Lessons

Lesson Info

Day 14: Standing Balance

in yoga. We do a lot of single lake standing postures, and sometimes these could be a little daunting because they're hard. We fall down, you know, breaks their confidence, their humbling right. It takes time. It takes practice to work into these standing postures on the standing poses. But with a little bit of practice and stuff we actually do build the balance we build. Our equilibrium are center. When we learn to bring the core control together, that stability, it all really starts to tie together. Start the mattress. I was bring the soles of the feet together. Let the knees open up. Lift the chest ups. Take a nice little Ford Full toe open up into the hips, knees open up to the outside. Crawl out through the fingers. Lengthen the low back a few deep breaths into the back body. Open the mouth and exhale. Inhale, exhale, inhale. Walk the hands back. If you have a strap, grab a hold of it. Come on to the back, draw the right leg into the chest. Now, if you're flexible enough to reach ...

up and grab the right toe, that's great for most of us. We're not there yet. Take the strap around the bottom of the foot, take a hold of it, keep the legs straight ground into the hip, pull the foot down towards the face. Now one of the interesting things about just body positioning the postures is really they're all the same, whether we're standing on the foot laying on her back. Or however, however it is upside down, we're making the same shape, and it requires the same amount of flexibility. But we just change the dynamics of it by changing the where are centers where our bases, right, so this it's it's an easier posed because we're grounded down, were supported by the Earth that we could really work on opening up. But if we take this in the same pose like this, this is really just warrior three, you know, But the foot's up to the sky. Or if we're standing on her left foot, this is extended big toe pose, right? So really working through the different orientations, we challenge the body in different ways. Take the right foot, open it up to the outside, keep the left hip ground, just open up into the inner hip a little bit more. Bring it up to center. Switch hands. Take the right foot over to left. A little twist. I feel a nice stretch to the outer hamstring through the outer I t band. A little twist to the spine. Inhale up back to center. Bend the knee. Pull it in release. Switch it out to the other side. Hook the loop around the foot. Extend the right leg out. Activate the right. Legace. Wells you activated left. Pulled the hell. And towards you press out. You could even give a little engagement through through here. Don't worry if your way back here, as long as you're feeling a stretch, you're doing the pose, right? You know, we get so concerned into, like, am I doing the pose right? Does it look right? How's it supposed to be? And then we look at other people that have may have been in the practice in a little bit more open and we go our post. My post doesn't look like that. I must not be doing it right. And that's not at all how it is. It's really like Are you feeling it is the pose accomplishing the purpose of the pose you know, Is it opening the body? Is it strengthening the bodies that lengthening the body is a building balance? And if you're doing one of those things that we're really working into the pose and we're doing it right, we're practicing yoga. Open the left foot out towards the left wall, around the right, hip down just to open. Just open up into the in earth. Left. Go, Ryan, Take it back up to center. Guide the left foot over to the right. Switch hands. Reach the left arm over a nice little gentle twist. Come back up to center, Release the foot. Draw the knees in Little Rock. Roll up, plant the feet. Stand up. Now, the more open that we are in our body and our hips in our hamstrings, the easier it is to balance. Doesn't matter if we're balancing on one foot on both feet. On one hand, if the body's open, we don't have resistance pulling ourselves out of it. So when we we stretch first and were open in the body, it gets a little bit easier. That's why it's easier in a class if you're working through it to work into balance. poses, like halfway through the classes. And if you just started into it cold, you know? So first, pose that we're going to come into a single egg standing poses, tree posts, rickshaw, Sina. And this pose is is really about just learning how to engage in control the body. It's It's the basic foundation single leg balancing pose, and we could start out. We build it right, we're going to start on the left foot. And if you need to, you know, always feel freedom to take something and bring it along so that we could, you know, balance onto it. All right? You know, have something balance works and and the way it works is by, you know, we develop it, we build appropriate exception. The more that we build it, the better that we get at it. So we could start, you know, always using something or a wall. We're gonna take our right foot to our left ankle and just find the balance here. Maybe use it the block or not. The block. You know, your chair or whatever you have alongside of you for balance. Try Sit up tall. Engage the core. Bring the hands of the heart. If this is feeling good for you, then you could take Move this out of the way. Use it if you need it, you could take the right foot to the inside of the calf, Open the knee up, pressing together, ground down. Sit up nice and tall, engaged to the core. Maybe bring the hands of the heart. Really just finding your level or pull it all the way up to the inside. Now this takes a little bit more flexibility. You want to make sure that you're not stopping on the knee, pull it all the way up, press the right foot to the inside of the left eye and then work on