Yoga Uniao Series 1 (Part 4): 9-Min Capoeira & BJJ-Inspired Flow

To a one-legged squat, hands behind you and like a crescent pose with the knee forward and then cross your arms and push your head forward. And that's the three techniques. So my right leg is now forward. To put this together, we're going to do it total four times in this part.

So from here, we step the left foot forward and the right foot back and reverse. Right forward, left back, left forward, right back. The one mistake you can do here is to swing your arm inwards. You shouldn't swing your arms the same.

You shouldn't swing like a warrior too. You should swing your arms like a twisting crescent. So you're always in crescent and your arms are twisting the way that you're moving. So if I'm going towards the left, that's the way my arms swing.

So it's not like I'm dancing between warrior twos. I'm doing crescent poses with twists. This is called jinga or rocking from side to side. And this is the basic moving capoeira.

Don't do it short because that has no value. Your knees should be bent and you should step far back so that the lower you are, the cooler it looks. And it also makes more sense to be low. Here I can be quick to attack, counter and fint.

If I'm high up with straight legs, I don't have any... There is not much offensive or defensive I can do with straight legs. Deep down low. Repeating.

Right foot forward. One jinga, two jingas, three jingas. And then I do this same sequence of kick evasion and counter on the other side. So my left leg is forward, hands down.

Always kick with a heel. Don't walk like a soccer kick. Always walk the opposite way so that you're kicking with your butt and your heel first. Into a squat, into an evasion.

One legged squat, stepping over and headbutting. Step back to down dog. So now we did it two times. First time we started with the right foot.

This time we start with the left foot. The first two, you do them technique by technique. Like one, pause, two, pause, three, pause. Here we try to make them all into one flow.

So left foot forward, kick, into an evasion, back up and headbutt. Three jingas, one, two, three. And from here we do the one we started with, the right foot forward. Kick, squat, evasion.

One legged squat, step over, headbutt and down dog. And that's basically it for the part four. So you see it is the same positions as we find ourselves in yoga. But you can see that the context is very different.

It's faster, it's more flowy and it's more jiu-jitsu like. That's why I admire capoeira and I believe it has tremendous value for jiu-jitsu because it is yoga positions in the context of fighting someone. But in capoeira you're not allowed to grab your opponent. You can only use your body language and your movement to fint, to evade, to sweep someone, to kick someone.

Capoeira is jiu-jitsu, shadow jiu-jitsu. If you're doing jiu-jitsu but you can't touch your opponent, then you have capoeira. So I believe if you do yoga for your own body and if you do jiu-jitsu moves like we're doing capoeira moves like we're doing here, I think that has amazing value for your own body which you use when you do jiu-jitsu. And I also think it directly translates to jiu-jitsu.

And you can see guys like Cobrinha and Fim Fu, they have solid capoeira. They move like a real capoeirista and their jiu-jitsu is amazing. So I believe this has value. And if you find this hard, I can't imagine how you can ever berenbolo someone.

Because these are, I did it thousands of times of course and it's harder first times. But if you learn this, I believe that you can also learn to do a berenbolo. I can't imagine why we would ever do that. But just as an example, it's a somewhat advanced sequence of body positions as is this.

So quick recap. Down dog, right foot forward, kick with your heel first, all the way into a squat, push back up, step over and headbutt. Jinga from side to side, one, two and three, kick with the right foot, do a push up, change in headbutt, down dog. Start over on the other side, left foot forward, kick and try to always look forward towards your imaginary opponent.

Jinga once, jinga twice, jinga three times and do the first side again, kick, down, back up and headbutt, down dog. And that's it for part four. Over to part five.