Dandasana (seated wide legged forward fold)

To do this pose:

Come to a seated position on your mat. Extend each leg out to your sides, coming to a wide leg or splits position. You can keep your knees bent a little bit or if you’re comfortable, try extending them and flexing through your feet. From here, you can stay upright or start to walk your upper body forward in a folded position. Feel free to rest on your elbows, a pillow, a bolster, or come all the way down, connecting your heart to the earth. 

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• It stretches in the inner thighs. This part of your leg is often ignored and so important in supporting your hip flexors! More leg injuries occur to the inner thighs and hip flexors because they’re weak. This pose lengthens and strengthens them, helping to prevent those injuries especially when running from patient to patient. 
• It stretches the spine. Especially if you are leaning forward,...

Trikonasana (triangle pose)

To do this pose:

Come to a downward facing dog. Extend one leg up behind you and take a step forward with it between your two hands, grounding that foot with your toes facing forward. Ground through your back foot with your toes pointing to the side, or the long edge of your mat. Cartwheel your arms up overhead, reaching the same arm as the front leg forward and the same arm as the back leg back, bending through your front knee into a Warrior II position. From there, straighten your front knee as you push your hips back and reach forward with your upper body toward your front fingertips. When you are as stretched as you can be, release your front hand down to either a block, to rest on your shin, or even the floor as your back arm comes up to reach toward the sky. Your upper body now more parallel with the floor with your side body on both sides long and open. Repeat on the other side. 

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses:...

Utthita Parsvakonasana (extended side angle pose)

To do this pose:

Come to a downward facing dog. Extend one leg up behind you and take a step forward with it between your two hands, grounding that foot with your toes facing forward. Ground through your back foot with your toes pointing to the side, or the long edge of your mat. Cartwheel your arms up overhead, reaching the same arm as the front leg forward and the same arm as the back leg back, bending through your front knee into a Warrior II position. Release your front elbow to rest on your front thigh or, if you’re more bendy, reach those fingertips down to the floor, continuing to bend deeply into the front leg. Reach your back arm up over head either reaching for the ceiling or up and over toward the front of the room, making a straight line from the tips of your fingers to the bottom of your foot. Repeat on the other side.

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• As with Triangle...

Utkatasana (chair pose)

To do this pose:

Come to a standing position at the top of your mat. On your inhale bend through your knees and sweep your arms out by your sides and up by your ears to reach up. Hold the bent knee position with your arms up, or bring them to a prayer position if your shoulders are tight. Hold and breathe. Feel the heat start to build up in your legs and your core.

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• It strengthens the supporting muscles of the major joints, such as the shoulders, hips, knees and ankles.This is because it provides stability in a strong standing position. The stability of these joints is so important especially later in your career as a nurse after long hours of heavy work on your joints! 
• It develops core strength. Your core is vital to wellness in general, but it’s most important action for nurses and other hands- on workers is that it protects your low back. The stronger your core is, the less your...

Ashta Chandrasana (crescent lunge pose)

To do this pose:

Come to a downward facing dog. Extend one leg up behind you and take a step forward with it between your two hands, grounding that foot with your toes facing forward. Keep your back heel up, ground through your front foot and once you find your center, bring your upper body up and reach your arms up over your head, bending deeply into your front leg. If you feel comfortable, start to arch your upper back and let your arms fall back to create that crescent shape with your body and breath.

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• It improves balance! Pose with the back toes tucked provides a much more precarious pose so you have to engage that core and focus on the balance. This helps improve your stamina in general, helping your body get through your 12 hour shifts without feeling exhausted. 
• It strengthens your thigh, gluteal, and shoulder muscles! This is a full body pose so perfect for when...

Parivrtta Anjaneyasana (twisted high lunge)

To do this pose:

Come to a downward facing dog. Extend one leg up behind you and take a step forward with it between your two hands, grounding that foot with your toes facing forward. Keep your back heel up, ground through your front foot and once you find your center, bring your upper body up and reach your arms up over your head, bending deeply into your front leg. Hold your high lunge position for a moment. Once you’re ready, twist from your navel over your shoulder, the same shoulder as the front leg, bringing the opposite arm forward and the other arm back. From there, relax your front hand down to the earth, reaching your other arm up to the sky. 

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• It provides gentle massage to the abdominal organs, stimulating digestion. This is great for after a long shift, whether or not you go to eat, without taking it too far as with deep twists. 
• It tones the...

I've always wanted to be the best nurse I could be.

I wanted to be the one with the answers, the one you could count on, even the one you could call ANYTIME of the day or night!

What I didn't know, was who I would become...

We all go into nursing for one reason or another, but most come down to wanting to help people.

Why don't we help ourselves?!

About a year ago I found Brittany's Facebook group. I figured this would just be another group that I would join, some stuff would pop up on my feed, I would scroll by at night before I went to bed and would call it a day.

Well, that's the complete opposite of what happened.

Initially, I had every excuse in the world why couldn't do any of it...I worked 80 hours a week, I was on call 24/7, I was tired, if I was not at work I had a 1000 things to catch up on.

The funny thing was all those excuses were actually reasons why I needed to participate.

I started slow, I...

Balasana (child’s pose)

To do this pose:

Kneel at the back of your mat. You can tuck your toes under if you feel any stress on your knees or untuck them and sit back on your heels. Keeping your toes together, spread your knees out wide. Walk your hands forward on your mat to rest your belly and chest between your knees and your forehead on the mat. You can also put pillows or a bolster between your legs to support your upper body. Stretch your arms out in front of you, palms down on the mat. Exhale and sink deeper into your hips. 

How this pose is especially beneficial for nurses: 

• It stretches the low back. One of the most common injuries among nurses is back pain. Regularly stretching out your low back and hip muscles can help prevent and heal these injuries. 
• It’s restorative and deeply relaxing. Restorative yoga poses are usually held for anywhere from 5- 60 minutes so that you can truly and completely relax your body. After 12 hours of...

I found Brittany when otherwise I would have either left nursing or dug some kind of metaphysical hole and disappeared!

Instead the Universe brought me a healing relationship!

With someone who understood, someone who had been through burnout and was doing well on the other side.

My spirit saw this and thought, "Oh! A sliver of hope!"

I started my journey bitter, disheartened, totally lost.

I had been to yoga classes in the past but YOGA 101 helped me build an actual practice...surrounded by real support.

It helped something shift in me.

This shift was obvious to everyone.

I started being nice to people and not because I had to but because I wanted to.

And then, something came full circle.

Life is funny that way.

One time, when I was a baby ICU nurse, a senior nurse yelled at me. I was humiliated.  I thought I wasn’t good enough.

I almost quit.

I didn’t ask...

Supta Baddha Konasana, aka supine bound angle pose

Sit down on your mat with a block, bolster, or pillow nearby.

Bend your knees, put the soles of your feet together.

Keep feet far enough away from your pelvis that you make a diamond with your legs and there isn’t pressure on your knees.

When comfortable, lay back, placing either a block or your bolster on the floor between your shoulder blades.

Relax head, neck, and arms down by your sides.

Close eyes and breathe into hips and heart, letting go of the day.

How this pose is beneficial for nurses:

It opens the hips. Stress is often carried in the hips, but nurses especially since we’re on our feet most of the day.

Opening the hips helps release this stress, anxiety, and negative energy.

Notice what thoughts and feelings are coming up for you during this pose.

It opens the heart.

It feels like half of what we do as nurses is charting, and when we’re not charting, we’re hunched over our patients’ beds.

We...