A yoga wheel can be super useful in back bend preparation, if you know what to do with it. Here’s a start! More yoga wheel tutorials to follow in the coming weeks…
Courtesy: @DharmaYogaWheel
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Ever wondered why you get a banana back in headstand/ handstand? Or why your arms cannot extend overhead – arms in line with ears – in your down dog? One of the reasons may be a tight latissimus dorsi. It’s a huge swathe of muscle across your back. Additionally, as the muscle bundles together into a tight tendon, which then twists before inserting into your humerus (upper arm bone), the lats pull the arms down when they are tight. This can be a tough one to learn to elongate, and it tends to overwhelm relatively weaker muscles across the front flank of the body.
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If we keep practising anything – swimming, golf, running, yoga – the same way we always do, we don’t get anywhere. We merely reinforce our old habits – of breathing, activating muscles and shifting our centre of gravity around – without focusing on moving more optimally.
If your goal is to “improve your game”, some analysis can identify if you’ve unhelpful movement patterns or a lack of strength or flexibility that gets in the way of a good golf swing or running gait. From there, you can then develop your practice in the direction that strengthens around the right patterns.
Here are two video tutorials on strengthening around the right patterns, using props: plough pose and caturanga.
The important thing is, without any awareness of where you are at, it is not possible to be scientific and systematic in your practice and to reach your goals. Even if you don’t have performance goals or dreams of personal bests, remember, you risk hurting yourself in the long run when you practise unmindfully.
Mindfulness can and should apply to everything that we do. We know we can analyse and get more information about ourselves – our swimming form, heart rate, etc – with the aid of videos, sensors and interactive software today. We can also get feedback from a coach. But there is another source of self-analysis, which is yoga. A good consistent practice of yoga can open our eyes to all of ourselves, and in terms of movement, offer an awareness of how we breathe, how we maintain balance, how we engage our inner and outer muscles, and how we move when we move.
We need to cultivate the right action, not just any action. Through our self-analysis, if we realize that we are overly reliant on one muscle group, or over-compensating with another part, then action can be taken to address these imbalances. This is when mindful practice can bring us to a place of optimal movement and ease, in the long run, allowing us to continue to do the things we do and to love life!
Mindful practice makes perfect.
@SpiceSadhaka
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And you thought that yoga bolsters stay in the territory of effortless, restorative practice…
Here’s how to use it to ‘cancel out’ some of the effects of gravity in caturanga dandasana (your yoga half push-up), so that you can work on your upper body strength, focus on stabilizing the shoulders as you move, and find a good energetic alignment.
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The angle of flexion in the cervical spine (neck) area during shoulder stand and plough pose practice can be very harsh for many of us. Over time, the ligaments stabilizing the vertebral joints in the neck area may slacken, if they are subjected to the same pulling forces – repeatedly – over time. This creates instability in the cervical spine in the long run.
Try this in your practice: prop your shoulders and thoracic cage up with 2-3 folded blankets placed on your practice mat (to prevent slipping!). This raised height allows your head to hang lower than your shoulders once you lift your hips up into plough or shoulder stand, so reducing the angle of flexion, but still allowing you to practise and enjoy the benefits of the inversions.
Watch this video for other ideas on how to use various yoga props (and daily household items) in a plough pose.
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