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Challenging

Lesson 4 from: Yoga for Photographers: Part 2

Vanessa Joy

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Lesson Info

4. Challenging

Full Yoga Class Level 4

Lesson Info

Challenging

all right, we're going to get right into this lesson starting at the front of our mats, policing our feet directly below our hips, spreading our toes deep. Inhale and exhale. Squat down. Inhale up. Exhale down, inhale up. Exhale down, inhale up. Exhale down, inhale up. Exhale down, inhale up and forward. Fold all the way to the floor. Inhale the flat back. Put your hands wherever they need to be and exhale down and inhale up and exhale. Jump or walk your feet back and go through your vinyasa inhaling toe upward dog exhaling too dumb or dog, inhale your right leg up. Exhale it down to where you're one big inhale up and exhale. Open Tory or two. Inhale back. Exhale, decide angle and inhale back. Exhale forward. Inhale back. Exhale forward told you were getting right into this inhale back. Exhale forward and stay here and said angle. Go ahead and place your hand down. If that's what you'd like to be. You can also bind here if you would like or go into bird of Paradise wherever you are, be...

there and own it and be proud of it. Maybe your bird of paradise is here. Maybe you straighten your leg Maybe a wobble. Come back, Have fun with it. Come on, Back down The same way you came in And hands come down and go through your vinyasa Inhale of her dog Exhale downward facing dog Go ahead, inhale your left leg up. Exhale between your hands. Come on up. Inhale the warrior one Exhale Warrior two Inhale back exhale and decide angle Inhale back Exhale side angle Inhale back Exhale the side angle Inhale back Exhale on the side angle in one more time Inhale back and exhale and stay inside Eichel going to whatever variation you did on the other side Everyone has one side that's better than the other. Maybe this will be my better side Here we go If you're in Bird of Paradise come on down The same way you got up and side angle Go ahead, put your hands down go into plank and go through your vinyasa Inhale upward dog Exhale down or dog Take a look at your hands and walk Jump your feet forward flat back and forward fold Inhale Come on up, Exhale prayer This time let's put our feet together as we inhale up and then sink down into chair pose. You can leave your hands up for in front of you. You could put them down a little bit more. It's better if your shoulders your back or you bring them to prayer right now, everyone's gonna bring them into prayer. As we twist towards the left, placing our right elbow onto our left knee, I'm using the leverage to twist open deep breath in deep breath out. Go ahead, up through the middle, not straighten your legs. E no, You wanted thio down through prayer. Exhale to the other side in twist Deep breath in on deep breath out. Go ahead, inhale through the top and then exhale Forward fold Straightening your legs. Inhale flat back. Exhale. Go through your Vanessa when you're in downward dog, take a look. Forward your hands. Walk or jump your feet between them. Inhale flat back. Exhale sword fault and then inhale of I am Exhale in the prayer. Inhale up. Exhale back down into your chair. Go ahead right into prayer and twist to the left. Put all of your weight into your left leg and then you're gonna shoot your right leg back do Twisted present. Deep breath in deep breath out then your leg is coming back together. Come back through chair. Do not straighten your legs. Hands in a prayer as you exhale and switch to the other side, Putting all of your weight on your right leg. Shoot your left leg back. Take a deep breath in and deep breath out. One more deep breath in and deep breath out. Go ahead and bring your legs together up through chair. Exhale forward, fold and go through your Vanessa walking. You're jumping your feet back chatter on the upward facing dog, downward facing dog looking at your hands in front of you. Walk or jump up. Inhale flat back. Exhale four sold. Inhale slowly. Come on up, arms up and exhale prayer. Inhale arms up, Exhale forward, fold all the way down. Inhale up and exhale your right foot back. This time, go ahead down into a lizard, putting both hands on the inside of your left foot. You can stay here, or you can join me coming in to on down to your forearms. Feel free toe. Rotate that foot out. We'll bring it nice and close and then coming on up. Grab your back leg if you can. Or just spend it and go ahead, bring it down and go back. Downward facing dog. Go through your having Asa. Once you get to downward facing dog, look forward. Walk or jump your hands in between your legs forward, full down and inhale all the way up on an exhale prayer. Inhale up and exhale. Heartful. Inhale to a flat back and this time, exhale your left foot back coming into lizard on the right side. Stay here or come forward. Let your knee fallout if you'd like, and then push back up and go ahead and grab your foot. Really stretching that quad as well as hip flexor. Make sure your knee is not over. Your right knee is not over your toes. You want it to be a little further back than that. Go ahead. Release that leg, bringing your foot back Course in your oven. Elsa, you nailed up. Exhale downward facing dog inhale. Look forward jumper. Walk your feet between your legs. Inhale flat back. Exhale forward fold. Inhale all the way up and exhale. Thoughtful. I'm sorry. Ex helper. Inhale your arms all the way up. Exhale for it. Fault. Inhale to a flat back. Exhale your right foot