Allow yourself to sense and feel the internal feedback within you while you are in the pose. With your eyes closed and notice where you are flowing freely, and the profound state of ease that can occur when we release into the pure sensation.

Purposes: Movement, flow, expansion, pleasure

Practices: Opening and widening the hips, turning in to sensation and feeling as a guide, movement in general, working with polarities.

Actions: Inward rotation of things, balancing polarities, especially expansion/ contraction, rooting down/ lifting up, and opening to toe flow, fun and play.

Yoga practice: Full yet contained graceful movement

Feeling and Sensing

Svadhisthana, means one’s own place. You access your own place through inner sensation. Because it is internal, you cannot see it any more than you can see a thought; you can only feel it. You experience them as sensations that are pleasurable or uncomfortable. There is a kind of sensation bordering on pain that occurs right at your edge. It is the sweetness of stretching into intense sensation, similar to the way a good massage digs into your sore muscles. The key to finding this delicate boundary between beneficial stretching and harmful stretching occurs entirely through the realm of feeling and sensation. You can only find it from within as you move into and out of poses, sensing your edge. This internal monitoring is an essential guide to your practice.

It is not how far you move into a pose but how deeply you feel the pose that you are in.
Anodea Judith

Sitting and Sensing

Tune in to the subtle sensation within the whole body, especially within the sacral area. Learning to bring your attention and invite consciousness through sensation.

Find a comfortable seated position. Make sure you can easily keep your spine upright. If you are sitting cross-legged on the floor and your knees are higher than your hips, then sit upon a folded blanket or cushion. If you are on a chair, be sure to uncross your legs and allow each foot to touch the floor so that your hips are level.

Begin by extending your roots downward and your crown upward. Find the center line that runs between your crown and base, the central axis of your spine. As you deepen your breathing, feel as if you could draw the breath up your core on each inhalation and all the way down on each exhalation. Extend the height of your crown as you inhale, and extend the depth of your roots as you exhale. Allow yourself to experience feeling and sensation through stillness.

Allow the breath and movement to be completely correlated. Let the breath move the body and change the direction of your movement naturally.

Knee-down Rotation

Benefits:

Release held tension in the hips. Improves digestion. Strengthens lower back, relieves stress and deepens relaxation.

Practice:

Lie on your back and bring your arm to a big T position, wrists level with each shoulder, palms facing downward, then bring your left knee toward your chest for a gentle hip stretch. When you are ready, exhale and use the right hand to guide the left knee toward the floor on the right side of your body. Rotating from the lower spine as you roll onto the outer right hip.
Lower your left hip toward the foot of your mat, lengthening the left side body.
Breathe and hold for several breaths, inhaling to lengthen and exhaling to move deeper into the twist.
Release with an inhalation, then switch legs and repeat on the other side.

Deep Lunge

For comfort, place a blanket beneath your knee

Benefits:

Creates core strength and increases steadfastness. Opens the arms and shoulders

Stretches the hamstrings, and loosens the hips. Energizes the body.

Practice:

From hands and Knees (table top position) step your left foot forward, placing it between your hands, in line with the left hip (as photo).
Lower your back knee down to the floor, and place your hands on your front knee as you deepen the stretch by allowing your front knee to move forward and point your tailbone downward.
On an inhalation lift your arms up overhead and arch your back naturally, palming facing each other.
To open your chest and lower back more, place a set of blocks behind you where your arm can be fully extended, or interacted fingers behind your back and gently arch your back.
Breathe fully and deeply, then lower your hands back down to the floor and step back to Downward-Facing Dog, or retreat back to child pose.

Step 2- Connect- Sense and feel from within

Enter- Cultivate- Stillness and Stability

Step 3- Activate- Strength and Will