- Hey everyone and
welcome to Yoga With Adriene. I'm Adriene and this is
Benji and today we have an awesome yoga
for the pelvic floor. So this is a great practice for
anyone that's wanting to explore this part of the body
and how it can serve you both on and off the mat. This is kind of a clinic
style practice so explore, have fun and
find what feels good. Let's get started. (gentle music) Okay my friends, let's begin
today's practice seated so come on down to the ground. As always, take
your time getting there. How you move
matters starting now. And always but just using
this time and this space to be reminded of that so
moving gently and with love. And when you get down to
the ground and you're ready, we're gonna start by sitting up
nice and tall and just taking a moment to tune in to the breath. And today we're gonna really
breathe into the belly so go ahead and bring your
hands right to the lower belly. And as you're ready,
taking a nice big breath in and emptying it out. Thanks for being here,
for sharing your time with me. Start to
breathe a little deeper, a little more
fully but don't push it. So we'll kind of work our
way towards a more conscious pranayama technique. But to start just
notice where you are and let it unfold nice and slow so it should feel good
to take this time for yourself to breathe a little
deeper and more fully. So allow basically. Slowly using the breath as a tool to arrive here in the present moment so that you can
really learn from your practice today and hopefully feel good when you step up off the mat and in to the rest of
your day or your evening. If you want set a little
intention for this time and this experience. And then on your next inhale,
really see if you can send that breath down, down, down
towards the base of the spine, towards that pelvic floor. So if you notice and if you're
new to the practice and you're breathing really, really up in
the shoulders know that that's normal, that's a wonderful place
to start but just check in and really this is a
great reminder for everyone. If you're breathing up here, see if you can
use today's practice to really practice
that directional breath. So we're breathing
down, down, down, down in towards the diaphragm, all the way down
towards that pelvic floor. Awesome and then we'll slowly
let that go and just keep that moving throughout the
practice best you can. We're gonna adjust the legs here
to begin bringing the left heel in and then slowly, use your
fingertips to guide you here, we're gonna bring
the right heel around. So we're coming into what I've
been known to call cheerleader pose
or shape but whatever. It's one heel in and one heel
out so we have two different rotations going
on here in the hips. And you might find that your
right glute is coming way up here and that's okay.
Totally normal. Use that directional downward
breath to slowly create more space, more space, more space
and in time that right glute will come on to the ground. Should feel
really snuggily and good. Of course as always if
you feel any pain at all, that goes for this whole
practice and any time on or off the mat, pause,
take a deep breath, take a step back and reassess. Alright,
protect the knee joints, we're just gonna
spread the toes just a bit. Something light and easy here. And then when
you're ready, inhale, reach the fingertips up high. Stretch through
your side body here. Nice and long. And then exhale, you're
gonna twist to the left. Right fingertips come to the
outer edge of the left leg and left fingertips come
to the earth behind you. So we're essentially
accentuating this rotation in the right hip. Now, pelvic floor, close your
eyes and send your breath down and you're gonna
slowly inhale, lift up from the pelvic floor as
you breathe down. So we have two
opposing actions going on here. And so this practice
is about strengthening, stabilizing and softening
the pelvic floor all at once. We're gonna do it in different
tiers but it's as much about that as it is about your brain. Connecting brain
and breath and body so just allow for it to unfold. Focus on the experience,
not the doing or the mastering
and all will be well. So we're here in this twist. Awesome for the spine,
of course. But you're gonna close your eyes
just so you can visualize this hammock at the
base of the spine, this muscle hammock. And best you can, breathe into
you belly while you lift up from the pelvic floor which will
allow you to maybe journey a little bit deeper
into the twist. Great, release that, come back
to center and we're just gonna practice the same thing.
