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Benefits:

For your body:

• Releases your lumbar spine
• Stretches the tops of your feet so you can release the bottom of them
• Stretches your whole spine and gentle stretches your nervous system

For your mind:

• Focus your mind on your lower joints in a way that isn’t often focused on
• Releases stress to bring calm to your mind
• Concentrates you physically so you learn how to moderate with restraint

For your spirit:

• “I think I can. I think I can.” This will take over so you can breath
• Stretches your personal capabilities
• Helps you question yourself, am I doing this pose right for my body as it is today?

(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 or several blocks to sit on and support your knees.
• Roll up a towel and place it under your seat.
• Place a rolled up towel under your ankle to support injured ankles.
• Lie down on your back and do a reclined falling bridge pose.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a table top position.
2. Bring your knees together to touch and sit on your heels.
3. Lengthen your back and stretch your shoulders wide.
4. Separate your feet and heels about hip-width distance.
5. Sit your gluteus maximus to the floor.
6. Maintain your tall seat.
7. Plant your palms behind you and lower to your elbows.
8. (If your knees open that is just your anatomy.)
9. Maintain length in your neck.
10. Lower to your back and reach your arms over your head.
11. Grab your elbows and frame your face with your arms.
12. Breath here for a few cycles.
13. (To exit hook your exit, push away the ground from behind your low back.)
14. Stretch your legs your own way.

Benefits:

For your body:

• Massages your abdominal muscles and strengthens your spine
• Stretches your shoulder and arm joints
• A hip and quad stretch

For your mind:

• A pose to learn that your mind is not your ego
• Concentrates your mind on your breathing rhythm to feel how it can move your body
• To calm tension in your body in this pose it takes the ability to think clearly and relax as you are in the pose

For your spirit:

• “Can i really massage my guts with this pose?”
• You can begin to feel that there is no repose
• This pose opens you up to your personal flexibility in life, what’s possible and what’s not

(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 or towel to wrap around your feet.
• Do one leg at a time which helps improve your flexibility.
• Just reach back for your feet and focus on your breath, flexibility will come through practice.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a belly-down position.
2. Engage your core and breath.
3. Bend one knee and reach back for your feet one at a time.
4. Grab the outside of your foot without any side flexion.
5. Kick your feet into your hand and pull yourself up.
6. Lift your shoulders and flex your thighs alternate relaxing them.
7. Your breath will move you forward and back.
8. Keep your knees hip and shoulder-distance apart.
9. Relax your eyes and breath here for a few cycles.

Benefits:

For your body:

• Back muscles activate
• Strengthens your spinal fascia
• Stretches your neck muscles under your chin

For your mind:

• Concentrates your mind on every muscle
• Focus’ you towards the present
• Slows your mind when you can actively control and slow down your breath in this position

For your spirit:

• Imagine your flying above the world for a few moments and see where you go
• Your whole body is strong, unified at this moment to represent what’s possible’
• When you tell yourself you can’t, there is still a voice that will say you can do it, this pose will open your eyes to this moment

(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:

• Remain lower to the floor.
• Reach your arms behind you in an “airplane” mode.
• Keep your fingertips on the floor to stabilize your strength.
• Extend your arms over your head as to take flight.

Pose Description:

1. Start from a belly-down position.
2. “T” out your arms.
3. Touch your toes together and engage your abdominal.
4. “Spider tip” your fingers to engage your upper back.
5. Lift everything off your mat.
6. Extend in all directions and keep your toes gently together.
7. Relax your gaze long.
8. Lift your inner thighs.
9. Breath here for a few cycles.

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Benefits:

For your body:

• Opens blood flow to your finger-tips and knuckles, by strengthening your muscles in your wrists
• Strengthens your elbows ligaments and stabilizes your shoulder joints
• Stimulates your spines fascia to give you better spinal strength and overall back support

For your mind:

• “Am I putting to much pressure on my jaw and chin?”
• Deepens the focus of your arm joints and how they are strengthened
• The concentration of your breath to the very smallest muscles of your body can increase your awareness of mind in your body

For your spirit:

• This pose will give you more awareness of what flexibility in your body is and can be
• Gives you a lower perspective of the world which can make you feel taller the next time you stand
• This pose gives you gentleness and the sight that strength can exist at exactly the same time as being gentle

(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:

• Leave your hands on the side of your hips.
• Just avoid this pose if it causes you pain in your elbows.
• Lift only an inch of your mat, using less muscle engagement.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a belly-down position.
2. Bend your knees and lift your hips off the mat.
3. Flip your hands under your pelvis with pinkies touching.
4. Extend your arm and press your palms into the mat.
5. Lower your hips onto the back of your hands.
6. Lengthen your legs and touch your toes together.
7. Have your chin on your mat and with no pressure in your jaw.
8. Extend your right leg and lift your thigh off your hand.
9. Plant your right palm down and hover your wrist and extend your arm.
10. Breath here for a few cycles and then switch legs slowly.
11. (You can do both legs in the same way as one.)

