Welcome to this somatic yoga sequence.
Somatic simply refers to coming into a state where we can feel deeply.
This practice can be focused on the ground so you can feel fully supported and allow the nervous system to come to a state where you are able to drop into a deep sensory experience and absorption.
With eyes closed throughout if comfortable or softly open with a steady gaze.
Find the comfortable space,
Laying down onto the ground,
Rolling yourself down carefully through the back with bent legs.
Right from the beginning,
Practicing a sense of kindness with our body.
If you feel once you've arrived here that you need something under your head or your lights could be a little lower,
Change anything to really suit your ability to drop in and come down into your practice and your being.
If you notice that your head is turning to tip backwards and your chin is lifting,
That may be an indication that you need something under your skull to lengthen out the back of your neck.
Just enough to tip the chin gently in towards your throat without taking up the natural curve at the back of the neck.
Place your feet about hip width apart,
Far enough away from your body that you feel equal weight between the heel and the ball of the foot.
Without looking,
But just feeling out that place where your legs and shins are about 90 degrees from your thighs.
It's the place where we suddenly feel the lower back can be soft and the thighs don't need to work to stay here.
If it feels like it's a strain in either your legs or your lower back to hold this position with your hips,
Knees and feet in line with each other,
It may feel more comfortable for you to walk your feet out a little wider,
Turn your toes in and drop your knees in towards each other.
So it feels as if your legs are stacked inwards and there's a little more breadth across the lower back.
Place a very small cushion under your lower back if you feel you need lumbar support there.
Move each shoulder blade up into your body and down your back to really feel a sense of opening across the collarbones and across the top of the chest.
If it's comfortable to do so,
Bring your hands onto your belly.
Somewhere on your abdomen that your hands can feel very soft,
Fingers soft,
Palms,
Wrists not lifting.
Adjust your elbows if you need to make a little room to drop in the wrists.
You're feeling the weight of the upper arms through from the elbows to the shoulders,
Allowing you to fully drop into the weight of the shoulders.
Blood that release back down the arms into the hands and into the belly.
Then simply feeling your breath in your belly.
Feel it rise as you inhale and fall as you exhale.
Feeling your breath move to your belly,
Your diaphragm at the bottom of your ribs,
Then up into your chest and your throat.
Feel breath move up into all of those parts and all the way down again.
As you inhale,
Your breath travels in through your throat,
Your chest,
Diaphragm and down into your belly.
As you exhale,
Release tension up from your root in the pelvis,
Your belly and out through your breath.
Simply lying here to breathe and feel what is.
Dropping away from the chatter of the mind,
Dropping into the belly to really feel what is true right now.
Connecting with our center,
Our gut and where we really feel intuition and innate wisdom.
Breathing into that second brain and trusting what we feel there.
As you come into your belly,
Feel that area corresponding with an opening into the base of the skull.
A sense of coolness can be there.
Feeling the breath now move between those two areas and moving into the back of the belly,
The pelvis and the base of the skull.
Feel that as we open into the base of the skull,
We can correspond that area in yogic terms to the moon or yin energy that helps soften the brain and come down from the fireiness and ambition of everyday life.
Feeling as your body softens in this way,
That your jaw can soften,
Your eyes can soften and even moving into your face.
Making space and relaxing the body can allow awareness of parts of the face where you might be holding on or you might have a habitual expression that feels locked in.
Maybe a frown,
Maybe a setting of the teeth against the challenges of life.
You can now feel free to move into your face.
If there are areas that are caught or stuck,
Try squeezing into them and scrunching up between the eyebrows,
Tensing the jaw,
Scrunching up the cheeks and even stretching the skin of the top lip over the top teeth.
That area corresponds directly back through our head and back to that cooling yin area at the base of the skull.
You may notice feelings of tension there from stress,
Looking up towards a computer screen or hunching our shoulders,
Starting to release into the back of the skull as it helps us release around the jaw.