So here we go. Breathing, inhaling, seeing if
you can activate this twist from the pelvic floor
lifting up, lifting up. Lower belly engages when you do. And of course,
at the very least, we're just breathing deep,
warming up through the spine. Great, release,
come back to center. We're gonna do
that one more time. Try to again initiate this
twist from the pelvic floor, whatever that means to you. So close your eyes, feel it out. And you might find on this last
round how when we engage the pelvic floor we have more
range of motion in the hip, connection to the core
and then in the spine as well. Awesome, then
we'll slowly release, come back to center. You can use your fingertips
to guide you as you switch. Right heel comes in,
left heel goes out. Just take a second to
feel the sensations in the hip sockets on this side. And then when you're ready
send the fingertips up high. Think about lengthening from the
side waist to the shoulder and then the shoulder to the elbow
and then the elbow to the wrist and the wrist up
through the fingertips. So big stretch here, inhale. Exhale, keep that
length as you slowly journey over towards the right. Opening up the chest, left
fingertips to the outer edge of your right leg now and
right fingertips kissing the earth behind you. Okay, so we've done it on one
side so you might be able to accent or activate a little bit
quicker on this side but just close your eyes and
feel it out, maybe not. Inhaling, breathing in to
all four sides of the torso. And again, using that exhale to
lift up from the pelvic floor and maybe journey a
little more into your twist. Close your eyes. Imagine that just soft hammock
of the pelvic floor lifting up. And then gently release and
see if you can really soften everything here.
Just take a break. And then we'll go again. Lift your chest,
take a deep breath in. Send breath all the way down
into your belly and then we'll draw the pelvic floor up. Lower belly comes in.
As you exhale, twist. And see if you can
really initiate that twist from the pelvic floor. Should feel
really good in the spine. Keep breathing. And then release back
to center, soften, let it go. And one more time, here we go. From the pelvic floor
traveling up past the navel, up through the thoracic,
past the heart space. Nice, long beautiful neck. Breathe deep. See if you can find a
little more of a twist. Don't push though, just check
in and activating from the base. Sweet and then slowly releasing. Coming back to center. Great. We're gonna bring
both feet together here, soles of the feet
together for Cobbler's Pose. So just opening up the hips for a little vinyasa
we're about to do. Interlace the fingertips.
Bring 'em to the toes. Find that opposition here so
that the tops of the thighs, so these nice, heavy quad
muscles and then the heavy femur or the thigh bones draw down as you lift up
from the pelvic floor. And then maybe you just imagine what many of us know or can learn about if you're not in
the know, a Kegel here. It's a gentle squeeze and really
more than a squeeze you want to think of it as a
lift from pelvic floor. You might close your eyes here just to try to activate
that a little more. And then just to warm up the
lower back we're gonna bend the elbows left to right,
send the heart space forward, and then tuck chin to chest,
round through. Find what feels good here, let
the weight of the head hang. Shoulders can soften
and we breathe deep here. Opening up through the hips, the backs of the legs, lower back to
mid-back and then again, careful you're not
holding in the head, the neck, let go. Take one more
cycle of breath here. Really breathe
down in to your belly. Feel your breath. And then use the exhale to
press down through the bum and slowly roll back up.
Awesome work. Okay, now we're gonna
come to lie flat on the back. Any little movement that feels
good when you get there you can take it right away. Depending on where
you are in your body, any other activities or workouts that you've been doing
or not been doing. So just take a couple
moments here on your back to find what feels good.
