Beginner Yoga Class (40 Min Practice Along)

hi kathy madeo here back with another video this one a beginner yoga class if you're brand new to yoga or you just want to refine your alignment and your postures this class is for you we will be using some props so if you have anything around that is like two blocks you could get creative around the house and a blanket let's get started we'll get started in a cross-legged seated posture known as tsukasana or easy seat i want you to take your block whether or not you think you need it or a pillow or cushion and sit up on it because ultimately we want the knees lower than the waist so you'll cross at your shin bones and flex your feet and place your feet somewhere close to underneath your knees and then from there we'll bring the hands to gently rest on tops of our legs and before we close our eyes let's just find some nice alignment here so if you gently press your hands into your legs you'll feel a lengthening through your spine that's called axial extension so you you want to focus when we say reach the crown of your head up that's the purpose of that to find a lot of length and kind of decompression throughout the spinal column so gently press into the legs reach the crown of your head up and you can close down your eyes here if you haven't already and as you close your eyes you might notice a subtle shift or transition maybe the sounds around you get a more intense or you can feel the prop underneath your seat with a little bit more intensity and so what we're doing is just making that shift into being aware we're being mindful and we'll use this awareness as mindfulness throughout our practice today so that we begin to move with more intention to ultimately come into alignment and find freedom in our body we'll take a few more moments here just if any thoughts are coming up let them come up and you can watch them and just let them pass by bring your awareness to your breath just gently watch your breath come in [Music] and out through your nose with your mind's eye you might notice just taking a couple minutes here and what we call centering perhaps calms you it's triggering your parasympathetic nervous system so you can feel a little bit more relaxed we'll bring our hands into anjali mudra so you'll press the fingers together the thumbs together take the backs of your thumbs and press them into your sternum and lift the crown of the head up a little bit more we'll take an inhale in and exhale you can bow in and we'll release our hands gently open up our eyes and we'll come off of our prop and come into child's pose known as balasana so your knees are wide big toes touch you'll walk your hands out in front of you hands are wider than your shoulders and release your upper trap muscles so that you feel space in between your shoulders and your ears and just breathe here continuing to create that mindful awareness in your body and feel the stretch perhaps in your low back and hips wherever your tightest you'll feel generally the most take another breath here and we'll walk our hands back and bring our knees together in thunderbolt and if this is in an uncomfortable position you can sit right up on your block so we'll be using props throughout and i'll always use the prop for you so you can see how to use it and we'll bring our arms out in front of us nice straight arms make a tight fist and just circle your hands so people don't often realize how much weight bearing we do on our hands in yoga switch directions and if you're never done that before you usually don't have the strength to be able to bear the weight of your body so it's important to condition your wrists we'll take starbursts so you'll flick the fingers out from the palms and then make that tight fist and flick and we'll do this a few more times and we'll go a little bit faster four five four three two one and we'll take one more round of stretches here you'll have your right hand your palm facing forward and you'll pull your fingers back the four fingers and you can circle out the right thumb in one direction and then switch and then we'll do the opposite so we'll stretch now the top of the hand the wrist and the forearm and we'll just simply switch so left wrist extends we'll pull the fingers back circle out the left thumb in one direction then the opposite direction fingertips down get a nice stretch there we'll shake it out and we'll come into tabletop and if your knees feel sensitive you can place a blanket right underneath your knees which i'll do so shoulders right above the wrists knees hips distance apart we'll take some cat cows so you'll allow your belly to drop bring your shoulder blades together and gaze upward on your exhale flex your spine so this is our cat stretch bring your chin into your chest you'll notice the pelvis tucks under and we'll continue on here so inhale pull the chest through extend your spine use your exhale to flex your spine push the floor away with your hands we'll take two more inhale and exhale you're riding the wave of your breath so you're using your whole inhale to do the movement and the whole exhale into that cat stretch and we'll come to a neutral spine and take some dancing lines so we're basically just doing big circles this is great to get the synovial fluid going the shoulder and hip joint as we circle around and we'll switch directions here we'll meet back in our tabletop position and we'll take balancing tabletop so first we'll curl the right toes under and straighten the leg and just rock back and forth here you'll get a nice stretch of your calf and your achilles heel and we'll find that neutral position lift your right leg up but keep your outer hip closed so we're not opening here we're closing it and shift your weight to your right hand and you'll stretch your left arm forward make sure your left thumb is pointing up that will keep the upper arm bone in a healthy rotation here and we're just holding this is like a classic core exercise so good so trying to keep the front ribs down and we'll exhale release and we'll switch sides left toes curl under we'll just start by rocking forward and back and we'll come to our starting position here and lift the left leg up we'll flex the left foot weight shifts to your left hand reach your right arm forward so your neck is nice and long nice neutral spine here as we hold the heel doesn't need to go any higher than the hip same with your right wrist doesn't need to go any higher than the right shoulder another breath and we will release we'll sit back on our heels for a moment you can move the blanket out from underneath you we'll just circle the wrists here for a moment and then we'll dive right into our downward facing dog so hands come a little bit more forward than they were in your tabletop curl your toes under lift your hips up and press your chest back now you might be inclined to want to straighten your legs and round your low back but i'd rather have you bend your knees a little bit so you can keep the pe