If you've been moving into the face,
Just feeling what you need to let the face now come to settle.
Then taking your arms out to the side and placing your elbows and hands onto the floor and above your shoulders.
If that feels comfortable to do so,
Lower your arms more down towards your body if you need.
Arms held in a cactus position with the hands placed up in the direction of the head.
Then open the arms out wider if you need to really find a point where you can drop down the outer edges of the shoulder blades to the ground with the backs of the hands on the floor.
So you're placing your arms and shoulders in a position they feel most supported by the ground.
Simply breathe to feel this new position and this opening across the chest.
It's a wider,
Broader occupying of space.
Notice what feelings this brings up.
As you open across the heart,
It may feel right to swell the in-breath,
Draw in a little deeper and exhale down into the belly,
Even sighing out if you need.
Over the next exhalation,
Just allow the head to drop to one side,
Just rolling onto the side of the head without adjusting or changing the position of the head,
Letting it be completely heavy with no strain or work in the neck.
Inhale to gather back to center.
Exhale the head down to the other side.
Then follow that rhythm,
Rhythm of your own breath,
Inhaling to center and exhaling to the other side.
Just letting that roll follow your breath.
As you exhale and roll the head to one side,
It may feel right to sigh out there,
To release and even make an ah sound or any vowel sound that simply happens to fall out.
Whatever releasing sound you might need.
Inhale,
Gathering back to center,
Breathing to feel more natural opening at the base of the skull and soothing the lower emotional brain.
The next time the head comes back to center,
Just allowing it to stay there,
Just feeling what is and feeling the ripples of our practice.
Yoga is a system of action and then reflection,
Letting that reflection come in feeling tones,
No need to create words or labels.
Feel through the belly,
The effects and the aftermath of what that brings to you now.
If your knees are dropping in towards each other,
Just opening them so that your knees are hip width apart,
Removing any head or back support so that now your neck and spine can move most freely.
Then just starting to exaggerate the natural rhythm of the breath into the spine.
These are often known as spine undulations,
Much like the most commonly known cat cow pose.
As we inhale,
You can start to naturally feel the filling of the lungs and rising of the belly,
Naturally starting to arch the back.
As you exhale and the lungs empty,
The chest and belly drop.
You can let that drop a little further,
Even starting to feel the tailbone draw up.
Follow behind the rhythm of your own breath,
Arching the back as you inhale and dropping in the middle at the waist as you exhale,
Letting that rhythm create pelvic tilts that lead you,
The top of the pelvis down to the floor with the exhale,
While rocking onto the tip of the tailbone with the inhale.
Simply moving into the space that is offered to you.
Nothing forceful,
But rather following the flow of the rhythm that your body presents.
Never needing to impose our will upon the movement or the body,
Treating ourselves kindly for the level of energy and movement that we have at any given time.
If the rhythm is starting to feel smooth to you,
Maybe as you inhale and lift the chest,
Then you can start to draw the chin into the chest and chest towards the chin.
As you exhale,
Allowing the chin to rock up to the ceiling,
Inhale as the chin draws in towards the chest,
Exhale with the chin up to the ceiling so you're never lifting the head,
Just tracking a line up and down the back of the base of the skull with soft jaw,
Soft face.
Feeling your body moving just behind your breath.
The breath leads,
The body follows and the mind observes.
A few last moments.
So then as you come to stop,
It's not a sense of a sudden stop,
But rather a transition to ease towards still.
The periods between practices,
A continuation and part of our meditative practice.
We still stay absorbed and fully present,
Letting the breath guide us as an anchor to stay in our bodies.
Feeling the ripples of that movement through the spine and through the body.
Draw each knee gently up in towards your chest,
Replacing your head support if you feel you need and take a loop or just your hands into the backs of your thighs,
Whichever is easiest and feels that you don't create compression at the top of the back or the neck.
So either holding onto the back of each thigh or taking a loop with the elbows right up into the knees to hold the hands.