Get situated. Great and then when you're ready
bring both feet to the ground. Knees up towards the sky. And you're gonna bring your
hands up and we're gonna bring the index fingers together and
the thumbs together to create this diamond shape. And you can kind of look at this
shape with your eyes and this is kind of the shape we're
gonna imagine the pelvic floor. And if you were to draw a
line in-between your fingers, between this shape, horizontally, you would end up
with two triangles. One at the top
and one at the bottom. And you're gonna imagine that
you have these two triangles, this diamond shape right at the base of the spine, pelvic floor. And on the
membership we'll get into this, talk a little more in detail but
I want this video to kind of be useful for everyone. Men and women and all different
ages so we'll keep just a nice foundation going today but we're
gonna get into more Mula Bandha on the membership soon. But just to give you a little
visual and then that's the visual you're gonna place
right at the pelvic floor. And then bring your hands
to your belly and start that downward
directional breath again. See if you can breathe all the
way down through the belly and into the pelvic floor. And then as you exhale, see
if you can isolate those two triangles and
draw up just a bit. Again, you can think of a Kegel
and rather than a squeezing in, think about a lift
up towards your head. And then I encourage you to
close your eyes and it doesn't have to be a big move here but we're actually just getting
the brain connected. The neuromuscular
connection going. Just try a couple
lifts and you might even, if you're familiar with Mula
Bandha be able to isolate that top triangle and that bottom
triangle and if you're not there today, don't worry about it. One of the ways we think of
the top triangle and the bottom triangle though is one is you
can imagine kind of holding or squeezing in the same way that
you would like a stream of pee. And then the
back triangle is like when you're trying
to hold in gas. Oh yeah, we're
going there today. Pee pee and farts all day. Okay, so that's
just a little taste. We'll go a little more in depth
on the membership and for now I want us to
get into a practice. Couple more moments
here to just close your eyes. It really helps to close
your eyes and draw up and in. Yogi's choice
whether you don't wanna, whether or not you
want to try to isolate the top and the bottom. Otherwise, just think of
that triangle kind of drawing, hugging up and in. Think of a napkin, like
a cloth napkin in a bowl. And when those muscles are
relaxed it's soft in the bowl. And then when you squeeze and
lift we're kind of pulling up the corners of the napkin,
pulling up that cloth. So now we're gonna start to
accentuate that a little more. In case you're like,
"I have no idea what I'm doing "but I'm with you Adriene,"
we're gonna accentuate that by inhaling, lifting the
lower back up so you can put your hands
underneath your back. You might even try. And then exhaling, you're
gonna draw the navel down, lift up from the pelvic floor. Lift that hammock up and rotate so lower back comes
flush with the mat. Great, then slowly release. Inhale, tailbone rocks down,
lower back peels up. Just soften everything,
relax everything. Super important
to relax in-between. And then exhale,
curl the tailbone up. Think about lifting though
from the pelvic floor so we're not
just rocking the bones. We squeeze and squeeze and you
should feel the lower abdominal muscles especially engage. And again, releasing everything. Softening through
the bowl of the pelvis. Lots of space
between the lower back. And one more time, again, rather
than just moving the joints, let the pelvic floor initiate. It begins to lift up. Lower back becomes flush with
the mat and then once you get here this time
you're gonna hold here. So core is engaged. Pelvic floor is
lifting up and in. You start to naturally press
into your foundation within the feet a little more and then
we're just gonna keep that going as we slowly peel the hip
points up towards the sky. Knees and shins shift forward. Don't think
about doing the pose, think about initiating
this from pelvic floor. So lots of work there. You got it.
Breathing deep. Lift, lift, lift. Chin to chest. Excuse me, chest to
chin and then chin to sky. Good and then slowly lower down. Keep the pelvic floor engaged
until the last possible moment. And then let it all go. One more time, just like that. Starting with the pelvic floor. You're gonna be able to use
this from now on every time you come to Bridge Pose. Draw it in.
Navel goes down. Play. Slow lift, nice and slow. Pelvic floor lifting in all the
way up towards your heart space. Slow lift, shins forward. Chest to chin. Chin to sky. Breathing here,
don't forget your breath. Sweet and then on your exhale,
slow and steady lowering down. Pelvic floor hammock is the
last thing to release here. Woo, awesome.
Great, walk the feet together. Slowly open the
knees and just relax. Everything, let it go. Interlace the fingertips.
Bring 'em behind the head. You're gonna extend the thumbs
and just massage the neck here. Opening up
through the armpit chest. Close your eyes. Practice
relaxing everything here. Take spa like breaths,
deep and full. Should feel really good. Mmmm. Awesome. Now, here we go again. You can keep the
arms where they are. If it's not comfortable
for you in the shoulders, you can just release, hands, palms on the earth
gently at your sides. Otherwise, option
to keep elbows wide. We're gonna inhale in. Exhale, draw the knees
together, lift the pelvic floor. Squeeze and lift.
