How To Safely Enhance Your Poses
These Tips Will Deepen Your Poses
Yoga is all about continuous improvement of the mind and body. There is always a threshold that you can work towards where you can safely push your body towards, stretching your body to this limit. However, you must take care not to overdo it as this can do more damage than good. So how does one know where their threshold is and how to go as deep as we can without causing any damage to our bodies?
The following tips will help you find the right mix of comfort and challenge in any pose you do. These tips will ensure you don’t push your body too far, but enough to get the full benefits of the pose while still improving your practice.
See the article below and be sure to share this with anyone who is looking for safe ways to deepen their stretches.
Know your body
Paying attention to how your body feels before, during, and after your practice is paramount to a safe yoga practice. We all have different strengths and limits to our practice. If it hurts, back off from that particular pose, or go into it a little slower.
If it hurts, back off from that particular pose, or go into it a little slower.
No one knows your body better than you do. If you’re an avid runner, you might notice your hamstrings are particularly tight. Be mindful that you might have to keep a slight bend in your knees during your standing forward fold.
If you sit all day for work, you might have more back pain and need extra decompression in the lumbar spine. If you have constant back pain, you will have to pay more attention to activating your core throughout the practice in order to support your spine.
Refine your counter poses
Why do yoga instructors love child’s pose so much? Because it allows your body to neutralize and decompress your spine while relaxing mind and body. This is the same reason why after an upward facing dog or cobra, a downward dog usually follows.
Sometimes when too much pressure is applied to a specific part of the body, it tightens up making it harder for us to reach a pose. For example, after a series of planks, you might need to stretch and roll your wrists around to decompress before getting into your crow pose.This is why paying attention to how each pose makes your body feel is a good way to know when you can go further vs. when you need to back off.
Use the conscious breath
You must hear this all the time! Why? When we inhale, we give ourselves more energy (prana, or life force), and as we exhale we create more space. You will often hear breathing cues throughout your class for this reason.
A good yoga pose to try conscious breathing with is a seated forward fold. As you inhale, straighten your spine, raise your arms in the air, and as you exhale slightly fold forward. With each inhale straighten, and with each exhale fold a little deeper. You can keep getting deeper in the same pose, rising back up and doing it again by following the breath.
You’ll notice right away why yoga teachers put such a big emphasis on timing inhales and exhales. If you tried getting deeper into your forward fold with opposite breaths, you’ll notice that it makes it more difficult.
See the full article from Yogi Approved here
To your health and wellness!
