Ashley Lauren Frith is a violist, song writer, facilitator and educator. Currently the Director of Racial Equity and Belonging at Community MusicWorks in Providence, RI, she also serves as core faculty of the LA Philharmonic’s YOLA National Institute. All of her work is informed by certified yogic training, a 15 year Zen meditation practice, and held by contemplative end of life care partnership.

Full Transcript

Really nice to meet you all. This off the screen. And thanks, Rebecca. I didn't know you were going to read the whole bio, which is really funny to come out of sesshin. It's like this person is all these things. But I'm really just really happy to just spend a little time with you all and just share, just share a little bit.

As Rebecca mentioned, I teach yoga and my main sort of like profession is as a musician and my meditation and yoga practice go hand in hand with artistry and just trying to exist and be in the world. I thought I would just today would just sort of share some breathing exercises and some mindful movement practice. I think there's an interesting relationship to this. I'll speak for myself about the body and, you know, we as practitioners spend a lot of time in stillness and in silence. And I'm really grateful for the connection of getting to also move mindfully in addition to practicing and being still. And it sort of I think for all of us allows us to maybe sit more deeply, but also just be present with all the things that are sort of coming up in our systems, we store so much in our bodies and are deep in our connective tissues. And the movement piece for me is just another element to support us shedding the things that we don't need and getting closer to our true selves to each other.

So let's drop right in. I actually thought we would start with a few exercises, actually. I feel like it's not something that we get to do often, and especially after sitting for a little while. I thought we would start there. I just wanted to say that my Zen teacher is Yoshin David Raiden of Ithaca Zen Center, a student of Sasaki Roshi, the Rinzai tradition. So I guess folks are pretty comfortable. And, yeah, I just think sort of encourage you to be. And if you'd like to sort of stay and see the position in the lotus, that's totally fine. If there's another place position for your legs, feel free to just sort of find a spot that feels good and comfy.

Everybody can go ahead and take a second and let's just sort of shift our weight between each of our butt cheeks and just find a nice center of spot. Even. And then we can go ahead and lengthen our spines, but lift up out of our joints, out of our hips, the shoulders be soft away from the ears and just occurs, the chin maybe to settle a little bit towards the next, just settling in a little bit for the exercises.

We're going to just try to move only our eyes. So I'll just try to be as soft and as still as possible in the rest of our body. And for this practice, try to like actually feel the stretch. And it shouldn't feel like a strain, which is just sort of like most of the stretches. So you should just feel it, feel it enough.

So let's start by just looking up. Down. Looking up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. And if anybody's like me, just checking with our neck and our shoulders and just let them know they can be nice and soft for this, nothing else has to work. And then let's look to the left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Close our eyes. Settle. And then open our eyes again, let's look to the upper left. Lower right. Upper left. Lower right. Upper left. Lower right. Upper left. Lower right. And now look to the upper right. Lower left. Upper right. Lower left, try and get a good stretch here. Upper right. Lower left. Upper right. And lower left.

And go ahead and let's rub our hands together. I'll just sort of get a little life force energy into our hands. Be nice and warm. And then we can just place our hands over our closed eyes and take a breath here. OK, lovely. Let's move on. We're going to do a breathing exercise that we're going to use for kind of a big chunk of this and it's going to call this a title breath for today. And so we'll start with we'll start with the breath practice and I'll sort of explain each step.

So, again, just sort of take a second or settle into our bodies. If it feels good, we can have our eyes closed or just kind of lower our gaze away from the screen. And we'll start by just feeling our breath as it is, just witnessing it. And I encourage us just to witness it without judging it, just noting its state in this moment. And then let's inhale. We're going to make it a little longer. Each inhale, just a little bit longer. A little more space. It's helpful to have a visual we can imagine, sort of the tide going out with each inhale. And then we're going to take a breath. And we're going to take a breath. And we're going to take a breath now. Just taking in a little more air each time.

