Yoga Uniao Series 1 (Part 1): 20-Min Technique & Flow

And from the up dog you don't just lift your butt back like this, that's the cheating version. From up dog you go chin to chest and you really try to roll through your chest, you're reversing the roll you did from child's pose, so it's this exact opposite roll for child's pose to up dog, up dog to down dog. Okay so that's the first part of the first part of the first series. From here you step your feet hip with the...

From here from down dog you lift your right leg out behind you, lift your right leg and then lift your heel as well and take a inhale when you're at maximum splits and exhale step your heel in front of your left toe and then stretch your arms, stretch your legs, opposite leg lift and inhale exhale heel in front of the toe. Try to step with straight arms alternating legs for each step, you're probably going to have to lift up on your fingertips and eventually you will probably have to start bending your knee when you're standing on the leg but try to never bend the top leg, straighten the top leg even if you have to bend the standing leg. Walk all the way forward until your feet are at the front of the mat. Here place your hands on your shin bones, lean into the toes, lift your head and inhale and exhale bend your knees and fold forward.

We just do this once but just to to have a opportunity to talk about it you want to lift your head as high as your butt so most people just lift like this with a rounded back. This is very common that people do this but what I want is straight legs, straight spine and really lift you should feel this like a good morning when you're grabbing heavy weight and lifting you know the good morning exercises these ones that's how much tension you want in your hamstrings and your spine. Most people just do this but here we go really all the way to hip height and then you bend the knees and roll down. Right lift all the way up, arms overhead and stand at the top of your mat.

You're probably going to do this on jiu-jitsu mats but I'm going to keep referring to the mat as a yoga mat because of the distance like a typical yoga mat length but if you're in jiu-jitsu mat just ignore that I'm saying yoga mat and pretend I'm saying jiu-jitsu mat. Okay from here interlace your fingers and then you bend your knee bend your knees and then slide your arms forward lift your chest lift your arms and then as you inhale you go all the way up and as you exhale you go down. Let's do that again so from standing interlace your fingers sweep your arms forward and as you inhale you go all the way up and as you exhale swan dive down. So one more time interlace the fingers stretch your palms forward bend your knees and then stretch them out and dive all the way down.

As you inhale you go up lift your head high and as you exhale you jump back through all the way down to your belly so you can step your feet backwards spread the fingers and then as I'm jumping my legs back I'm bending my arms and trying to land with the hips belly and chest in the floor at the same time like this. What is really common is that I jump too high with the legs and I land with my chest first or I land on the toes and I jam my lower back like this and then I go down. Okay so none of that is okay the only thing we want here is to jump back smoothly with all the weight into the hands and land with the whole body at the same time. So inhale exhale that's what we're looking for.

When you land on your belly make sure that your hands are not under your head but more in line with your ribs. Okay so fingers are not under the shoulders fingers are your thumbs are more or less at the same place as your nipples. Okay flatten out your feet lift all the way up to upward facing dog and slowly roll all the way back to down dog. Make sure your feet are hip width apart and that means you have about two fists distance between your toes.

