Circulation & Energy

Hi everyone, welcome to Yoga & You. I'm Sanjana Prasad. I invite you to join me on a seven days diabetes management series. Today is day one. We're going to start off with a gentle stretching activation and introduction to the series. Let's get on the mat and let's get started.

The first posture that we're going to start off is Tadasana. You also call it as mountain pose. It looks like a posture where the person is just standing but the entire body is actually super active. The mind is focused and present. So I'm going to turn to the side and show you this so you can also watch my position of my pelvis and the spine. So you can start with your feet together.

Now for some of us, the ankles are collapsed or the knees knock into each other. In that case, feel free to separate your feet hip width apart but ensure that your feet are parallel to each other and the toes are pointing forward. And if you tend to have collapsed arches, I would recommend you start gently pulling the arch up because this is a great place for you to develop that strength and activate those tiny muscles under your feet. So let's get started with the foundation. The feet either hip width apart or together.

Now coming to your knees. You're not going to hyperextend and lock the knees. Neither are you going to bend the knees. We're going to find a middle ground where the knees are soft. So there is a little bit of space around the knees over there. Your quads are active. So you're going to gently engage the quads. You feel that activation around the quads here. Your knee caps are active.

Your pelvis is neutral. We are neither going to arch the lower back nor are we going to over tuck the pelvis. Again always a middle ground, a balanced neutral pelvis. Draw the lower belly in very gently just to give your spine a bit of support. Lift your shoulders up towards the ears. Roll the shoulders back and down. Here again, I'm not flaring my ribs. My ribs are drawn in. Allow your arms to rest by the sides of the body. Your palms can touch your thighs or can be slightly away. Relax the shoulders. Your chin is not lifted. Neither is it dropped down. Neutral chin, may be slightly tucked back to ease out the neck.

I want you to bring your awareness back to your feet. Think about where you feel the weight. Is it more towards your right, more towards the left, more forward or more towards the heels. Now it looks like I'm just standing. The mind is very focused and my body is actually active and it is constantly trying to keep me in balance, so I don't start swaying side to side.

So to improve this balance, what we're going to do is learn a little bit of weight shifting. So keeping this activation, I want you to shift your entire weight towards the toes. So it feels like you're leaning forward. There's barely any weight on the heels. Hold it there for one, two, three, four, five. Come back to center.

Now we're going to shift the entire weight to the heels. When I say shift, the entire weight is shifting. I'm not arching back. Entire weight towards the heels. Stay there. One, two, can almost lift my toes off. Three, four, five. Come back to neutral.

Slowly shift the weight towards your right side. So you feel the weight on the outer edge of the right foot. Stay one, two, three, four, five. Center. Shifting to the left. One, it's a very tiny movement. Two, three, just for you to feel it, does not have to be seen. Four, five. Come back to center.

Now close your eyes. You have a sense of how it feels to shift forward, shift back and shift to the sides. Keeping your eyes closed, maintaining that activation, ground yourself to the center, your center of gravity, that midpoint between the front, back, right and left, where there's barely any swing. If you are uncomfortable with eyes closed, you can also do this with eyes opened. We are trying to still the body and just focus on the breath. One, two, three, four, five. Very gently open your eyes.

Keeping the feet as they are, you're going to inhale and lift both your arms up, join your palms above the head. Extension of Tadasana, Parvatasana. Here if you notice, I'm not flaring my ribs. You want to keep the ribs drawn in, slightly tuck the tailbone. Imagine there's a wall behind you and you're trying to press the lower back against the wall. Just keep the natural arch of your lower back. Take your arms up, stay there and breathe. One, two, three, four, five. Exhale and gently bring your arms back down.

Okay. Moving on to the next posture. Tadasana gives you the base of the foundation for this one, which is Vrikshasana. So if you're able to find your grounding in Tadasana, the balancing posture also becomes more comfortable because you know where your center of gravity is and you also have a point of focus. So for Vrikshasana, start off with a basic variation where you're going to place your palms on your waist. I'm going to balance on my left foot. I'm going to fix my focus at a point in front of me on the floor. So if it's comfortable to place your focus at a point at eye level, feel free to do that. I want you to just focus on an unmoving point.

Now from here, you're going to lift your right foot up, place it against the left shin and open out your knee, stay there and breathe. One, two, three, four, five. Release, relax. Let's switch to the other side. When you're shifting the weight, I don't want you to push your hip out. There is a slight weight shift, yes, but we're not going to sink into the opposite leg to find balance. The standing leg is tall and strong. So engage the glute and you're going to lift the left foot up to the shin and stay there for one, two, three, four, five. Slowly bring the foot down.

Now if you're finding the balancing posture hard, you feel a bit disoriented, it's good to practice them close to a wall. So I would go close to a wall. Keep the wall just about say a forearm distance from my face so that my point of focus is really close to me and not very far away. The closer your point of focus, the better your balance. If you're still feeling out of balance, then I would recommend keeping the wall on your side. If you're practicing with the right leg up, keep the wall on the left side. So in case you lose balance, you always have this wall to play with until you eventually find that stability.

Now if this is very comfortable for you, we're going to lift the heel all the way up to the groin. This requires a little bit of opening in the hips as well and the standing leg has to be strong so that your leg doesn't keep slipping out. So let's give it a shot. So we're going to try balancing on the left leg now. So you're going to lift your right foot up to the left inner thigh. Once you have balance, take your arms up. Breathe. One, two, three, four, five. First, bring the palms down to your waist. Gently release the foot down. Every posture try to come out as smoothly as you go in so that you don't lose balance.

