Vertical Standing Postures

Hi everyone, welcome back to class. I hope you are enjoying the classes so far. So today we will continue with a few postures that require a bit more opening in the hips. So we will go slowly. Let's start by always sitting with the spine straight, closing the eyes. Take a moment, join the palms together, inhale, slowly open your eyes.

Now we are ready to start. Today we are going to look at Utkatasana and Prasarita Padottanasana. They both require some opening in the hips. So I recommend that you work on Surya Namaskar, the videos that we have done before this. Just use it as a warm up and then you can come back to this.

So today we are going to start by standing, so all the way up. Let's walk over to the beginning of the mat. From here, we will just do two Surya Namaskars anyway just to warm up the entire body. So feet together, get ready. Inhale, hands up, exhale bend, inhale head up, exhale, keep it simple, just walk back for the first one, exhale lower down, knees down, chest down, inhale arch back, exhale downward dog, push back into downward dog, feel your femurs pushing back into its socket, pull the kneecaps up, activate the legs, open the feet about hip distance, three, pull the navel in, two, one, let's look forward.

Let's walk to the hands, nice and easy, bend the knees, walk over to the hands, feet together, inhale, look up, exhale, head down, inhale, come up and stand, exhale, samasthiti. Surya Namaskar are we, inhale, Utkatasana, fully squat and come up, exhale, bend over your legs, exhale, head up, exhale, keep it simple, just walk back, no stress, inhale, exhale, knees down, chest down, inhale, arch back, exhale downward dog, look forward, right leg forward, back leg 45 degrees, Virabhadrasana, inhale, hands up, look at the hands, exhale, neatly take the hands down, step back, exhale, lower down, Chaturanga, inhale upward dog, go with your breathing, exhale downward dog, look forward, right leg 45 degrees, left leg forward, inhale, find the balance, hands up, join the palms, look at the hands, exhale, hands down, inhale like that, exhale, body down, inhale, arch back, exhale, push back, couple of breaths in downward facing dog, one, two, if this is too intense for you, just bend the knees and push back with the hands, three, breathing only from the nose, four, five, that's enough, look forward.

From here we are going to take a hop forward, so inhale and hop, keep the feet together, Utkatasana chair forward, inhale, come up, samasthiti. Okay, we are going to work a little bit more on Utkatasana now. We have already accessed Utkatasana before in Surya Namaskar, but let's just look at it a little bit more. So now align the big toes together, the heels are slightly separated. Okay, only if you keep the toes together, the knees will be together. So as you inhale, start to bend the knees, squat and come up.

Okay, take the hands up, keep the hands apart for the first one, and then slowly release the hands, take the hands to the chest, join the palms, send the hip creases back, feel the quadricep muscles, the muscles of the thighs turned on, let's hold it here, send it back, hold it, deep breathing, one, pull the navel inside, two, shoulders relax, three, four, five, don't come up, take the hands up, if it's possible, look at the hands, one, I feel my thighs burning already, but just hold, two, three, four, five, straighten the legs, bend forward, it feels really good to straighten the legs after that intense posture that we did.

Inhale, lift the chest, look up, create length, exhale, bend, be comfortable, bend the knees, head down, let's stay for a couple of breaths. Deep inhale, deep exhale, release the hands, bend the knees, round the back, and slowly come up. Good.

From here, open the feet apart, if both the feet are pointing forward this time, not to the side, nicely point the toes forward. The distance between your feet depends on how tall you are, but for me about 4 to 5 feet is more than enough. Okay, so go ahead and take the hands on the waist, nice long inhale, nice deep exhale. Now from here inhale, just lift the head up, exhale, push the hips back and start to bend forward, feel the opening in your outer thighs and inner thighs, let your hands absolutely loose, just go ahead, interlock the elbows and hang out here, press into the toes, relax the shoulders, we'll stay for 5 breaths, 1, 2, 3, 4, don't bend the knees, knees are straight, 5. From here just pulse, pulse, small up and down movements, feel the opening in the inner thighs, outer thighs for 3, 2 and 1, let it go, bend the knees, round the back and coming back up to standing.

We're working on a posture called Prasarita Padottanasana, wide leg forward bend. Okay, we're going to look at two variations today, so again keeping the feet open, let's continue from here, if it's comfortable or if you need to just open it slightly more, okay, not more than this. Hands on the waist, inhale head up only, exhale start to push the hips back, keep the spine long, see how I'm not dropping my head, my head is lifted until the very end, go ahead and take the hands to the ground, either the fingertips or the full palms.

From here lift the chest, look up, and we'll stay here for 5 breaths looking forward, 1, feel the length in the back, avoid rounding the back, create good length, 2, 3, feel the leg muscles turned on, 4, 5, now only if it's comfortable for you, you place the palms down and start to take the head down, so inhale head up, exhale head down, hold it there, 1, you can walk the hands a little more back, taking the head inside, 2, press into the toes, 3, 4, 5, very good, that's enough, inhale lift the chest look up, create length again, exhale catch hold of the waist, stay where you are, don't hurry, inhale, come up.

Exhale, we're going to do one more variation, if that was difficult for you, you can do that one more time, but if you can, we'll try the next one. Inhale, open the shoulders, interlock the fingers behind you, exhale, inhale head up only, as you exhale start to orient your waist back and your chest forward, open the shoulders, take the hands over the head as much as you can. I have a shorter torso and longer legs, so for me I need to open my legs a bit more, but if you can, try not to do that, just keep it comfortable and hold here, it doesn't even have to be all the way here, if your shoulders are tight, it will be somewhere here, no problem, just keep breathing through it, feel the nice opening through the shoulder blades, one, two, three, four, five, very good, inhale as you come all the way up, hold your balance and coming back to standing.

From here take a nice deep breath in, deep breath out, take your feet together and start to bend the knees, sit down all the way down, okay, let's just do a simple twist to release the body. So from here you can stretch the legs forward, bend the right leg, hold it close to the chest, one hand gap, inhale, exhale, left hand on the right knee, twist and look back, deep breath in, deep breath out, one more time, inhaling, exhaling, that's enough, look forward, you can stay there for more time, if you just want to release a little bit further, about 3 to 5 breaths is good enough.

Left leg bend, one hand gap between the foot and the thighs, start off with the back straight, inhale here, exhale, twist and look back, pull the knee towards you and twist, inhale, release, cross the legs together, close your eyes, feel free to take Savasana for a long time as much as you need to, relax the body, calm the mind, join the palms, inhale, slowly open your eyes.

Thank you for joining me, I'll see you next class.