Hello my name is Jenny Matthews I'm a PhD student and certified yoga
instructor at the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion. This is
Dr. Jennifer Huberty associate professor also in the School of Nutrition and
Health Promotion. So the first pose we're going to do is Child's Pose. So what
you're going to want to do is just come down onto your knees and when you're on
your knees you want to place the big toes together and spread the knees out
wide about hip to shoulder width apart or however far you're comfortable going
and when you've gotten that position you want to slowly take a deep inhale and
start to tiptoe the fingers out in front of you nice and slow keeping a strong
straight back and just coming all the way down until the forehead touches the
mat and when you're here you just want to think about extending the tailbone
out nice and long so you keep a straight back and you can stay in this
pose anywhere between 30 seconds to a couple of minutes and just breathing
here and every so often taking a deep inhale and maybe slowly crawling the
fingers a little bit more forward to get a little bit more length in the spine
and each exhale just decompressing the chest into the mat. Our next pose we're
going to go to is going to be bound angle pose. This is also a seated pose so
if you want to come sitting on your bottom and what you're going to do is
place the bottoms of your feet together and you can place your feet as close to
the pelvis as is comfortable, the further away the feet are from the
pelvis you'll feel that a little bit more in the hip. You want to grab onto
the big toes and extend, as you take an inhale you want to extend the spine, try
to keep a neutral pelvis. You can slowly start to bend forward as much as you're
comfortable before the back starts to round and
few deep breaths here and depending on how flexible you are in the hips and how
much pressure you want to release in the spine here you can even release the
hands from the toes and start to tiptoe the fingers out in front of you reaching
out so that you kind of go into a forward fold here so this will release
some tension in the back and then just let the head hang loose and release some
tension from the shoulders here and each inhale maybe create a little bit of
space and extend the spine a little bit more in each exhale start to crawl the
fingers towards the edge of the mat or out in front of you just a little bit more.
Our last pose we're going to do today is going to be a standing forward
fold. So I'll have Dr. Huberty stand up and you're going to stand start in
Mountain Pose so this is just a standing pose in yoga with the palms out to the sky.
Press through the heels of the feet and the balls of the feet so all four
corners of your feet you want to kind of imagine you're drawing a rectangle in
your feet so pressing spreading out the toes so you're creating a nice stable
platform for you. We're going to start by placing the hands on the hips
to hold on to the sacrum to give you a little bit more stability here. A slight
bend in the knees taking in deep inhale and then as you exhale slowly start to
bend the body forward bending the knees as much as you need to and start placing
the hands down maybe if you can't reach the floor place the hands on the shins
or if you can touch the floor go ahead and set the fingertips on the floor and
let the head hang, let everything just kind of relax. Bend your knees as much as
you need to. You don't want to lock out the knees in this pose so always have
a slight bend and take a few deep breaths and maybe with each inhale you
create a little bit more space so you extend the spine a little bit and each
exhale you can decompress and maybe fold a little bit deeper. Squeeze the shoulder
blades together to help create some stability in the spine and start to
stand right up, all the way back to standing.
Hands back down to the side and you can repeat those as much as you would like.