction in the body.
So with our somatic practice,
We're doing conscious contractions and conscious releases.
We're gonna start our movement at the pelvis.
So you could replace your hands back at the pelvis,
But our first movement is going to be an arch of the back.
So the pelvis actually rolls forward towards your feet,
And then you arch the back.
So this arch here,
You can even place your hands behind your back.
You've just activated your low back muscles.
To get out of this,
We're gonna soften with gravity and release our low back to the floor.
So let this be a new experience,
Right?
A kind of a slow tilt of the pelvis forward,
The back muscles contract,
And then you release that and soften it to the earth.
You might take your hands out of the equation,
Just using the low back muscles to roll the pelvis forward,
Feeling that soft contraction of the low back,
And then a release of the low back.
Let that be a juicy release where you actually get to breathe at the bottom in that full relaxed position.
Okay,
So these muscles that we're just turning on are activating what's called in somatics a go pattern or a green light pattern.
So you can imagine as we activate the back line of ourselves,
We're rushing forward,
Right?
So this is a pattern that many of us might know quite well.
We wanna soften out of this pattern.
So we're actually consciously contracting and then on purpose,
Relaxing out of the contraction.
So this is the crux of somatic conscious feeling inside when we move through these postures.
So let's settle the back arch and soften down to the earth.
Let's give your feet a little press so that you can bring stable energy back into the pelvis.
So we're gonna reverse this movement now.
So we've just been arching the pelvis forward to create an arch in the back.
Now we're gonna do the reverse.
We're gonna do a little tuck of the tailbone.
The tailbone reaches towards the ceiling.
Your low abs contract.
I'm taking my hands to my low abs.
I can actually feel them tightening underneath my hands as I tilt my pelvis towards my chin and then release this movement.
So again,
We're consciously contracting,
Rolling the pelvis towards the ceiling,
Tightening our low ab muscles and then releasing out of this movement.
So this is another type of pattern that might present in the body.
If you can think about this movement of the pelvis rolling up and in,
This is more of a withdrawal response.
Or a red light pattern in the body.
And so we wanna free ourselves from this pattern,
Right?
And how we do that is consciously release out of the pattern.
So we're moving slow so we can actually feel what this contraction feels like as we roll the pelvis towards the ceiling and then soften out of that release.
All right,
Let's take a moment here to breathe in stillness.
You might have a foot press come into your world.
That brings some stable energy in.
And so we're gonna build this into a little bit of a four-part movement.
So the first movement is gonna be that arch,
That contract of the back,
The pelvis rolls forward.
The second movement is a release,
Softening,
Allowing that soft release to come over you.
And then the third movement,
Contracting the low belly,
Rolling the pelvis up and in.
And the fourth movement,
Releasing from that contraction.
Yes,
So keep this a curious exploration as you take this four-part movement,
Just soft and within your range of movement.
There should be no pain in this practice.
So if at any point you are feeling pain,
Please move out of a deep contraction or find a more supportive position.
Take a few more through this low body here where you're using the low back and the low abs just to softly and sweetly move through and arch and flatten.
Being curious about what muscles show up here that are activating.
Maybe you feel some asymmetry to this movement.
Maybe your right side or left side is firing more.
And that's just something to be curious about.
All right,
We're gonna slowly move this up towards your center line.
So as you continue this movement within your range,
Let's start to move this more towards the belly button.
So the arch gets a little bigger in the body.
We're warming up a little bit.
So we explored some range.
So when we go back now to this hugging in,
The pelvis rolls forward.
See if you can press the belly button towards the floor and bring this somatic curling of the body a little higher,
And then release out of that.
So take this to your degree here,
Moving the arch and flatten a little bit bigger in the body.
Just curiously exploring this movement.
Again,
If you get bored or frustrated or anxious,
Any of these types of experiences,
I wanna normalize.
This slow movement is new for most of us.
After you found like a bigger arch,
We're gonna start to move this up to the shoulders.
So let's make sure our arms are out in a straight line.
Kind of a generous Y shape.
And we're gonna tap the shoulders back towards the earth as we arch the back.
So now we have a full arch in the back.
