How can less be more in class? What does that mean? Don’t work hard? Don’t try new poses? Don’t listen to my instructor when they say go deeper or sit lower? I’m confused!
A few weeks ago, we had The Sangha Trinidad’s Yoga Teacher Training 2014. And during our Training, we worked on a course called FUNCTIONAL ANATOMY. It’s kinda like learning anatomy, but instead of just learning body parts, we learned about moving our body parts in a pure way. What does that mean? Well if we were told to stand tall in Tadasana (Mountain Pose), then how do you stand without overusing other parts of your body? And then how do we as instructors deliver that information to you so that you understand?
WORD OF THE MONTH: RIGID!
So here’s a test…
- Try standing.
- Then press your feet into the ground as hard as you can.
- Then squeeze every muscle in your body, including your glutes (your butt muscles), your abs…everything.
- Then roll your shoulders back as far as you can…drawing your shoulder blades as close as you can to each other.
- Squeezing your arms into your body…squeezing your legs into each other.
- Now…how does that feel? Like CRAP, right?NOW…
- Release.
- Just lightly rest the centre of your heels…the padding under your big toes and the padding under your baby toes into your mat or on the floor.
- Just imagine wrapping the muscles in your legs around the bones of your legs.
- Just gently inhale and as you exhale, draw the bones of your rib cage toward the back. Your abdominals engage, but you can still breathe.
- Allow the arms to just be by your side.
- Keep your shoulders in neutral position…not too far back and not rolled forward.
- Now…how does that feel? Relaxed, non?
The point is to not overuse all your muscles and just learn to use what you need. How do you know if you aren’t doing it right? If you can’t breathe while you are doing the action, then you aren’t allowing your body to do the action!
