Sebastian Brosche · 9 min · 1,361 words
Previously titled: Section 2
Okay, let's have a look at our wrists and our hands. So in most yoga poses, the fingers are pointing forward. So we're in our tabletop, our fingers are pointing forwards. So we want to add a little stretch to the hands, wrists and forearms.
You can turn your fingers out to the side, move around, side to side. This is a way to just ease into the hands. And if it's available for people, they can turn their fingers all the way back towards their knees. Also here, you can choose to circle or you can shift your weight back and forth.
So it's just to open up in the hands, wrists and palms and also to balance out all of the poses that our fingers pointing forward. Okay, that's our wrists. And now we're looking at the rolling knee from tabletop. So first of all, we want to find neutral.
So we're not doing cat pushing the floor away. We're not rounding. We're not arching. It's just a fine middle way.
So what usually happens is when someone is taking one leg off the floor and lifting it back, the back arches because we disconnect to our core. So it's nice to remind people to, as they lift the leg, stay connected to the core. And also the hip tends to open up. You can look at Sebastian's foot right here.
It's pointing up and out to the side. So a nice check to see if the hip is in neutral. If the toes are pointing down, you might not lift the leg as high, but you're connected to your core and you have a nice neutral hip line. So that's what we focus on here.
So when they lift their leg, hips in line, core connected. So we use the in-breath here and the out-breath we use to pull the knee as close as we can to the body. So to get the knee forward towards the forehead or the face or the chest, we have to connect to the cat pose, the pushing the floor away, rounding, and also our core and hip flexors pulling the knee in. So to keep this information as short as possible, it's nice to just say inhale, keep connecting to your core, exhale, find your cat, push the floor away, draw the knee in or just something like that.
Inhale, stretching back, try to keep connected to your core, exhale, draw the knee in, push the floor away. Okay, so that's our rolling knee trying to create space for the leg to move forward and also trying to keep connected to our core as the leg lifts. So we're moving into our half straddle. So when the leg goes out to the side, what tends to happen here is that you maybe bend your left arm to lift the leg.
So a nice cue here can be keep arms straight and lift from the outer hip. And then the foot comes down in line with the opposite knee just to have a sense of where the foot is going. So that can be nice. Just gaze down at your knee, keep the foot in line with the knee.
So from here, we walk the torso up above the hips. How you could add is up to you, whatever makes sense to come up, walk your hands back, lift up or just lift your arms up. And we're moving into some nice side stretches here and it looks pretty easy. But what can help to increase the stretch if the hips push slightly forward?
Because if we're in the stretch and we're kind of allowing the hips to go back, we're taking the stretch out from the front of the hip. Can be nice to add that to keep the hips lifting forward and up. And we also we always use the inhale to lift up. So you inhale arms up and you lift everything up.
Keep that lift and exhale you do the side stretch. What tends to happen in our side stretch also is we collapse in one side to open the other side. So first round you just focus on okay arm over to the right, you side stretch to the right. Moving to the other side option is hand to the hip or to the floor.
So when you move into round number two, you can add notice if you're collapsing into your side body, try to keep both sides long and lifted. And then you can add the same cue on the other side. So keep the side body long. Keep pushing the hips forward.
So for our side stretch, the focus is pulling the hip forward and up keeping both sides long. We use the inhale to find the length and we use the exhale to find the side stretch. Okay, anything you want to add? Okay, so there's plenty of other things we could add, but we'll look more into that in the variations.
So from here we come down. You move into the twist stretch. So you want to first of all, you want to make sure people not just curling themselves back into a ball. So instead of rounding and just going back, you want to try to lengthen the back and then move the arm, the opposite arm towards the leg that is out to the side.
So when he has his right leg, it's the left arm moving towards. You can see the difference if he keeps the torso long and move the hand towards his leg. And if he doesn't do that, he does around his spine and try to grab the leg. It's two completely different poses.
So we want to use the pose to open up the body and find more space. So use the inhale to find length and the exhale to move your hand towards your foot or your leg. So here you have the variation where you can keep the hand in the floor for support or you can walk the hand forward and you find a slightly deeper stretch. So the cueing here is basically to find length and then keeping some of that length as you move your hand towards your own leg.
And many people find it harder to breathe here, which can also be very similar to what we experience when we are rolling. We find ourselves in positions where it's hard to breathe. So this is a good position to remind people to practice breathing in weird positions. Anything you want to add?
Okay, that's our half straddle side stretch, half straddle twist. So from this half straddle twist, we move into half puppy. So releasing the leg. So we're still in the half straddle legs.
Nothing moves, the hips stay where they are. It's just the arms that walk forward. And as the arm walk forward, we find more length in the back. And for most people, top of the head is available.
So you can drop the top of the head down. As you can see, then it's more of a straight spine, but there's a nice stretch in the shoulder area, especially around the armpits. If you have more space, you can give the option to come onto the forehead. Then you will see there's a little bit more stretch in the upper back.
And for some people with healthy necks, the shin can come down and there's an even deeper stretch and the chest is maybe on the floor for some people. There's always nice to just give these three options so people can choose what their body is ready for. And the legs, they just stay active. You keep pushing into the outer edge of the right foot that is straight.
So you're not collapsing into the inner knee on your right side when the right leg is the straight one. And again, just reminding people to breathe here because some people find it intense and they tend to hold their breath when things get intense. Anything you want to add? Nope.
Okay. Good job.
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