Transitions: warrior 1 to warrior 3

Our last focus area in class was transitions (which is simply the yoga word for how you move from one pose to the other). It’s easy to just focus on the individual postures in this discipline but spending some time thinking about how you’re moving from one to the other has a few key benefits:

• It’ll probably make you slow down. This is useful to help you pay more attention to what you’re feeling in your body, and also because moving slowly builds more strength (in the transitions we looked at this month, moving slowly was building strength in students’ legs, hips, core and shoulders)

• Slowing your movements down in flow yoga should also slow your breathing down. And with everything that’s going on around coronavirus right now breathing a bit slower and deeper sounds like a good idea!

• More broadly, this kind of practice can help you train yourself to keep paying attention and not get overwhelmed in a challenging and shifting situation

The first transition we looked at in detail was warrior 1 to warrior 3. We were using the arms alongside your body variation of warrior 3 – I like that one because I like how it switches on my back muscles. But you can have your arms reaching forward/ hands in prayer/ however you like! Here are the steps we went through and one key adjustment I was cueing for my students:

We start in warrior 1. I like to practice and teach this posture with my feet hip width apart across my mat, rather than one behind each other. This foot placement feels nicer in my back and also makes me feel more balanced (which is useful since we’re about to stand on one leg!).

See my earlier blog post about foot placement in warrior 1 here if you have any questions about this!

From warrior 1 bring your arms down by your sides. Shrug your shoulder blades down your back away from your ears and squeeze them a little towards each other.

Turn your palms to face forwards and feel your upper back switching on. Try and keep that feeling in your upper back as we move through the next few steps!

In some bodies when you lean forward like this the extra weight being carried by your front leg will make your hips skew out to that side (ie towards your front leg). The video below shows how I cue my students to minimise this.

If it feels like your hips skew out to the side when you lean forwards, put your thumb in the crease at the front of that hip (ie in the fold in your body where your torso meets your leg). With your hand guide your outer hip towards the back of your mat and a little in towards the centre of your mat. Then try and keep your pelvis in the position as you remove your thumb and reach your arm alongside you again.

Then, once your hips are set as shown in the above video, lift your back heel and pivot slightly on your back foot so that your hips square a little more towards the front of your mat. This step will help your hips be more even when you shift into warrior 3.

Notice that there is more weight on your front leg now and the extra effort that requires of your front leg. Don’t let that freak you out! Take a couple of slow breaths and just notice how it feels. Shifting your weight forwards like this has started the transition to our next pose.

Keep shifting more of your body weight forwards on to your front leg until eventually your back leg gets so light it lifts off the floor. Once you’re in warrior 3 press down through the big toe of your standing foot and feel that foot making lots of continuous tiny adjustments to keep you upright.

Then when you want to come up don’t let your focus go! Think about where you want to place your top foot when it lands, then bend your standing leg and as slowly as you can shift your weight back again to warrior 1.

PS Excuse that my leg got cut off in that last photo! Trying to fit yourself in the camera lens while at home because the country is in lockdown doesn’t always work…. 🤦🏻‍♀️😂 And, as always, please comment below if you have any questions!

yoga for core strength and awareness part 5: your front

This blog has been a little quiet for a while – I let coronavirus lockdown throw me off my normal routine and haven’t been writing the blogs that normally accompany our practice in class each week. But I’m vowing that from this week I’m going to keep up with it again…. And to catch up will be writing a blog post a day this week! So to round off our study in March of your core we had one more area left to cover: your anterior (or front side of your) core. For our purposes you can think of your anterior core as the stuff that wraps you up into a little ball shape by bringing your chest and thighs towards each other (so the front of your abdominal circumference and your hip flexors).

I chose to work towards crow/ crane pose or bakasana to make students feel this area of their body work. You can see in the last photo here that the shape of this arm balance means tucking your thighs up near your chest, so asks your body to switch on your anterior core strongly. A technique I use all the time (that I picked up from my teacher Jason Crandell and that he got from his teacher, Rodney Yee) when teaching more difficult poses like this one is to get students to practice making the shape of the pose a less challenging way round. This is great for students because they get more than one opportunity in class to understand the shape of a pose and how it feels. Repetition is key to help people learn. And, from a teacher’s perspective, it’s a tool for making sure that my students feel this area of their core working even if they can’t yet balance on their hands in bakasana. So, in order of how this poses appeared in my class sequence:

Bakasana on your back

This posture teaches the ball shape of the pose, and in this version (with your knees outside your upper arms) teaches the action of squeezing your legs in against your arms. It also (in my body at least) instantly makes you feel exactly what your anterior core feels like when it switches on strongly to lift your chest away from the floor!