Come up. Great, open out. Soften everything. Knees come together.
Squeeze and lift, come up. Now we're gonna add a
lift of the hips here. So we're calling
this Cobbler Bridges. So open the knees wide. We're gonna kinda
integrate the Bridge Pose now. As you lift up, lift the hips,
knees come together. Great, slow and steady, release. Knees wide, Cobbler's Pose. Relax everything. Ready? Here we go. Pelvic floor engages. Knees come together. We find our feet and lift up. Pelvic floor, lifting,
lifting, lifting, lifting. And then slow and steady. Lowering the hips,
opening the knees wide, softening through pelvic floor. Slow adnd steady,
getting the hang of it. No rush Here we go.
Pelvic floor lifts. Find that Kegel. Knees come together,
find your feet, lift and squeeze. Slowly lower, and open. Now keep this going here. If you want a little more,
you're gonna slowly lift the shins so that they're
up towards the sky and you're just gonna
do this in the air. So you open here, and
then squeeze and lift here. Open here. Squeeze and lift here. So remember, lower back should be flush with the
mat for both variations. And you know your body. One just activates
the core a little more. You're having to hold
the weight of your legs up. You don't have the foundation
of your feet on the ground. And we're gonna keep going here
for a while so once you get the hang of it, once you find the
variation that suits you today, maybe you soften your gaze. Just look past your nose here. Or close your eyes so you can really find
that subtle sensation of the pelvic floor
lifting and engaging and then relaxing and softening. Once you get the hang of it,
see if you can accentuate the squeeze and the lift even more
and then also accentuate the soften, the letting go. As you accentuate
the squeeze and lift, notice how the abdominal wall,
that midline really engages. And wherever you are,
let's do three more. Sweet, after your third one,
hug the knees into the chest. Take your time. Find a little
movement that feels good here. Then hold on to your right knee. Send your left leg out long.
Take a deep breath in. And then exhale,
take your right knee over towards the
left side of your mat. Open up through your right arm. Find your Supine Twist here. Turn over on to the right ear. Close your eyes
again and breathe down, down, down into your belly. Really active
breath here, my friends. Great, on your
next couple of exhales find that Kegel, that lift. And then slowly release. Come back to center, hug
both knees into the chest. And then when you're ready,
keep the left knee hugging in, send the right leg out long. We'll do the same
thing on the other side. So big breath in. Exhale to come into that twist. Opening up
through the left side. Coming on to the left ear. And then start with
just an active breath. Close your eyes
or soften your gaze. Really send your mind's eye to that diamond
shape as you breathe in. And out. Big active breath. Stretching the
skin of your rib cage, your back body, your belly. And then again, for your next
two rounds see if you can close your eyes and on that exhale
practice your Kegel, your lift. Fabulous, then slowly
come back to center. Hug both knees
up into the chest. You're gonna slide the hands
to the backs of the thighs and you're gonna slowly rock up and
down the length of your spine. Get a little massage here. Should feel really good. And then you're
gonna connect to your core. Find that Mula Bandha and use it to rock all the way forward
into a Froggy Pose. So I'm gonna give you different
variations here but you can start in Froggy.
