Empowered Self with Mandy Ryle

Practice Resources

Chair Yoga

Movement Snack for Legs and Core

Just a quick chair practice to get your blood pumping and your lower body reved up. Sitting all day isn’t the terrible sin that the media would have us believe. It’s just important to get moving for 5-15 minutes every hour or so. This little practice will do perfectly.

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Chair Yoga

Standing Practice for Stronger Legs

A quick standing practice to fire up your legs. This practice targets the posterior, anti gravity muscles: calves, hamstrings, glutes and also the quads. These muscles are highly correlated with higher metabolism, so this practice is a great way to rev things up during a day of sitting. 

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Yin Yoga for Back Pain

Getting to Know Your Back Part Four

If you are a movement geek like me, you will be blown away by the simple complexity of this somatic experience. Prepare to feel stuff you may not have felt in your back before. We will also be touching on one more important back related topic that can’t be ignored. The influence that society and societal norms has on our experience of our back.

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Yin Yoga for Back Pain

Getting to Know Your Back Part Three

In this practice, we will explore another layer of the experience of the back, the Thoraco Lumbar Fascia. I am fascinated by fascia and have spent a great deal of time studying it. But the TLF is special. The fascia in the low back is unique as you will learn in this practice.

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Yin Yoga for Back Pain

Getting to Know Your Back Part Two

Many who have back pain believe that their spine is unstable. There is a distinct feeling of instability and vulnerability in the back that is reinforced by confusing or misleading messages coming from popular culture and even medical professionals.

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Yin Yoga for Back Pain

Getting to Know Your Back Part One

The back is an incredibly complicated structure anatomically, but even more so when you consider other parts of the experience like the the vascular system and the nervous system. But humans are not just walking talking tissues. We are embodied selves with thoughts, feelings, beliefs and predictions. These parts of our experience are EVERY BIT as important to our experience as the tissues themselves, maybe even MORE important.

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Chair Yin

Chair Yin for Travel Aches and Pains

I’ve chosen the stretches we all crave when we’ve been sitting in a car or airplane, or just during a day of work as well as regulation practices to help you calm your nervous systems to get some perspective or even relief. This practice is a quick and accessible practice that you can do just about anywhere in a chair.

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Somatics for Deep Hip Learning

Deep Hip Learning

The hip is more than a collection of tissues. It’s a unique and complicated element of the embodied self. In this practice we combine a somatic lesson with some of your favorite Yin poses. These will facilitate deep learning for you and your hips!

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Chair Yoga

Chair Yoga: Lunges and Twists

This is a perfect practice for your lunch break at home or at the office, or if you have some movement issues that make it hard for you to get to the floor. You’ll get your heart pumping and stretch all the right places.

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Mindfulness Practice for Chronic Pain

Gunas Meditation

This is an incredibly valuable practice. It is a wonderful introduction to mindfulness but also enhances interoception. Interoception is the sense of ones body and it has been shown in research to reduce pain intensity in those suffering from chronic pain and augment self compassion.

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Somatics for Neck Pain

Sternal Rhythm

This practice focuses on restoring the rhythm between the sternum, neck, jaw and hip. We will utilize some somatic movements to help you attend to the sternum.

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Humming Practice for Neck, Shoulders and Face Pain

This is a slightly unusual practice but it is very effective. If you suffer from face, neck or shoulder pain, you likely spend a great deal of time re-adjusting your posture and position to reduce pain. You have likely found that it doesn’t really work. This practice is designed to enhance awareness and provide compelling evidence of safety to your brain and nervous systems.

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How to Stretch Your Neck

One really irksome myth is that if your neck is tight, some stretching will help bring relief and over time, this stretching will fix the tightness and the pain it is “causing”. Total horse$%I$. Sorry to all of those influencers who are peddling this myth. 

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chair Yin

Chair Yin: Your Nervous System and Your Neck

This is a go to, short practice to relieve neck and shoulder tension naturally. The whole practice can be done from a simple chair. You will engage in some somatic work as well as gentle stretching to increase range of motion and reduce feelings of stiffness.

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Soothe Upper Back and Neck Tension

Soothe Upper Back and Neck Tension

To be an adult is to sometimes struggle with upper back and neck tension and even pain. This is my professional opinion. Though this pain/tightness can really disrupt your life, it’s important not to get too tied up about it. This practice is to give you some go to tools for managing this suffering.

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Somatic Yin for Neck and Shoulder Pain

Somatic Yin for Neck and Shoulder Pain

This practice really focuses on the sides of the neck. You know, those muscles that get so tender and tight? When the sternocleidomastoid gets cranky, we can often feel sensitive in our shoulders and even the jaw. This is mostly somatic work to learn to feel sensations here without the drama. Though, you will get some gentle stretches as well.

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Thoracic Nerve Flossing

Thoracic Nerve Flossing

This practice puts the other tissues in a supporting role in favor of mobilizing, and gaining awareness of our nerves. Especially the ones that exit the thoracic region of the spine. We will use somatic movement and a bolster to gently mobilize the nerves and soften the experience of the spine.

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Save Your Neck

Save Your Neck

If you suffer from neck pain (everyone raises hand…) this class is for you. Learn more about pain, why stretching isn’t the answer and what actually may help. This class blends Yin and somatic techniques to soothe your nervous system and re-introduce smooth, pain free movement.

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