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Morning practice from Wellington

A guided relaxation and gentle yoga sequence integrates body awareness with mindful movement.

Begin by making the body comfortable, closing the eyes, and relaxing from toes to head. Release tension with each exhalation, systematically softening each body part. Withdraw attention from external concerns to unite mind and body in the present. Initiate movement with deep breaths, stretching the whole body and then each side individually. Practice rolling smoothly from side to side, initiating the movement from the pelvis. Perform a supine twist, synchronizing the movement of knees and head with the breath. Move through a series of postures including a forward bend, a gentle backbend, and lunges, maintaining awareness of sensation and distinguishing between effort and pain. Conclude by returning to a supine position.

"With each exhalation, relax your back."

"Feel your body, relax your body."

Relaxation, a little bit of yoga nidra. Make yourselves comfortable, with your legs apart and arms a little away from the body. Close your eyes. Take a couple of deep inhalations and exhalations, and feel and relax your whole body from the toes to the top of the head, and from the top of the head back to the toes. Breath by breath, let go of all tensions. The body is relaxing: your arms, your shoulders, your neck. Let go of tensions from the back muscles. With each exhalation, relax your back. Take your awareness then to your face. Relax the eyebrows. Relax your jaws, and notice the breath moving in and out through the nostrils. With each inhalation, the belly rising, and with each exhalation, the belly falling. Take your awareness into your legs. Relax your hips, thighs, both knees, calf muscles, and your feet. Relax your whole body from the toes to the top of the head, and be aware of your being in this room. Your mind and your body are together for a short time. Withdraw your attention, your interest from the external world, from everything you have been doing till now and everything that may come in the future. Feel your body, relax your body. And now we will just take a little bit deeper inhalation and exhalation, and slowly you can start moving—moving your fingers, moving your toes, moving your arms and legs. With a deep inhalation, lift both arms up and over your head onto the floor. Hold the breath in as you stretch your whole body. Push the heels out, toes towards your knees, press your body to the floor a little bit, and take a long exhalation as you return the arms slowly beside your body. Release the stretch and return back to the relaxation state. And then we go again. Deep inhalation, stretch your whole body. Feel the body, feel the stretch, and long exhalation as your arms return back. Relax. And one more time: deep inhalation, stretch your body, and breathing out, release. Same practice with one side at a time. So on your next breath in, we stretch the right arm only, up over your head and extending your right hand. Right heel to opposite directions, feel the stretch on your right side, and then, on an exhalation, let go and let the arm go back. Relax the right arm and leg inside of your torso. And then, breathing in, left stretch. Left arm coming up, stretching the left side. Push the heel out, spread your fingers, feel the stretch. And exhalation, let go, relax. Right stretch again, breathing in, stretch the right side of your body. And let this stretch bring your full attention here to your body. Exhalation, let go. Left side, left hand, and left heel; your right leg is relaxed. Exhale. In this way, you can go ahead, please. One more stretch each side. And after you have finished the stretches, we will bring the arms one more time up over your head on the floor. This time, your breath goes freely, and put your palms together and your legs together. Feel how your body is straight, and try to keep that straightness of your body as you smoothly roll onto the right side. So the movement starts in your pelvis, and you feel it. Then, for a few seconds, just stay there, and then slowly roll back to the middle. Then, slowly roll onto the other side. Feel the movements, and then slowly come back and carry on. We go twice more this way to each side. You can feel when you begin the movement in your pelvis how it twists the body a little bit. It’s very nice in the back, and it’s possible that your arms remain in contact with the floor during the rolling. The next time when you come back from your left, you can finish, but there’s no need to speed up. Just peacefully complete your practice. And then your arms go at the height of your shoulders. We spread the arms at the shoulder level, palms facing up to the ceiling. Now, before we practice a twisting exercise, just notice if you’re holding tension in your arms or shoulders, and you can relax that. Take a deep inhalation, exhalation, feel your body, and then we bend the legs so the heels come as close to the buttocks as possible. Your feet remain on the floor, and there, take a deep breath in. Breathing out, your knees move to the right side. At the same time, your head rolls to the left, and you will look to the left hand, experiencing a twist in the lower back. Breathing in, and head and knees back in the middle. As you’re breathing out, your knees slowly go to the left, head rolls to the right. And you can continue; try to synchronize your legs, the head, and your breath together. No need to hurry, take time, and at the same time, as you are aware of your legs, head, and breath moving in synchronicity, you can feel in the lower back the twisting of this exercise. You can feel it in the abdominal area also, so you can feel it in your neck when the head is rolling side to side. And with this observation, let your full attention now return back to your body, and then you will naturally enjoy your practice. Keep going. We will do one more time to each