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Yoga for Nervous System Regulation | Spring Class 10
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New here? Read this first!
Yoga for Nervous System Regulation is a unique program combining yogic tradition with neuroscience to help students engage with the nervous system, calm stress responses, and cultivate peace and resilience in body and mind. Learn more about the program here.
Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of this practice.
- Please complete the entire Spring Series in order before moving on to subsequent series, regardless of the current season. Each series builds upon the material covered in previous seasons, so doing them in sequence is important for your understanding and your safety.
- Yoga is best practiced on an empty stomach, which means no food for 2 hours prior and no beverages for 30 minutes prior. Follow your practice with food and plenty of water. Review the complete Yoga Safety Tips here.
- Each weekly class consists of a playlist of 3 practices to be completed in order. The asana (yoga poses) prepare us for pranayama (breathwork) which prepares us for meditation, which prepares us for life!
- This course is designed to accommodate a range of learning styles. Below the video playlist you’ll find additional visual aids and links to resources that enhance the learning experience.
- Yoga is a very individualized experience, and it’s normal to have questions or concerns. I would love to hear yours! Please submit a comment at the bottom of the page, or follow KMKyoga on Instagram, where I share additional insights, support, and resources with a growing community of fellow practitioners.
Thanks for being here!
In the asana portion of this class, I’ll be introducing a new niyama – tapas, which means “fire” and also “discipline” – the discipline to accept challenges and try. In pranayama, we’ll explore a fun new way to slow down our breathing and heart rate with “birthday candle breathing”. In meditation, we’ll continue our exploration of the ways in which our breath changes the physical boundaries of our bodies.
Remember, yoga is best practiced on an empty stomach. Review the complete Yoga Safety Tips here.
Please don’t hesitate to ask questions in the comments section at the bottom of the page, or by sending me an email at kath@kmkyoga.org. I’m happy to help with clarifications or modifications to ensure your practice is safe, comfortable, and enjoyable.
Find a quiet space with room to move. You may wish to pause notifications on your digital device. Gather your mat, a sturdy chair, some water, and a blanket. When you’re ready, hit Play on the first video in the playlist – asana – to begin.
Enjoy your practice!
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Spring Class 10 Video Instruction
Each class playlist consists of three videos to be practiced in order:
Asana ➙ Pranayama ➙ Meditation
The purpose of asana (yoga pose or “seat”) and pranayama (breathwork) are to prepare the body and mind for meditation, where the real magic happens! I strongly suggest you try the classes in sequence, but after you’ve completed the entire sequence at least once, feel free to revisit individual parts as you’d like.
Once you complete a video, the player will automatically advance to the next one in the playlist. You can skip to the next video at any time using the next/previous arrows at the bottom of the player window, or by clicking the icon in the top right corner.
Asana (Pose) Descriptions
The following diagrams are offered as a supplement to today’s asana practice. Use them to quickly reference specific poses in the video, review verbal instructions in written form, and clarify details from the class. Scroll within each text box for transcript excerpts with time stamps indicating when each pose is demonstrated in the Asana Video for today’s class.
00:01:12:06 – 00:01:35:12
So find your seat: sits-bones are on the chair, thighs are free. Knees and feet or hip width apart. And your knees are over top of your ankles, hands on your lap in a place where your shoulders are loose and comfortable. Give a little pull with your feet. Feel the thighs engage in the pelvis, tilt the spine, elongate, chin comes up.
00:01:35:14 – 00:02:13:19
Then release the feet. Take a long, gentle inhale that makes you a little taller. And on exhale, close eyes, if that’s comfortable or otherwise, just little slits so you can see your hands in your lap. Bring your attention to the breath in your nose. Feel the temperature, the textures change. Next, direct your attention to the breath moving through your throat.
00:02:13:21 – 00:02:56:15
Next, watch your chest move with breath and then belly. And then that little tiny triangle between the bottom of your breastbone and your navel. Can put your hand, even if you’re comfortable with feeling it from the inside? This time, I’d like you to put your hand there, feel the diaphragm go down on inhale, up on exhale, and then a deep exhale.
00:02:56:17 – 00:03:05:17
And then I want you to notice what part of your torso moves first on inhale.
00:03:05:17 – 00:03:27:22
Could you feel that? That the diaphragm is the first thing that moves? The diaphragm drops down a little bit, which allows the atmospheric pressure to change and draw air into your lungs. Then your ribs begin to expand out to the side. That’s the most efficient breath practice.
00:03:27:23 – 00:04:04:02
So let’s check in with our arms and back, our whole back. Ready? So arms down. Exhale here. Turn your hands and inhale up … soft shoulders, soft neck, and exhale down. Inhale up, exhale down. Try a few of those on your own. Pause the video and try a few.
00:04:11:19 – 00:04:37:06
So notice the shoulders and upper back and upper chest that you brought with you today to this yoga practice. Then let’s check out our backs. Low back, Really the whole back, by the time you’re done here. So knees and feet are hip width apart, your knees and thighs are pointing right toward that space in between your second and third toe.