back toe war. You're one exhale and warrior two and then in just side angle Except we're not going to stay here. You can wiggle your feet a little closer together, but here you're going to straighten your leg so you end up inside angle, so straighten it and then bend it down and then straighten it up and bend it down. Straighten, um, and straighten And then one more time, straighten And then, yeah, keeping that knee bent Come up, Rachel, the back. Deep breath and circular Hands down. You go through your Vanessa back through town. Hard facing dog walker Jump your hands between the legs. Inhale foot back Exhale forward fold Inhale arms all the way up Exhale hands to prayer Inhale arms up, Exhale forward fold Inhale flat back and exhale the left foot back as we inhale And a warrior one Exhale Tory or two and then can to your side angle You can still do this If you're only putting your knee on your elbow. By the way, you can come here and then strange and then bend, straighten and bend few more Straighten and bend, straighten and then one more straighten and bend Go ahead and come on up Deep breath as you reach the right hand up to the sky on Then cartwheel your hands back down You cool So your Vanessa and now upward facing dog Exhale downward facing dog looking forward Walker, Jump your hands up Inhale fight back Exhale down facing dog Inhale way up Exhale prayer of the four fold Not an hour facing dog All right, come on over to the center of your map. Mhm. We're going to open our legs up nice and wide. Inhale your arms up, Exhale all the way down and you're going to place your hands on your ankles. It was low as you can and just let your head hang. Take a few deep breaths on your next inhale Lift yourself back up to center. You're gonna take your left hand, place it on your right foot on my right leg and lean forward and then twist from there, this bend in your arm. The more you pull, the more it stretches that shoulder blade right there. It's a wonderful stretch. Take a deep breath in back to center and switch to the other side to bring your right hand to your left calf and then leaning forward and twisting really, really pulling with that right arm to separate the shoulder blade and give it a really great stretch. Deep breath in on deep breath out. One more deep breath in and deep breath out. Come back to the center. He'll toe your feet back together until you get your feet underneath your hips. We're going to lift up from the hips and all the way up. Okay, Go ahead and clasp your hands behind your back. He could deep breath in. And as you exhale, flat back forward fold on your hands, Come over your head Stretching another part of your shoulder. Deep breath in and deep breath out. Yeah, Deep breath in and deep breath out. Yeah, on Go ahead and release your hands down. Slowly. Roll up. Perfect. Alright. Coming to the front of your mats. We're going to do some balancing poses, so we're going to start off with crow. So you're going to bend your legs, place your hands down and you can start a little bit up. You're trying to go on your tippy toes, press your elbows onto your triceps, but close your armpits and then slowly lean forward to your comfortable and then eventually you end up lifting your feet. Yeah, take a few breaths here, and whenever you're ready, place your feet down. We're going to do that one more time. But when you come out, if you can shoot your feet back into chatter Ranga to go through your vinyasa. If not, just put your feet down, then step back into your plank and go through it from there. So let's try that one more time. Hands come down. Lean forward into crow. Pick your feet up whenever you're comfortable. Take a breath here, deep breath in and then your next exhale. Go through your vinyasa, inhale and then stick around into downward dog. Yeah, take some deep breaths here. We're gonna go ahead and lift are right leg up and then bring it into plank. Touch your outside your right elbow to your right knee, bring it back up and touch your knee to your forehead. Mhm. Bring it back up. And now we're gonna touch our knee to the opposite side, and from here you can go into another balancing pose. Maybe bring your hands in, but resting your hip and your knee on your elbows and then coming back to downward facing dog. Go ahead to the opposite side, lifting up your left leg and then bring it to your left elbow. Left back. Bring it to your forehead, let's back and then bring it to the right side. Coming into your balancing on the other side. Bring it back and we're facing dog and then down into child's pose the in deep, deep breaths. Maybe roll your wrist that while you're here. Yeah, and maybe bring your elbows close to your forehead, your temples. Put your hands in prayer and bend to give yourself a nice tricep stretch. Maybe even try to touch your shoulders. Bring your hands back out and coming onto all fours. We're going to go into dolphin, which is really important for strengthening our upper backs. So go ahead. You can put your hands down right in front of you parallel to each other. If you have trouble keeping the parallel to each other, you can take your yoga block and put it in between your hands just like that. Okay, go ahead and tuck your toes under and then push up into dolphin. Take a deep breath in and out, deep breath in, end up and come on down. Now, this time we're gonna go from dolphin to downward dog back and forth a few times, really strengthening our backs. So push back into dolphin and straighten your arms into downward facing dog and come on down, maybe bring your feet in a little bit and then back up into downward dog like down and dolphin. This time, bring your feet and even more. So you're really, really high up here, really? Putting a lot of pressure on to your upper back. Your elbows feel free to lift a leg. This is in preparation for forearm stand, which may be we'll do one day and switch legs and back down. Go ahead, bend your knees and then come down Child's pose with your hands. I do? Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're gonna go ahead and roll over to our backs, Joe, a couple of fun poses here. Go ahead and lie down flat on your back, and we're gonna go into bridge so feet pretty close to your fingertips hip with apart and go ahead and lift up into bridge. Lift your hips up and then scoot your shoulders underneath. You clasp your hands from here. You're going to lift up your right leg, then bring it down parallel and lift. Parallel lift. Really, with your left leg pushing, pushing, pushing your heel into the floor A couple more. Okay, and one more up and then release. Go ahead and tuck your feet in. You could rock from side to side if you'd like, and then we're going to switch. So lift up your hips, clasp your hands underneath, wiggle your shoulders and lift this time your left leg up and then lower and race lower till the knees air together than race. Remembering. You're also breathing here, so feel free to stick your chest out. Get more air there, just a few more and one more down and up and feet down. This time, we're going to bend our knees in, give yourself a little hug and then also do a little twist. So straighten your right leg out, take your left knee and bend it over to one side, looking towards your left deep breath in and deep breath out breath in Andi, brother, inhale back to center and go ahead and do the other sides to straighten your left leg. Bend your right knee and bring your right knee over the left side as you straighten your right arm and look over. That's it. Deep breath in and do you read them? Deep breath in and deep breath out and come on back to middle and we're gonna go into full wheel. Alright. If you've never done this before, it's basically the next step of bridge. You're going to place your hands. Palm's down with your fingers pointing towards your shoulders. Make sure you get in hair out of the way. Your are gonna lift your hips just like Enbridge and even bring your feet close to your buttocks as well. But you'll be lifting with your arms, too. Now there's two ways I'd like to do bridge, so I'll show you both. So go ahead and push up, and the first one I like to Dio is with my knees bent just like this, and you can slowly start to walk them in wherever you like. Remember, if you're not breathing back off And then you can also bend your elbows wherever you are. Go ahead and come back down, tucking your knees into your chest. You could rock from side to side here. No, and then I'm going to show you the other way. I like to do well comes into the gymnastics days when we used to do Rainbow Bridges, we call them, so this time we're going to go up the same way. But I'm going to straighten my legs and then bring my fingers together in a little triangle pattern like this. All right, It's the same kind of thing and remembering If you're not breathing going too far, let's go ahead and push up. I'm going to straighten my licks, bring my hands together, come into a rainbow, and then come on down whenever you're ready and really grab your feet this time, tuck your head your knees touch of your toes nice and lists. I am that release. Take your knees and kind of do circles with, um and that may be the other way, relaxing the back that you just worked out. Great. We're going to do inversion, so come on up. However, you are comfortable and we're just going to do a headstand. So there are a couple of ways you can do this. Personally, I like to do it in the way where you could go back and forth from crow. But what I think is actually a little bit easier way is to grasp your hands like this and you put your hands down and your hands. Your elbows are a lot of support, but your hands become kind of where you create all your head so you can do a headstand like this by putting your head down. And this is if you haven't done a head stand before. This is how I recommend you Start. So you just start by straightening your legs, and then you can bend each one, maybe just kind of dancing like this if you're not totally secure with it. But when you're ready, bend, maybe you stay here. Maybe you go up wherever you are. As long as you're breathing, it doesn't matter. And then when you're ready, come down the same way you came in. So that's one way to do it. The other way to do it is to do more of like a tripod stand. So you're gonna put your hands here, and then you lean forward and just put your head down. And what's nice about this is you can go in pretty much the same way that we just did by training your legs. Spending went up than the other one. Or you could go in from Crow. So feel free to do what we just did or get into a handstand, tripod headstand like this, or feel free to come join me and crow. All right, so I'm gonna go into crow into the headstand, then back into crew. It's a lot of fun. So go ahead, bring your feet in nice and close. Get your knees in onto your triceps and you go into crow first. Then once you're comfortable here, even slowly lean forward, get your head down and then work with your feet breathing. And then when you're ready, maybe have to get some fun. Knees come down and then you come back in the crow. Mhm. And there are inversions for the day. So let's go ahead