Rodrigo Souza: Hello, folks. I hope you're well.
My name is Rodrigo Souza.
I go with the pronouns he and him,
and I am your Adaptive/Accessible yoga teacher today.
Okay. We're going to have a practice based on hopefulness,
how to embrace the future with hopefulness.
And as we can see,
we're going to have some props today.
So I would love, if you can separate these, a small pillow, an extra chair.
So we're going to have two chairs,
one that you're going to sit on and the extra one.
We also in this practice,
we will be using two blocks and a bolster.
If you don't have a bolster,
it can be a big pillow or anything that you can adapt the practice to your body.
And talk about adapting.
I am paralyzed from the chest down,
so I adapt the yoga to my body,
and I would love for you to take these movements and adapt to your beautiful body,
to your beautiful self, okay?
You can also visualize the practice if it doesn't feel comfortable,
or you can come back to Dhyanasana and have a soft gaze and just stay home, all right?
Beautiful. Let's do that then.
Right, sit up straight and tall. And your body,
raise the sternum a little bit,
and notice how you extend the spine as you do that.
Soften your shoulders.
Start breathing, soften inside of your mouth.
If it's available to you,
it's comfortable, you can close your eyes.
You can have a soft gaze,
gaze to, you know,
to the floor in front of you.
Bring yourself back here,
noticing how you feel, non-judgmentally.
And also notice a time in your life that you felt really hopeful.
And notice how you felt that moment. Which sensations were present back then.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Let's be curious about how it felt.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Visualize a warm and glowing light
and immerse yourself into a light of hope.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Notice how you're breathing,
and with each exhalation,
soften yourself a little bit further,
landing back to your beautiful self, fulfilled with joy, gratitude, and hope.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Beautiful. Gently bring yourself back, open your eyes.
Have a little smile. Lovely.
We're going to add some mindful movements.
I would love for you to synchronize them with the breath if it's available, okay?
We're going to sit up straight and tall and start with
some neck movements.
Ground yourself in mountain pose, inhale,
raise your head, your chin to the ceiling,
to the sky as far as comfortable for you.
Try not to drop your head far back.
Exhale long and soft,
chin towards the chest, gaze to the floor.
Beautiful. Hold it here.
Inhale one more time.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Exhale.
I like to inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth,
but be my guest, you do whatever feels comfortable for you.
Gently bring your head back to sentinel, back to midline.
And we're going to do the same thing on the horizontal plane.
Ground yourself through your sitting bonds. Inhale.
We gaze over our right shoulder.
Lovely.
Exhale, long and soft, through the mouth.
You gaze over your left shoulder.
One more time, as we go again.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Beautiful.
Back to center. And release.
As we release, we keep the palms on your legs,
and then you do some shoulder rotation backwards.
Synchronize with the breath. Three times backwards and three times forward.
You can do one shoulder at a time,
as well if it's comfortable.
Beautiful. I hear the cracks when I do that.
Oh. Lovely. Give your arms a little shake.
And now we're going to start to use this prop over here.
Okay? We're going to do a variation of a Downward Facing Dog.
Adho Mukha.
Okay, first thing we're going to do,
we're going to place the extra chair right in front of us.
And we're going to ground ourselves either through
our sitting bones or through the feet touching the ground.
Then we're going to walk our hands.
Spread your hands like that, your fingers,
and we're going to walk our hands until it's comfortable for you.
Notice that your spine is engaged and elongated.
You're not flexed.
You are extended. Extended spine.
Hold it here, press down your inner heels against the floor, gaze forward.
Beautiful. Find a place where it's comfortable for you but also challenging. Here we go.
Once in the posture, inhale, exhale.
Lovely. Try to find that
sweet spot between comfortable and challenging.
You don't want it to be too challenging
and you don't want it to be too comfortable.
Beautiful. And to spice things up,
now we're going to turn the chair around.
Turn around.
It's also a variation of Adho Mukha, but now we're going to,
have a bigger stretch on your back.
So sit up straight and tall one more time.
