Floating Forward & Core Strength: 13-Min Yoga Flow

For most people the hips stay really low. So just show hips really low and the hips feel heavy, the shoulders feel weak. So we want to try to bring the hips as high as we can and then the landing as light as we can. So why people are afraid to bring the hips up is what Sebastian just so nicely demonstrated is that you have the fear of falling over.

That's why you want to keep the thighs to our chest. So if he forgets to bring the thighs in and he just takes the legs up this is where you use core connection and this is where you look like a crazy donkey. So what we want to do is emphasize on belly to thighs, thighs to belly. So we will be revealed when we fall because our legs are moving away from our torso.

So if you see legs here that means no core connection. When you have no core connections, connection you won't be able to put your feet slowly to the floor. So this is the drill. The drill is from dog belly to thighs, jumping thighs to belly and the landing is pushing the floor away and at the same time you're pushing the floor away you want to start bringing your feet to the outside of your own hands.

So you're resisting the floor, pushing the floor away at the same time you're placing your feet on the outside of your hands. This is a really nice drill to build heat in the body and also to build shoulder and wrist strength and like I mentioned a hundred times core connection. So for all cool cartwheel passes and all that this is a really nice drill. When you're finally in your squat you can relax your wrist.

Maybe you people tend to tense up their neck so it can be nice to allow them to move their hands, move the head and take some nice deep breaths into the squat. The squat itself is nice to just remind knees and toes the same way so the knees are not collapsing in and toes pointing out. So also for people if the hips are really high and they're having a hard time relax you can just find a way they can feel comfortable. For some that might be hands supporting them by touching the floor for others it's just hands together.

So wrapping up the squat toes knees same direction movement of the head wrists can feel really nice. So the transitions from the squat to the floor for some people it's really easy the hips are low it's just to sit down for other people if they're here to sit down might be a little hard. So option option in the beginning to take one hand behind and support the way down. Okay but the goal should be to be able to do that transition with no hands and here we work into our reverse tabletop.

So it's really nice to stretch out all the rounding so fingers point towards the hips if that's hurting someone's wrist it's okay to turn the fingers out doesn't really matter as long it feels okay for that person but the cue can be fingers towards your hips or slightly out. Feet are hip distance and same here with the toes and the knees we try to have the knees and toes pointing the same direction push evenly into the hands and the feet to lift the hips and lift the chest. People tend to maybe lift the hips a lot and the chest is not lifted so they're not pushing so much into their hands so hips lifting chest lifting. In yoga there's a cue where you drop the head it's nice since this is dynamic just keep the head up and keep the back of the thigh strong.

So when we're here we inhale and exhale is hips down so inhale is push the floor away lift up exhale is down and it's nice to add the L sit here for people that wants to have some extra spice and build some extra heat. So you inhale you push the feet and the hands down lift the hips exhale hips down or you want to create the space to pull yourself back then you again find your you round the back and you push the floor away and you lift. So it's a nice check for people to see if they can find a space and to push the floor away and bring their body through their own hand. It's nice to have something to work towards.

Okay so that's our reversed tabletop and L sit just hands shoulder width feet hip width pushing evenly through the hand through the feet lifting the chest lifting the hips and breathing when we come up breathing in and when we come down and back breathing out. Moving into core so we use what we call in yoga the boat pose to do different variations here. So the boat pose in itself is just trying to keep the spine nice and long the chest lifted and we connect to our hip flexors so it's a really important part for jujitsu core and hip flexors together. So arms can be in front of you you're balancing on the front of your hip you're not on your tailbone so a lot of people will try to be on their tailbone and lift the legs from here it's almost impossible to straighten the spine so you want to make sure people are in front on front of their hips balancing on their hips not their tailbone and from here it's bent knees is super just bring the legs together lifting the chest active feet if the feet are not active the legs are not active the legs are hanging it's easy to to round the back so pushing the floor away even though we don't have our hands don't have our feet on the floor we're still pushing the floor away but this time we're doing it through our hips pushing the hips into the floor lifting the chest bringing the legs up the legs can be be in line with the knees or straight but if people straighten their legs and round their back ask them friendly to bend their knees and lift their chest okay so our boat pose our boat pose is front of the hips nice straight spine lifting the legs lifting the chest and breathing and just adding the the low boat it can come slightly forward because we're doing we're moving from our boat into our plow so from the boat lifting the feet you can have the knees bent and then slowly start to straighten the legs at the same time as you go back so we call it the half boat or low boat and then take a breath and then all the way down with the torso legs over the hips so for some people they will start to shake and shiver when they're in the low boat and that's a good thing then we know that we have something to work on to get our core stronger and become more integrated we will need that we will need that when we work our way into plow pose so we can easily just throw our legs over our head but it won't be very beneficial for our back if we do this again and again and again especially with another person's body weight on top of us so here we want to find that connection to our core that we found in both boat pose but also the half or low boat so drawing the ribs in is a nice cue drawing the navel in is also a nice cue this will help you find what we in yoga we call it the corset so the core is not the the six pack but it's the whole corset around the spine so it's protecting the spine to draw and tighten that corset so tighten up your corset lift the hips up and then try to draw your legs towards your own hands or bring your legs towards your own hands for most people this is too much but this can be our goal so for most people the cue will be bring your feet over your hips try with straight legs see how far you can bring your legs overhead without using momentum most people probably will stop and that's okay now we know that we need to work on our hamstring flexibility and our core connection so bring the hips back down this time bend your knees and start to rock your hips up and down so using the core to bring the hip up but also cheat a little bit and use a little bit of momentum and now use just as much as you need to get the legs overhead legs can be bent or straight doesn't really matter making sure people have the weight in their shoulders and not their necks so reminding people to use the core to bring the legs over and to stay with the weight in their shoulders not their neck again we have a nice pose to remind people to breathe and stay calm in a weird situation anything you want to add there okay so that's our our plow pose our core and our core and our reverse tabletop good job