squeezing the thigh into the foot. When you pull these two together, we're really creating mawr stability through the entire body. Keep the core engaged in the hands of the heart. Now, with any kind of balance post, the eyes play a big part into appropriate exception into our balance and stuff. So finding address City Point is really important interest. The point is simply a stationary object or something that we look at, hopefully something far off that's not moving. That we could find to balance. So, you know, you pick a point on the wall. Um, not me, cause I'm obviously moving, but something that's not moving and you look at it and this is going to help you The balance. Keep the core engaged, press in, bring the palms of the heart. Now, as we challenge the balance, we could take it to different levels. Maybe reach the arms up, reach out to the side body, bring the gaze up, find interesting on the ceiling on. Then we could always work into really challenging the balance and closing the eyes. Closing the eyes makes it so hard. If you look here, I come out of it. It's okay. Have fun with the melons. Challenge that The more you work, the better you're going to get at it. We'll try it on the right lake. Bring the foot to the ankle. Right. This might be where you're at. Maybe you could take it up to the calf or grab it. Pull it to the inside of the right thigh again. Squeezes together. Try to stand up nice and tall. Grow your roots down. How we stand on our feet is really important who want to think it. We're not leaning onto one edge of the other, but we're really grounding down into all four corners of the foot. You know, imagine that the energy is pouring down through the lake straight into the earth and you're growing roots out. You know, they're supporting you like a tree unanimously tree post. Engage the core hands of the heart. Maybe find your Driss t take it off way off in the distance. Grow the arms up, Maybe even bring the gaze up Take it to your level If you can close the eyes and challenge it right balances long as he can bring the hands back to the heart Set the foot down, shake out the lakes come into our standing splits Now this pose is challenging because one it's a lot of flexibility to, You know, If we take the hands off our heads down so now are appropriate section Everything's changed around It feels different, You know we're upside down, but we're yet we're still balancing on her foot So plant the foot plant the hands reached the left leg up You know, don't worry so much about the flexibility right now, we're trying to balance here, so if the hips open, that's okay. Right now, we're not gonna worry too much about that at the hips closed. Don't worry about how high the leg. It's even if you want to, You can bend the knee. But what we really want to do is find the balance here in the post with a head down. So bring the hands out wide. He had taken into a really wide basis. Really helps stabilize it. You know why? Triangles we fold forward? Does it work deeper into the balance? We want to come on, Lee, onto the right foot so you could take the right hand to the right ankle like this. Find your balance, maybe come up onto one finger, two fingers, two fingers, one finger. You know, take it off and work into it. When you feel it, you're gonna notice you're moving around a lot. The foot is feeding back. As balance starts to work, we start to feed back to the brain, saying we're going this way. We correct going this way, we correct. And the better we get at that more balanced that we get at that the better the body is that is that correcting and the less that we move into it. Keep the core engaged for three to one. Set the hands down, set the feet down, shake the legs out. Standing splits. It's a lot. It's a lot on the hamstrings. That's a lot of the balance. So many things working into it reach the right leg up. You can bend the knee, however you want into it full down into the lake. Think of growing nice and tall through the left side of the body. Maybe just up onto the right fingers left hand to the ankle. Maybe just up onto two fingers, maybe onto one finger or both hands to the ankles and find the balance. Notice how much movements happening to keep you up there. All this feedback. You know the brain works without us even thinking about it. Balance works. It's it's a secondary response. It's natural, right? Subconscious. So we really have to work it to build it. We can't just think about it to be better and just go. Oh, I want balance. Better study it. No, we have to work it. Bring the hands down. Bring the feet down Stand back up, Give the legs a little bit of a shake come into crescent So even though we're working no single leg standing poses crescent pose could be really challenging on the balance and really challenging if we take away or Driss t right. And this is one of these poses that I have a lot of troubling. I often take classes blindfolded, which sounds kind of silly, but I really like to just bring everything internal so that Ah, I could work on my balance Even Maurin closing the eyes really challenges about. So we're gonna come into crescent, reach the arms up now we're gonna challenge balance, even mawr by bringing the gaze up. So you notice as soon as you bring the gaze up you want to start to come over. But this really helps. This really helps Challenger balance, you know, working through that. So bring the gaze up, maybe try to close the eyes. If you close the eyes and notice what happens to the balance, it starts to get really difficult. If you start fall, open the eyes back up. Bring the balance back in wrap the try substance sink a little bit deeper. Maybe close the eyes again. Play around with it. Feel about feel the balance happening through the feet. Notice what's going on. Open the eyes up. Step forward. Set the right foot back