Yoga For When You Are Overstimulated

Hello, my sweet friends. Welcome to Yoga with Adriene! I am Adriene. This is sweet Benji. And this is a practice session for when you are overstimulated. So come on down to the ground. If you have a bolster or a blanket, a block or towel, bring it for this session. If not, you're just like “Girl, no I'm just, I'm just going to sit down and join you”, that's perfect too. You don't need all these things. Just extra. All right, so let's come into a comfortable seat together, and let's bring the palms together so you can feel your palms together right here in front of your heart. Why not bring it into a prayer pose? You can do that. Take a deep breath in and allow your gaze to go down just past your nose to start. So the eyes are just open, like 15%. And then we're just going to move the hands slowly, feeling our own touch here on the palms. And just depending on where you are at, where your nervous system is at today, you can keep this nice and slow. Or if it feels good, maybe you're in a chilly room or chilly place. You might want to move a little faster to create a little heat. I'm going to keep it nice and slow and steady, and again, I'm just gazing down past my nose, creating a bit of a soft focus, if you will. Let's start to relax the shoulders as we do this. And you may notice that if you have been overstimulated, like this can be really hard to just bring your soft focus. Down past your nose and slowly move the palms back and forth. But you got this! Way to show up. Let's call in some balance together. All right, we'll take the hands now and bring them to the heart space. Use the power of this touch to actually physically lift your chest up. Relax your shoulders back down to your body. Then bring your hands to cover over the eyes. And you can. You can touch your face if you like. You are you’re, you're making the choices here. Or you can just kind of cup the eyes like I'm doing here with a soft bend in my knuckles. And if this is not right for you today, for whatever reason, doesn't feel right or safe, you can just return to that soft gaze down and gently past the nose. I will invite us all to ever so sweetly just begin to deepen the breath a little bit. Nothing intense, nothing fast. Just bringing more attention, really, to our breath. And then we'll release the hands. Release the arms gently to your sides. And you can keep a soft, that soft focus this whole practice. Or if you feel comfortable and safe you can close your eyes and use the sound of my voice to guide you. Thank you for letting me guide you today. Press your left palm into the earth. We're going into a side body stretch. Reach the right fingertips up towards the sky and slowly, as if you were moving through water, begin to come into this side body stretch. Bring that attention and awareness back to your breath and see how your breath can move your body here. Feel the movement of your inhale and any possible movement in your body from the exhale. Now take your right hand and let it drop down to your left knee. Then slide the spine back up right. And we'll come into a little twist here, bringing the left fingertips behind. It's so small though. We're not forcing or cranking. Just a gentle spinal twist. And then release it back to center. And we'll take it to the other side right away, bringing the right hand to the earth. And slowly, as if you're moving through water, reaching the left fingertips up and over, finding a nice stretch in the left side body, feeling your inhale and your exhale move you, even if it's super subtle.

Nice. Then release, slowly, your left hand to your right knee and ease out of that side stretch by bringing this spine up right, and then just gently roll your right shoulder open for a nice, gentle, super gentle, subtle twist here. Breathe. Coming back to your breath, softly returning back to your center. Gorgeous. Then slowly come back to center. Bring the palms together again and slowly move them back and forth. And inhale. Sit up tall. Exhale. Hands over the eyes here gently or soft. Gaze down past your nose. Lower body's grounded upper body is gently lifting and lengthening upward. Release the hands. Bring the palms to the knees. Take your chest forward. Lean forward. Then take it to the right and back, rounding through the spine, chin to chest and then take it to the left. Continue the circle again, finding that soft focus or closing your eyes here, just moving. As if you're moving through water here, nice and slow. You're moving in a circle. And reversing the circle. Taking it the other direction. Jazz. Soft skin. The face is soft. You're feeling the warmth of your palms on your knees. And then bring it back so that you're centered again. Head stacked over the heart center. Heart center stacked over the pelvis. And of course, we're not working with mirrors in this yoga session. So we are inviting ourselves to kind of tap into that felt sense of the head and the heart in the pelvis being stacked, being in alignment. do your best. All right. Hands come together, rub together. And this time, we're going to bring the hands to the ears. And you can close your eyes or find that soft focus just for two breaths. Here we go. Whenever you're ready. Good. And after about two breaths, releasing that. And we'll shift. Now to legs extended. And here's where you can really call in some of your props one, it's nice to sit up a little bit when the legs are extended out in front on a blanket or block. If you have a blanket or a bolster or a pillow, we can bring it now to pretty much right where your hip creases are and your belly wanting to create a little gentle sense of compression in the low belly here. So inhale, sit up nice and tall. As you exhale, start to lean your heart forward and find your version of this seated forward. Fold back to lasagna. It could be with the knees bent without any props belly coming to the tops of the thighs like so. Head relaxed. Or any other version that feels right for you to be in for about five cycles of breath. We're going to be here for a good bit, so take your time getting there. And when you arrive. Find that soft focus or close your eyes and count the breaths. Five cycles of breath in and out, in and out.

And then take your time transition as if you were moving through water. Slow and steady we will release and we will come to lie flat on our backs. When you get there, bend your knees and hug your knees into your chest. Once again, finding that gentle compression so really squeezing the knees of the shins towards your torso. Best you can. Finding that long, smooth, steady breathing here. And then coming into stillness. So finding a place where you can be still here. Shoulders relaxed, jaw relaxed. Hugging the low body in and up. Nice. Then bring the left foot to the ground. Send the right leg up towards the sky. Big breath in. Bend the right knee. Squeeze it up. Find that compression once again slowly extend the left leg out long. Option here to lift the nose up towards the knee. Breathe and keep the shoulders relaxed. Just an option. And then exhale. Release. Right foot comes to the earth. Feel the grounding through your right foot. Left knee bends and we send the left leg up high towards the sky. Breathe in, breathe out. Hug the left knee in towards the chest. Find that squeeze. Send the right leg out long. You can stay here. Head relaxed or slowly peel the head, neck, shoulders up. Breathe. And then release both feet. Come to the ground once again. If you have a block, grab it. We're going to place it underneath the small of the back. If you don't have it, do not worry about it. You can just feel the firm ground underneath the small of your back. Everyone bring your hands to your sides for stability. Then we'll “seg”, send, excuse me, the right leg, “seg”, the right leg up and the left leg for a little waterfall here. A couple breaths. So without the block, we're just connecting low back to the earth here. And with the block, you have it on its lowest setting. Feet up. Think legs up the wall, Viparita Karani. And letting the upper body be heavy. The shoulders relaxed. Toes soft. Fingertips soft. Let’s do just a few more cycles of breath here. You got it. Then gently bringing one foot down, followed by the other foot. If you have the block there, go ahead and release it. If you called in a blanket or pillow or bolster earlier, grab it again now and put it underneath the backs of your knees. Can also use something to pillow the head. Or I like to place nice heavy blanket right on top of my hip creases of the hips and the pelvis. And then bring your hands into a position that feels comfortable and grounding, and we will take a deep breath in together as a community, remembering we are not alone

and use an exhale to relax everything. The weight of the body, our thoughts. Giving ourself a moment here to soften and let go, or to practice softening and letting go. With the eyes closed, allow your breath to just find a natural rhythm. Softening and getting quiet in the body. mind. All right, my darling friends, feel free to end this video and stay here a little bit longer. If it feels right for you, we will rub the palms together one last time. And then bring the palms over the eyeballs to cup one last time. Take a deep breath in. We'll close the practice with the long breath out together and then sliding the palms together. Thumbs to third eye. Namaste.