Transcription:

We have a wonderful program for you today. The only prop you'll need is something to put underneath your hips for the last exercise and a wall, and that's where we're heading off now. The first exercise uses the wall.

Just watch how I lower myself and follow along with me, please. I've got my feet about a foot away from the wall like this. I'm just going to lower myself using the wall. And trying to get my body as close to my heels as possible. That feels very good. And sit like this for a while. You'll feel a stretch in this area here. Don't do anything, just rest for a moment there. And it doesn't matter where your knees are, higher or lower, just wherever they come to under their own weight, feel the sensations in this part of the body here.

Now, lift your knees up just a little bit like this. Put your hands behind the knees like this, then use your bottom muscles to press the knees down to the floor. You'll feel it as you press the knees down onto your hands, these muscles here will activate. Then stop that. Take a breath in. Let everything go soft and use the same muscles to press the legs down a bit more towards the floor.

Now, let's say you come to here, something like this, now put your hands on the knees, don't press them down, and instead press the soles of your feet together as though you're doing a chest exercise except with your feet. So I'm pressing the soles of my feet together now. And we'll use a long count for this. Five, four, three, two, one. Slowly stop that. Hold onto your feet, take a breath in, and on a breath out, press the knees down a little bit further if you can. And what you'll feel is that the feeling of the stretch becomes more diffuse now. It's actually over a wider area as legs get down lower.

Then the third part of this exercise is put your hands back on your knees again. And I like to straighten my arms so you can lift your shoulders up like this. It just makes them easier to hold. And then in that position, I'm trying to lift the knees away from the floor. So to bring the knees together like this, but against the resistance of my arms. So again, a long count. Five, four, keep lifting, three, two, one. Slowly stop. Hold your feet again, take in another breath. Let everything go completely soft and press the knees down to the ground using your bottom muscles at first. And then if you need a bit more assistance, press the knees down also using your arms. But what we've learned is the more you can make these muscles stretch other muscles in the body, or any half of a pair of muscles stretch its opposite, the quicker the re-mapping in the brain. And wherever you've come to, for this part of the session, just hold that position and we'll stay in this position for four or five breaths.

You'll find that as your legs relax, the legs will naturally settle onto the floor. Or if you're not yet quite on the floor, the legs will go down closer to the floor. And the last thing we'll do in preparation for later exercise is, sitting here with the legs as low as you can, hold your feet. Watch what I'm doing with my lower back. I'm slumping and I'm arching. Slumping, arching. Slumping arching. And that starts the awareness of the all important pelvic movements for this sequence of exercises.

Okay. Now, to let the hips at the back here relax, there are a number of ways that we can do this, but the easiest way we have found is simply to separate your feet and do, what Olivia calls a Z pose, I call the figure four. It's the same exercise. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then just extend the legs and get them to roll around. You will find that that will settle the hips down completely.

Next, an exercise we call the elephant walk. Now, I'm going to turn side onto you to show the mechanics of this. The side view is an easier way to see all the critical bits. I'm going to pull the trousers up a bit to get a bit of room in there. And I'm using my hands to lower my body onto my legs. And on one of the cameras, you'll probably be able to see now that my tummy and then my ribs are resting on my thighs. And for the elephant walk, that's critical.

Now, if you find that you can't rest your fingers on the floor, like I can like this, of course you can use a block or something else that will do the same job. And then the first part of the pose is simply to let the back of the neck, relax like this, and let your back bend and so your body rests firmly on your thighs. That is critical. And the essence of the elephant walk, I'll do the movement and then we'll do it together, is simply to straighten one leg until you feel the stretch, and then let that relax. Straighten another leg. Well, I should say try to because you'll see that my legs are nowhere near straight. But this movement here, you can see the body's swaying now, the hips moving from side to side, this is what we call the elephant walk.

Now, let's just break this down a little bit more. You can move yourself across to one leg like this, and you'll find that when you're resting more of your weight on this leg, it becomes easier to straighten the other leg. So try to do that, but again, without letting your body leave the leg here. So that's one side. And I'll turn away from you a little bit now. Straighten this leg.

You can also, by using little arm bending movements, you can let the weight of your body stretch your lower back. And then come back to the front like this. Let the back of the neck relax completely. And now do the whole sequence. In your own time, gently move like so.