Ground yourself. Bring yourself back to your body,
and then we can
hold the back of your chair over here and see if you can
go a little bit further and place your ears between your arms, and hold it here.
Extend your arms.
Feel the stretch. Once in the posture,
let's take a collective breath here. Inhale,
exhale, and bring yourself back to center,
back to midline. Beautiful. And release.
I love practicing with two chairs.
I don't do that very often.
It's good when you teach in-person,
so you can use props,
and then you can use two chairs.
I love that. Right, we did down dog,
and now I'm going to do something that I found it to be very helpful,
especially for me that I'm a paraplegic.
I don't get to stretch my legs very often.
You can see that they are flexed.
So we're going to do a Head to Knee Pose,
which is a variation of Janu Sirsasana.
We turn the chair around again towards us.
And what do we do here,
we gently going to
take our right leg and extend very gentle.
I've got a lot of spasticity, mostly spasticity,
so I need to be very gentle. Beautiful.
Once your leg is extended here,
now we're going to extend your spine.
And this foot that is grounded on the floor,
the left foot,
you can use it to root yourself.
Beautiful.
And now very gentle,
we're going to get into the posture.
Get into a forward fold from the hip, not from the spine.
Walking your hand towards your leg,
towards your ankle, and try to bring the head towards the knee.
For me, it's it's comfortable here.
Once in the posture we breathe, inhale.
You're going to it's comfortable for you, folks.
Don't push yourself, or himself. Exhale.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Beautiful. Once here,
we're going to get into a twist.
Gentle twist. Keep your leg there.
Hold it here. Inhale.
Raise your arms any amount.
Exhale. We're going to take the left hand
and bring outside of your right knee right here,
and the right hand at the back of the wheel, the back of the chair.
Hold it here and gaze over your right shoulder.
Gentle twist here.
Feel the stretch. If it's available to you,
you can extend your hands.
Notice how you feel. Exhale.
Back to center and release your leg. Lovely.
Notice how you feel. Reposition yourself in the chair if you need to.
Take your time here to breathe.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: And we do the same thing with the left leg, opposite side, okay?
Be very gentle with yourself.
Always. Lovely.
Sit up straight and tall,
ground yourself through your sitting bones
or through this foot here touching the ground with
the right foot, and get into the posture until it's comfortable for you.
Lift your chest, engage your spine, and forward.
Get into a forward fold from the hip.
Beautiful. Here is great for me.
I don't need to go any further.
I'm feeling. Let's breathe. Inhale.
Sweet. Exhale, back to center.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Lovely. Hold it here.
Steady Mountain Pose, inhale.
Raise your arms any amount.
Exhale. Get into a twist to the opposite side.
Right hand outside of your left knee.
Gaze over your left shoulder,
extend your arm if it's available, if it's comfortable.
Feel the stretch, inhale, grow taller.
Exhale, back to center.
Release. Beautiful. Take your time here to notice how you feel.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: And maybe we can take advantage that this leg is here,
and we can place the other leg there as well.
I don't have a good trunk control,
so I need to be careful about it.
There you go.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Lovely.
And that we can say is a variation of Dandasana, right?
So sit up straight and tall here.
What are we going to do here? As we're in Dandasana
we're going to get into a seated,
supported forward fold now.
And as we did in Janu Sirsasana and Head to Knee Pose,
now we're going to do it with both legs, with both hands.
We're going to walk them until it's comfortable for us.
Get into a forward fold from the hip.
Lovely. Sit up straight and tall.
Ground yourself to your sitting bones, folks. Feel it.
All right. Let's get into a posture.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Here is okay for me.
Maybe a little bit.
Remember that we're not interested in
the aesthetic and how the posture look, but how it feels.
Notice how we feel. Do you feel comfortable?
Do you feel conscious?
Do you feel that you are in your body?
Beautiful. Hold it here.
Let's take a collective breath. Inhale.
Exhale. Release. Lovely.
Release your leg. Release the other one.
It was a lovely stretch.
We, wheelchair user, we don't get to do that very often.
So if you have
a disabled student, that is a great variation to work with them.