Once you sort of found our edge for this. We do the same thing with the exhales. Now we have our long inhale, exhale. Each one getting a little bit deeper. Letting out more air. If it's helpful to have a visual and think about each breath, each exhale, the tide going out a little bit more. Taking our time. Each exhale, each exhale. Each exhale getting a little longer. Matching our inhale. Once we find our edge, should feel your full, nice big full belly inhale. And a deep and long exhale. Letting as much air out as we can. So we inhale together. And exhale out. Inhale. Exhale.

We're going to add some movement to this breath. So the next inhale, see if we can allow our arms to move up with us as we inhale. And then we get to the exhale, let the arms come down. To our best, let the breath come first. Inhale and then arms come up. Almost as if the breath is what's moving our arms. And then we exhale, let the arms come down. Inhale, arms follow. Shoulders be nice and soft. Exhaling. The arms come down. The arms come down. Let's do a few more of these on our own. So let the breath move our arms. Be as fully in our bodies as we can. Everything else can be soft. A couple more. A couple more. Start with the breath, let the body follow. One more. And exhale. And exhale. Beautiful.

We can let our arms rest for a moment. I'm sure with this, some of us, we notice that there's a little bit of a pause. We get to the end of our exhale before the inhale comes. And it's just a part of our breath. And we can sort of allow that to sort of move us. And then we exhale. And exhale. And exhale. And exhale. And exhale. And exhale.

So we're going to add this practice in with some other movements. So we'll do something very similar where we're just going to try to be guided by the breath. And I'll just say before we do a few of these, we'll do less movement and just so we can have a moment, just like we did with this upward and downward motion, just kind of feel it for a little while. And then we'll do a little bit of a movement. So just as we do with everything, just listen to your body. The nice thing about the breath is just use the breath to sort of guide what's the extension and the range of our motion. For whatever we're doing. And if you don't even have to look at me. So just like all of my voice and do the thing that you're thinking that you're hearing and just let your breath tell you what that's going to be.

Okay. So we'll start with our head and our neck. So just go ahead and allow that title breath to come back. So. Nice full. Inhale. Maybe it's filling up our whole body. And nice exhale. Letting it come down our back body. Inhale. Big tide coming in. Long exhale. Tired going out. Inhale. We'll start with some neck rolls. So starting with the inhale breath first. You're just going to roll. The head around and up. And exhale. Come around and roll down. Inhale, roll the head up. Try to just move the head here. Be careful with the back of the neck. Just go. Stand as far as the body would like today. Exhale, come down. Breath first. Inhale. Rolling up. Exhale. Rolling down. And exhale. And we'll just go ahead and let that roll. I encourage your shoulders to soften and relax down. If that's helpful, let's switch directions. Inhale. Rolling up. Let the breath move us. Exhale. Coming down. Inhale and up. Exhale, come down. And we'll just go ahead and let that roll. And exhale. And down.

This time just settle our left ear to our left shoulder. Let's inhale here. Exhale. Can that ear just release any more into the shoulder? And then we'll just go ahead and let that roll. And then go ahead and inhale our left arm. Around. So we're sort of just gently placing our left hand. Onto our right cheek. Exhale here. Releasing the shoulder down and tilt. To the left. And then we'll gently inhale our right arm up. And then we'll just go ahead and let that roll. And exhale. And exhale. Sinking a little bit more with the left side of the body. Towards the left. Inhale here. Exhale. If we're feeling this and it feels good and we want a little bit more, we can tilt a little bit more to the left. And lift. And if you're feeling like a little too much, just release it and let it go. Just find where we are with this. And let's just be just with the breath just for a few breaths here. So inhale. Exhale. Find a good place for that right arm. Maybe it's a little closer to the ground. Maybe it's a little bit higher. And then we'll just go ahead and let that roll. Inhale. Tied in. And exhale. Come out of that. Release the head. Find our neutral. Release the arm.