Don't worry if you find that you can't straighten your legs—it took me years to be able to do this. You might find that when you get to here, this will already be enough of a stretch. So just stay there and breathe and relax. Try and let yourself go a bit closer to the feet. And in time, as you feel this muscle letting go of it, you use this muscle to gently try to straighten the leg a bit more. So altogether. And you can swing around like this too. All together. This is the elephant walk. And then use your arms to lift yourself up like so. This is an absolutely extraordinarily effective exercise for loosening all the fascia right down to your heels and even the soles of your feet too, if your calf muscles are tight. I, honestly, nothing will improve your hamstring flexibility quicker than mastering this pose.

Okay. And then we have another one we call the wide leg elephant walk. This is what it looks like. As the name suggests, you've got a wider stance. I've got my knees bent slightly. I lower myself. And again, you can use the blocks, but most people find they can actually reach their fingertips onto the floor in this pose. Let the back bend so... Let me just go through that bit again. The back is straight to here. And when you're letting your body's weight go between your knees, you'll feel a stretch up underneath the glutes here. Then let your back bend. Let the back of the neck relax. Let the head hang free. And the wide leg elephant walk, as the name suggests, is simply to repeat those same leg straightening actions, but this time with your body in between the legs to begin with.

So just follow along. You can have the knees as bent as you need to. And all the while, you are trying to get your face to go a little bit closer to the floor. So that's working in the middle position. Now watch. I'm going to walk across to this leg here like this. And you'll have to take this on faith, my body is completely relaxed. So I'm just letting the weight of my upper body do all the stretching up underneath the glutes here. And then once I've got to this side, I try to straighten my right leg while my shoulder is inside the line of the knee, as you can probably see.

Then across to this side. Take your time with this. I'm a little bit tight on this side so I'm going to spend a moment in this position trying to get my shoulder past the knee here like this. And then one, two. Feels absolutely wonderful. Ask yourself, where do you feel this? How does it feel? And can I relax a bit more so that it feels better.

Now for the middle position. Last time, I'm going to let myself go even lower. If you want, you can hold onto your ankles, but it might be quite enough to do this, but I'm going to make it a slightly bit stronger for myself. Might let the legs go apart a little bit wider. And then watch: with my body pulled as close to the floor as I can today, then once more. One, two, three, four. Hang around for a while and breathe deeply. Don't ever hold your breath doing these poses. And then last of all, try straightening both legs together. Stick your butt out as much as you can. That moves the pelvis. Wonderful, wonderful sensation.

Bring your feet together. And I'm just going to settle down on my feet here because this, in fact, is the start position of the next exercise, which I've called the 'bent-leg cossack'. In a later lesson, we made it a whole cossack squat, but it takes quite a bit of strength and flexibility. This version here is just a very good stretching exercise. Also too, notice that while I'm resting here talking to you, I'm on the balls of my feet. I come up really high like this. It's a good balancing exercise and it's also a nice little toe stretch. And so I mention that because in normal daily life, as much as possible, try to incorporate movements that last week or last month would have been stretching exercises, but now adjust part of your normal movement pattern.

So I'm going to rest my weight on this leg here. Watch. Slowly take this leg out to the side like this. Also, if it's comfortable, you can rest on the knee. It's a bit more stable for some people, but I'm perfectly comfortable on the ball of the foot. I'm going to do two things. I'm stabilizing myself with this hand here. I reach the arm that's closest to the foot and hold the outside of the foot like this. And then we're going to apply the same kind of leg straightening actions we've been using so far. And that's a very relaxed movement for me today. If you want a stronger movement, put this hand over this side and reach this arm through, like so. Pull your body onto the leg and then slowly work at this action of trying to straighten the left leg, in this case. Straighten your back, lift the chest, try to straighten the leg.

Of course, if you need to rest your feet in between, have a little rest and just hit pause. I'm going to go straight through and do the other leg, which will look like this. First, the closer hand. We call these little movements pulsing movements. And if you're feeling a bit looser today, reach the other hand around, pull the body.

I just noticed something. In order to get my body on the leg, I move this hand further away from it—still supporting me, but now watch. With the leg sufficiently bent, when I reach to here like this, now my chest and shoulders actually on the leg. So that's a bit more advanced position. And from that new position, work at trying to straighten the leg.

Now, where do you feel this one? Some people, calf muscles. Some people, hamstring muscles. Some people, hip. And for me today, it's actually lower back on this side as I reach down and turn like this. That feels very nice.

Now, my left leg was a bit tighter today. So I'm going to go back and stretch it briefly one more time. And I recommend that you all do that. Always stretch your tighter side one more time. This time, because I've done a bit of a warm up, I'm going to put this shoulder on this leg like this. So reach this hand further into the set. Hold. Now it's already loosened up.

