Eagle Progression Sequence to Release Shoulder Tension

Good morning!
Are your arms, shoulders, neck, back and hips a bit tired and sore from Autumn activities like raking leaves, chopping wood and harvesting the bounty from the garden? On this rainy morning when maybe you are finding a moment of respite I wanted to share a possible eagle posture progression sequence designed to release some of this accumulated tension, perhaps allowing you to harvest the energy that was stuck in the tension back into the body to rejuvenate where you are depleted and prepare you to keep going with more ease in whatever activities you engage in next.
I often teach this progression in a chair to make it more restorative and accessible to every body, although the full pose is done standing. While this video is primarily focused on the seated posture I briefly show the standing potential as well.
Once again I apologize for the technology, and the video is not perfect…
But it works for now and I hope comes to you at a time when it is useful.
Enjoy!

Practice video for Finding Your Own Practice Workshop 5/30/2015

A little inspiration 🙂 If you like, flow with this to start, holding any postures as long as you want and/or moving through each one breath. Inhale expand, exhale condense. Remember – backbends happen in the upper back and lengthen the lower back and forward bends hinge at the hip socket instead of rounding the back. Adapt to this. You can mute the music if you want silence or your own music – although this is one of my favorites. And don’t worry, Joe the cat doesn’t stay in the frame for long.
To find some desire to want to practice Hannah Tosi suggested coming into a posture that you know you enjoy and experiment in it to feel what you like about it. And then I suggest let it lead you into whatever comes next. If you like follow a skeleton practice that includes – vinyasa (maybe sun salutation flow of some kind), forward bend, lateral/side lengthening, balance, backbend, twist, hips and if you like inversions. As an exercise you could write a list of different postures that would fit into each of these categories. And here are the sample practices that I spoke of that you can follow and/or use as a jumping off point.
Your mental drishti/focus point on feeling yourself in your body and how the subtleties effect the posture and your experience.
If you’d like to share let me know how it goes.
Love.