coming to see the position. So do you want to alleviate some of the stress we just put on our heads. So we're going Thio, come in to our hip stretch here. It's just making a triangle with your legs trying to put one leg over the knee. But if this is not comfortable or if see how their space between my knee and my foot, you can spread it out a little like this. All right, so deep breath in and exhale, Lean forward and you can drop your neck and then it relax. Yeah, go ahead, walk your hands back, switch feet like this, then and inhale up. Exhale forward, but make two fists with your hands and put your forehead right on top of it. And this alleviates lots of the pressure that we just put on the top of your spine from doing those headstands. Deep breath in deep breath out. Yeah, Breath in. Okay. As you inhale, push yourself back up and go ahead and get yourself up. Just standing. We're gonna do one more sword fold here just to separate the decompress our spine as we just compressed it. So go ahead, lift your arms up, exhale forward fold and really just let your head hang. Shake your head. Yes. Shake your hand no. And then let your hands relax. You just drop the tops of the poems that your hands on the floor or you can grab hold of your elbows, do a little shake again. Deep breath in and out. And remember, you can always bend your knees here. This'll exercise right now is for lengthening the tops of our heads. So not about the hamstrings from here, though, give you a little turn from here. Bend your knees, grasp your elbows behind your legs and then slowly see if you can straighten them. Deep breath in deep breath out again, still shaking hand around if you want and release Inhale flat back. Exhale for your last Vin Yasa. I didn't think you'd see one more. Did you inhale up? Exhale Downward Dog and inhale. Look forward and walk or jump your feet through. All right from here, let's go ahead, stretch forward, lengthening the spine and then push back and rounding it and lengthening and rounding and lengthening and rounding because and then we're going to come on up into a squat position here and go into side crow so both of your hands come into one side or the other Mr on the left side as you kind of come up and then lean your hip over So you come to side crow. You can straighten your legs if you'd like. When you're ready, come on down and switch to the other side. We have lots of balancing today. Great for concentration. Pray for building upper body strength. All right, so coming up leaning your hip over So you're bouncing on a hip in your knee and then straightening your legs if you'd like. Come on back down, Yeah, and then straightening your legs, inhaling up on exhaling down. All right, Before we end, we are going to dio lovely balancing pose here, here in tree. So place all of your weight into your left leg and then bring your foot up that you might just stay here and try, and that's okay, But I'm here to show you the next step. So you're gonna cross your foot over your hip and slowly lean down. And from here, we can either come into a balancing pose here, which I'm not going to do because what I do want to dio is come down to toast and except feel free to do whatever you like. The toast and is a great one for concentration and balance. You could just keep your hands here. You can do one hand up at a time. Maybe the other hand. Or maybe both. Both is not for May, but maybe it's for you when you're done here. Go ahead, push back up. Come back up in the tree and shake out that left leg. Alright. Flipping over to the other side, ground yourself into the right leg. Go ahead and lift up. Maybe you're gonna stay in tree. Maybe you're coming with us. Go ahead and put your foot over hip hands to prayer and then slowly come on down. Hands can come down again. You can go into the balancing pose here. If you want Thio or come in Does stand taking deep breaths, playing with lifting one or both. Oh, centering yourself. And then when you're ready leaning forward and coming back up in the tree where you started and then shake out there it like All right, we're going to come finally down onto our mats Now that we've properly worked, so many parts today are going to end. Bye. Coming into boat. You can straighten your legs or not, and then come on down into final relaxation, which have certainly deserved today. Let's go ahead and Titan, clench your whole entire body and then let her relax. Mhm. Just let your breath breathe for itself. Now, if you like, you can loosen your jaw little bit by stretching it out. Maybe even having a honor to let your mind stay right where you are thinking about absolutely nothing. If you have trouble doing that, focus your eyes in the middle of your eyebrows, giving your brain something to concentrate on here. Well, but not wander around. Let yourself relax from your head to your toes completely. Then go ahead when you're ready, which might not be now. But when you are ready, you can wiggle your fingers and your toes. Bend your knees up, turn over to one side or the other, keeping your eyes closed. Help yourself up to a seated position. However you're comfortable. Maybe it's on your knees. Maybe it's cross like it, but keeping your eyes closed. Bring your hands or your rest to your knees, palms up, palms down. Whatever is more comfortable for you. take a deep breath in, huh? Maybe even yon Let it out. One more deep breath in going through prayer coming up lifting your arms up and exhale down through prayer Slowly, often opening your eyes Mhm. Yeah. Now let's stay.

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