Yoga Class by Katy Wright – Part 2

Mountain

We’ll begin today’s yoga practice with a good, solid mountain pose… So step your feet hip-width apart, engage your quads, and from that strong foundation, lift through the crown of your head, so your body feels long. Now engage your core muscles to bring further stability to the body, in preparation for tree pose.

Tree pose

Shift your weight into your left foot – and keep the leg active, with your thigh muscles engaged. Give yourself a moment to really root down through that left foot, before bringing your right heel to the inside of your left ankle – you can use your toes to help you balance. Begin to open the right knee out to the side.

This might be enough of a challenge, but if you’re feeling steady, you can bring your foot a little higher, onto your calf – so that the only thing now supporting you is your left leg.

Make sure your hips are facing forward – only the right knee is opening out to the side.

Still feeling good? Then perhaps you can bring your hands onto your hips, or even overhead.

Wherever your arms are, take another long inhale, then as you exhale, bring your right foot – and your arms if they’re overhead – back down.

We’ll take a few breaths here, so you have time to re-establish your foundations, before switching to the other side…

So, with a strong, active right leg and a firm core, bring your left heel onto the inside of your right ankle, and open your knee out to the side. Again, be aware of what your hips are doing – they’ll want to follow the direction of your left knee, but we want to keep them facing forward, so you get a good hip stretch.

Stay here, or bring your left foot a little higher and, again, decide what to do with your arms – then stick with your decision so you can focus on balancing. It can help to find something to focus on – a steady gaze brings steadiness into a posture.

Take a couple more breaths in the posture, then come down with an exhale and shake out your legs if you need to.

Standing pose – forward fold – halfway – forward fold – downward facing dog – lunge – RIGHT

Step your feet apart, hip-width, and bring your arms to the sides of your body. Then as you inhale, bring your arms up over head, and as you exhale, swan dive forward into a forward fold. Inhale and lift halfway – with your hands either on your shins or your hips – lengthen through the spine and then as you breathe out, fold forward again.

Plant your hands firmly on the mat, shoulder-width apart, and step back to downward facing dog. Take a breath or two here, then with an inhale, bring your right leg up behind you. As you exhale, move your shoulders forward and draw the right leg through, so that you can begin to walk your foot up between your hands and into a lunge.

Warrior 2 – RIGHT

Drop your left heel, so your foot is now flat on the mat, with the outer edge of the foot parallel with the back edge of the mat.

Push into your right foot, so you can bring your hands onto your right knee and then open your body to the side, so your chest and hips are now facing the long edge of the mat. Your right arm should be pointing towards the front of the mat, and your left arm towards the back.

Keep your back leg strong and straight, and check what your front leg is doing… We want the knee of the bent leg to be in line with the toes, to protect the knee joint – don’t let it collapse inward.

Now cast your gaze over your right hand and enjoy the feeling of strength that comes with Warrior 2!

Extended side angle – RIGHT

Keeping your legs exactly as they are, lower your right elbow to your right thigh, for extended side angle pose… Your left arm comes up to a vertical position.

Try not to bring all your weight forward – keep the back leg active, and make sure you’re not resting your ribs on your right thigh.

Reverse (‘rebel’) warrior – RIGHT

From extended side angle, we’re going to move into ‘reverse warrior’ pose, so again, keeping the legs exactly as they are, lift your torso and place your left hand on your left leg and bring your right arm up and over, so you feel a stretch through the entire right side of your body.

Be aware of what your right knee is doing – is it still in line with your knee? And is your back leg straight and strong? How about that top shoulder? – if it’s scrunched up towards your ear, drop your shoulder.

Take another inhale here, then with the exhale, cartwheel your hands back to the mat, placing them either side of your right foot, and step back to downward facing dog – ready to do it all again on the opposite side…

Lunge – warrior 2 – extended side angle – reverse (‘rebel’) warrior – LEFT

So you’re going to inhale as you raise your left leg this time… And exhale as you then bring the left knee forward and plant your foot between your hands – you can pick it up and put it there if it doesn’t go that far!