00:04:37:08 – 00:05:14:23
Same on this side. Heels are definitely directly under your knees, palms on the kneecaps. Inhale here and hinging at the hips, exhale down. Use your hands to keep your knees apart if you need to. And let your head hang. Bring your attention to your low belly as you take an inhale. And on exhale, soften the belly and let the lumbar and sacral spine the bottom of the of the back become longer and softer.
00:05:15:01 – 00:06:01:17
Bring your attention to your upper belly as you inhale. And on exhale, soften the upper belly and let a little more of the spine hang from the tailbone. Inhale into the upper back and shoulders. And on exhale, let the shoulders soften, neck be limp. Head hang freely. Take a long, gentle inhale here. Exhale from the tailbone all the way to the top of the head, letting the spine hang and press down with your feet.
00:06:01:19 – 00:06:33:12
And inhale up. Walk your knees and feet back together. Take a moment to notice if you found that you had more discomfort than usual with the low back. Maybe do a few more of those. Let the back loosen up or maybe you were a little impatient and went too fast. But we don’t want to progress to the next pose until you’re comfortable in the pose that led up to it.
00:06:33:14 – 00:06:35:08
So if you’re ready, we’re going to … I’m going to move my chair and we’re going to put the mat back under the chair and do a fun pose from a couple of weeks ago. It’s a variation on virabhadrasana or Warrior series in yoga, and it’s a really good place to practice discipline and tapas.
00:07:00:15 – 00:07:42:04
So let’s go wide with feet parallel to each other. Parallel to the short side of the mat. You want to be wide, as wide as you can manage, but you need to be able to stand up straight. I can go wider, but I can’t come up straight. So you want to be able to stand. From here we’re going to pick up the toes and spin on the heel to point the foot so that now this foot is parallel with the long side of the mat.
00:07:42:06 – 00:08:06:15
Your pelvis is going to be diagonal, it’s going to be at an angle, but your shoulders need to come back to parallel with the long side of the mat. If your ankles are at all tight, and mine are, you can, when you bend, roll up on the inner aspect of the foot or you can keep the foot flat.
00:08:06:16 – 00:08:42:04
Either one is good. I want you to practice your knee motion to know where to stop, which is knee over top of heel again, because you won’t be able to see that when you’re in motion. So I’m going to square my shoulders up with the side mat. Exhale here. Inhale up. Soft shoulder. Soft arms. Exhale bend. Soften your belly at the bottom.
00:08:42:06 – 00:09:15:09
Inhale back up. Exhale down. Couple points. When you’re doing it on your own, you can keep watching and replaying what I’m doing. But then you won’t be able to use your breath pace. So a couple of points. It’s arms. Knee. Knee. Arms for stages. And we don’t move anything. We don’t move arms when we’re moving legs. There’s a lot of balance involved in that in this pose, which is a discipline in itself.
00:09:15:11 – 00:10:02:15
So inhale up, exhale, bend, soften your belly at the bottom. Inhale up. Exhale down. Once you’ve got it, you can put your breath, practice in and it’ll look something like this. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. Soften the belly. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. Please pause the video and try a couple of those on your own
00:10:02:17 – 00:10:32:15
with the breath pace that you’ve got. I used a four. It was kind of an arbitrary number. I’d like you to find the breath. Breath length that’s best for you and use that. So pause your video and try a couple, please. So, you know, I’m going to say notice, right? Notice how you feel. Then to come out of it,
00:10:32:20 – 00:11:00:09
you need to bend this knee a little bit to bring those toes up and turn that foot in. Take a moment there. Just notice how you feel and then we’re going to do the other side. Pick up those toes. Out you go plunk it down. I made mention last week of something that I’m used to saying pretty often, and I don’t think I’ve said it enough … is that we are not symmetrical creatures.
00:11:08:05 – 00:11:31:06
We sort of look like we are: arm on each side, leg on each side. Two eyes, two ears. But we’re not. And you have a dominant side, which is usually the hand you write with, and then you have a non-dominant side. Your dominant side tends to be stronger. Your non-dominant side tends to be more flexible. So you need to go into each new pose on a new side aware that you are noticing the differences between the sides, honoring, respecting the body you brought. So practice that knee bend so that you’ll know where to go when you are not able to see it.
00:11:31:08 – 00:11:58:22
Exhale. Bend. Inhale. And exhale down. Try a couple of those. You can put your breath pace in once you’ve got it. And if you want to do that now, I’ll talk you through that, too. So you can choose what you do during your pause. I’m going to use a four count. Remember, I’m just picking an arbitrary number. You need to find the breath pace that works best for you.
