Day 2 ~ Stretch & Soothe

 

As we headed into Day 2 of 30 Days of Yoga with Adriene, I found myself excited to learn more of what she had to teach me. I was so excited, I took a selfie right before we began to share with my friends & family my new found interest.

  So we got on our mats, and dove right in to day number 2. This session began with an easy (& my personal favorite) pose, extended child pose. This helps get your body warmed up for the following sequences by stretching the kinks out. What I like about Adriene is that she tells you to allow yourself to move a little side to side or even sway back & forth if your standing. You don't have to be totally stiff & serious. You can have fun while doing it & it feels great! We then got on all fours, extending the right leg straight out, imagining we are pressing it into a wall. These imagination descriptions she gives us; I have come to find, really really help me understand exactly what I am suppose to be doing. We then switched off to the left leg, from there she had us bring our leg back from extended leg pose and had us hug it in to the chest (almost so our nose and knee were touching), this is a good one to help improve your balance. Once done with that, my wrists were really starting to hurt pretty bad from pressing down into the ground like we were. Luckily, she showed us a little wrist exercise we can do to help reduce wrist pain after doing those poses. 

   During the next sequence, we did poses like downward dog, baby cobra, plank and then jumping into mountain pose and repeat. I've always hated repetition in other yoga videos, but have found that I don't mind it so much with these. Maybe it's cause I actually like the instructor? Haha!! To end it out, we sat back on our mats, pulled our legs into our chest giving them a hug and then proceeded to rock back & forth from sitting position & back to laying on our backs. This gave our spines a nice little massage, and we finally came to a rest on our backs to end session number two with a little relaxation.

   I will admit, it was a little harder than Day 1 (of course), but I didn't find my self wanting to give up or skip poses. She even said at one point, "If you would like to skip this, you can." I was rather proud of myself when I pushed through, rather than giving up like I had before. 

    Check out the video below for day 2 and give it a shot! Leave me a comment let me know how you did :)

Day 2 - Stretch & Soothe