Have your knees wide so you feel breath across the lower back and space in the belly to still breathe.
Just start to let yourself move as feels right.
Keep the feet dropping and you can move into toes and ankles as feels right.
Slow the movement down so that you really feel.
There is a sense of less is more.
Just like if you were in a fast moving car or train.
If it was going too fast,
The landscape outside suddenly becomes a blur.
You slow down and we start to be able to pick out more detail and nuance.
Moving to feel a massaging across the back,
Lower back,
Sides of the waist and across the muscles that move up the sides of the spine that work so hard to hold you upright.
Moving across the shoulder blades and letting the head move as well in any way that simply feels right,
Feels organic.
Letting your breath roll,
Soft eyes,
Soft jaw and moving your jaw around into your face.
Anytime that you need to release tension rising up from your belly and your root,
Check it's not getting caught in shoulders,
Face and jaw.
Then drawing yourself to still into the center.
Release your hands from the backs of your thighs to take them onto your knees.
Knees and feet touching each other and knees drawn into your chest.
Place your palms over your knees so that your fingers are pointing down towards your feet.
Just start to rotate your knees around so it's like an upside down pendulum.
Keep your knees and feet together and rotating circles into your knees.
Create a circular movement into the back of the pelvis,
Moving across one side of the pelvis up into the waist.
Cross around to the other side and then down to the tailbone.
Feel your belly getting involved with the movement naturally.
Then changing that movement into the opposite direction.
Feeling different here.
Maybe the movement is a little more slow.
Maybe it's a little more staccato.
Just feeling what is and accepting all nature.
Draw your knees into your chest and still in position with your fingers pointing towards the toes.
Inhale your knees in towards your chest a little more.
Exhale both knees away from you.
Open them out and away from each other and inhale as you draw them back in together up into the chest.
Creating mirroring circles that lubricate into the hip joints.
Exhale with knees away from the chest and out.
Inhale them back up and in together at the chest.
Feel that you're coming back to a rocking motion in the pelvis as you make those circles.
Just as we did in the spine undulation.
Feeling free to let the pelvis tilt to let the body move.
This happens naturally.
Then rotate the circles in the opposite direction.
Inhaling them in and up towards you.
Exhaling out and away from you.
Then inhaling to bring the knees together and draw them back into the chest.
This direction creates a little more movement in the lower back as you inhale the knees back and in from away from you.
There's a little more gathering needed up into the pelvis and up into the belly.
Keep your jaw and shoulders soft as this focus and attention is happening.
Then release your feet down to the ground and bring your hands to your belly to feel what is here and now.
Open your arms out to the side again to that comfortable neutral position with the elbows bent.
The backs of the hands,
Elbows and shoulder blades dropping down into the ground.
Walk your feet out as wide as your yoga mat if you have one but twice hip width if you don't.
Your knees are still bent and the soles of your feet are still onto the ground.
Just breathing here to feel the difference in the lower back and into the belly with this wider stance.
Inhale here and on the next exhalation allow your knees to drop down to the right hand side so that you're rolling onto the sides of the feet.
Not moving the feet but keeping them as wide as they are.
The next inhalation draw the knees back into centre.
The exhalation that follows allowing your knees to drop down to the left hand side.
This creates the side to side motion often referred to as windscreen wipers when we inhale back to centre and exhale to alternate sides.
Just letting that movement flow behind the breath.
Finding a position with the feet where you don't need to adjust them but just rolling onto the sides of them still as wide as the mat.
Once you've started to feel that you've really got that synchronicity with breath and movement you can allow the head to turn away from the legs so that as the knees drop to the right the head turns to the left and vice versa.
It may feel right to remove any head support to let the neck lengthen freely.
Then it can really feel like you're wringing across the spine as a diagonal movement.
All of the movement reaching out and centred from the belly.
As you exhale really feel a sense of releasing and the weight of the legs dropping you down.
