Beginners Yoga for Flexibility with Julia _ 20 Minute Home Workout, Stretching, Pain Relief

Hey guys , it's Julia and welcome to my complete beginners yoga series today .

In this video , we're gonna be focusing on how yoga can help improve your flexibility .

And I just wanted to say thank you to Nirvana for sponsoring this video and sending me this beautiful um high quality mat that I love so much .

So , I'm excited to get started with you guys .

Whenever you're ready , we'll meet standing on the top of your map sent here .

All right .

So to find your , your perfect posture , you want to start with your feet together and then heal toe your feet out to hips with distance apart .

And when you're thinking about hips with distance , it's really more the the width of your hip joints instead of how far out your hips go to the side .

So from here , we're gonna draw the shoulder blades up and down the back , palms , facing forward , length and up through the crown of the head .

This is to do or um perfect posture .

That's what it translates to .

So take a minute here to just rock back and forth and notice the changes in your body as you distribute your weight differently .

So just rock back and forth and then find equilibrium equally balanced between your heels and the lift up all 10 toes , maybe place them down one at a time , feel really evenly rooted through all four corners of your feet .

That's a key .

You'll hear a lot , the four corners .

So just yoga is about noticing the small differences .

So once you find your close your eyes and slowly start deepening your breath , remember to add length through the crown of the head .

So there's room for the neck .

And after taking a few deep breaths , open your eyes and notice that your gaze has softened .

Try to keep this softness throughout your practice .

As you inhale , we're gonna focus on linking breath with movement .

So inhale , reach the arms up overhead , exhale , lower them back down towards your sides a couple more times just to get in the groove of moving with your breath .

Inhales always to expand exhales to contract or release inhale to lift the arms up overhead .

And I'm just gonna step out to the side here .

You could stay where you are .

I just want to give you a little bit better visual of what I'm gonna do here .

So as you inhale arms up overhead , grab the left wrist with the right palm and as you exhale , lean over to the right side , hips come out to the left , focus on squaring your hips towards the front of the room .

You want your entire body to be on one plane like a flat , like a pancake .

So exhale , always to release inhale , come back up .

Exhale .

Lean to the other side , breezier .

Remember to square your hips and reach that right elbow up towards the right ear so that you can lean a little bit lower .

Inhale , come back up , arm stretched overhead .

And as you exhale , you're just gonna bow forward over the hips , release the hands down towards the mat , bend the knees as generously as you need to , to lay the torso down flat onto your thighs so that you can get that length through the entire spine as opposed to just keeping your leg straight and rounding through the upper back .

You really want to just focus on lengthening elongation here , maybe sway side to side .

You can grab opposite elbows or cross your arms .

Add a little bit of extra weight here to help pull the crown of the head down towards the mat .

I always really like to move my neck here like a ton of neck issues .

So nod the head .

Yes .

Shake the head .

No , that's really feeling what you need .

And as you inhale , we're gonna peel the chest away from the thighs .

You can straighten the legs here and maybe keep a little micro bend in the knees , arms , palms can come to your shins or upper thighs if you're not , you know , capable of bending all the way down .

And if you are , if you're super flexible already , you know , for some reason , just genetics , you can keep your palms on the mat , keeping the neck long , shoulder blades down the back , your gazes down towards the top of your mat or the floor .

And as you exhale , release , bend those knees , come back to your forward bend here , we're gonna plant the hands and step both of the feet back into a downward dog .

So your downward dog is gonna be just like your did doce with your feet , hips with distance apart , your heels probably won't come down towards the mat .

It takes a long time to get there .

So just focus on energetically drawing the heels down towards the mat , keeping activation in the shoulder blades so that you don't just compress into that upper back .

You want your down dog to be strengthening .

So push the mad away from you .

That's how you're going to get that activation in between your shoulder blades , actively pushing away all the time .

And you can get some neck movement here too if you want or we could walk our dog if you've ever heard somebody say that it's just bending one knee and then the other long , deep breathing , believe it or not downward dog is considered a resting pose .

So spend time here , get comfortable on your next inhale , take the right leg up in between your palms , plant it down in the center , you could drop your back knee down towards the map and we're just gonna come into a little bit of a lunge here .

So stay here if this is enough for you .

If you'd like a little bit more on your inhale , always moving with your breath .

Intentionally inhale , lift up , hands can come to heart center .

I want to draw back on that right hip so that you can exhale , sink down into the hip , flexor , make sure that your knee is directly above your ankle .

You never want it to go out too far .

So less is more breath lengthen through the crown of the head here and exhale , release , plant the hands to frame that foot .

Once again , you can tuck the back toes coming up into a full lunge and pressing the mat away from you to reach that right leg back to meet the left in your downward dog .

Once again , a couple of breaths here and on your next inhale , reach that left leg up in between the palms , plant it down untuck , the back toes , knee comes down towards the mat .

Stay here .

If this is enough for you , if you'd like a little bit more inhale , rise all the way up .

Hands to heart center , exhale to release and sink a little bit lower .

Drawing back on that left hip , checking the alignment of your knee , knee over ankle or behind .

Find some softness here .

Notice if you're working unnecessarily hard , what are you compensating with ?

What are you , where are you holding your tension ?

Just ease into it and exhale release frame , that foot pressing into the mat .

You can come on the back ball of that right leg , exhale , reach the left leg back to meet the right downward dog .

Three long deep breaths here making some space for yourself .