All right, so now we're going to get into
a variation of Side Bends
using the second chair as well.
And also, we're going to use the blocks.
We're going to take the pillow out. We're going to put it here.
And you can play around.
You can use a pillow,
you can use a block, you can use two blocks.
You know, my body is different than yours, right?
So you're going to adapt for your body.
You can put one block on your chair just
parallel just beside your chair where you're sitting.
I like to use two blocks for me to get a good high here.
Once the two blocks are here,
I put my elbow in it,
and then I ground myself through my sitting bones.
Sit up straight and tall here. Gaze forward.
You can press your feet down as well.
Expand inhale.
We're going to get into a full lateral flexion here.
Until it's comfortable for you,
you can play around. Exhale.
One more time, inhale,
going further and further.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Feel the stretch on the right side of
your body. Exhale.
Beautiful.
We're going to do the same thing.
We're going to change sides.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Very gentle. We're going to get into the posture here.
Sit up straight at tall.
Ground yourself into Dhyasana.
Inhale.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Exhale.
Lovely. Now try
to go a little bit further.
Inhale.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Exhale.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: And release.
Beautiful.
We did, like, lateral flexions and forward folds in a chair, right?
Twists as well. Now we need to do a backward bend.
A back bend.
So a back bend with two chairs.
A variation that I like to do is a Camel Pose.
We're going to place
our chair that we're sitting on right in front of the second chair, the extra chair.
Here we go.
We're going to gaze forward.
We're going to sit up straight and tall here,
ground yourself into Mountain Pose, and gently,
we're going to walk our hands backwards until it's comfortable for us.
And get into a back bend. Whoa.
Broaden your chest. Hold it here.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: It's a lovely heart opening.
Feel the beam of hope inside of your heart.
Ground yourself here.
Beautiful. Gaze upwards. Inhale.
Exhale, release. Back to center,
back to midline. Beautiful.
So we opened the spine in the six directions with two chairs,
and now we're going to go to the La La Land of Savasana,
which we're going to build a supported child's pose, Balasana.
What are we going to do? We're going to take a bolster now.
In my case, as my feet is on my wheelchair foot rest.
One thing that I like to do,
I like to place two blocks just beside my front wheels because I'm going
to take my feet out of my wheelchair foot rest.
This is a good posture for me because I get
to invite a little forward fold
as I'm going to go into the posture,
and also a little hip opening over here.
One thing that you're going to do now,
you're going to take the bolster and place in front
in the chair in front of you.
Hold it here. We're going to get into the posture now, okay? Lovely.
Sit up straight and tall.
And at your own pace,
you're going to get into a forward fold here.
And we're going to hold the bolster.
You're going to embrace the bolster as you embrace the future.
Embrace the future with hope.
Hold it here. Find a place that is comfortable for you.
Lovely restorative version of Balasana here.
Let's take a collective breath here. Inhale.
[Gentle music]
Rodrigo Souza: Now turn your head to the other side.
Inhale. Soften the tensions in your body,
soften your eyes, soften your shoulders.
Feel hope.
The beam of hope. The golden lines.
And gently bring yourself back to Sentinel, back to midline.
I going to tell something for you, folks.
I could stay here forever.
But you don't want to have, like,
a two-hours class with me, right?
So we got to stop.
Beautiful. Bring your body back to Sentinel, release.
[ MUSIC ]
Rodrigo Souza: Put your blocks away.
Reposition yourself in a chair,
and put the extra chair away as well.
I really hope you enjoyed this class.
That was fun.
And I really hope you embrace the future as it comes, okay?
The world might not be okay,
but you can be okay.
There is a place inside of you that is always in peace.
Always hopeful. And we can access that anytime,
especially in some restorative poses like this using chairs.
Explore that in your house.
Come back to yourself. Come back to hope.
Ground yourself the last time. Inhale,
raise your arms any amount,
exhale long and soft through the mouth.
Get into Anjali Mudra.
And thank you so much.
I'm very grateful to have you practicing with me today. I'll see you next time.