Lessons

Lesson Info

Hips, Knees and Feet

go ahead and start off in a cross legged position. But what we're really gonna dio is from your cross legged position. Keep your bottom foot on the bottom. Let's start with the left foot, actually, sir, altogether, And then take your right foot and put it on top. And you can kind of go wherever you're comfortable here. Ideally, you have your ankle over your knee ish and your knee over your ankle. So that's your ideal position. But this might not be for you. Not yet, anyway. So if you want, you can come out a little bit out here. The idea is that right here you're making a little triangle. Alright, so wherever you're comfortable, that's where you could be and go ahead and remove any flesh. So you're sitting straight on your sit bones. All right, go ahead, inhale up and exhale forward. You might only lean this far because this is definitely intense on the hips. You can go to your elbow or further try to keep your back straight and keep your tush on the ground. Keep your neck straight as ...

well. Don't let it hang over. All right. Deep breath in every inhale thing about extending every exhale. Think about leaning forward just a little bit more warmer. Inhale and exhale. Go ahead, inhale yourself. Back up and we're going to switch our feets now. The right foot is going on. The bottom left foot is going on top. Guess yourself seated nice and evenly Deep breath in, inhale and exhale. Walk your hands wherever you are, slightly less than comfortable keeping your back straight. So what we'll do in this lesson is we're really going to work primarily on the hips. Because if you have lower back pain, knee pain, foot pain, ankle pain, a lot of it has to do with your hips. One more deep breath in. Yeah, and exhale out and deep breath in and walk yourself to the center. Perfect. All right, let's go ahead. Straighten our legs out. Nice pike position. Gonna just inhale a little bit. Make sure that you are nice and flat here and then exhale. Start walking your hands down your legs wherever you are This time we are looking for hamstring stretch here. Alright. So wherever you are a songs you can feel that stretch. The legs do have to be straight here. All right. You might be here. You might be a little lower. You get nice and low again. Don't hang your head. You want to keep it nice and straight, and definitely keep your feet flex as much as possible. This helps you get a nice stretch. Not only your hamstrings, but in the back of your knee and your upper kaffes. Deep breath in and out. Deep breath in and out. Good. Now walk yourself back up. You want to bend your right leg and reach your left hand to hold the outside of your foot? Your right hand's gonna come down for stabilization. Everyone is going to feel the stretch in very different parts. You might be feeling it right now, but what? We're attempting the stretches our I T band. Let's go ahead, lean back a little so your right foot comes up, then you're going to straighten as much as you can. You might not be on the street and all the way, and that's okay, but if you can ideally, you're coming all the way straight and then go ahead and lean and move your right foot. Start bringing it over your left until you feel that stretch right here in your ICBM, it's going to run. Hopefully, you get the stretch. So it runs all the way from your hip down past the side of your knee, down all the way to your foot and sometimes all the way down to your inner arch, keeping your Bacchus straight as possible. If you don't feel it, almost arch your back a little bit. You will definitely feel it. After that. It's a deep breath in and out. This is gonna really so much tension in your legs. Sometimes it completely eliminates all new pain. Good. Comeback to the center. Bring it down. We're going to switch sides, so bend your left leg, Right, right hand comes around. Hold onto the outside of your foot. Left hand comes down for stabilization. Who lift up, straighten as much as you can. I'm going to just go right here with this leg so that you can see what it looks like. If your knee is bent and then go ahead and move, you're right foot. I'm so your left foot over your right. If you don't feel it here, straighten your back more and ideally, straighten your leg a little bit more I don't feel any stretch my hamstrings This is not for your hamstrings. If you feel more in your hamstrings let your foot come down a little so you can straighten your leg and start feeling it in your I t band Deep breath in and deep breath out Deep breath in You can also mess if you wanna raise it a little bit Here just stretches different parts and deep breath out One more in and exhale Come back to the center Perfect. So go ahead and go into butterfly pose because your lower back Well, I felt that as well. Deep breath in on then. Round yourself down over your feet Really releasing your lower back Because it does cause some tension. You could go to the right to the left Just working out that tension there. Good. Then let your head hang. You could wiggle it from side to side, Thio. Good. All right, let's come on back up and scoot yourself a little bit closer to the front of your mat and swing your legs around. All right? We're gonna work on our hip flexor has actually come a little bit to the back of your mat for this one. If you have any trouble with your knee on option is always to take your mat, fold it a little bit because you are going to be leaning on your knees a little bit. I tend to find that uncomfortable. So I'm going to go ahead, put my knees down here. So go ahead. Come on up and we're gonna put our left foot forward and slowly, wherever you are, you just gonna slowly lean forward. You're going to feel this in your hip flexor. Here, make sure that your knee does not go over your foot. You don't You don't wanna go here That's gonna hurt your knee. If you find that you're stretching that far, just put your right need back like that. So keep your hips square pointed towards the front of your mat and hands wherever you're comfortable. Maybe you want them down here. Maybe here either way is fine. We're stretching the front of our hips. Deep breath, inhale and then slowly get yourself back so you can switch legs. So right foot comes forward and you might just be here. That's fine, too. Wherever you feel the stretch. Yoga is all about you and your body, not anyone else's. So wherever you feel good, that's where you stay. If you want one hand up in one hand down. That's fine, too. Deep breath in and out. Mom are in and out. Okay, go ahead and come back and you can put your mat back. Won't be coming on their knees again. Good. So from here, we're going to go into pigeon. So bring your left leg forward and lean in this way. Now, if you are uncomfortable here, you can put a block underneath you underneath your tush. Here. You're actually sitting right on. It just helps with a little bit of