Soul Stretch Library

This week's focus will be on finding where we are mentally, emotionally and physically when it comes to range of motion and how we talk to our bodies in various positions.

This week, we’ll be focusing on finding our why. When we dig deep and really find why we are doing the things we’re doing or why we want to do certain things, we can assess as to whether or not we actually want to be doing those things, if those things are actually benefitting us or if we can let them go, or maybe we’ll realize we need to ramp up our investment and really go after it.

This week, our practice will focus on taking the clarity we found in week 1, the why we found in week 2 and lay the ground work for where we’re going.

Flexibility, like most things in life is fluid and constantly changing. Things like stress, long hours at a desk (or in a car/plane), sickness, hormones, exercise and happiness all impact our flexibility and ranges of motion.

Adults love to watch children play, to see their souls dancing energetically right out of their bodies. But when was the last time you felt like your soul was dancing right out of your body? When was the last time you felt like jumping as high as you could…just because? Or were extra wiggly because that particular movement felt soothing and made you happy?

The central nervous system powers every system in the body. Muscular, digestive, thinking, moving, breathing. The CNS is our main frame computer. What’s interesting about the nervous system, is that is runs autonomously and we have two tracks running simultaneously. Parasympathetic and sympathetic.

This week’s focus will be on finding where we are mentally, emotionally and physically when it comes to range of motion and how we talk to our bodies in various positions.

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Our feet are the foundation of all that we do. We can’t have complete balance, perfect posture, efficient strength and functional flexibility without proper utilization of the feet.

Energetically speaking, the hips are home to the the root and sacral chakras. Anatomically speaking, the hips contain major skeletal, muscular, and neural components.

Home to the spine, spinal cord, and some of the biggest muscles in the body, the back of the torso is a muscular and neurological powerhouse. If there is one place we hold our tension, be it mental, emotional, or physical, it’s the back.

We’ll be focusing on the head, neck and shoulders. Mechanically, the shoulders move in 6 different directions: flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, external and internal rotation. The neck also moves in 6 different directions: flexion, extension, lateral flexion in 2 directions and rotation in 2 directions. The neck can also move in combinations of these directions, for example, pairing flexion with lateral flexion to look down and over.

In this 30-min Soul Stretch class, we focus on movements in the seated and quadruped position with options given for standing modifications. Our card pull for today is “Personal Growth”.

In this week’s session, we let an excerpt from Honest Monsters guide our practice. Is there anything poisoning or harming our personal gardens that we need to get rid of?

Our cup is overflowing, abundant and we’re celebrating with movement!

Today, we focus on softness as strength

Giving and receiving is part of a balanced whole. Today, we focus on receiving and allowing ourselves to make room and accept all of the gifts the universe wants to give us.

Today’s card pull was “The Devil”. This session helps us tap into our primal primitive energy.

I like to think of the grey space as all of the area between zero movement and the edge that we’re always chasing in yoga classes. What happens if we back away from the ledge, move ourselves away from the edge and play in the 1-80% of our available movement range?

While none of these movements feel like traditional hamstring stretches, they can be quite effective at hamstring release. If you’re like most folks and really stress out those hamstrings during stretch, today’s class will feel particularly good. For our hypermobile folks, the focus was on finding 80% and really working to keep from dumping in to the joints.

With a lot of potential travel over the next few months, today’s class focused on gentle standing soft tissue work using a ball and seated mobility work.  The seated stuff can be done at the airport, in a hotel room, or anywhere you can sit down comfortably for a little bit to get in some gentle movement.

In this video, we focus on a gentle release of the facial muscles. This can be particularly helpful for folks who suffer from headaches, migraines and upper trap tightness.

This movement practice starts with some spinal mobility in either the standing or quadruped position, moves through rotation and then into the glutes and adductors.

In this class, we let the body guide us through hips, ankles and pecs.

Today’s class takes a gentle journey through the body, included a card pull from the Affirmators Deck and a special guest appearance from my son, River.

*I did have tech trouble with this class, so the sound was rerecorded for this video and added back into the video.

In today’s class, we used the Elder Animals deck from Asha Frost and focus on the upper body with a focus on healing and regeneration .

In this class, we utilize a warm beverage for our senses meditation. Be sure to grab one before starting the class.

This class focuses on the power of knowing how and when to rest. Our movement practice focuses on low back, hips, quads

For this class, we will utilize a dowel. A broom handle w/ the broom removed is the perfect size for this. This class focuses on how we can use a simple prop to really elevate our movement practice.

This week, we do a special three card pull for Past, Present and Future. We do a full body practice and review all of the techniques we’ve learned in Soul Stretch.

Pigeon pose can be extremely difficult for most of us and is actually unhealthy for some hips. This modified figure-4 version is a great place to focus and get the same attention to the glutes and piriformis as we get in pigeon, without compromising hip health.

Need a good glutes stretch but feel too tight when you’re laying down or even seated? Try this standing variation.

In this quick video, we’ll use somatic movement to help reset the nervous system.

Rest and recovery are important parts of all training plans. If you’ve been skipping this important component of training, watch this quick (>5min) video on why you should start prioritizing rest days.