side, and then the knees will go on the right and head to the left. Instead of moving in and out of the pose, this time we stay there and breathe a deep abdominal breath. With each exhalation, if this āsana brought some tensions to your attention, you can let go. Each exhalation, you relax a little—maybe in the thighs, maybe in your hips, maybe in the back. Next breath in, come slowly back to the middle. And then breathing out the other side, so knees left and head right, and also here, deep breathing. Keep your right arm on the floor, relaxed shoulder, relaxed elbow. Stay in the pose, breathe deeply, and next breath in, come back. Bring both knees to your chest, and pull your knees with both hands towards your chest, and we try, if you can, rolling forward and backwards. When you get into the speed of it, you can go all the way up so that your feet will touch the floor, and then going back and up and down. Feel your spine as you do this practice. Try to keep the neck, the chin near the chest so your whole spine is rounded a little bit, and you can finish in sitting and then turn around and sit in Vajrāsana at the back of your mat. We will practice Kathā Praṇām. So before we start, just again refresh your awareness, feel your body, feel your breath. And we begin with the first āsana, lifting up your arms, put your palms together, and then stretch the arms to the ceiling, abdominal breathing. Then, we separate the palms, and the upper arms will stay at the level of your ears. Take your attention to the hips, and slowly, from the hips, start bending forward until your hands, elbows, and forehead touch the floor, if possible. If not, go as far as you can go. Relax your shoulders, relax your lower back. And there we’re moving forward to the caterpillar. Hands a little forward, and bring your chest between the hands. Like your toes, elbows are pointing up, shoulder blades relaxed, so the whole weight of your chest is on the floor, not held by your hands or arm muscles. Place the hips down, then press your pelvis to the floor, using your back and abdominal muscles to lift your chest up a little bit. Keep shoulders soft, not near the ears. Keep them relaxed and look up. Belly stays on the floor. This is the Bhujaṅgāsana, the cobra. Now we put full weight on the arms and lift up into the Sumeru Āsana, the mountain pose. Good. Now you can look at your hands and then take a step forward with your right foot. So you place your right foot beside the right hand. Ideally, the palms should be like this, but that makes our leg not straight. So you can be on the fingertips and look up. And let the hips sink lower down, so you feel the muscles. Feel your foot a little more forward and a little bit more to that side. Yes. Good. Now let go of the floor. Come with the torso straight like this. Keep your legs low, and then lift your arms up. Again, here is a stretch of the arms up to the ceiling, and the hips are sinking down to the floor. Feel your breath, and then separate your palms and hands slowly down. We keep looking up, straight back. Next movement, left foot is going forward beside the right foot, and hands beside your feet. If you cannot touch the floor, just be relaxed. Look down towards your navel or your thighs so that your neck is relaxed. And if your back is fine, you can try now lifting up from the hips. So your arms go first, then come near the ears, and then you keep going up. If not, then just come up naturally as you can, palms together, and again stretch to the ceiling. And a little bit is like if you are pressing the elbows to each other, so it makes the stretch better. Now, here you can notice, often we put more weight on the toes. If that’s the case, put a little more on your heels and notice the change, how it makes your legs more relaxed. Put palms apart. Again, if the back can handle it, you can keep the upper arms near the ears and start bending forward. Relax in that position, looking down, and make yourself relaxed. The blood you can feel is returning down to your hands, to your face. We are going to step back with the right foot. Big step back. Step back, knee on the floor. Your distance between the knee and the foot has to be a bit bigger, yes, so that you can feel this going a little lower down. Pain? Yes, pain, good. Not pain, you need to be able to distinguish between pain and effort. If the muscles are just surprised slightly, that they haven’t been moved or stretched this way for a long time, that we don’t call pain, yeah? It’s a surprise. But if the pain is there, then of course we have to do something about it. Back down. Good. Now, you can have your full palms down, tuck your toes on the right foot, and step back with your left. Sumeru Āsana. Gently, we are sort of pressing our heels to the floor. Stay in the position a little longer. Very refreshing for our head, for the brain, the circulation. Then both knees on the floor, and we will go into Cobra. So it’s like a swinging chest between your hands, hips down, press the pelvis to the floor, and lift it. Elbows, if possible, close to the ribs, shoulders soft. So the āsana is held by your back and abdominal muscles and a little bit by your arms. When we push a little back into the Caterpillar, keep the shoulder blades relaxed; you can feel that point between the shoulder blades. If your arms are relaxed, you can clearly feel it. Good, then try to push back into Śaśāṅkāsana, so it’s like you’re pushing the floor away. Or you need to maybe lift up a little bit, sitting on your heels, forehead, elbows, hands on the floor. This is a very nice posture, especially for our back, and also for digestion. So now we can try again to lift up from the hips to the last position, palms together, stretch to the ceiling, and then separate your palms and slowly bring your hands down on the under leg. Lie down, please, on your back.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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