Hello Yoga Mamas! Just 5 more days until my fundraising event for The Longest Day! If you didn’t know I was offering a couple of yoga classes for this fundraiser, you can read more about it in my previous post here, and also on my donation page on Facebook here.
In the last post, we explored flexion and extension of the spine. In this post, as we play with forward bends, we’ll see how spinal flexion and extension affect the action at the hip and how we bend forward.
Many people start out in yoga acting as if a forward bend is the same as rounding forward in the spine — and sometimes it is! But there are various types of forward bends and it all depends on what we want to get from it. Do we want to stretch our hamstrings? Stretch our backs? Get into an inversion?
Here are a few of my favorite forward bends that can be modified to suit various levels of flexibility and strength. The poses featured in the video below are: Uttanasana (with support under hands: blocks, chair, table, at the wall), Dandasana /Paschimottanasana (hands propping behind or at the wall, knees bent if wanted), and Prasarita Padottanasana (hands to blocks, chair, table, or hands on hips or thighs). Enjoy! The next video will be on Surya Namaskar, a.k.a. Sun Salutations!