Inhale as a gathering back up to the centre that comes from the belly.
It's a gathering up of soft knees.
Then the next time you come to the right hand side allow your knees to stay there.
No rush to get there.
Just joining in the next time your knees naturally drop to the right.
Take a deep inhalation here and exhale into the whole of your body.
Feeling a real sense of arriving into the weight of this pose here and now.
As you exhale feeling all of the weight of your body being taken down by gravity.
There's a feeling of accepting whatever sensations arise and breathing in and around the hips.
If you feel intensity or a sense of deepening and swelling of intense feelings inhale in towards or as close as feels comfortable and exhale to make space around them.
As you inhale finding the courage to feel whatever arises and an exhale makes the space to let those feelings move and disperse.
We notice that things are always changing and we learn to be with strong emotions and intense feelings in the same way that we learn to be with these intense physical sensations.
If it feels right to do so and your breath can remain smooth and free in this position lift up your right foot and take it to the outside of the left thigh.
So you're placing the outside of the right foot just above the ankle to the outside of the left leg just above the knee.
Breathing to feel the weight of that foot and feeling that weight creating a route from where we can breathe up the spine into the chest.
Letting your breath move up and down your spine.
Occupying the whole of your body with your breath.
So even if there is intensity in one area you use expansive feeling in the breath to feel that we don't get locked into those feelings and reactions to them.
Give them space to feel release movement and possibilities on the exhalation.
Then releasing the top foot and placing it back down to the ground.
Inhale your knees back to the centre and without visually checking just feel yourself organising your body.
Move your pelvis and shoulder blades in any way that you feel creates a sense of evenness.
Feeling your gaze to centre to balance out right and left sides of the brain and to help you organise as your brain best can.
When you're ready exhale the knees down to the left hand side.
Just settling in here and not rushing to lift the left foot if you did so on the first side.
Just checking side two so it doesn't suffer from knowing where we're going.
We can still employ beginner's mind,
Fresh new experience and be in all parts of the pose without simply going through the motions.
Feeling the whole of the journey of this side unfolding.
Breathing into what is on this side and noticing things might feel very different.
Not just into hips and lower back but we can feel the difference in asymmetry in our digestive organs.
Differences in our colon or lymphatic system around the lower abdomen and into the groin.
A whole new set of experiences.
If you lifted the foot on the first side now lifting up the left foot and moving it to the outside of the right thigh.
Inhale deeply and exhale to arrive here.
Breathing to feel the weight of the foot rooting you down.
Breathing this side up into the liver where we open up into the right side of the rib cage.
Taking the passage of breath to follow where it needs to and noting places it follows.
Flowing freely and noting places where it might get a little stuck.
We're noticing how it will always move like water through a river when it meets a rock it will always find a way to flow past.
Soft face and soft jaw allowing the spine to move with the breath.
Gently release the top foot and place it back down onto the ground.
Inhale the knees back to centre.
Placing the arms back into the neutral position.
Feel both feet are back onto the ground and hip width apart.
Breathe to feel ripples of the movement travelling through your nervous system.
Now we will come to a small sequence where we follow motion behind the breath.
I will do this on one side.
Right side first and left side after.
Then you can follow that rhythm from right to left behind your own breath patterns.
So on an inhale draw the right knee in towards your chest and exhale to lift the right leg up to the ceiling with heel above the hip.
Even if you need to bend the leg.
Inhale draw the right knee into the chest.
Exhale and place the right foot down onto the ground from where it came.
Inhale and draw the left knee right into the chest.
Exhale that leg to the ceiling.
Again heel above its own hip even if you need to bend the leg.
Inhale the knee into the chest and exhale down again.
Follow just behind your own breath so the right knee moves into the chest next.
With the inhalation the knee always draws into the chest.
With the exhalation you are reaching out either up to the ceiling or down to the ground.
Follow from side to side.
Movement just behind your breath.