Now, a note on the speed of this movement. If you find that moving like this, that is to say half the speed of the poses that I've been using, then that's the way you must do it. In other words, you have to find your own rhythm and you have to find your own intensity. No one can teach you that. That's excellent. So that's a warm up for our last pose, which a very famous pose in yoga, we're only going to do a fraction of it.

The reason I'm using the bolster underneath my hips... And you're going to open your legs out like this. So just do that now while I'm talking. I'm keeping my knees bent. Now, this is the critical thing. Watch this part of the body here. We want to be able to do pelvis movements. That is to say, if you watch carefully, the pelvis is moving inside the legs. You can slump back like this. And you might find that when you're slumped back like this that you actually feel a stretch in this area here. I know I do today. But the key thing then is from the slump position, you ask yourself, "What muscles do I need to use to do this? To sit up straight." And then practice that movement a few times because if you look here, you'll see that sitting up straight is rolling the pelvis forward. And in this pose, where eventually we're going to put our chest on the ground, this movement here is the fundamental movement.

So just to put all those things together now, just watch. I move to this side, I arch the back and move the pelvis forwards. I move to this side and slump back. So if you think about it, I'm drawing big circles in one direction with my pelvis. I imagine I have a tail and I'm drawing pictures with it. The other way. And all of these movements together, they will loosen up the fascia and the muscles of the lower back. You'll end up looking and feeling supple. That is the goal. So many of us, and especially in Western culture, are really bound up in the hips and lower back. Just simple movements like this that require no effort whatsoever, but rather a simple exploration of a new range of movement without effort—that will change the way you move, it will change the way you feel. That feels beautiful today.

Okay. Then we'll keep the leg bent for now, and we'll bend down towards this leg. I'm going to reach this hand up into the set like this for balance. And then, watch, I'm going to reach. One, two. And as I reach, I'm trying to reach something past my fingertips. You will find these muscles and these muscles will tighten. There's a very complicated relationship in science called the reciprocal inhibition reflex. I won't go into this now, except to say that by actively reaching, you can actually relax the muscles on the other side of the movement with the muscles we're trying to stretch. So you see that I've reached, I've reached, I've reached, and my whole body now is on the leg. Lift myself back out. Go to this leg. Still with the knee bent, support hand, reach, reach, reach, reach. And that brings my body in contact with the leg here.

And then last of all, separate the legs a bit more. Still even with the knees straight, just feel that you've still got that pelvic movement thing happening. With the leg straight, once again, reach. Breathe in, reach, breathe out, breathe in. And then hold your foot like this. You can let the foot wiggle in and out. You can try a little movement sideways like this, but you can get the feeling in your own body that if you practice this, eventually you'll be able to put your face on your legs and your body will be resting on the leg like this in complete contact and everything soft and relaxed.

The other side. My tighter side today. Reach, hold. Reach, hold. Reach, hold. Hold the foot. Reach, reach, reach. Hold the foot. Straighten your back. And now you can see that the ribs are on the thigh, the leg is straight. I pull back on my arms. That straightens the low back. I'll just exaggerate that movement. That's the other way. This is the movement that we want. And let yourself go down towards that leg. Come back up.

And just a couple of little exploration movements forward. Nothing exaggerated. What you don't want to see, and this is what you see all the time, is people reaching like this with their back bent. That will not help you. What we want, in fact, is the back to be straight and for the movement that we're going for to be happening from the pelvis. And that's because these muscles here are letting the pelvis roll over.

So just spend a moment exploring these movements. I'll show you a couple of other little, just very simple things to do. I'm pressing myself with this arm away from this leg. It becomes a gentle, really gentle, stretch in here. Feels very pleasant. And I'll try that on the other side. But you can see, I think, from how I'm doing this that my whole body's relaxed in this position. And I remind you that the reason for using the mat under your bottom or any support is to tip the body forward. It makes all of these movements so much easier to do, and it helps those movements to feel natural in the body. And in the end, flexibility is nothing more than, in particular positions, feeling natural in the body, whereas before they felt like they were a massive effort.

All right, that's all we have for you today. This session will probably leave you feeling a tiny bit sore. Don't worry. Have a bath, move around and we'll see you next time.

Program 18: ‘Tailor pose’, z-pose recovery, standing legs apart, bent-leg Cossack, floor legs-apart intro

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