back into crescent again. Lift the arms up. Close the eyes. Play around with the balance. You know, sink down a little bit deeper. Feel the feedback. Happen to the feet of the challenges. Maybe gaze up higher. Look back, open the chin. Open the I step back forward. So it's great to come into a standing balance pose, you know, going from nice and slow controlled, being able to get into it. But what about when we start working into it and we're moving through a floor through a sequence where we're floating up? You know, we're going from warrior to to half moon or something and moving into those mountains, that's when it really starts to get challenging. So we're gonna work a couple times coming from crescent lunch into standing splits. Now, I really want you to challenge yourself. Of course. Use your hands if you need to use your hands as we get better at this, we take away we take away those training wheels real income from Crescent into standing splits three times. Um, when we do so, I want you to think about not using the hands and really challenge yourself. So we just come in and we find the balance right away, so we'll start in crescent lunch with the right foot forward. Bring the hands to the heart where a lean Ford maybe put the hands down, Maybe not lift the left leg up. Standing splits. Bend the right knee without the hands. If you can set the left foot back, lift the chest up. Come forward. Chest over the top of the right thigh. Reached the left leg up. Standing splits. Find the balance. Been the right knee, said the left foot back. Inhale backup crescent lunge. Last time reached the chest forward over the top of the right lake. Send the left leg up to the sky. Standing splits. Reach a back crescent lunch. Step the left foot forward full down. Bend the knees. Relax. Hang down. Left side, Inhale, Come back up. Step the left foot to the back of the math can find the balance Three times. Standing splits on this side really works. Slow on the transition. If you can keep the hands of the heart and lean forward over the top of the left leg. Floated. Ford reached the right leg up square down to find the balance. Inhale back up, bend into the left knee. Reach the right foot back. Inhale. Reach the chest up. Now, these air really challenging. I've spent a lot of time practicing balance. So if it looks easy for me, don't be discouraged. You know it's not an easy thing. Lean forward. Lift the right leg up, then the left knee. Step back in Hill. If the chest again. Of course, you could use your hands, but challenge yourself to just find the balance. Okay, falling a few times is fun. Whatever. Lean forward. Pressing the left foot last time. Reach the right leg up. Really working to find in the balance and standing splits. Benoni. Step the right leg back. Come up. Step the right foot. Ford, shake out the lakes. One of them, the more challenging poses for me when I first started was Half moon and half Moon is really hard because were there so many things going on? We're really on one foot, the hips air stacked, the dresses weird. It's hard. There's a lot of core control going on into it. But with practice and training, it gets a lot easier. And I really recommend to anybody starting this to use a block. It helps you to get your chest and find your side core and side core stability. Building that side core stability is going to make half moon a world easier. So we're gonna come into this. We're actually gonna start by using the wall. So So start up by the wall, stand about a foot distance, foot's distance away from the wall. Or so this just gives us a little bit of space to lean into it. Right? You want to start? We'll do left foot forward. Take the block out. You know about it about 6 to 8 inches in front of the left pinky toe. Plant a block. We're going to reach up, and I want you to press your back into it now. Maybe you might feel a little bit too far away from the wall. If that's the case, take the foot a little bit closer. The closer you are to the wall. That kind of the harder it is, but also the more stack that we become. You want to make sure that the left hand is directly underneath the shoulder. Press the back of the body into it, engage the court, so notice a lot of us have our belly sticking way out. Pull it in. Round two, the spine. Press up. Stand out through the heel. So feel this position. Remember this position? This is really what Half Moon should feel like and pretty much what it should look like, Right? We'll try that on the other side. Take the block down close to the wall foot that eight inches foot away. Reach up. Bring the back into the wall. Press up, extend out to the hell. Don't worry if the foot's way down here way high, we really want to try to find a little bit of length, pick up through the right side of the body, press the back of the body and bring the gaze up. Even this takes challenge, and it definitely takes a lot of flexibility to be in this position. All right, come back down. We'll work into it, adding in a little bit more balance. So obviously when we taken in class, we're not gonna have a wall to use, so we'll just we'll start with it trying to find the balance because we're at home. We have a wall. Take the block down. We're gonna put the foot on the wall. So you need to adjust so that the foot could come out in, press into that. Line it up so that the heels airline take the block out to the outside corner, right? See where my pinky toe is? It's just a little bit out to the side. Hands flat here where you could even be upon the fingers. Press into the wall. Want to stack my hips up? Really? Imagine that you're still against the wall and then engage the core. Lift the left hand up. Try to find the balance here. I'm press out. Maybe we could take it, afford a little bit and not use the wall and find this balance. A lot of this has to