Benefits:

For your body:

• Strengthens your lumbar fascia, specific to strengthening your low-back muscles
• Engages your diaphragm muscles, helping you breath
• Increases your inner-thigh contraction control, making your legs much stronger and more agile

For your mind:

• Concentrates your mind on the ten inches in front of your face, or gives you a great point of focus to stare at
• Gives you resilience as you focus your attention on your breath and body connection
• If you can think of them, your eyesight will improve by relaxing your mind and eyes to focus more clearly

For your spirit:

• Wisdom comes from the grasshopper legs your arms form
• Gives you sight that if everything in your body is connected from toe to nose then you must extend that connection to everything that could contact your body
• Cobra recognizes the harmony and rhythm of the music that resides inside each breath you give yourself

(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 between your hands.
• Remain lower in the posture.
• Keep your hands on the floor.
• Move into a Spinx Pose.

Pose Description:

1. Start from a push-up position.
2. Lower to your belly and untuck your toes.
3. Bring your big toes together and make your legs like a “cobras tail”.
4. Engage your core and lift your elbows like “grasshopper legs”.
5. Plant your palms down lightly.
6. Gently lift your shoulders and press the ground lightly away from you.
7. Lengthen your gaze in front of you and hover your palms off the mat.
8. Breathe here for a few cycles to strengthen your low-back and diaphragm muscle.

Benefits:

For your body:

• Stretches your diaphragm muscle increasing lung expansion
• Engages your lumbar fascia to help promote a healthy low-back
• Opens your chest, shoulders, upper back and gently stretches the back of your neck

For your mind:

• Allows you to release tension in your mind, by relieving pressure on the front portion of your brain
• Letting go gives you space to think clearer
• Lowering the speed of your thoughts this way can help your problem-solving skills

For your spirit:

• You feel an almost primordial form your body once took
• Your heart is opened to the world in front of you and you can embrace it
• Connect with your own knowledge and allow that knowledge to give you the confidence to learn more and embrace more knowledge that comes your way with love and grace

(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 or bend your knees
• Lay down on a body pillow to release pain if a firm floor or yoga mat causes you to feel pain
• Allow hands-on assistance to give you a more grounded feeling as you perform this pose

Pose Description:

1. Start from a push-up position.
2. Lower to a forearm plank position.
3. Dorsi flex one foot at a time and lower to your quads.
4. Maintain your shoulders and forearms.
5. Suction your palms to the mat.
6. Lengthen your inner adductor muscles.
7. Big toes touch and all ten toenails to the mat.
8. Gaze forward and relax your eyes.
9. Breathe here for a few cycles.

Benefits:

For your body:

• Strengthens your shoulders
• Encourages joint health in your wrists and elbows
• Intensifies your isometric transverse abdominal engagement

For your mind:

• It will give your mind the confidence to try just a little bit longer
• Increases your focus on the breath allowing thoughts to minimize there distracting effect
• Gives your mind focus on your body and its center that maintains the spines erectness

For your spirit:

• It can burn a fire of determination in your spirit that you can do it
• It tempts your spirit to reflect on itself because of the instant strain it puts on you physically
• Teaches you that you have everything that you need already within you

(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:

• Lower your knees to the floor.
• Put a block between your forearms.
• Continuously encourage yourself to breathe consistently and to maintain an engaged core to stabilize your back.

Pose Description:

1. Start in a push-up position.
2. Lower your forearms to the floor in a number “11” were your hands were.
3. Suction your palms down to the mat.
4. Hug your navel to your spine.
5. Press your heels back and evenly plant your feet ball mounds.
6. Gaze down and relax your eyes.
7. Breathe here for a few cycles.

Benefits:

For your body:

• Stretches your upper back
• Gives a way to reach inversion postures
• Strengthens your shoulders

For your mind:

• Trust yourself to try
• Increases oxygen to your brain to help improve your thinking
• Increases the concentration of breath while inverted

For your spirit:

• Encourages you that you can do anything
• Happy when you get it

(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:

• Interlace your fingers.
• Bend your knees more.

Pose Description:

1. Start from a downward-dog position.
2. Lower your forearms to the ground in a number “11”.
3. Suction your palms to the mat.
4. Step your feet toward your elbow 2 or 3 steps.
5. Release your head and engage your abdominal.
6. Breathe here for a few cycles.