Drop your right heel so your foot is flat on the mat – we want the edges of the foot glued to the mat, not lifting away, and your leg should be straight and active.

Now push into your left foot as you lift your body up to a vertical position and open out to the right – your left arm will be in front and your right arm will be pointing to the back of the mat.

Check the alignment of your left knee – is it in line with your toes? We want to keep it there to avoid twisting the knee joint, and also so we can really open that left hip.

Take a few more breaths, making sure that your weight is evenly distributed across both feet. And gaze over your left hand. How are your shoulders doing? If they coming up towards your ears, then relax your shoulders – feel your shoulder blades sliding down the back of your body.

Now for the transition to extended side angle… So bring your left elbow down onto your left thigh. The right arm comes up to a vertical position.

Make sure your left knee is tracking over your left foot. And notice what’s happening to your body – is your chest facing the side of the mat, or is it turned towards the mat? If that’s the case, see if you can roll your right ribs back and bring your left ribs forward – it can be helpful to imagine your body as a spinning barrel!

Wait for the next inhale and then lift your torso up to vertical in preparation for reverse warrior.

This time, you’re putting your right hand on your right leg, and your left arms comes up and over, so you get that delicious stretch through the left side of the torso.

We’ll take a couple more breaths here… And then, with an exhale, you’re going to come back up and ‘windmill’ or ‘cartwheel’ your hands back down to the mat, either side of your left foot, so that you can step back into downward facing dog.

Child’s pose

After all that, let’s take a nice, restorative child’s pose for a moment. So drop down onto your knees, bring your big toes together and open your knees out. Then take your hips back towards your feet – or as close as they’ll comfortably go. Leave your arms extended out in front, shoulders relaxed.

You can rest your head on the mat, or if that’s not easy for you, rest your head on a block. It’s important that you can relax your neck and shoulders.

Here, take a big breath in – feeling the back of your body expanding as you do – and then let the breath out through your mouth.

Table top – sitting

Okay, let’s take that energy into our final postures.

Come up to a kneeling position and then bring your legs out in front of you, with your knees bent, so that you can roll down onto your back, ready for ‘low bridge’ pose.

‘Low bridge’

With your arms by your sides, walk your heels back towards your hips – and keep them hip-width apart. And then walk your fingertips towards your heels. From here, I want you to press into your feet and hands, and the back of your head, as you lift your hips a few inches from the mat.

See if you can work a little harder in this posture by moving your knees forward, whilst bringing your chest towards your chin. But make sure you can still breathe – you throat shouldn’t feel closed!

Still feeling good? Then lift your hips higher still! You can change the position of your arms, too – just clasp your hands beneath your back and roll your shoulders under slightly, so your chest lifts a little bit higher.

Your knees might want to move out to the sides – don’t let them! – keep your thighs parallel.

Take another inhale here, and then with the exhale, release your hands if they were clasped and lower yourself back down to the mat, before bringing your knees towards your chest.

Knee hug

Wrap your arms around your knees, and gently draw them closer to your body with each exhale, so you feel a good stretch in you lower back.

Corpse pose

When you’re ready, place your feet back on the mat and either leave them there, with your knees bent, or stretch your legs out along the mat and let your feet fall out to the sides. Your arms should be stretched out too – a few inches away from your body – and your palms turned up towards the ceiling.

Do what you need to do to feel comfortable and even throughout your body (remember, you can prop your knees up, or support them with a bolster or blanket).

And consciously relax any parts of your body where you’re holding tension.

It’s important to give yourself time for savasana (corpse pose) at the end of a yoga practice, because it gives the body time to integrate what you’ve just done in your practice. Often, after exercise, we just get up and go, but by taking this time to relax, we allow the cells in the body to make a memory of all the work we did, so that next time, it’s that little bit easier.

Now, prepare your body to come out of corpse pose, by bringing back some movement to your fingers and toes… then your wrists and ankles. You might want to take a stretch overhead too.

Sitting

Now slowly come back up to a seated position – any way it feels good for you – kneeling, crossed legs, knees drawn to your chest… And take a big breath in… then slowly let it out.

Well done, you did it!