Balance & Stability: 14-Min Yoga Class (10 for 30 #9)

One more on each side. And then step back to plank and turn to your right. So your left arm is down and your right arm is up and then stack the feet to balance inside plank. Take two breaths here inside plank, finding your balance.

It's surprisingly hard the first time you do it. Switching sides, right hand down, left arm up. Make sure you're straightening your spine and your neck. Don't tense your shoulders and your neck.

Try to tense your legs and square off the hips. Usually the hips droop down. So square your hips and lift them up. Take another breath and try the first side again.

Side plank. If you want to make it slightly harder, lift your top foot so you're balancing on one hand and one foot. One last switch. Switch.

Square hips, straight arms and legs. And then back to plank. Let's try the one we did on all fours, but now we lift the knees and we'll do it from plank instead. So lift your left leg and your right arm, find your balance and switch.

So make sure your butt is not too high. Look forward, inhale and exhale plank. Two more on each side. Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale. Two more. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, and exhale.

Sit on your knees and relax your shoulders. Can you feel how much technique and work it is to do integrated poses like this where you have to use your whole body? It doesn't matter how strong you are in one muscle. It's the whole shame that counts.

Let's do some balancing poses from standing up. So stand up. Oh, I have to zoom out. Sorry.

I forgot. That's it. So stand up. Lift your right knee and catch either your hamstring or the front of your knee like this.

Okay. And now straighten the standing leg. So you lock the knee. We're not bearing too much weight on the knee, so it's okay to have it locked.

And then try to lift your toes on the standing foot. So you're just balancing on the sole of your foot. Lift your chest. Look straight forward.

Try not balancing with your toes. Try just placing your body weight optimally in the center of the foot. And then switch sides. If you stand on something soft like a jiu-jitsu mat, it's going to be much harder, but you're also going to improve your balance more.

But if you're on soft mats, you can use your toes. It's going to make it probably doable. It's really, really hard to do this on a soft mat without using your toes. Lock your knee, lift your chest.

And then switch again. Pull the first knee, the right knee in, and then open the knee out to the side. So you're going from here to here. Do that a few times.

Close and open. Close and open. Close and open. Stay here and open.

And then pull your foot to your chest and point your knee down. So catch your ankle or your foot and then left arm forward, right knee in, and then open. And then switch sides. So you're just balancing on the sole of your foot.

And then switch sides. So you're just balancing on the sole of your foot. So you're pushing your hips forward and pulling your foot back at the same time. So it's both a balance and a front of the hip stretch.

Take two more breaths. And then switch sides. Pull your left knee up. And open.

And close. And then switch sides. Pull your left knee up. And open.

And close. Open and close. Balancing is one of the things that you don't think so much about. You just assume that your balance is quite okay, right?

But when someone sweeps you from a guard and it's not really good and they manage to sweep you just like that, it's not because they have a very good balance, right? It's because your balance is not as good as you hoped it was. Good news is, catch the left foot, stretch your right arm forward. The good news is that balance is quite easy to practice and it doesn't matter how old you are.

If you're 90 years old, you can still improve your balance dramatically just by starting doing balancing poses. So you're just improving your balance dramatically just by starting doing balancing poses. Take two more breaths. And it's not like you can exhaust your balance tank.

It gets better the more you practice it and there is like an infinite, you can get infinitely good at balancing poses. Okay, shake out your legs and let's go back to all fours. Lift your butt high, bend your elbows and place your knees on your triceps. So like this, knees on the outside, feet close and then the more you bend your elbows, the easier this is going to be.

If you try with straight arms, it's going to be really hard. So lower your head close to the ground, your face low and then flex one foot. So you lift only the toes and then you switch. So you have to go forward and down, not up and high, low and forward.

Try flexing the feet until they leave the ground, balancing only on your hands. So it's like the smallest handstand in the world. This is called crow pose. It's an arm balance.

So you're balancing on your hands, on your arms and this balance with the fingers is the basis of a handstand. It's great to learn this before you attempt handstands. So if you lean forward, you can, you actually have breaks here. You can break with your fingers and push yourself back by just using your forearms.

Nice. Sit down, on your toes and place the knees in the ground and catch your heels. So you could do this really hard by lifting your hips and doing a back bend at the same time, but the first variation would be just lifting your knees and balancing on your toes. And any balancing pose like this, like if this is super easy for you, you can close one eye and do it one time.

So you can do it one night style or even close both eyes and try to breathe and keep your balance. It's super hard. If you want to try lifting your hips and also lift the knees off the floor, also super hard. This might be too much for your toes.

If it's too completely too much for your toes and you can't do it today, do it for a few seconds. And then you try this one instead with flat feet like this. Just sit on your ankles and try to find the balance on the toes like this. It is hard.

Do a couple of more tries either with flat feet or with your toes tucked under. Nice. And last pose, sit down on your butt, catch your ankles or your calves and try to straighten the legs as much as possible. So lift your chest and lift your legs as high as you can, maybe even straight legs.

It's okay if they're slightly bent. Spread your toes and press the feet in towards each other and then release the ankles and lift your chest with power. Straight spine. Now if you can, close your eyes and take three breaths.

And then open your eyes, straighten your legs lower down to your lower back. Take three breaths here. And then sit back up and cross your ankles. So in every kind of pose, if it's on the hands, on the forearms, on the head, on the feet, on the elbows, you can always find a way to add a little bit of tricky balance into the equation.

And I find that it does something with your focus. When you combine tough standing poses with tricky balancing poses, it creates a kind of flow in the class that really makes you present and focused. And it makes the experience of a class much better. And of course, balance is a vital ingredient to a good Jiu Jitsu game.

Thank you guys for today. See you in the last class.