Sebastian Brosche · 6 min · 877 words
Previously titled: Section 2 - Seated
Okay, so this is the section where we are just seated. It looks pretty easy, but for a lot of people this might be the hardest of the whole class. We see a lot of people when we ask them to just cross their legs. What happens is that the hips are too tight, the low back is tight, so the knees are way up here and it's almost like you're going to fall back, so this is not a really comfortable place to be.
So a couple of things you can do seated. One thing is to not cross the shins, but cross the ankles. For some people that helps to release the knees further down, for some it doesn't. For some people it's just not possible to sit comfortably on their butt, so they have to be on their knees.
So people can be on their knees or seated cross-legged doing these drills that we're doing now. So always give the option to sit on their knees. If you can see that they're sitting like this, they won't really benefit from the exercise that we're doing. But if they are comfortable cross-legged, they start with one shin in front.
I usually always use the right first because it's easy for me to remember. We'll just start with one shin in front. Also one thing that can help is using the hands to lift the hips up and then scoot the hips back and sit back down. So you're more forward on your hips than back on your tailbone.
So that's a nice cue to give if you see people are kind of off balance. So when they're in balance seated, lifting the spine so you're sitting up tall. So giving place and space for the breath. And then we grab the knees and start with circles.
So chest forward and then rounding the spine when you go back. So just giving a place to start to move the upper body. So if they're on their knees, it's kind of the same thing. Just moving the chest forward and flexing on the way back.
So going both directions. And this is also nice to just give people some freedom. And if you have something you want to say when you start the class, this is a good place to give a little talk if you have something you want to share and tell them what this class is about today. Because you don't really need to give much cues when people are moving.
Just say change direction. That's all when you put them somewhere comfortable. And the next one, we change the crossing if there are seated cross legged. And then we do some side stretches.
So again, just make sure people are sitting up tall. If they're sitting way back on their tailbone, rounded, this does not really feel too good. So make sure they're pushing into their hips, pushing the floor away. Inhale, the arms go up and exhale, side stretch.
So there's many ways to do the side stretch. So you just start them off by saying inhale, arms up, exhale, side stretch. And then you can add that they can place the fingertips down. They can place the palm down.
They can even place the forearm down if they want to go deeper. And here you also have the option to do circles with the arm. So instead of going from side to side, they can circle the arm and go to the other side. It's also possible to stay on one side, do three circles, go to the other side, do three circles.
So it's just what you prefer to and how you want to teach it. So pretty straightforward. But just know that for some people it's really hard to just stay seated cross-legged. So you have the option always to give knees, sit on the knees.
I really like to sit on the knees side stretch when I move the hips. It feels so good. Yeah. And it's not just that people are, some people are flexible, some people are tight.
It's also body proportions. So that's why it's nice in some cases to always give the options of something else. One thing I want to add about giving an introduction is when people are new in a 60-minute class and it says yoga, many people automatically get nervous, even fighters, experienced fighters get nervous because they have no idea what's coming. So giving a little briefing and just demystifying what's going to happen, this is a very nice time to do it.
They just move a little bit, they already start feeling a little better. And then you just tell them a couple of things. We're going to go through a warm-up, some sequences and then stretching it then. Yeah, some people might see the word yoga on the schedule and think this is super scary.
So if you just tell them, it's just we're going through a warm-up, we're going to create some heat, moving into a standing sequence and then we'll do a nice cool-down. Then people maybe will lower their shoulders and breathe a little deeper and relax more. Okay, so that's the seated section.
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