Unlock Your Hamstrings 45 Min Practice Along

hi friends Kathy Medio here back with another video this one a practice along to unlock those hamstrings you might be one of my newer subscribers who subscribed after watching this one video that seemed to pick up a lot of traction that I posted over two years ago called unlock your hamstrings fast if you haven't watched that video I want you to pause this video before practicing watch that video so you can get the fundamentals and then come back to this practice along if you're one of my new subscribers from watching that video I want to say thank you so much for all of your amazing comments I've been reading through all of them and for for clicking that subscribe button in order to get the best results from this video you'll really going to need some props and so if you don't have yoga props like two blocks a strap and a blanket I want you to pause the video and just go get creative around your house I'm going to be doing the entire class with props and taking more of a modified looking pose so that you can see yourself more in me and not see a final kind of destination because here's the thing about yoga and our postures is that that destination is actually an illusion the poses are just there to help us get information about our body we're not trying to look or achieve anything in the pose we are just in the pose and so we're going to accept our bodies in the present moment so much about flexibility is in the mind it's the way our brain sends signals to our muscles to either tighten or relax so when I ask you to do things like breathe or soften or let go that's kind of what I'm trying to do is trigger that parasympathetic nervous system to start to tell your muscles that you're safe and it's it's okay to relax so with all that said grab your props and let's get started [Music] foreign [Music] make sure you have two blocks two pillows would also work here and a long strap and I will show you where we're going to center today you'll have the soles of your feet together and then you'll take those two blocks just to the outside of the thigh bone there and you can see I've placed them in a diagonal position so we have the nice side edge resting on our thighs there so set up for your cobbler's pose or soup to botticanasana here and one of the reasons why we're putting the props underneath us is because you can even feel what this feels like when you don't have them there The Joint starts to get a little stressed and then those muscles start to tense up now sometimes we want tension in our joints in order to deepen but for this we don't so we want to take all that tension out and take a passive stretch here and the adductors and the hip joint now you can just close down your eyes here we'll just take a few moments to center before we begin moving our bodies as you're here do your best to breathe in and out through your nose allowing your belly to be soft deep inhales and exhales watch your breath go in and watch it go out we'll just do our best throughout class today to get out of our own way if negative thoughts come up such as like oh I feel so tight or I'm not flexible just let them come up but just watch them as they come up without judgment and let them pass and that will begin the process of detaching to those thoughts you might notice you're starting to feel more relaxed we want to be relaxed here in order to stretch our muscles deeply you can blink open your eyes you'll set the blocks aside heel toe your feet in hug your right knee into your chest allow your low back to flatten here so you'll stretch your low back take your right knee over to the left we'll take a spinal twist and you might notice we're stretching the outer hip here as we do that we'll come back to Center and just simply switch sides so left knee hugs in flatten your low back right hand comes to the outside the left knee you're shifting your right hip onto the mat left hip is straight on top and left arm is to the left focusing this little bit less on a Twist and more on an outer stretch of the hip and we'll come back to Center have both knees bent soles of the feet underneath your knees and take your hands and just find your frontal hip points here the Bony part of the front of the hip that's pointing up and just you're going to keep your fingers there to stabilize the hip joint as you let your right leg go out to the side the right knee and then back in so out to the side and back in so these are kind of supine clam shells here as we just begin to externally rotate the right knee out and Bracken and we will switch so left knee goes out and in trying to keep the hips from following the knee that's why we're placing our hands here and you're just noticing any stiffness and you're not judging you're just noticing really everything that we feel in our body is sensation and unless it's painful like throbbing shooting burning discomfort and sensation is normal the next thing we'll do is take our hands and clasp them behind the right leg and we will Flex the right foot and point it flex and point it flex and point it we'll keep it flexed now and we'll straighten the leg if the hands have to come out behind the thigh to straighten the leg or if the leg needs to lower a little bit please do that and so we're just kind of beginning to warm up the hamstring here good next we'll Bend straighten point Bend straighten point so foot goes flexed as you bend straighten Point Flex the foot bend the knee will take the strap around the sole of the foot now and we'll begin to straighten out the legs so I want you to lower the leg as low as you need to to get it straight okay so wherever your leg is straight or you're at a 90 degree here from here I want you to take your left hand and bring it to that frontal hip Point again and begin to straighten your left leg and then allow your low back to come off the mat and it's natural curvature there in the lumbar spine notice if you're tensing your grip with the strap I want you to slide your hands down a little bit let the upper body be relaxed here and then I want you to really Flex through your right foot and press the strap into the or press your foot into the strap and then pull the strap in towards your chest so now we're stretching the Achilles heel and the calf as well and the foot is flexed like this a deep breaths take your hand left hand hold the strap take your right hand like a horseshoe here you'll want to lower the leg a little bit and I want you to put this horseshoe grip inside your hip joint so this is called hip traction you're giving yourself an adjustment and what I want you to do is press down the thigh your thigh and then see if you can bring your right foot up a little bit closer now you're only going as close as you can keep the legs straight good now we'll keep this we're not doing a full twist just a little bit of like a lean over with the right leg to the left and now we'll bring the leg up switch the grip left hand onto the thigh or the hip poi