(soft string music)
- We're gonna do a few gentle seated stretches
using two chairs.
So you wanna be sitting in a chair,
and then also have a chair in front of you.
We'll start by extending one leg
and lifting it up onto the chair.
And you're gonna sit up nice and tall
and start to hinge forward.
So for some people this might be intense enough,
you might be really feeling a nice stretch in the hamstring.
And if so, this is where you wanna stay.
You can also wrap a necktie or a belt
around the sole of your foot and hold onto it
to help get a little bit deeper in the stretch,
if that's available to you.
You wanna make sure that you stay sitting up nice and tall
so that you're not rounding forward,
and if you have a little bit more room,
you can start to slowly walk to torso down toward the leg,
stopping wherever you start to feel resistance.
And you don't wanna feel the stretch behind the knee,
you wanna feel the stretch in the thickest part
of the muscle behind your thigh.
So if you do feel a stretch in the knee,
take a little bit of a gentle bend in the knee.
It's fine to have this knee bent
so that that's not where you're feeling the stretch.
Also, if you're feeling any discomfort in the low back,
ease off so that that's not
where you're feeling the stretch.
Wherever you are in this pose,
you wanna take a few deep breaths.
And you might notice that as you breathe,
the muscles start to soften and release,
and you're able to go just a little bit further.
There's a balance
between feeling a little bit of a stretching sensation
and feeling an intense, sharp, shooting feeling,
so you wanna go for just a dull little ache
that tells you that you're stretching the muscle.
And then come up, lower that leg down,
and then take the other leg up.
Again, sit up nice and tall.
This may be the full expression of the pose for you,
make sure that your shoulders are back and down,
that you're sitting up nice and tall,
that you're breathing fully and deeply.
And if it's available,
you can start to bring the torso lower.
Only as far as you're able to keep a nice long spine.
(soft string music)
And then come up,
and this time we're gonna have both legs up.
And again, sit up nice and tall.
You might stay here, or if it's available,
you might start to walk the hands down the legs.
Again, you can have a strap around the feet
that you're holding on to.
Make sure that you continue breathing fully and deeply,
that you don't have any discomfort in the neck.
That the shoulders are relaxed.
And then come up.
Now bring the soles of the feet together.
And it's fine if the feet are very far away from the body,
it's also fine if the feet don't quite touch each other.
If you need to bring the chair a little bit closer
because you have more room, that's fine too.
You wanna make sure that you're not pressing on the knees
and putting too much pressure
on these muscles that we're stretching,
just being in this position is enough of a stretch.
Sitting up nice and tall, and again,
if it's available to you, you can start to bend forward.
You can hold on to the legs wherever it feel comfortable,
and now, instead of stretching the hamstrings,
you're probably gonna feel a stretch in the hips
or in the insides of the thighs.
Keeping a nice, long spine,
and as you stay here for a few deep breaths,
you may notice that you have a little bit more room.
Keeping the back nice and long.
(soft string music)
And then come up, lower the legs down.
And you can stay sitting against the back of the chair,
or you can come away from the chair a little bit.
Sit up nice and tall,
and we're gonna start to twist
from the bottom of the spine up.
So instead of turning the head right away,
we're gonna start by becoming aware of the low back
and beginning the twist there,
and then very gradually, starting to sequence up
so the head is the very last thing
to look over the shoulder.
We're not holding on
and pulling ourselves into this position
but it's just a very gentle, easy twist
that you should feel distributed throughout the whole spine.
You might even notice that as you inhale,
you lengthen the spine a little bit more,
and as you exhale, you might twist a little bit more.
Keeping the shoulders relaxed.
And then come back to center.
Roll the shoulders, find the length in that spine again,
and now very gently begin to twist from the low back
all the way up through the spine, the head turns last,
and it's a very small, subtle movement of the head,
just glancing over the shoulder.
(soft string music)
And then come back to center.
And lastly, we're gonna arch the back.
Again, a nice, big stretch
by holding on to the back of the chair.
You wanna come a little bit away
from the back of the chair to make room for this.
Arch the back and get a nice, big stretch
of the whole front of the torso.
Imagine that the energy of your heart
is just exploding out in the room.
This is a position that we're not in very much,
we're here a whole lot.
So it's good to get that counter movement
of really opening the whole front of the torso.
Without taking the head very far back,
just a gentle gaze upward.
And then release, and let go.
(soft string music)