Often we forget that we have spent years acquiring our quick-fire habitual responses. These lessons invite you to move beyond your compensatory habits. It is only when we slow down long enough to notice them that we can effect real change.

Your only job in these lessons is to sense your movement in a nonjudgmental way. Give yourself permission to slow down, move, and feel, even if it's just for ten minutes.

calming

I included a number of calming lessons here to reset the parasympathetic state. These days, it’s easy to get stuck in a stress response, that quick intake of breath, tightening of the belly, and gripping in the jaw. These lessons will interrupt the stress response as well as invite calm and letting go.

1 Calming - Body scan with breathing, 16 min
2 Calming - Simple pelvis rocking to check your state, 9 min
3 Calming - Breathing and tapping to reduce anxiety, 7 min 45 sec
4 Calming - Mini seesaw breathing to release tension, 10 min
5 Calming - Awareness of the stress response holding the breath, 21 min
6 Calming - Fully exhale to shift the stress response, 11 min

Shoulders

This area can be so tight so often we sometimes forget what it feels like to release it. Try these “tricks” to sneak around your habits. Watch your jaw as you do these, too, and practice keeping the teeth separated.

7 Shoulders - Oscillating to free the shoulders, arms in triangle, 8 min
8 Shoulders - Rocking the upper back, self hug, 10 min
9 Shoulders - Release shoulders with plunking and tapping, 16 min

Low back

Try these to unravel tightness and tension in the low back. Attend to the quality of the movement, making it smoother and lighter each time.

10 Low back - Rocking pelvis with arms overhead, feet together, like pelvic clock 17 min
11 Low back - Tilt draped legs, arms out to side, 20 min
12 Low back - Basic pelvic clock, 33 min

dynamic sitting

Many people ask me the correct way to sit. My immediate response is: get out of gravity and lie on the floor for ten minutes every hour or two because humans were not designed to sit still for a long time. You’ll feel so much lighter just by letting your spine decompress throughout the day.

The goal is not to figure out how to be static and love it, but rather how to sit more dynamically because stillness is death, in every sense of the word.

That said, there are many things you can do to keep mobile while sitting, including moving your spine in many directions, relieving tension in the neck, and unwinding the shoulders and hips.

13 Sitting - Waggle knees in sitting to release hips and low back, 9 min
14 Sitting - Round and arch to find a neutral spine, elbows on knees, 7 min
15 Sitting - Side bending with one sit bone dropping, 9 min
16 Sitting - Twisting, round and turn in sitting to soften the spine, 7 min 30 sec
17 Sitting - Help for the neck: circling arm and head in sitting, 8 min

Jaw and eyes

Tension likes to lurk in the jaw and eyes and it’s mostly unconscious. Use these lessons to settle the excess, unnecessary tension and return to a soft, easy quality in the face, neck, jaw, and eyes.

18 Jaw - Tilt head to release jaw, neck, ribs, 33 min
19 Eyes - Swiveling eyes, monitoring breath, 33 min