Benefits:

For your body:

• Strengthens your pectoral and deltoid muscles
• Increases lumbar fascia muscle of your low back
• Helps you stretch your diaphragm muscle

For your mind:

• Opens up your body awareness and how you think about backbends
• Increases the focus you have on your breath
• Centers your mind on the present

For your spirit:

• Shows you what you are capable of doing in your practice
• Expands your confidence in your breathing ability

Modifications:

• Place your knees on the floor and close together. (You don’t want to feel low back pain in this pose.)
• Tuck your toes to support your knees.
• Keep your eyes down
• You can use Spinx pose or Cobra pose instead

Pose Description:

1. Start for a high-plank position.
2. Lower to half-way plank with your elbow in your ribcage.
3. Flip your toes over and engage your thighs.
4. Straighten your arms and maintain your shoulders over your palms.
5. The eye of your elbows faces one another.
6. Maintain even muscle engagement throughout the posture.
7. Stay for a few breath cycles.
8. Exit via downward-facing dog pose. (Tuck your toes and lift your hips up to the ceiling.)

Benefits:

For your body:

• Assists complete release of muscles
• Encourages a unified body
• A place of complete rest and recovery for your brain
• Helps improve better blood flow to your skin

For your mind:

• Relaxes thoughts away thru a soft focus to concentrate your mind
• Allows you time to reflect on yourself and why you just practiced
• A place to do nothing, to just let go and be

For your spirit:

• Unifies your mind and body through rest
• Increases an observation of continence
• Happiness is a place of tranquility and bliss

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Use a pillow beneath your knees.
• Place a blanket over you.
• Put one hand on your heart and one on your belly.
• Place a pillow behind your head.

Pose Description:

1. Start on your back in a laying down position.
2. Separate your feet your hip-width or comfortably wider.
3. Flex your feet.
4. Open your palms up and lengthen your fingers gently.
5. Relax your smile and eys.
6. Feel a slow lengthening in your spine.
7. Pick a point in your body and focus on it while you release your practice.
8. Let go of every muscle by light engagement and gentle awareness.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Releases your back muscles
• Massages your organs near your back
• Stretches your spine

For your mind:

• Relaxes the back of your head which can assist you to relax your eyes
• Gives you a sense of renewal
• Stretches your hips and relieves your emotional strength

For your spirit:

• You gain a fresh look of reaching a happy position in your body
• Remain playful in your practice of posture
• A blissful release to leave your worries behind

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Grab the front of your shins to help with flexibility.
• Use a towel or a strap to assist your grip.
• Grab the outside edge of each foot.
• Roll up and leave a towel behind your head.

Pose Description:

1. Start on your back in a laying down position.
2. Kick your heels up into legs up the wall.
3. Flex your feet, release your toes.
4. Maintain a flat back on the ground from tailbone to skull.
5. Reach up and grab your feet’ inner arch with your fingertips.
6. With your hand and elbow, pull your knees and feet out and down toward the ground.
7. Keep your heels stacked over your knees.
8. Pull down statically.
9. Breath here.
10. Rock right and left gently releasing tension from your back.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Releases your spine tension
• Stretches the fascia around your vertebrae
• Stimulates circulatory health
• Supports your nervous system regulation

For your mind:

• Teaches you to concentrate on letting go
• Surrendering is a calming activity
• Clears out negative thoughts

For your spirit:

• Removes blocks you may have about letting go
• Contentment can give you a presence
• A sense that you can surrender to gravity

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Bend both knees in to do the twist.
• Place a block below your elevated knee.
• Keep your hand on your knee or hip in the twist.

Pose Description:

1. Start on you back in a laying down position.
2. Bend your right knee to 90 degrees.
3. Extend your left arm and with your left hand pull your right knee across your body.
4. Engage your core to twist, shift your left hip under your right hip so they stack upon each other.
5. Lengthen your left leg and extend it to your upper back.
6. “T” out your arms and release your hands.
7. Gently stretch your neck and simply gaze over your right shoulder.
8. Learn to surrender your body here.
9. Breathe here for a few cycles.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Releases colon stress in the ascending and descending colon
• Gently massages your lymphatic system specific to your pelvic lymph nodes
• Massages your gut and lumbar

For your mind:

• Reduces stress
• Allows you to surrender your mind
• Improves your concentration on your breath

For your spirit:

• How we release can improve how we gain
• Comfort continues by constant reflection and humility
• Creates a union between your mind and body

(Your body is your own, so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Place a pillow behind your head.
• Use a strap or towel around your shins until you can reach your wrists, grow from here.

Pose Description:

1. Start on your back in a laying down position.
2. Bring your big toes to touch and extend your legs.
3. Bend your right knee to your chest, basket grip your shin.
4. Gently pull your leg around your ribs to your armpit.
5. Bring your elbows into your sides.
6. Engage your left thigh and perineum.
7. Breathe here for a few cycles.
8. (Bend both knees to your chest and grab your elbows around your shins.)
9. Lower your spine to the floor.
10. Breathe here for a few cycles.

