Yoga for core strength and awareness part 1: deep core muscles
Olivia Marley
This month we’ve shifted our attention in class to the topic of ‘core’. And we’re approaching it in two ways:
trying to feel and use the muscles in and around your waistline
focusing on breathing, which is core to this discipline (and to me is one of the things that differentiates a physical yoga practice from lots of other exercise disciplines).
As I’ve been announcing in class that we’re going to be looking at core there have been a few groans. That’s normal! I think that could be at least in part because people’s experience of their core muscles can sometimes be just the bit you feel when you do sit ups. Since your torso isn’t flat, it’s more cylinder shaped (see first image here), we’ll instead be trying to take a more balanced approach by feeling muscles in your front, back and sides. And we’re starting this topic this week by trying to access some of the deepest muscles of your core: some that run alongside your spine; your pelvic floor; some deep (and high up) inner thigh muscles; and your hip flexors (see second image).
Within the flow of each class, here are some ways we’ve been trying to feel those parts of your body:
lie on your front and lift your head, chest and legs away from the floor. Feel muscles in your back fire up to lift you
imagine you were on the loo doing a wee and you wanted to stop partway through. There’s an idea of what pelvic floor feels like! We’ve been building that into class by taking long steady breaths and at the end of each exhale drawing pelvic floor and lower belly in and up a little
put a yoga block (or book/ cushion etc) between your legs and squeeze. Feel your inner things switch on. Bring that sensation into postures like downward dog, warrior 2 and warrior 3
come into a lunge with your back knee on the floor. Press your back foot down and see if you can feel the front of that thigh switch on. Then (without actually moving your knee) that you’re trying to drag your back knee forwards towards your front foot. If you feel something working around the front of that hip, those are your hip flexors.
We’ll continue our focus on this area of your body over the next few weeks by working our way around the front, back and sides of your waist. More blog posts to follow showing how you might approach working with those areas of your body!