Notice any tendencies for this movement to possibly speed up the breath and the rhythm.
At any time you notice that happening hand over the reins to the breath so the mind is no longer setting the pace.
It will usually want to speed things up but the breath and the body are much more concerned with energy conservation.
We'll tend to slow down whenever given the opportunity and when we step back from ambition or grasping.
Each time you lift the leg up reaching a little more and allowing the tailbone to drop down.
To do that you'll feel the belly engaging and you need to lengthen up through the belly to make space between the breastbone and the pubic bone.
As you lift up you draw out through the sides and the backs of the knees.
Then the kneecap draws down towards the hip.
Flexing the foot so the jaw feels really active as you lift it up towards the ceiling.
Soft face,
Soft eyes and soft jaw.
Flexing the foot so the jaw feels really active as you lift it towards the ceiling.
Soft face,
Soft eyes,
Soft jaw.
After doing the next cycle on the left hand side,
Coming to rest and placing your hands back onto your belly,
Just letting your breath soften and settle and feeling the ripples.
Bring your hands down by your hips with palms up and just sweep your arms up and around to the sides like you're making angel wings in the snow.
Sweeping your hands up along the floor and up above the shoulders.
Any time it feels that the shoulders or the arms start to lift off the ground that's where you take your range of motion to.
So if you take them past the point where your shoulders suddenly lift you could start to be creating strain.
Just find where your easy range of motion is so that you can keep your arms dropping down to the ground.
Sweep up the arms along the ground on the inhalation.
Sweep back down with both arms with the exhalation.
Inhaling up and around,
Exhaling down.
Try to lift the arms the least possible to have to push against some resistance or friction on the ground.
Create a little work into the shoulder girdle,
Into the muscles and the front of the chest without tensing there.
Then draw in the arms back down to the hips.
We're going to add that movement into a bridge pose.
So remove any head support now.
Place your feet hip width apart.
You may feel you need to take off any socks on feet to get good traction on the ground.
Finding a position where you can feel that your feet are close enough in towards your bottom to create press lift into the ground but not so close that you strain the fronts of the knees.
You don't necessarily need to be able to touch the ankles with the fingers if you're used to doing it that way.
Feel where is right rather than pushing into an ideal.
Feeling your feet hip width apart,
Maybe a little wider if you need a space across your lower back.
And then just open and spread your toes so you feel good contact with the base of the big toe.
That's our route in bridge pose.
We press back and up from there and retain a connection to the earth with the base of the big toes,
Often called the brain of the foot.
Inhale and start to lift up the pelvis,
Sweeping the arms up around the side of your angel wings as you go.
So your arms reach their highest position up towards the head at the same time you reach the highest point with your pelvis.
Exhaling all the way down with your arms,
Peeling down through the spine so your tailbone reaches the floor at the same time that your hands come back to rest by your hips.
With these first few you don't need to come too far.
Just exploring,
Feeling your range of motion naturally opening up.
Exhaling up,
Exhaling down.
Now follow that motion just behind your breath.
Inhaling up into the bridge position as you take the arms up and around,
Then exhaling arms and spine down to the ground again with the exhalation.
As you lift up,
Feeling you lift up more and more through the heart.
Lifting up the area between the shoulder blades and feeling that there's a little motion of chest to chin and chin to chest as you lift up with the in-breath.
Keep good contact with the base of the big toe.
You'll notice if it tends to lift up,
Maybe the knees splay out.
Keep that contact there to stabilise the lower back alongside rolling your thighs but feeling your knees stay in line with your feet.
Next time you come up,
Holding that position.
Maybe walking the shoulders a little further under towards your heels.
Just enough to feel that you can lift up into the heart and the upper spine.
Breathing here with the soft face to explore how to sustain strength in the pose without strain,
Push or force.
Finding effortless effort in our practice.
Breath long and smooth.
Jaw and face soft.
Not too little,
Not too much.
