Sebastian Brosche · 19 min · 1,835 words
Class 6: a passive recovery class using the floor, wall and gravity to release tension without effort. Total let-go.
Welcome back! This class is a recovery class where we will use three assistants. Assistant number one is the floor, number two is the wall and number three is gravity. Which means that we're not going to use a single muscle to stretch, we're going to let go and relax and the more we let go and relax the more stretch and relaxation we will get.
So sit your butt next to the wall and then lay down and turn yourself so that your legs are touching the wall. Depending on your flexibility you will have to scoot away from the wall until you can place your foot flat on the wall and have not your foot but your ankle across the thigh and then the further down you put the top foot the more stretch you should feel. For me to feel a stretch I need to be a bit closer to the wall here and you should have to lift your butt a little bit because the weight of your butt when you drop it down that should create the stretch in the left leg. So you're creating a kind of machine here like a setup that uses gravity and the weight of the butt to drop down like this and it can take four five six seven attempts before you find that sweet spot but when you find that palms up arms out make sure that the floor is warmer that you have a blanket under you so you can really relax you shouldn't have to kind of creep up on yourself and huddle up because it's cold and then allow yourself to settle in and by settle in I mean relax the forehead relax the cheeks relax the whole face actually try to breathe through your nose only if you need to scratch yourself or do something do that but avoid fidgeting or not avoid fidgeting but if you're fidgeting pay close attention to the fidgeting and put some question marks around the fidgeting and suddenly your fidgeting is going to become self-aware and a little bit embarrassed and the fidgeting is going to stop and between my words and my talking try to appreciate the quietness and the silence we're only doing a couple of poses throughout the class so we really have time to appreciate being still in one pose for much longer time than in the other classes take some time to readjust if you feel like that's necessary for example you can you can fold the whole hip section over a little bit to the side kind of changing the angle or if you need to walk the foot a bit sideways up or down to get a more intense or a less intense stretch and if you get interrupted by a cat or a child or a phone or anything that's fine just take time to start over from the start and settle in again so it's okay to be interrupted but you need to take some extra time after you get interrupted to get back into it so now release the leg both legs up the wall take a moment to just feel the difference between your left butt and your right butt for me there's a clear difference in the sensation before and after the stretch the second side might be a bit stiffer or more flexible than the other so again use some time to adjust to find the right position scoot in scoot out turn the angle sometimes i feel like i need to grab the shin and kind of support my knee with my forearm because otherwise it's so stiff this muscle that it the knee is gonna buckle close to the chest so i kind of need to guide the knee out a little bit like this and use a little bit of of force first not force but power and rigidity before i relax my arms out if you need another variation for the arms personally my shoulders really like having the hands behind the head but if your elbows are up from the floor it's probably not recommended it's better to find a place where your spine can be straight and if you're not feeling a stretch and your butt is on the floor then you need to scoot closer to the wall lift your hips a bit higher and maybe move the ankle down further to get more of a stretch but as soon as you start grimacing and doing funny funny faces you can start to feel the funny funny faces it means you have too much intensity then just ease off five percent and if your leg is falling asleep it's also a sign that you're stretching too much it's better to stay for three minutes in a mellow stretch than one minute in an intense stretch why because we're not warm we haven't warmed up our muscles so that's why we shouldn't go over 60 70 intensity please allow your eyes to close there's really nothing interesting going on and I think it's really important that we limit our stimulus and input because let's compare your life now to a life 500 years ago you probably have the same amount of input as 20 people a 500 years ago like a person from from the medieval times if you gave them a phone they would be absolutely exhausted from all the stimuli that you get from a couple of hours on the screen so finding time making time for less stimulus finding time making time for less stimulus and more quietness is good so whatever noises you have around you can be traffic in my case in my case it's rain on the ceiling of the studio it's a fan whatever it is allow that noise to be there and don't be irritated over it it is what it is try to make the noise part of your experience notice how the breath has slowed down from when we started notice how the breath has slowed down from when we started and then release both legs up and release and then release both legs up take a moment roll over to your left side feet together feet are flat in the wall and then scoot out as much feet together feet are flat in the wall and then scoot out as much as you need to so that you can stretch your arm overhead and become really long through your right side and then take a big inhale fill up and hold it and then as you exhale move the elbow down into a twist Breathe out Keep breathing in and out through your nose and whatever is going on in your rib cage and your spine, let it be there.
Our default attitude is usually using power to fix it. Try to use breath and relaxation instead. The worst problem is the one that really isn't there if you're trying to fix something that's not broken. That's a real problem.
So try to stop fixing things and just accept them exactly as they are. There is nothing to fix. Take two long breaths more here. And then roll over to the other side.
Feet in the wall, arm overhead. Take a long inhale. Hold the breath. And as you exhale, elbow down.
It's okay to let your knees separate. So either your elbow is hanging a bit above the floor or your knee is hanging in the air. If your spine is really twisted, you might be laying flat. Doesn't matter where you are.
What matters is how you breathe and how you relax. Again, relax your face and forehead. Take two breaths more here. Now come back to center.
Take a breath. Maybe hug your knees to your chest. And let's scoot the butt all the way in towards the wall. Put your legs straight up the wall and relax.
If your legs are falling apart, next time you do this class, take a belt or something to wrap around your legs. Maybe that was one of those training rubber bands so that your legs are glued together. So that if you don't need an inner thigh stretch, it can be nice to just have the legs up. So you can choose.
As for today, just relax as much as possible. And this is an open invitation to stay here for as long as your mind and hips and lower back needs it. Maybe it's two minutes, maybe it's 10 minutes. If you have nothing else to do after this, maybe you want to take a nap here.
But every time I come into this position and stay here for a while, my lower backs are crying really happy tears afterwards and thanking me deeply for the time it got to spend here. This pose, legs up the wall pose, is an antidote to many problems. Allow yourself to be distracted and let your minds wander. But every time you catch yourself thinking about stuff, take a deep inhale and hold your breath for a while.
And when you exhale, that brings you right back into the present moment. I've said this before and I'm going to say it many times again because it's very true. It's not really what you do today. It's what you can do over time.
So if you felt XYZ restrictions in the hips or the back or whatever today, not important. What's important is that you come back and you do it again tomorrow. You're never going to notice one percent increase in flexibility. But do a hundred of those classes and then you have a hundred percent improvement without you even noticing it.
When you're feeling tired or even exhausted, you're doing most things pretty well, but you are doing too much of it. If your life was a gym session, you would probably spend six hours in the gym without eating or taking a break. And that's why you're exhausted. Almost all of us needs less stimuli, less plans in the day and more space and time to just exist like this.
Initially when you start doing stuff like this, you might feel a lot of resistance, internal resistance to actually do it because it feels like another chore to do. It's not a thing to check off the list. But when you do it for a while and you realize what it actually is, you're going to start trying to make excuses to do this instead of something else because you feel how good it is for you. So stay here for as long as you like.
I'm going to cut the video now, but make a conscious decision when to get up and try to keep a little bit of this calm that you have right now for a while into your day or evening. And welcome back to the next class.
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