If you have flat feet like me, balancing asanas can be a little bit challenging, but I highly recommend that you practice them over and over again. Out of personal experience, doing it repeatedly has really improved the stability in my ankles, my control and my focus. So that is something you should include in your practice, even though it is challenging.

So let's switch to the other side now. You're going to balance on your right foot. Fix your gaze. Don't stick your hip out. Stand strong. Lift your left leg up. Hold on to the ankle. Lift the heel all the way up towards the groin. Stay there. Make sure the knee is pushed out. Take your arms up. Draw the belly in. Breathe. One, two, three. Don't hold your breath. Four, five. Control. Bring the palms to the waist. Gently bring the foot back to the mat. Fantastic.

We're going to move down now to the floor for Paschimottanasana. Let's go for it. So we're going to sit down with the legs extended forward. Now for some of us in this position, you'll notice that the back is starting to round. This could be because of multiple reasons, you could have tight hamstrings, a tight lower back, or maybe a little bit of weakness around the belly or your lower back. So here what we want to do to help us sit tall is to bend the knees. This is a nice micro bend in the knee and it will help you to sit a little bit taller. Now another way you can do this is also to sit on a block or a couple of cushions which will help to elevate the lower back and it will help you get a slightly forward tilting pelvis which is required for your forward folds.

Now we're going to stay here. The first posture that we are going to do is called Urdhva Hasta Dandasana. So you're going to take your arms up, palms facing each other. This is the starting point for all your seated forward folds. With practice, eventually when you're able to sit here with your legs straight, sit tall and hold this here with engagement in the belly, you know you're ready for deeper forward folds. So bend the knees slightly, take your arms up, let's stay here and breathe. One, two, three, four, five. As you exhale, lengthen forward.

Now I'm going to take a three-finger grip on my big toes. You notice I'm still looking ahead and lengthening forward. I am not going for the forward fold yet. Keep lengthening the spine. This is a preparation, Padangusta Dandasana. One, two, three, four. At this point if you feel like you are comfortable, I want you to start straightening out your knees. You see when I straighten out my knees, I didn't go away from my leg. So I'm still lengthening the spine but my knees are straight. I'm maintaining the contact between my belly and the thigh. Breathe here, one, two, three, four, five. Inhale, lengthen forward and come up. Exhale, release your hands.

Now we're going to go for Paschimottanasana. Paschimottanasana is a seated forward fold. Paschima means back of the body and Uttanasana is like we are stretching the back of the body. So we're not going to try to go flat here because the spine has a natural curvature, but we don't want to strain the shoulders and be forcing the body into the forward fold. You want to have that ease and also that comfort in the forward fold, at the same time experience the stretch.

So let's start again with the knees bent. We're going to inhale and lift your arms up. As you exhale, we're going to change the grip this time. We're going to see if we can hold the sides of the feet or the top of the feet. I like holding sides of the feet. It gives me a better grip. Now from here, inhale lengthen the spine. Exhale, we're going to melt into the thigh. Now if you're still very comfortable here, you start sliding your heels forward, forward, forward. At one point you feel like okay, now I've reached my maximum, I'm comfortable, and you're going to melt into your legs. Stay there and breathe. One, keep drawing the belly in. Two, three, four, five. Inhale, lengthen forward and come up. Exhale and release your arms. Lie down on the back.

We found a little bit of activation through Tadasana, balance and focus through Vrikshasana, and a gentle relaxation forward fold stretch for the back through Paschimottanasana. Three very important postures we covered: stability through the standing, balancing very very important for focus, and Paschimottanasana as a start to your forward folds. Very very important posture in this series is now Shavasana and we're going to practice this with a quick rotation of awareness through the body.

So separate your feet about mat width apart. We're not going to control the legs. Shake out your legs nicely and allow the thighs to roll out, feet to roll out, palms facing the ceiling. You can adjust the back of your neck. Lower back, natural arch. Don't force the chest up. Neither are you tucking the tailbone. Relax. If you feel like you want to slide a cushion underneath your knees, you can do that. It will help you to relax the lower back even better.

Take your awareness towards your toes, soles of your feet, top of the feet, ankles, heels, both your feet are relaxed, relaxed, completely relaxed. With every breath you take, allow the body to completely relax in your Shavasana. Awareness to the shins, calves, knees, back of the knees, thighs, back of the thighs, inner thighs, outer thighs, groin, your butt, pelvis, hips, both legs are relaxed, relaxed, relaxed, completely relaxed.

Awareness to the lower back, mid-back, upper back, awareness to the sides of the body from your waist all the way up to your armpits. Awareness to the lower belly, area around the navel, upper abdomen, ribs, chest, sternum. Your torso is relaxed, relaxed, completely relaxed.

Awareness to the shoulders, shoulder blades, upper arms, armpits, elbows, forearms, wrists, palms, fingers. Both your arms are relaxed, relaxed, completely relaxed. Awareness to the back of your neck, back of the head, top of the head, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, lips, inside of your mouth, your teeth, tongue, the jaw, chin, neck, collarbone, neck and head relaxed, relaxed, completely relaxed.

Entire body from the top of the head down to the tips of the toes, completely relaxed. Let's take one deep breath in through the nose, sigh the breath out through the mouth. One more time, inhale, exhale. Continue to stay in Shavasana for another two minutes and come, completely relax the body.

So that was day one of the seven day series for diabetes management. So be sure to follow the entire series. We are coming up with day two. So I'll see you in day two. Thank you.