the pressure. But if not, you're gonna come here. Your foot can come all the way in, but for more intense stretch on your hip, you bring it out to 90 degree angle. Now, we're gonna stay here first, and we're going to look back towards the leg that straight in the back and just lifted. Wherever it is our goals, it's going to stretch the hip flexors. But we're also now getting a stretch in our quads and you can turn this way. It's kind of opening your hip a little bit, or if you like, it's a little bit more intense to switch to the other side. Or you can hold on with both. Whatever you're comfortable with, it's all stretching the same thing, just different ways of doing it. All right. You can rock a little bit if you want to find where you want to stay and hold that stretch and inhale and exhale. Go ahead and put that foot down. Now push yourself up nice and tall and hinge at the hips toe. Lean over your front foot to come down into pigeon. You can. Maybe you're just staying right here and you feel it in that left hip. Maybe you put your elbows down. Maybe you go ahead and put your forehead down. This tends to be a little bit uncomfortable of a position, and you really must concentrate your very best on inhaling and then letting it all go as you exhale. Inhale it and then consciously think about relaxing that left hip as you exhale. Inhale and exhale. Go ahead, inhale up and bring that foot back if you like. Give it a little shake definitely did a lot of work there. All right, coming to the other side. Bring your right foot in front, cross it over in. Place it wherever you're comfortable. And if you want, put that block right underneath your hip. If that is comfortable for you. Otherwise, go ahead and sit down, really trying to square your hips towards the front of your mat. Then you're going to look back either of your left shoulder or you're right. Just bend your knee up a little bit. All right, try to grab your foot and then from there, go wherever it's comfortable for you. Ideally, you do. Keep your hips straight, looking forward while you do this. Finding if you wanna hold on with one hand or two or hold on with your left hand or your right feel free toe. Come forward a little bit if you'd like. If it's too much for your hip flexor, lean forward a little bit. It takes some of the pressure off your hip flexor, but then bend your knee a little bit more and you'll still feel in your quad. Deep breaths in and out. One more deep breath in and go ahead and let it go. Push yourself back up. Re square hips If they've shifted it all deep breath in and then exhale Walk your hands, elbows, forearms our forehead wherever you're comfortable And let's give pigeon a few breaths Here, every inhale thing about lengthening every exhale Really Concentrate on relaxing that right and inhale and exhale. Oh, I'm more deep breath in and deep breath out. Go ahead and slowly trying to walk yourself up to the center and you're just gonna bring your legs around. We do one more stretch for your inner thighs here before we start using this little thing you've probably noticed in the corner of by that. All right, so just gonna go flat on your back and then bring your knees up. You can put the bottoms of your feet together on wherever you're comfortable, so you might want to put your hands kind of blow your lower back. That's fine, but you're just gonna open your legs and your feet can stay touch. This is kind of if you need extra support, you don't wanna go so wide or you can let them separate and you can hang on to your knees you can also from here start to straighten your legs and then flex your feet. Really? Where you'll start feeling more of that inner thigh Stretch deep breath in and act breath in and out If you want, you can rock from side to side two yourself a little lower back massage while you're here Deep breath in and out. Go ahead, bend your knees. Bring your legs together and roll yourself back up. Alright, The last part we want to do is stretch your feet our feet so often get ignored. So we wanna make sure that we take care of them. After all, they do a lot for us. All right. So first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna bring yourself down to seated position if you can. Right here. If it's too much for your knees again, hold up the mat, put under your knees. But we're not going to stay here long. We're gonna put our hands down and you're just going to ever so slightly tilt yourself back until you feel you hear me crack until you feel stretch in the front of your feet Takes a little bit of ab work If you want you to do one at a time. You just bring your right foot up and you're really gonna feel the stretch in the front of your foot. They could switch to the left, or you can do both Whatever works for use that you're getting a stretch in the front of your foot, which we so rarely dio. All right, left and right. We're both at the same time. Now let's do the opposite. Let's flip our feet so the toes are against the mat, and then you can sit back on them here and again, lift your foot up, really pushing and then flexing. All right, so you're going to move your heel forward and back here, and you're really stretching your arch and now the bottom of your foot. All right, go ahead to the other one. Lift up your knee a little bit so you can flex and then go forward and back Little tiny movements for your feet. But they will feel so good. Perfect. And then, while you're here, you can even just kind of sit and rock back and forth, kind of putting more of the pressure on to your big toe and then to your pinky toes, going back and forth. Good. All right. Now get to our little friend here. All right? You could do this seated, or you could do this standing, whatever works for you, but it essentially is. This is a yoga ball of this size, but you could just use a tennis ball. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. You can put it right down, and then you're just going to put the middle of your foot on it. This might be enough pressure for you to just roll back and forth or you can lift up a little bit more and roll back and forth or you can do it standing, whatever you want to do. Standing does take a little bit more balance, but you just roll it around your foot. Don't be afraid to put more pressure there, and I just It's like a foot massage. Let's go ahead and roll it around your right foot. Really? Get into the arch there and then switch and roll it around on the left. Wherever it feels good, feel free to stop anywhere to put a little bit more pressure in one spot. If you want Thio just rolled around kind of the middle and the inside of your foot when you're done. What, you want everyone to stop because it does feel so good. Let's go ahead. Put your feet down, spread your toes wide. And now we've loosened from our waist down. Really helping alleviate hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, no mistake.