All right more or less two feet two fist distance maybe a fist and a half. Okay from here lift your heels and roll forward to plank pose and in plank pose lift your right leg so that you're in a three-legged plank and then you go halfway down to a low push-up and then as you're pushing back from the low push-up you go straight into three-legged dog like this from dog to plank from plank to three-legged plank push-up and then all the way back to three-legged dog and the goal here is to eventually make this flow really well so instead of pushing back from low push-up to plank and then to three-legged dog like this instead we want it to be smoother like more like this plank push-up and then so everything is moving at the same time okay and it's going to be very hard for you to accurately measure how you're doing this unless you film yourself so I recommend for all this series I recommend you do each each part each of the six parts at least five six seven times and then you do the whole sequence at least ten times and then you film yourself to get a honest evaluation by yourself on how things are looking because these series are supposed to look aesthetically good if it doesn't look good then you haven't mastered it yet it should flow like a dance you should be able to put on a video of yourself and then be amazed of what you see by what you see okay so that is the goal things should look very smooth very pretty then you know you have mastered very simple because you just have to look at yourself if you're looking clumsy you have you don't you haven't achieved mastery yet okay so from down dog roll forward lift one leg and go down halfway and then all the way back to three-legged dog from here you bend your knee your top knee and you roll through the spine again just like you did when the foot was in the floor same role but now you add on the knee so as you're rolling you're pulling your knee forward placing the foot just between your hands so equal distance between both hands from here on your fingertips lift your chest and then lower the back heel down so your feet are on the same line stretch your left arm forward and turn your chest first so it's like a side angle pose and then you push with the foot to lift up to warrior two okay so i'm showing it again we went from plank on one leg low push up three-legged dog rolling knee nice and slowly nice and slowly placing the foot between the hands on your fingertips heel down turning your chest and then lifting up warrior two arms should be parallel to the floor right knee should be bent but never like this foot always under the knee and if you if you're you feel that you're looking like this it's probably that your your foot didn't step far enough forward so when you step your foot forward don't be satisfied with the toes on line with the with the wrists try to get your toes in line with your fingertips okay so your your ring finger or pinky finger or sorry index finger should be in line with the toes okay warrior two we take one breath more or less in each of the static poses and then we bend the back leg and sit all the way down on your right buttocks so kung fu stretching all the way down to the ground make sure that your knee is never turning in you engage your butt and push the knee out to the side from here right hand very important that you don't put the left hand behind you so the bent knee that hand should be in the ceiling so left knee left arm up right hand behind you find a good placement of the hand and this will probably take some time to figure out where the perfect placement on the hand is flex your right foot so that the pinky side of the foot is in the ground and then you lift your hips without letting the knee bend inwards and this is hard i know so on your toes on your left foot and then lift up and circle the left arm okay three times we do this in the series and we don't want it to look like this we want the left knee to work left and the right foot to work right so you're turning your legs away from each other just like we did in warrior two okay so big circles with the left shoulder lifting your hips as you inhale lowering down as you exhale okay so three rounds in total and as you sit down here you might find it really hard to get off the floor you use the back hand to help you and then you also swing with your left arm so you're almost like your left hand is cutting your toes like a sword and that way you get a little bit of speed and if you gather some momentum here you might get up off the floor you are probably stiff and you're probably doing it wrong because your foot is too much in front of you and you're running into your left knee so you actually have to really work your leg out to the side and get up off the floor this is a superb exercise for hip mobility okay get up off the floor and go back to warrior two from where you came so in real time this whole part will look like this so all right and from warrior two now you just turn the thumbs up stretch your arms to the maximum keep your hips open lean forward and move into half moon pose whoop give me another try lean forward lift your left foot out behind you trying to stack the arms of top on top of each other and kicking your left foot out behind you ultimately you want the leg to be parallel with the floor and not fall out behind you you want to keep the the toes in the exact same line as in warrior two what usually happens is this you have a nice line here and as soon as you lift the left foot behind you it falls all the way back to the left to the right so try to keep the toes in line when you're leaning forward and moving into half moon pose your fingers should be off the floor and you should balance just on the right foot and depending on how long your leg is if you have really short legs like i have you can probably have the the top of the finger almost touching the ground if you have really long legs your hand is probably going to be way off the floor that's not important just hold your breath for a second and half moon pose and then from here hands and the back foot comes down to the ground at the same time and then we roll all the way back we stretch our right leg out behind us to a three-legged dog and then down dog so no vinyasa just stepping back to three-legged dog into down dog okay so i'm gonna show you without talking the whole sequence but i'm gonna do it on left side now so just watch ah ah so And that's it for the first part. This was part one of the Jogur-Uniyaw series one. Keep practicing the rolling knee.

Keep practicing the getting up and down from the floor in the Kung Fu stretching or Kozak squat. Those are the two things that will probably take the most time to learn. And as well as doing that first part where we got up into standing and folding forward, that is also probably going to take a lot of time because of your hamstrings. But give it time because those techniques when you master them, it's going to loosen up your hips and your legs so much you can't even believe it.

Okay, practice, practice, practice and see you in part two.