Week 221: Tip Over Your Yoga

A anticipated practice this week that unexpectedly tipped me over. It was long in duration and welcomed many yoga props.

Recently focusing on staff pose (dandasana), I thoroughly enjoyed doing it again this week with Do Yoga With Me, in Align, Stabilize and Stretch video. But...with a twist…or shall I say tip...

I was cued to flip the pose to the back, or into a supine position. My legs and heels floating in the air (and not on the ground), soles of my feet parallel to the ceiling. Nothing like turning a yoga pose on its head! How did I accomplish staff pose with my body totally out of space from the traditional upright position?

A strap!

A glorious strap!

I can’t got on about how much yoga props are so helpful!!!

By placing the strap around the balls of my feet and holding on to the ends with my hands, it allowed the strap to work its magic! The tension of holding the strap against my feet and weight of the arms provided the pull down required to the ground (thank you gravity too!) The pressure of the strap aided in the lengthening of the leg and thus the lengthening of the hamstrings.

And release…

Not only did my hamstrings love it but my low back sure did too. I can see doing a supine staff pose with those individuals who have low back pain. Essentially the back tension is removed as the back rests on the floor. Not something I am bothered with in the upright position but I clearly found it took the low back out of the equation. So much so that I felt I could lengthen through the entire spine while it rested on the ground.

I truly took away power from the position and space of the supine staff pose!

Now, I would have loved to proceeded with trying the seated version to see the impact on my hamstrings but not this time around.

What we did do, however, was move into standing poses which covered the hamstrings, iliotibial band, and adductors. Slightly different that the traditional sequence, it was interesting for the body to adjust to standing after working through the lying pose. I wonder if the supine work helped me stand better. I can habour a guess that it did!

This practice provided many other juicy poses and props which I will need to save to write about for another day! I will most definitely be returning to this practice (soon)!

Nothing better than tipping yoga poses over and making my brain work over time by figuring out the slight variations of each,
LW