Let's do the other side. So inhaling. Nice long spine. Release that right ear to the right shoulder. Exhaling. Bringing that arm up. And then we're going to do a little pull. Just allowing the natural weight of our arm to give us a nice neck stretch here. Inhale. Open up the chest a little bit. Exhale. Draw the shoulders down away from the ears and tilt to the right. Inhaling. Left arm straight out. Exhale. Sink a little bit more to the right if that feels good for you. And then we're going to do the other side. Inhale. Inhaling. Inhaling here. Find a happy place for the arm. Good height. It's a little bit lower. You should feel the stretch a little bit more. A little bit higher as we release. Two more breaths on your own. We're going to do the same thing on the left ear as well. We're going to stretch our neck with our breath. And then exhale. Release that.

We'll do one more stretch with the neck. Reach our arms straight up. Then just reach your left arm, reach up with the right arm, and then just clasp the hands together. We're going to bring them behind the base of our head. Then with an inhale, open up the chest, extend those elbows towards themselves, towards each other. With an exhale, folding the head down and let the elbows come towards each other and release. Again, not pulling on the neck, just letting the weight of our arm naturally support the stretch. Inhaling into the back of our neck, exhale, let the head sink. Inhaling, encouraging the spine to be nice and long. We lift up a little bit, shoulders soft. Exhale, release the head, release the elbows. One more breath here, breathe into the shoulders and the neck. Exhale, release that.

Then let's just do a little bit with our shoulders. Starting with the breath, we'll inhale, bring the right shoulder up towards our ear, exhaling, rolling it back. Inhaling up, exhale back. I know we're going really slowly here. The idea is just that the breath is priority. We're feeling into that, inhale up. We're really just feeling what's happening when we're doing this motion. Exhale, come down. One more time on this side, checking with our neck and our head, so everything else is just relaxed and soft. Exhale, come down. Then switch to the other side. Inhale, roll that shoulder up. Following the breath, exhale, squeezing down. Inhale, roll up. Exhale, come down. What's the range of our shoulder? What's the range on this side today? Inhale, come up. Exhale, down. One more on this side. Breath first, inhale up. Exhale, come down. Great.

Then I think we all have room for this. Well, I'm going to slide back just a little bit. We'll inhale and bring our arms up alongside our ears, palms facing towards each other, and then just arch back. Exhale first, fold forward over our legs. Take a nice big breath here. Maybe our head touches the ground. Maybe it's just suspended in the air. With the breath, we'll try to just release as much as we can here. Take a nice big breath into our lower back. Inhaling, exhale. Release the upper body towards the floor a little bit more. Send an inhale into our whole back. With the last exhale, does that help our body release into the floor towards the ground a little more? Then breath first, inhaling, coming all the way up. We can leave our arms down and just let the head be last. Just coming up nice and slowly.

I see we're coming up to the end of our usual time here. I wanted to do one more activity if that's okay, Rebecca and everybody. I just wanted to offer this heart press exercise. Then I would love to know just how any of this felt, hopefully somewhat useful or supportive. This practice, we can have our eyes closed or just lower our gaze, whatever feels comfortable. Just recede if that feels good. We've been sitting for a minute. Then we're going to place our hand on our heart. We'll start with an inhale. On the exhale, we're just going to add like 5% pressure with our palm into our heart. Just very gentle. Inhale, release. Exhale, gently press the heart. This is a somatic releasing exercise. Inhale, release the hand, release the pressure. Exhaling, gentle press, maybe try 10%. See how that feels. This can be supportive for anxiety. It's good for calming technique. Inhale, release pressure. Just do a few more times. Exhale, play with between 5% and 10% pressure. See which one you're appreciating in this moment. Inhale, release. Exhaling, heart press. Inhale, release. I'll let you just do two on your own without my voice. And we can let that go when we're ready.

So thank you so much for just letting me share those few things with you. I know we sort of, time goes by pretty quickly. But I love to hear how any of you guys are doing some of these things. So thank you so much for just letting me share those few things with you all. I know we sort of, time goes by pretty quickly. But I love to hear how any of you guys but I love to hear how any of that felt. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much.