yoga for core strength and awareness part 3: your sides (twists)

We’re continuing our look at core in class this week and staying working the sides of your body. Last week we were looking at side bends and side plank (vasistasana). This week we’ve shifted our attention to twists. The key posture we’ll be building towards is parsva bakasana or side crow/ crane pose.

There are a couple of different ways to do this posture – this video shows the variation that I find fires up my core muscles most and feels most buoyant once I’m in it. Differences from how you may have done this pose before include the placement of my hands; resting my hips on one arm not two; and the adjustment at the end to lift my feet higher. If you notice me pausing at different points in this video, the pauses align with the ‘steps’ I’ve written for you below!

The steps I go through in this video are:

1. Start in a squat with your legs together, heels lifted and your hands in prayer. Then twist to your right and hook your left elbow on the outside of your right knee

2. Take a couple of goes to get your elbow as far down the outside of your knee as you can. Holding your right thigh in place with your right hand might help you

3. Keep pressing your left arm against your leg and place your left hand on the floor so that your fingers are pointing in the same direction as your toes. Place your other hand on the floor shoulder distance away from the first hand (not too close together!)

4. Lift your hips

5. Shift your weight over towards your right arm and bend your elbows to a chaturanga-like position (see a post here about the posture chaturanga dandasana if you’re not sure what it looks like!)

6. Lean forwards until there is so much of your body weight forward of your hands that your feet start to get light and maybe lift

7. If your feet lift and you feel steady enough, try to roll your top hip forwards (so for me here that would mean towards the camera). Feel how this creates more twist in your body and lifts your feet higher.

If you can't get through all of these steps first time don't worry. Just pay attention to which step you get stuck on, because that might tell you something about your body. For example, if it's hooking your elbow on the outside of your knee that's difficult, you might need to work on your twists and outer hip mobility to get into this pose. If it's lifting your hips up that's tough it might be a lack of core strength, or if you feel like your arms can't hold you it could be upper body strength.

As always - please just ask any questions that come up!

Yoga for core strength and awareness part 2: your sides (side bends)

Within our current class theme of ‘core’, this week we’re shifting our attention to your sides (look at our last post for a simple diagram of your core). As with last (and every!) week, our primary focus is on breathing plus also trying to feel the muscles in the sides of your waist working. For this week of study we’re looking primarily at how the some of the muscles in your core can make you bend to the side, and feeling how your outer hips also have a role to play in that motion. 

Here are some of the postures we’re using to feel those tissues working:

Side ribs breathing: lie on your back with your knees bent. Put your hands on the sides of your lower ribs, so that your fingers are towards to the ceiling but your thumbs are wrapped around towards the floor. As you inhale try and breathe out into your hands, so that your ribcage pushes your hands further apart. As you exhale feel your ribs and hands sink back towards each other. Repeat.

Side waist strengthener: lie on your back with your knees bent. Lift your head and shoulders and reach your hands towards your ankles. Feel the front side of your core working to lift your head and shoulders. Take an inhale, then as you exhale reach your right hand towards the front of your mat (to bring yourself into a sideways bend). Inhale come back to centre, exhale reach to the other side. Repeat a few times, concentrating on feeling the side of your waist shortening to make your torso bend sideways as you reach your arm.

Lounge lizard to modified side plank: I’m not sure if the posture in the first of these images has a common name (but I call it lounge lizard!). Notice how both my feet are pointing in the same direction, which would be parallel with the short edge of my mat if I was using one. I’m also not sitting on the floor, my hips are hovering and I’m feeling a stretch along the outside of my bottom hip and in that side of my waist and ribs. Inhale into the bottom side of your torso, then as you exhale keep your feet as they are and push up into the version of side plank show in the next image. For extra length in the top side of your body you can reach your arm alongside your ear like. Move between these two postures a few times, in time with slow steady breathing.

Side plank: you can see here I’m lifting my hips a little higher than they would be if my body was in a perfectly straight line. I like doing that because it feels like it works the side of my waist and outer hip more to lift me higher. Make sure your bottom shoulder stays happy by shrugging it down your back away from your ear.

Again I’m not sure if this posture has a name - I’ve heard it called bananasana 🍌. Whatever it’s called, this is a nice gentle way to stretch out all the tissues in the sides of your body . 

Yoga for core strength and awareness part 1: deep core muscles

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!