do with this lift coming out of the side body. Half moon is one. These poses that no matter where you are in the practice, it's always challenging you know, bring the gaze up. Really makes it hard. Closing the eyes makes it even more heart, you know, floating the hand wherever we are, we could challenge ourselves and our balance in it. Let's try the other side. Bring the block down. Left foot. Take the right foot against the wall. Stack the hips. Right. Look. Look at your body. It's the best way to find your profile. Reception your body where it says it is simply. Just look at it. You know, press into that foot. Reach the left arm. Reach right arm up, engaged to the side body. Step away from the wall. Try it again. Just with the balance. But still think pressing into the wall. Reaching up, maybe. And bring the gaze up. Press out to the heel, Lift the bottom left ribs up. Find the core engagement. The more stable you are in the body, the more stable you are through the core. The easier it is to balance this pose. Set it down, shake out the legs, shake out the hips, grab your strap. So when we started this, you know, I talked a little bit about ah, you know, poses being the same thing right there. Just different variations of that. All right, so we started and was called recline. Big toe pose. So now we're going to do the same post, but standing. So you take your strap, hook it around the foot, reach it up notice, You know, we're opening up. It's still nice. A lot of hamstring, but now we're balancing it. So the purpose of the post changed quite a bit, you know, Now it's about the standing balance, like so lift up as much as you can grow tall through the side body, really work into finding the edges of the feet and grounding them down into the mat. You could always use Ah, chair something alongside the body. Take the foot. Open it up to the outside. We'll try to keep the balance, practice it, maybe even grow the left arm up. Take the left hand grab. I'm gonna hold it here. Keep the legs straight. Try to find the balance. Reach the right arm back. Stand up tall. Look for your dress. Two point behind you once you find it focusing on it. This is really gonna help with the balance. Come back to center. Benoni released the foot. Try to do everything controlled as you can. Switch it out to your side. Hooked left toe. And if you one of things that I noticed a lot of people, they get frustrated if they're in the balance posing. They're jumping around and they can't do it. They get frustrated with themselves. Stop. Come back to where you're stable. Always start from a good point. All right. Take a few deep breaths when the mind stable when the bodies engaged, When the breath is there, balance happened so much easier. Grab it, pull it up straight in the leg. Out. Bring the right hand to the hip with the chest up nice and high. Maybe reached the right arm up to the sky. Find your balance route down. Look for your dress. T open it up to the outer wall. Grow a little bit taller. Take it around to the front. Switch hands. It's okay to come out of balance. Just start over. Plant the foot, lift back up, grab it, twist open and look for the dress city of the back of the room. Come back to center. Many set the foot down. Set the strapped down. Sit down onto the niece. Take the right shin across the front of the mat. Reach the left leg back. Sink the hips down. Now, if you're really tight in the hips, support yourself by taking a block underneath the but chic here, you know, just so that we're not creating any injury. You want your right knee opening up towards the right wall, He'll towards the left hip. You know, however it feels and slowly walk down onto the forms onto the hands. You take your time with this post standing balances take a lot of outer hips. You know, they really work into the glutes into the tensor fascia. Lata that your tfl um, your I t band all this stuff working and activating to support you. So it's important to stretch this out, Justus. Important it is to strengthen. Come back to the hands. The knees up will switch it out to the other side. Bring the left shin across the front of met the right foot back again. If you need a block or bolster anything you have pillow, he put it underneath the hip. Just so you know, you could sink down into their without without worrying about injuring yourself or sinking back. Now on forearms. Relax and dispose. Move over onto left hip. Bring both legs around to the front. Give the legs a little bit of a shake, pressing the heels. Roll onto the back. Draw the knees in. Keep a hold the right leg straight in the left. Take the right knee over. Come into a little bit of a twist back to center straight in the right leg. Take the left knee over back to center. Bring the knees and one last time. Take a full deep inhale. Open the mouth. Exhale, release the legs. Come into Shiva Sena. Relax into the body. Relax into the mind. Take a few more minutes in Shiva Sena. Just Teoh. Give the body the rest that it needs. Standing poses, balance poses. They could be challenging. They could be really frustrating, you know, we get into and we we asked too much of ourselves where it was like a man and we get down on ourselves. You know when that starts to happen, Stop reset. Remember to breathe. Find your centre. Find your Driss T when all these come together. Then we could really find our balance. We find our balance in our practice, and we hopefully start to find her balance through life. You know, we come into the same situations where we're frustrated where we're angry. We're upset. We could be like, Hey, stop, breathe, You know, Take it back. Bring it back to the mindfulness. Thank you for allowing me to share my practice with you. Love and gratitude look awesome. A Stosic. You know, Bob on to Melvin's Be happy and free home. Shonte! Shonte! Shonte!