Plank with one knee drawn into your armpit

In this pose you’re repeating that drawing my knee into your chest shape, and also practising pointing your top toes and drawing that heel into your bum (which is a cue I’ll give students later for bakasana on their hands). It also adds in having weight on your hands and pushing the floor away from you with your arms.

Bakasana on your bum

Another version of the same shape. In this version I’m cueing students to try and sit tall, which will be firing up the front of their hips (aka their hip flexor muscles), and press their arms out and legs in.

Bakasana on your hands

The same shape repeated, in what (for most students) is the most challenging way round. So your body is already warmed up: - Anterior core (abdominals and hip flexors) to make that ball shape - Hamstrings and calves to bend your knees and bring your heels towards your bum - Arms pushing the floor away like we practised in plank. Plus this version introduces the extra challenge of trying to balance on your hands. If any of you/ your students have any wrist or shoulders issues you also have the on your back or on you bum versions to choose from, which you will already have experience are in no way an easy or cop out option!

Please comment below if you have any questions!

Yoga for core strength and awareness part 4: your back

It feels a little weird to be talking about anything other than COVID-19 at the moment. But in my flow classes, which have continued online, I have been trying to keep consistency for my students by carrying on with the curriculum we were working on together in the studio. This blog post is a little late - it’s about content we’ve already covered in class - but I’m playing catch up a little with this blog after spending all my free time trying to get my tech for online classes sorted! What does that meme that’s going around at the moment say about ‘it’s ok to not be completely on top of things during a global pandemic’….?

So to continue our focus in class on core awareness, we next shift our attention to your back. Even though it’s mainly your lower back that’s in the area I consider your core, because your tissues all blend into each other (and you don’t move like a robot!) during this focus we were also feeling upper back, your bum, and your hamstrings (ie the back of your thighs) work. Here are some of the postures we’ve used, in the order they appeared in class:

Locust pose

Lie down on your front and reach your arms back alongside your body. Lift your hands, chest and thighs away from the floor until you feel your back muscles switch on.

If this feels too much:

• don’t lift up so high, or

• just lift your upper body and lower it, then just lift your legs and lower them

To work harder:

• Start with your palms facing in towards the sides of your body. Slowly turn your palms to the floor and just keep on turning them that same way until they stop. See if you can feel the backs of your shoulders switching on more

• Without actually bending your knees, imagine there’s a heavy weight pressing down on your heels and you’re trying to lift your feet and bend your knees against that weight. With that imagined resistance you might feel the backs of your legs and your bum working harder.

Warrior 3 variation

I like to add a little backbend into warrior 3, as you can see in this photo, because it feels like it switches my back muscles on more (and helps counteract all the rounding forward we do from sitting so much!). In this variation I’ve got my arms in locust pose to also engage the muscles that draw my shoulderblades together and down my back away from my ears.

You can apply the ‘to work harder’ suggestions for locust pose to this posture too (except the tip about engaging your legs only applies to the top leg in warrior 3!).

Lunge with added hamstring strengthening

This pose is commonly practiced by reaching one arm back, grabbing your top foot and using your hand to pull your foot in. That’s a completely valid way of doing it and might create more stretch in the front of your thigh. Doing it the way shown here - without grabbing your foot - means your hamstrings have to do the job of bending your leg, so it’s a more strengthening version of the same posture. If this bothers your back knee, try putting some extra padding underneath it. And beware: this is quite strong for a lot of bodies so might make your hamstrings cramp!

Bow pose variation

When you bend your knees in this pose you might feel your thighs drop down to the floor - keep trying to lift them! The same logic applies to this posture as to the lunge above: if you don’t use your hands to pull your feet in (which is the classic version of this pose) then your hamstrings and bum have to do the work of lifting your legs. You can apply this to any other backbends where you hold your feet (eg natarajasana or dancer’s pose).

Comment below if you have any questions!