Hip Opening at Wall: 20-Min Yoga for Rocks Hip Program (Week 1, Part 2)

So it's completely okay to slouch here. Try to breathe deep still. But if your posture is not perfect that's okay because we want the weight of the upper body to push our knees out from the wall to stretch the front of our hips. Try rocking a little bit again but now every tenth rock or so you tense up your butt.

You squeeze your butt for one second and then you drop down again and rock. So rocking rocking rocking rocking rocking rocking tens your butt and drop down again. And when you rock try to breathe deeply. And squeeze your butt and relax and breathe.

So the intensity is just for a second and then you go back to the rocker rocker rock. Tense and relax. Tense and relax. Tense and relax.

All right get over to all fours. Tap your legs tap your feet out a little bit and move back into a very stiff variation of downward facing dog. So you can have your head over your hands and it's kind of a mix between down dog and plank pose. So you just stand on all fours and stretch your legs out like this.

Now stand up back against the wall and move your feet wide. Really really really wide with your feet as far as you can go and lean your back against the wall but push your hips forward. So your elbows can touch the wall your triceps can touch the wall and your hands can be on your hips. And try to find a place where you feel that your legs aren't slipping that you shouldn't be able to have to engage to stay here.

You need to find a non sticky non slippery surface a sticky surface where you can stand here without the risk of falling into a split. But push your hips away from the wall and get your feet as far away from each other as possible and just let the weight of your body stretch your inner thighs here. Simple standing straddle pose with some assistance from the wall. Instead of slouching now you can lift your chest push your hips out so you tense your butt a bit again and push your hips outwards.

Breathe even if it's super intense and if you start slipping you have to move closer again and focus more on the pushing out instead of the sliding apart. So apart and out. Take a few breaths here. One more breath.

And then slowly lean your hips in towards the wall and see if you can bend your knees and lean your hands your upper body weight into your knees like this. So now you're doing a wide sumo stance you're pushing your knees apart and your upper body is leaning forward but the back is there to support your butt so you're leaning all the body weight into the wall and your upper body is pushing knees away from each other. So if you feel this in the shoulders you need to lift your head a little bit but try to sink down so your knees are apart your butt is back and you're letting gravity doing most of the work you're trying to resist gravity and find a place where you feel just general sensation in your hips. Don't go for anything extreme just find a place where you can feel oh this is a pose for sure this is a pose.

Take a few breaths in a pose. Two more. And then place your hand in the wall get down to all fours and just sit down on all fours and relax. The next thing we're going to do is a variation of the lizard pose so you probably have to start from a kind of high squat like this so wide legs your feet are wider than your hands your hands are more or less in plank pose so you can have super bent knees like this as long as you get your hands down step your right leg back and place the knee down so if it's hard to get both palms down you can move your foot out to the side or you can actually get some support a couple of books or blocks or anything to place your hands on and I like to put my knuckles down or stay on my fingertips if it's hard to reach the ground but I don't want you to find one place to stay here I want you to find many so if your mobility is kind of the size of a coin and that's all you can move in circles I want you to circle around that coin if you can make a circle that is as big as a football or a soccer ball a normal round ball you circle where you can circle I want you to find as many angles as possible to move around in if your back knee is hurting you can flatten out the foot you can move the foot a little bit from side to side you can actually do whatever you can here to move the body weight into the hands into the foot and back in towards the back knee just move close your eyes turn your attention in towards your body and out from the head your mind is not going to help you much here so distract yourself from your mind by breathing move where you can move one of the biggest saddest biggest lies I hear is well if I can't move like I want I'm not going to move at all it's idiotic thoughts like that that keep us away from what we want to be able to do if you can't move move if you can't move much move as much as you can let's switch sides stepping both legs forward left leg back try to bend the left knee and place it in the ground and move where you can move if the floor is far away bring the floor towards you by placing something under the hands it's that simple start circling around the coin and then as you do this video maybe this is the tenth time you do this video I can guarantee I can bet my life on that if you have been doing this program ten times it's something completely different now than the first time you tried it right it's not because this program is good in itself it's because you're consistent and you're actually taking care of trying to get to know yourself and your own body if 200 people are watching this program and doing it people are doing 200 completely different programs so no matter if you try to copy exactly what I do it's your body it's your breath and it's your time on the mat and it's going to look different from tomorrow to today and today against yesterday it's going to be different for every person and no person is the same as the next one so the reason it works is that you're trying to figure out how you should do it one more nice let's lay down on our backs both legs up we're going to do the same thing with it yesterday bend your left knee and grab the knee with a belt or your hands around the thigh or knee right leg out and now we're going to do it a little bit faster we're going to switch and switch so one breath on each side pulling the knee in and straighten the other leg so just do 20 or 30 of these really pushing as if you're standing on the straight leg and hugging the other knee up as high as you can if you're clicking and clocking in your hips perfect let your joints make sounds I think one of the best ways to get to know our stretching better to really get more subtle and precise in our stretching is to work repetitions with in this case the hip flexor so if you want to learn how to stretch the hip flexor working the hip flexor like this so you can feel the front and the inner inside of your hips when you can feel it when you work it you're going to feel it when you stretch it as well three more and feet down hips up and down and then you're hips up today squeeze your butt more and stretch the front of your hips take five really engage the back of your hips lift your thighs up slowly lower down and turn your butt towards the wall stretch your legs up like we did yesterday today bend your knees keep your feet together use your hands to push your knees apart so if your toes are not touching no problem but try to keep your feet together somehow and use the arms to push your legs open and if you lower your feet you're going to be more intense if you push your knees it's going to be even more intense find a place where you can push maybe 30 percent if you need to rock it a little bit from side to side that's nice too let's stay here for a minimum of two minutes let the pose do itself that's why I love these poses where we're using the wall and gravity because we don't have to do shit we can just relax breathe and enjoy yoga if you're new to yoga and you think silence you find that silence is awkward or weird that's the first mission to get over that if you go to a normal yoga class and people start oming and chanting the way I see it it's not about the sound at all it's about the vibration you make when there is action there is vibration and when you finish there is a different kind of stillness like the stillness has a different taste after the action so if you go to yoga class and people start oming don't think about the sound think about what happens after the sound the complete stillness after the action and the sound teaching a yoga class is a very important part of the process and it's really counterintuitive because I don't want to speak at all I just want you to be able to enjoy the movement and the silence but doing that you kind of need a guide I have to guide you through it it's just that words are so crude of a tool to convey the feeling and the sensation that I'm feeling that I want you to feel it's really really difficult and you really have to play along for it to work it's like a magic trick performed by a five year old everybody has to be like yeah okay yeah we accept all the faults and we accept all the mistakes we're just happy to be a part of it and we're going to play along and that's kind of the same mindset that you need for yoga to work if you're super skeptical yoga doesn't work at all you have to let go breathe relax and smile for it to work now place both feet in the ground and try to slide your feet flat down as down low as possible so this is also a variation of a squat you can place your hands around your knees and come up to your toes you're lifting your heels and pushing the toes into the wall this is a very nice variation of a child's pose if you were doing turtle on the ground straight up you're going to be able to do this and you're going to be able to do this if you were doing turtle on the ground stretching your arms out this would probably be not so nice for you but I hope this feels good for you toes in the ground toes in the wall actually and pulling your knees down take a couple of breaths here just to counter what we did and then sit back up with your back against the wall cross your ankles and stay here for a few minutes and just feel your body feel the silence and the presence you get after doing a 20 minute session of yoga poses see you guys in the next video or see you on the mat.