And as you exhale , we're gonna step both feet up to meet your hands at the top of your mat , coming back into that same half forward fold that we had going on earlier .

Inhale to peel the chest , forward , hands can come to your shins or thighs or the mat elongating the neck , exhale , bend the knees release , take whatever little micro movement feels good for you here or just stay if that works for you too .

And on your next inhale , we're going to reach the left leg back behind you , keeping the right leg straight , your feet are gonna be on two separate tracks , two different lines .

That's another reason I love this mat is because they have these lines set out for you .

You can kind of align your feet exactly how you need them to be .

And so as you inhale , we're going to do that same action that we did in the forward fold by reaching the chest forward and exhale , just bow over that hip , folding over the right leg , maybe play around with what happens if you draw back on the left hip here and notice that the stretch changes , exhale , bow , a little deeper .

Inhale , reach forward with the chest exhale , bring that left leg back to meet the right .

You take a forward fold from here , we're gonna generally sleep in the knees moving up through a chair post .

So inhale , reach the arms up overhead , exhale , hands to heart center , doing these little movements every day .

Also helps just establish the right kind of movement patterns in your daily life because that's how we should pick up and put down everything right with our knees never keeping our knees straight and you know , dumping into our back like that .

So we'll just , you know , start making a habit of rising and lowering the correct way .

So next time your arms are up overhead , we're gonna move down the same way .

Exhale , bend the knees almost like you're sitting into a chair and fold .

Reach that right leg back behind you .

We're going to come to the same stretch on the other side .

So remember keeping on two tracks , align your feet lengthen through the collarbones , reach the crown of the head towards the front of the room .

Exhale fold , find stability , find softness , making sure you're actively pushing through all four corners of your feet and exhale , reach that right leg back to meet the left , peel the chest forward , inhaling to reach through the crown of the head .

Exhale , bend the knees forward , fold .

It's your last forward fold for this practice .

So get out whatever wiggles you need to get out .

Not that yes .

Shake the head .

No , and exhale .

Sit all the way down on your mat and we're gonna extend our legs out in front of us .

All right .

And from here we're just gonna extend the legs out long in front of you .

Palms , come back behind you placed on the mat and flex through the feet just giving you a chance to rest and realign .

I know that if you're a beginner , some of these poses don't really feel natural or easy .

But that is the point of yoga because we want to stress ourselves out on purpose and then learn to breathe through it and it retrains our parasympathetic nervous system .

Next time we encounter a real stress , we'll be calmer , we'll know how to breathe .

So if you feel stressed and it's not super comfortable , you're doing it right .

So rest here for a moment and as you exhale , you could slowly lower down one vertebra at a time , come to lying down on your back .

So from here pressing down into the mat with your feet , just inhale , reach the hips up towards the ceiling .

Exhale to lower , just linking your breath with movement .

Try to finish your inhale just as you finish reaching all the way up , finish your exhale just as you release and come down towards the mat two more times with your own breasts , always letting your breath be the guide .

Domini we're focused on trying to catch up , just be where you are .

And then the next time we're going to come up and he'll reach up with the hips and then we're going to stay here for a minute .

If you want a little bit more , just show me your shoulder blades underneath your back , clasp your hands and then just press down into the mat .

See how much extra length that gives me .

Just use that as a little bit of leverage here .

Keep the chin away from the chest .

Andre releasing the shoulders , exhale , come all the way down and just take two neutralizing breaths here because we never want to do back bends and forward bends in a row could pinch your disc .

But after a couple of breaths , bring the knees in towards the chest .

This is basically a forehead bend , just lying down on your back .

So , and how to release a little bit exhale , drawn towards the center and you can rock side to side here , give yourself a little low back massage , making sure that your low back always stays in contact with the mat .

You don't want to pull in too much , just like a nice , gentle release .

And whenever you're ready , extend your legs out long , we're gonna come into a which is the resting pose at the end of your practice .

So during you're gonna release all conscious control your breathing and your thoughts just allow yourself to be allow your mind to wonder , palms up towards the ceiling to receive .

Closing the eyes , just feeling supported by your ma it's hard for some people to stay in this pose , but it's equally as important as all the other ones .

Just give yourself a few moments of silence .

And then slowly you'll be able to work up to staying here for a while .

Still start to deepen the breath whenever you're ready , fluttering open the eyes , adding movement in the fingers and toes could even reach up overhead and take a nice long morning stretch and a they all turn over onto one side just taking a couple of breaths in the fetal position .

Chilling .

The reason that we get up like this in yoga classes is because we don't want any rapid changes in blood pressure .

We work so hard to , you know , cultivate this nice calm state .

So you don't wanna rush out of it pressing into the mat .

Give yourself a hand to lift all the way up coming across like it in the middle of your mat .

Ok ?

Bring your hands to heart center , bow your head down towards your hands .

Send yourself some gratitude for practicing and for trying something new .

Thank you so much for letting me guide you and I hope you'll join me in more of my videos here on youtube .

I also have a full library available on Amazon and uh thank you again so much for Nirvana for sponsoring this video and if you want to hear more about all the reasons I love this mat .

I made a cool video reviewing it .

So be sure to check that out and I'll see you next time .

I hope you liked this video .

And if you want to join me for more practices , my full video library is available on Amazon .

It's free with prime .

So you can follow along on your TV tablet or from the Amazon app on your phone .

That way you can take a yoga class with me virtually anywhere .