Category Archives: Tutorial

How to Sit Tall

Don’t compromise your spinal elongation in your yoga asana practice.

Tight hip flexors and weak back muscles can cause us to constantly hunch over while we are practising many yoga seated poses, continuing a vicious cycle of poor posture created from sitting at the desk all day (the more you sit, the tighter your hip flexors, the tighter the hip flexors, the less easy it is to sit upright).

Here’s how to bring awareness to centering the pelvis and strengthening the core (front and back) muscles, in order to find a long spine, working with tight hips (which most of us live with!) Explore props and variations for four yoga asanas. ENJOY!

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Caturanga with Stable Shoulders

Use 2 yoga blocks – or stacks of books of the same thickness and firmness – to train strength, alignment and stability in the upper body in caturanga.

  1. Train flexing elbows to 90 degrees carrying own upper body weight (place yoga blocks to touch the shoulders at this height)
  2. Bring awareness to what needs to be turned on to maintain stable shoulder girdle (active palms, arms, hugging of shoulder blades towards ribcage).
  3. Work on concentric and eccentric muscle engagement by working in both directions slow – lowering down and pushing up.
  4. Work with knees down first to build upper body strength – chest, upper back, triceps – before layering in lower body work.

The detailed work needs a whole workshop to run through! These are some ideas to stimulate your awareness in your personal practice.

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Balancing Squat (Hips and Core!)

This is suitable for those of you who already have a comfortable malasana (squat pose) as part  of your physical practice. With a yoga wheel, you can add in stabilization work, firing up the whole core while maintaining hip opening, balanced weight distribution and mental focus.

See video on Spice Yoga’s Youtube Channel

Courtesy: @DharmaYogaWheel

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Strength and Length in the Hamstrings and Glutes

Runners alert! Dynamic working of hip extensors (hamstrings and gluteus maximus) –  strengthen and lengthen with the support of a yoga wheel. Ideal for those who are tight.

Don’t have a yoga wheel? Options:

i. Walk from side to side holding a yoga block in each hand

ii. Hold onto parts of a fence in the park

Courtesy: @DharmaYogaWheel

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Wheeling and Dealing with the Back

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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No More Banana Back in Inversions!

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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