00:11:58:23 – 00:12:43:06
Exhale, here. Inhale. Two, three, four. Bend the knee. Two, three, four. Soften the belly. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. Do one more. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. Soften the belly. Inhale. Two, three, four. Exhale. Two, three, four. So pause the video. Try a few of those on your own, at your breath pace, or just practice the pose.
Either one’s okay.
00:12:51:07 – 00:13:24:06
Take a moment to notice, and then let’s come out. So I’m bending this knee to lift and bring that foot in. Take a moment. Notice how you feel. And then we’re going to do a fun pose as a counter pose for this one. I want you to bring one heel in so that it’s pointed straight out and then bring the other heel in or the toe out.
00:13:24:11 – 00:13:48:13
Doesn’t matter which one, but you need to be balanced here. And it can be trick. If you think you’re going to have a problem, you can bring your chair around front and hold on. But I’m going to move the chair back so that you can see what I’m doing. If you’re using the chair, you would use it one handed and the other hand would do the pose.
00:13:48:15 – 00:14:14:13
So the exhale on this pose is lion’s breath. It’s one of the few times that we breathe through our mouth in yoga and the pose looks like this. We inhale the arms up and then you want your knees going towards your little toe side. So inhale up, exhale down.
00:14:14:15 – 00:14:23:16
That’s the motion. The breath is like this. Inhale up.
Inhale.
When I teach in-person classes, we usually do three. And we try not to laugh and we try to make each one a little louder than the one before. And it’s just such a great stress buster. So you can probably follow my breath pattern on this one. Let’s do these together just because it’s fun. So exhale here. Inhale up.
00:15:02:13 – 00:15:38:17
Bigger breath. Louder, bigger breath, loudest. Inhale up. Arms come down. Bended knee to turn that foot in. Bend that knee to turn that foot in. And then to come out of a wide stance, we shift our weight to one side and jump it together. You don’t want to drag because you’ll tense up muscles that we spent a lot of time loosening.
00:15:38:19 – 00:15:46:02
So find your place back on your chair and we’ll close out with the breath awareness practice.
00:15:46:02 – 00:15:58:11
The same old seat sits-bones, thighs free, hip width apart, knees over heels.
00:15:58:13 – 00:16:43:10
So take a long, gentle inhale that makes you a little taller. And on exhale … close eyes, if that’s comfortable for you. Bring your attention to the breath in your nose. And on exhale, soften your cheeks, smooth your forehead and let those little muscles around your eyes slow down their motion. Your gaze, even with closed eyelids, is a sort of vague gaze, which helps the muscles slow down and quiet.
00:16:43:12 – 00:17:04:16
Bring your attention to the breath moving through your throat. And on exhale, soften the space between shoulders and ears. Let your neck be long and soft. Chin might come up a little.
00:17:04:18 – 00:17:22:19
Bring your attention to the breath moving your chest, front back sides. And on exhale, soften the chest-arm connection at the shoulders. Let your arms be limp and soft.
00:17:22:21 – 00:18:00:15
Bring your attention to the breath moving your belly. And on exhale soften that hip-leg connection. Feel your torso balanced on your pelvic floor, and then come in to that little triangle and feel your diaphragm go down on inhale and up on exhale.
00:18:00:16 – 00:18:36:06
Nice long breath and feel the whole torso. Long, steady exhale through your nose. And with your next inhale, bring eyes open. Almost all of the pranayama practices and almost all asana practices are done with nose breathing. There’s been a lot of neuroscience research in the last decade about the advantages of nasal breathing. But we’ve been teaching that in yoga for a very, very, very long time.
00:18:36:08 – 00:19:02:16
It definitely helps to engage the parasympathetic system because as you inhale through your nose, the air mixes through your sinuses and releases nitrous oxide, which is going to help the vessels in your lungs dilate and accept more oxygen. There’s also the idea that, you know, the aperture of the mouth is much bigger than the aperture of the nose.
00:19:02:21 – 00:19:35:10
And so it’s easier to control the motion of the diaphragm when the air is going through a smaller aperture than when it goes through the whole mouth. So do try as best you can to do only nose breathing unless you’re given directions otherwise. It is an important part of nervous system regulation.
Additional Spring Class 10 Resources
This week’s pranayama involves exhaling for a count of up to twelve, if that extended length works for you. Here’s a demonstration of the method I mention in the audio for counting to twelve on one hand. You’ll notice that the numbers trace an inward spiral pattern across the fingers.
Comments or questions?
I’d love to hear about your experience with this week’s class and address any concerns you may have. If you’d prefer to reach out privately, send me an email at kath@kmkyoga.org.
Hi, I’m Kath. I teach yoga, breathwork, and meditation as a path to greater somatic awareness and nervous system regulation. Through this practice, I have learned to care for myself so that I can live more peacefully and more purposefully in my body, my mind, and the world. Read my full bio here.
I created KMKyoga for people like me, who can benefit tremendously from yoga but need an option that doesn’t break their bodies or their budget. All KMKyoga classes and learning resources are funded by donations. Learn more.