The shoulders might roll outward,
The palms roll up.
And then a full release,
Let your body come back to neutral.
And then be gentle with yourself here as you curl in.
Now the shoulders curl into your center point.
We've now brought this full curl all the way up to the shoulders.
Ease out of it,
Relax the jaw and the neck.
Let neutral be a place where you can take a breath.
And then two or three more of this just full arch,
Experiencing the arm bones rolling open at the shoulders.
And then an easy release through center.
And then a curl in the shoulders,
Just kind of nudge towards the heart a bit.
The belly button sinks downward.
Good,
And then one more as you come out of neutral,
You can gently press the shoulders back,
Roll the pelvis forward,
Find this full arch as if the belly button's lifting towards the ceiling.
And then a nice release,
A long release where you get to soften every muscle you just contracted.
Take it slower than you want as you hug the shoulders up and in,
Tuck your belly button towards the floor,
The pelvis rolls towards the ceiling.
And then a full release out of this.
We're gonna take a moment here to check in.
That might mean your legs go long,
Finding that full resting position again.
Or maybe you wanna sway through your knees,
Your hips,
Or find a foot press again.
Just do something that's gentle and subtle that's not going to cause any reactive pain.
So take a moment here,
We've just spent quite a bit of time exploring the torso,
Right,
In this very somatic,
Slow,
And systematic way.
All right,
We're gonna move to a little bit more exploration in the shoulders.
And we're gonna lift our shoulders up towards our ears.
Now this can be kind of a weird sensation because we have the drag of the floor underneath us.
But as you lift the shoulders straight up towards the ears,
The neck muscles get a little shorter.
And then take it really easy and slow as you let those shoulders come back down.
So again,
The somatic practice here is a conscious contraction where we lift the shoulders up towards the ears,
Shortening the muscles.
And then the softening part,
The release part is how we train ourselves into letting go,
Right?
How we know how to release contraction.
We practice that on the mat.
Let's lift our shoulders once more towards our ears.
And then a soft release,
The shoulders come back down to neutral.
Now this is the part where we differentiate a little bit and mobilize a little bit.
We're gonna pick a shoulder to start with.
And you're gonna just do one shoulder up towards the ear.
And then the other shoulder might actually dip down a little bit.
So this is an asymmetric movement,
One shoulder up towards the ear.
And then let that come back to neutral.
Let that shoulder come down,
Let the other shoulder come back to neutral.
And then change sides,
Take that other shoulder up to the ear and the other shoulder goes down towards the rear.
Yeah,
So this is getting shorter on one side and then lengthen,
Come back to neutral.
Take that exploration again.
One shoulder just gently moves up towards the ear and then release.
I'd like you to think about maybe using less effort here.
So in practice,
You'll often hear me say 50% less effort and you're like,
How could that be?
But that is the practice here.
We're doing more work with less effort.
So take one or two more of this asymmetric,
Nice little soft pull of the shoulder towards the ear and then release,
Even yourself out,
Find your shoulders back in neutral.
So we're gonna find a different direction of the shoulders.
Again,
You take this to your range of motion.
There's no forcing here.
So first,
Just a soft touch of the shoulders back towards the floor.
So as if a friend was coming to place two hands on your shoulders,
See if you can just softly press them both back towards the floor and then a gentle release of the shoulders back to neutral.
Now we're gonna hug the shoulders in towards our heart center and that's kind of a little tuck up and in of the shoulders.
Now,
If you haven't felt this sensation,
You could bring a hand to that short muscle on the front of the chest,
Just sensing what does it feel like to tighten the front of the chest consciously and then release.
So you might find that softening in towards the heart and then a press back of the shoulders towards the floor and let it be sweet,
Let it be soft.
Now there can be a tendency to do more here and I wanna encourage you to do less and that is a hard concept for many of us to grasp.
So let this be soft,
Let this be easy,
A gentle curl in of the shoulders and a gentle release.
Let's find a neutral place without any movement and let's bring our attention back to our center point.
Find a breath right here at your center.
The diaphragm expands upward and then it contracts inward.
We're gonna take both arms out into a wider tube and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and we're gonna bring our arms out and 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