So heels lifted. Obviously, we're
stretching through the foot, through the inner thigh here. Just take a couple deep breaths. Hands can come to the earth. And then, right away,
we're gonna start to engage the pelvic floor. So lifting up from
that diamond shape. You can even take it again,
index finger and thumb, to try to imagine lifting up. And as you begin
to activate this, particularly with practice and
as we start to open up and gain more flexibility, you're gonna
notice that by engaging this root block, Mula Bandha, you actually are able to find, just like we did in
the cheerleader twist, more mobility, more rotation,
more space. Which of course will
help us in our postures. Allows us to find balance and concentration in some
of the more difficult poses. So we're here. Maybe we start to bring up our
hands together at the heart. And if Malasana, deep yogic
squat or a variation of that is in your practice, you can now
start to lower the heels and play with that here. If neither one of
these are available to you, you can come into a Puppy Posture or
maybe you're dealing with something's in
healing around the pelvic floor. Then you can come to a
Puppy Posture and work here. Pulling up. So I have a couple
different variations. Breathing deep. You should hear the
sound of your breath here. Lifting up, engaging, noticing
how the gentle lifting up of that pelvic floor
engages the lower belly, the abdominal wall
all the way through. Keep it going. Nice, long beautiful neck,
travel all the way up to the crown of the head. Take one
more deep breath and then slowly release. Nice and slow, really mindful. We're gonna come to all fours. Bring the knees right
underneath the hip points. We're gonna stabilize here. So wrists
underneath the shoulders, knees directly
underneath the hips. Great. Curl the toes under. Press away from your yoga mat.
Hovering Table. Now, if you've done
this a million times, or it just doesn't matter, everyone engage from
the pelvic floor here. Let that be what lifts you up. So here we go. Inhale in, exhale, we
lift up from the pelvic floor. Core engages, we feel that
cinching together or lower belly and upper abs and then
maybe the knees hover here. Breathing deep,
keep soft in the face. Upper arm bones rotating out.
Lots of space. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Awesome then slowly lower,
walk the knees together. Send the hips back just a
breath or two here in Balasana. Send the fingertips back,
forehead to the earth. See if you can relax
and soften everything. Inhale in. Relax and soften
as you breathe out. Awesome work. Send the fingertips forward. Slowly make your
way back up to Table. Then when you're ready, curl
the toes under and you're gonna slowly peel the tail
up to Downward Facing Dog. So we're gonna put this into
play in a shape that we come to a lot, of course, in practice. So claw through
the fingertips here. Pedal out your dog just because. Stretching out through the legs. Melting your heart back. Hugging the lower ribs in. And then once you
feel a little warm here, we're gonna
bring our mind's eye, our awareness, our attention to, again, pelvic floor.
Base of the spine. So turn your toes in just a hair
so you feel that inner rotation of the thigh bone,
the hip socket. And if you're a
little tight today, you can keep
your knees bent here. Great, keep clawing
through the fingertips. Now inhale in through the nose and exhale draw
the pelvic floor up and in. Breathe out through your mouth. You'll feel your
abs turn on again. Soften and relax everything. Let's try again. Inhale in. Exhale, blow it out as if you're
blowing birthday cake candles out and you feel
your pelvic floor engage. If you don't feel it
right away, it's all good. Inhale in again. And exhale out
through the mouth. Pelvic floor lifts up. You might find more range of
motion as you start to get the hang of this.
Inhale in again. And exhale. Lower belly tones here. This is what helps us get up
into those upside-down poses. Let's try one more. Let's make this
one a Lion's Breath. Inhale in through the nose. Exhale, pelvic floor lifts,
tongue out. Great work, slowly
lower to the knees. Nice, nice. We're gonna swing
the legs to one side. Roll through the wrists
as much as you need here and we're gonna
come back to flat back. Right away, find your
feet on the earth this time. Hands come to the belly,
the lower belly. Inahle in, returning
to that low back flush to the mat connection. Lifting pelvic floor engaging. And then from here,
we're gonna lift the knees just over the hips here. Now you want to make sure your lower back
is nice and engaged. Great, then nice and slow, we're
gonna lower both toes down and then use that
connection of pelvic floor to lift the toes up. If this is too
much for you today, you're simply gonna keep your
feet on the ground and do one leg at a time and
practice from the pelvic floor. So we have all different levels. You might find that this is the
beginning of a reactivation of your relationship with your
core and so you might start with these one leg lifts. Lifting pelvic floor up
and then softening everything and then in time, maybe a
couple months from now, you'll work your way to lifting
both up at the same time. So once you feel like you have
the hang of this little dance, again see if you can really
accentuate the squeeze and lift of the pelvic floor. Close your eyes,
connecting brain to body and then same thing, see if
you can accentuate really relax in-between. So if you're moving too
fast you're not gonna be able to do those things. You're not going to be
able to experiment or explore. Hands on the belly,
particularly lower belly, help you feel and notice that
when you lift and squeeze that becomes engaged as
well to support you. And then you can also check to
make sure with the hands on the belly that you're
softening everything in-between, taking a beat
and then re-engaging. Keep it goin',
you're doing awesome. Make sure you're breathing deep. And then if
you're alternating legs, go ahead and
even it out right now. And if you're doing both legs,
let's do three more. Count 'em out. Take your time. Awesome work.
