Instructor: Megan Knutson
Community: Adult group, Hospital employees with health risk factors, Hospital setting
Plan Creation Date: June 1, 2013
Yoga Calm Principle/Lesson Goal: Stillness
Lesson Plan:
Calm
- Pulse count – Find your pulse on your wrist, 15 second count (x4), if your heart rate and thoughts are racing from the busy work day, invite your breath to slow down, allow your mind to release its thoughts about the day, allow your breath to slow down and move with ease with our movements
- Volcano breath – Allow the breath to slow and pair your movement with your breath. Move at your own pace. Inhale reach the sky, exhale stretch the arms out to either side.
- Forward fold – How does it feel to be still? Have you had the time to be still yet today? Remember there is nothing you have to accomplish for the next 45 minutes, no task to complete, no goal to achieve. Simply being present, slowing your breath, feeling the movements, and relaxing is all we are here for. Allow your mind and body to be still.
Activate
- Downdog – Allow your head to rest between your arms, release the tension from your neck and shoulders. Reach your hips up to the sky to create space between your ribs. Listen to your breath
- Forward fold – Plant the four corners of your feet into the ground. Slowly begin to roll up one vertebrae at a time
- Tree – Feel connected through your feet to the ground, begin to balance on one foot, hands can remain at chest or can extend overhead. Try moving your arms with your breath as in Volcano breath. Now settle your hands at the center of your chest in stillness. Feel a sense of quiet calm in your body as you balance in tree (repeat opposite side)
- Dancer – Keep balanced by telling yourself: I am strong, I am in control, I can do it (repeat opposite side)
- Eagle – Begin in chair. Wrap the left arm under the right, left leg over right. Press palms together or give yourself a hug if your shoulders are tight (repeat opposite side)
- Forward fold – Does this forward fold feel different than our first forward fold of the class?
Calm
- Cat/cow – Pair your movement with your breath, match your inhalations with your exhalations. Can you gently allow the movements to slow as your breaths slow and you fill the lungs even more with each breath
- Lying twist – knees come higher if you experience any pain in the low back
- Back breathing – If they are ok with me touching (I always make sure to ask permission before I touch students)
- Final relaxation – Simply lie still for the moment, enjoy the peace of this quiet moment – Read quote
- Hoberman’s Sphere breathing
- Pulse count – Can compare where it was when we began to now after class when we are relaxed