00:02:47:09 – 00:03:10:18

Find a good starting seat. If you have a sturdy chair, dining room chair with some weight or a desk chair, that’s best. You certainly don’t want wheels and you don’t want anything that will tip over. So, it needs to be a little bit heavy. Come to the very front of your chair so that your sits-bones are on the chair.

00:03:10:20 – 00:03:39:06

Your pelvis is a diamond where the front, your pubic bone is the front of the diamond, your tailbone is the back. And these two bones that we call the sits-bones are the outer edges of your pelvic triangle, your pelvic opening. So find those bones. Let your thighs be free of the chair. Knees and feet are hip width apart and your knees are directly over your ankles.

00:03:39:08 – 00:04:05:13

If you look down your knee, you should be pointing at your foot. In this way, we keep our knees safe and strong. So find that pose in your chair and then very gently, without actually sliding them, just pull your feet a little toward the chair and feel how your pelvis tilts and your ribs lift a little. Your collar bone lifts.

00:04:05:15 – 00:04:39:15

And then you can lift your chin a little, if that’s comfortable. Take a long, gentle inhale. And then on exhale, close your eyes if that’s comfortable for you; if not little slits, look at the floor. Bring your attention to the breath traveling through your nose. Feel the coolness of the inhale. Feel the warmth of the exhale. Trace that feeling back as far as you can in your nose.

00:04:39:15 – 00:05:16:11

Can you feel the coolness at the back of your nose, and then feel it replaced with the warmth, and then change your focus to your throat? Can you feel the coolness of the inhale as it travels through your throat? Feel the warmth. Let that focus go. Bring your attention down to your chest: front, back, sides. Slow, gentle. Inhale.

00:05:16:13 – 00:05:58:21

Where do you feel the coolness now? Do you feel it? Feel how your chest expands and then direct your attention down to your belly. Feel how breathing changes your belly shape. Let that focus go and then bring your thumb to the bottom of your breastbone and then just lay the center of your palm in between your navel and your breastbone and feel the breath moving under the center of your palm.  

00:06:05:04 – 00:06:44:14

For most folks, the sensation is going down on inhale and then back up on exhale; and then let that focus go. What you’re feeling under your palm is your diaphragm moving up and down and your diaphragm is right in front of your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the major nerve system in the general nervous system for regulating your cardiac, respiratory … your entire nervous system as well.

00:06:44:16 – 00:07:16:00

So when we breathe long and smooth, we’re stroking that vagal nerve and taking our nervous system into the opposite of fight or flight. Sympathetic nervous system is fight or flight, and our culture teaches you to stay there most of the time. So yoga gives you a vehicle to come over to the parasympathetic system, which is the tend and befriend system where you can take care of yourself.

00:07:16:02 – 00:07:42:09

So let’s keep that in mind that the long, smooth breaths we’re using are stroking that vagus nerve and regulating our nervous system. So let’s put that into practice a little bit. Let’s combine breath and movement to just to begin to develop an understanding of how breath and how the whole body moves. So let your hands just hang down.

00:07:42:13 – 00:08:16:22

You don’t want to slump, but you don’t want a military posture either. Somewhere, right in the middle, let them hang down. We’re going to exhale here and then inhale as you raise your arms, keep your shoulders and neck soft. And then we exhale our way back down. You’re using your upper back to lift your arms. Inhale takes you up and exhale takes you back down.

00:08:17:00 – 00:08:41:01

Now, pause there for a moment. Everyone breathes at a different rate. So the best thing to do now is to pause your video and try a few. Try to notice how slowly you can inhale and raise your arms, how slowly you can exhale and lower your arms. It won’t be the same as my pace. Your pace is right for you.

So please try that for a couple of minutes.