Sun C Salutation: 10-Min Flow Variation for Warm-Up Yoga

We don't have to repeat this. From here, when you're done with this, place your back knee down, lift your chest, arms overhead. Grabbing your elbows the natural way. So just grab your elbows, engage your core, lift your chest and lift up and lean back.

Look what happens if I don't say lift up. So some people sag their whole chest, kind of collapse the chest and go, some people do it like, yeah, exactly. Yes, that's it. This is what some people do.

So their whole torso is collapsing into their lower back. Look at the difference between this one and lift up and lean back. And now you should say push. Yes, so you're really good at queuing this.

You say push the fingers into the wrists. But here, there is so much engagement there. It's like steel in the front of her belly. You can't be relaxed in this one.

So you encourage them to go up and back always. And what you should look for is the collapse of the torso onto the lower back. That's one of the main reasons why people have back problems is because they don't place their torso on top of their lower back. For me, that was a huge thing when I fixed my lower back, was just lifting the torso.

Pelvis engaged, we talked about this before, just pushing the hips forward, lifting the chest, pull the elbows back. We're three cues. Don't say all three at once, but just vary them a little bit. Inhale, arms up, exhale, hands down.

Are we stepping forward or back now? Stepping back to dog. Take a moment in dog. Stepping the right foot forward.

You always start with the right back and then the right forward. Half splits flow, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Back knee down, lift your chest, arms overhead. I'm gonna give you a moment here because you did so long on the first time.

So. It's nice to know that usually it's two types of variations people do. The one is the flexible ones. They just rest down into their hip joints and they're just a little rest back into the back then.

You can see it with the hips really far down and then they're just resting on the back of their spine. And then you have the tight ones that are just resting down on their low back from here. I'm not sure you heard everything with the mic, but just to reiterate that the flexible ones and the bendy ones tend to not engage. They're completely disengaged and just dump their weight into their weakest spots.

And the tight people, they don't work enough with good posture. So they're kind of wonking all over the place. Basically you wanna tighten everyone up and work into the pose. This is not a pose that happened by itself.

If we're doing turtle, everything is kind of happening from gravity. But here you have to work against gravity actively to get a good stretch. One thing I like if you see you have a lot of flexible, lazy people is to avoid this, pull the front heel back and push the, and drag the back knee forward. Because that will have a force, the lift of the pelvis up.

And then it's a safer back bend. Yes. If you have really tight people, is try to relax the hips down and lift the chest up. So many subtleties there, but just be aware of those two main things.

Flexible people tend to be lazy and drop down and stiff people tend to be a little bit high up. So they need to lower the hips, but keep lifting and engaging and work hard with the back muscles to get the back bend there. Yes, the important, most important one, if you want just two cues, is push down and lift up. Yes, that one works for so many standing and balancing poses.

Push down and lift up. You have two directions, and when you work in both directions, you automatically inherently create length. Inhale arms up, exhale hands down, stepping forward, forward fold, half lift, inhale, exhale fold, rolling all the way up. Starting again in standing.

Take a moment, instead of just going straight for the next one, just take a moment, take one big breath. Let's do the next round. Inhale, arms up, stay here, exhale, clasp your hands behind your back. The unnatural way, or the Brazilian way to say it, another side.

Inhale, lift, hinging from the hips, bending your knees, slowly placing your belly between your thighs. Drop the head, because this is what you see a lot. I don't know why we tend to naturally default to this, but what we want to change is the default so that the weight of the head is stretching the neck. This is not something you have to say all the time, but when you see a lot of tense necks, remind people to not be tense.

Hands on chins or floor, inhale, half lift. This is a thing I always do, because if people have really tight shoulders and they've been in this stretch, and then from here you say just release your hand. Right, yes, the flinging. The hands to the lower back, because that allows the shoulders to release first.

I say that too, I forgot. So hands to lower back, sliding the hands down slowly can be an important cue when you see flingers, when you just release and spray everything all over the place. Hands down, inhale, half lift. Left, remember to switch it up, otherwise you're gonna do the, it's nice to have balance in this cue.

So left leg back, keep your left hand down, lift your right arm up, inhale, drop your right elbow down to the inside of the right foot. Do that a few times. Inhale as you lift and twist, exhale as you stretch deeply into the hips. We already done this in the warm up.

Oh, we already did this in the warm up, okay, yes. So that one, and then lizard foot grab. So one of the things we did in the warm up can be a variation in the full class. Hold for three breaths maybe, and then stepping back to dog.

Starting from dog with the left leg forward. Left arm up, inhale, drop the elbow, exhale. Three to five times. Lizard with a foot grab, catching the back foot.

Three to five breaths. Both hands forward or plank hands as I call it, stepping forward, inhale, half lift, exhale, fold, rolling all the way up to standing, inhale, exhale, stand up. This is a little bit faster. This is not the way I would cue it.

This is a summary. So you would not cue exactly like I did here. But that's the summary of it. Let's take an even quicker recap on what to do.

Inhale, arms up, stay here, exhale, clasp your hands. Inhale, lift, bend your knees, fold forward, take a inhale and exhale here. Half lift, step your right foot back, splits, half splits flow, one, two, three, four, five. Low lunge, grab the elbows, push your elbows back, drop the hips and lift your chest, engage the core and then stepping back, stepping your right foot forward, same thing on this side, half splits into a low lunge elbow grab.

Engage, engage, engage and lift. Stepping forward, half lift, inhale, exhale, inhale, roll all the way up, reset, round two. Inhale, lift, clasp the hands the unnatural way, fold forward, half lift, inhale, exhale, step the left foot back, arm up, inhale, drop the elbow, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, foot grab, one, two, three, four, five. Stepping back, stepping the left foot forward, lift, drop, lift, drop, lift, drop, lift, drop.

Lizard foot grab, grab the back foot, one, two, three, four, five. Plank hands, step forward. Inhale, half lift, exhale, fold, inhale, roll all the way up, standing.