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• 

Benefits:

For your body:

• Stretches both legs hamstrings
• Relieves your low spine from tension
• Improves your pelvic flexibility

For your mind:

• Calms your mind by releasing pressure from your brain
• Tests your patience to breath
• Allows you to focus on a single subject

For your spirit:

• “I can give into gravity and it will support me”
• Let go and see how much farther you can go
• It can bring appreciation to your foundation

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Use a strap wrapped around your feet.
• Place a block beneath your feet to extend your grip.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a seated position.
2. Send both feet out in front of you.
3. Pull the extra glute flesh behind you.
4. Flex your thighs and reach your arms overhead with peace fingers ready.
5. Fold forward and grab your big toes with your peace fingers.
6. Bend your elbows and extend your torso.
7. Walk your glutes back and fold from your hips.
8. Straighten your legs and lower your head.
9. Breathe here for a few cycles.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Improves flexibility in your leg
• Releases your hip from tension
• Lengthens one side of your spines fascia slowly and methodically

For your mind:

• Allows you to take rest and comfort in your mind
• Gives you a transparent look at your focus and where it is at this moment
• Centers your focus on one point between your eyes

For your spirit:

• Shows you that you can follow through
• Increases your connection to the foundation of your body and mind
• Begins a steady stream of potential creativity, where does this creativity come from?

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Use a strap around your foot.
• Wrap a towel under your foot.
• Bend your extended legs knee a little more.
• You can use a straddle technique, rather than bending one leg in and extending the other leg out, extend both legs out separate from one another.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a seated position.
2. Extend your right leg out and bring your left foot to your inner right thigh.
3. Peel the extra glute flesh behind you and reach your arms overhead.
4. Basket grip your finger overhead.
5. Flex your thigh and rotate over your right leg.
6. Fold over your right thigh and grab the ball mound of your right foot.
7. Bend your elbows and place your forehead to your knee even if you need to bend your knee.
8. Kick and pull, straighten as much as you can.
9. Breathe here for a few cycles.

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• 

Benefits:

For your body:

• Releases tension in your neck
• Creates blood flow to your brain
• Stretches your lumbar spine and the backside of your lungs

For your mind:

• Stretches your concentration in a new way
• Releases the fight or flight response gradually the more you do this pose
• Focuses you on tension and it turns out it is trapped in the mind, so relax you will be fine

For your spirit:

• What does it mean to pull on your heels so hard you may somersault forward
• I don’t need to clench my jaw anymore, it can be let go anytime so breathing becomes easier
• The recognition that the back of you is very much just as important as the front of you, this is a big point the whole is as important as its perceived parts

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(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Place padding beneath your knees to relieve pressure.
• Use a towel to grip your heels.
• Put a pillow or towel to place the top of your head onto.
• Round down less, do not force yourself to go to deep.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a tabletop position.
2. Bring your toes to touch and knees to touch and sit on your heels.
3. Keep your inner thighs together throughout.
4. Lower your pointer fingers into the arch of your feet.
5. Point your fingers toward your toes and lengthen your spine.
6. Tuck your chin to your chest and curl or round forward.
7. As you lift your hips off your heels to the ceiling.
8. Your hands will rotate to pull on the bottom of your heels.
9. Gaze between your thighs or at your belly button, relax your jaw.
10. Breathe here for a few cycles.
11. Exit slowly your hips to heels and your chin lifts from your chest last.

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• 

Benefits:

For your body:

• Stretches the front of your chest and neck
• Strengthens your upper back muscles and tones your triceps
• Deeply detoxifies your lungs

For your mind:

• Releases stress by putting your mind in an uncomfortable position
• Stimulates conscious breathing
• Allows you full mental access to your whole body and the present moment right now

For your spirit:

• Roar like a lion with lions breath
• Opens your courage to trust yourself today
• Gives you a greater understanding of yourself and what you are willing to go through to be successful

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Tuck your toes.
• Use a wall to assist your alignment.
• Use a chair behind you.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a tabletop position.
2. Stand on your knees two fist distance apart.
3. Parallel you shins if you need to tuck your toes to support your feet.
4. Place your hands on your lower back to the top of your glutes.
5. Push against your glute and slowly lift your gaze and sternum toward the ceiling above.
6. Lift your inner thighs toward your navel.
7. (Try to reach your heels without changing the location of your hips.)
8. Tuck your chin slightly.
9. Breathe here for a few cycles. (Lion’s breath can be used here.)
10. Exit slowly.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Transverse abdominal engagement and latissimus dorsi increases strength
• Engages sternocleidomastoid muscles to improve your neck strength
• Gives you a connection from your quads to your intercostal muscles

For your mind:

• Strengthens the concentration of your breath and the way it moves your body near your pelvis
• Builds focus towards your muscle engagement awareness
• Relaxes your thoughts so your jaw and brain connection becomes more fluid to relax your smaller muscles

For your spirit:

• You are the master of your energy
• Increases your confidence to control yourself
• Teaches to learn with ease about how growth happens

(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)

Modifications:

• Use a block beneath your hands.
• Use a towel or block under your forehead.
• Lift your hips off your heels to support your knees and place padding underneath them to avoid pain.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a tabletop position.
2. Bring your knees and toes to touch.
3. Sit on your heels and flex your thighs.
4. Reach your arms over your head and “steeple” grip your fingers to extend your spine.
5. Release your hands to a prayer position, latch your right thumb over your left.
6. Lock in your arms and torso.
7. Slowly hinge at your hips forward with a flat back the whole way to the floor.
8. The “knife-edge” of your pinky fingers touch the mat first.
9. Softly place your forehead on the mat and relax your jaw.
10. Maintain your flex thighs and torso and arms.
11. Breathe here for a few cycles.
12. Exit the way you entered.