You come down at any time that you need and any time that you feel strain entering the pose.
If you're staying,
Release the buttocks so you're not gripping up with them to hold you there.
Release their outer layers.
You might find a little drop but then you can lift up a little more through the heart.
Soft jaw and long and spacious breath.
Then peeling yourself down vertebra by vertebra.
Coming down to rest on the ground.
Walk your feet out wider than your hips.
Drop your knees in towards each other.
Turn your toes in.
So there's a real feeling that you're just dropping the weight of your thighs and knees in towards each other.
Bring your hands onto your belly and simply feel what is.
Letting your breath roll and staying absorbed in all of the feelings and sensations that the ripples of our practice are creating.
Before we move into Shavasana,
Final relaxation.
Just taking a few moments to really feel what it is you need here.
So it may be just to be still,
To breathe,
To feel.
It may be that you feel you want to come into a twist,
Move your knees into your chest or stretch out.
It may be that you just let yourself move into a free form way.
Just try to step away from any sense of needing to do a formalised practice or something that you think that you should be doing at this time.
But rather just placing your attention in your belly so that any movement comes from intuition rather than learnt knowledge.
You simply move,
Even if that movement is simply being still and feeling the movement of your breath in your body.
Then gathering yourself to come back,
Soles of your feet onto the ground and knees bent.
When you're ready,
Lengthening your legs out along the ground to come into Shavasana.
If you feel this tends to pinch your lower back,
Place cushions or a bolster under your knees and support your head again if it feels it tips backwards.
Take your arms out to the side about 45 degrees with palms up.
Rotate the whole of the arms out,
Not just the wrists.
Lifting up each shoulder blade and moving it down your spine so that you make space across the top of the chest,
Across the heart.
Arms away from the body so that you have the freedom to breathe into the sides of the ribs.
Feel fully supported by the ground.
Take a deep inhalation and exhale into the whole of your body.
Occupy every single part of you.
Feeling your breath moving through all of the cells in your body and all of the spaces in between.
Feeling all parts of you gathering in to create the whole that is always there.
Even if some parts call for your attention less or feel less obvious,
Acknowledging that they are included in yourself,
In your entirety.
Noting which places feel more awake and which may feel more dull,
Even numb.
Feeling all levels and tones of experience are equally valid.
Even no feeling is an important experience.
Gathering it all into the whole.
Take a deep inhalation and drop deeper into your whole self with the exhalation.
Letting as many breaths like this roll as you need to release fully into the ground.
Feeling heavy with the out-breath.
Let this weight create permission to let go with each exhalation.
Finding that creating the space to feel lightness arising with the inhalation.
Heavy as you breathe out,
Light as you gather breath in.
Let these feeling tones naturally air in and flow out.
Like a tide gathering lightness up into the shore with the inhalation.
Heaviness back into the sea with the exhalation.
Eventually letting the heavy and light focus simply fade into whatever natural primal pulse you find deep into your body.
Dropping further into the natural soothing rhythm of your breath.
Acknowledging that this deep pulsing silence is always there for you to tune into.
Even when we're making noise over it,
We can choose to drop beneath the layers of the mind and into a more truthful,
Uncluttered place.
Breathing to notice your outer shell softening as you connect more and more to your central being.
Take a few deep inhalations and sigh out anything simply ready to leave.
Follow this as many times as you need and then start to move fingers and toes within your practice.
Not to move to another state,
But to become aware of your body lying on this part of the earth's crust.
Feel connected to your whole being and the deep pulses that show that you are alive.
Bringing this integration with you.
Keeping your eyes closed.
Draw up your knees to bring the soles of your feet onto the ground.
Roll onto whichever side feels most safe and curl up into a ball.
From where you can begin to come to.
Eyes just opening to half-mast to stay soft in the face and front brain as you begin to meet the outside world.
Come to sitting for a few moments to acclimatize to upright and to make a smooth transition back into your day or evening.
Namaste.