Great work. We're gonna bring the
knees back to the chest, right away hands come to the
backs of the thighs and we're gonna rock all the way back up. Rock as many times as
feels awesome for you. And we're gonna rock
all the way up into a nice, comfortable seat
back where we started. Okay, so ending with
Kapalabhati Pranayama technique. Sometimes known
as breath of fire. Super awesome for bringing a
little energy to the body but also for
practicing this awareness, this relationship to
pelvic floor engagement, to Mula Bandha,
and to the lower belly. This area of the body. Alright, as you're
ready sit up nice and tall. And we're gonna bring
both hands back to that lower belly, the diaphragm. Breathe deep,
directional breath down. As you breathe in you should
feel your hands move and expand. And as you breathe out,
they're gonna draw in, in, in towards the spine. Inhale. Nice and slow here first. Now engage pelvic
floor as your navel draws in. Inhale, expand and soften. And exhale, draw up and in. And again, rather than thinking
about squeezing that pelvic floor hammock, think
about it lifting up and in. When you're ready
we're gonna speed this up. Short, sharp exhales is the name
of the game for Kapalabhati. In through the nose,
out through the nose. We'll just go for
a little bit here. Just a little taste.
If you want more, there's a whole
video on this breath. It's also called Skull Shining
Breath which I think is really cool and yeah, you can practice
it any time when you just want to get a little practice in. Okay, here we go,
take a deep breath in. Take a long
breath out for nothing. (sighs) And let's begin. (sharp breathing) Once you get the hang of it,
close your eyes. Again, go inward. See if you can
engage pelvic floor on that sharp, short exhale. See if you can keep
your shoulders relaxed. Chest nice and open. Soft, easy in the face. (sharp breathing) Keep it going,
just a few more. Toning the abdominal wall. Doing your best. If you get off track,
just come right back to it. Seeing if we can engage
pelvic floor in this Pranayama. It is difficult.
It takes practice. (sharp breathing) And then take a deep breath in, awesome work. And allow the hands to
rest gently on the knees as you exhale out. Ah. One more nice refreshing
breath just like that. Big inhale. Soften and relax everything. So dogs really
love Kapalabhati Breath. I always love when we're doing
the 30 day journeys that people chime in saying that their pup
really liked Kapalabhati and Benji does too, right buddy? Alright, from here you can
stay in your meditation pose. Take a couple
moments to yourself. Longer, inhaling lots of love in
and exhaling lots of love out. If you have the time you can
come on to your back now here and take a proper Shavasana. I think both are important for
a moment or two just to allow everything to soften and relax and allow the brain to have that experience with
your body as well. So I'm gonna come
on to flat back but you can stay upright
in meditation. Whichever shape you
have chosen, close your eyes, take a deep breath in
and then use your exhale to relax everything. If you're lying down, let the weight of your
body melt into the earth. Soften through the pelvic floor. And then everyone just
give thanks for your journey, for this practice. Take what you need always and simply leave behind
anything you don't need. Thank you so much for sharing
your time and your energy with me, with Benji and with this
beautiful community. Please share this
video with your friends, with your family, anyone you
think might benefit from this practice or from
Yoga With Adriene channel. Please subscribe if
you haven't already. It's the best way to support
free yoga for everyone from us. And from my heart to your's,
let's draw the palms together. Thumbs to third eye. Namaste. (gentle music)
