3 Ways to Use Your Yoga Bolster

Transcript

hello friends and welcome back to town
yoga today I'm working on some tutorials about how to use your yoga props to
enhance your practice so we're gonna go over three ways that you can use your
yoga bolster to enhance your practice and that's great for at home or at the
studio a yoga bolster can really help you find comfort in a lot of poses that
might be a bit more challenging otherwise as a short hem the bolster can
be used anytime you need the ground to come up a little bit closer to you or
even to change the angle of the ground to you sometimes
and any way you just need that support a little bolstering if you will so the
first place that we can use this yoga bolster to enhance our practice is again
in simple seat so some Yogi's have trouble crossing the ankles here in this
seat for a number of reasons maybe the hips are tight maybe you have an injury
in the ankle and it's really irritating and you kind of want to take the weight
off of them well sitting on the bolster is great in two different ways one you
can just sit on it kind of a traditional just lifting yourself up a little bit
and coming back to your see that's a nice I really like it's actually
straddling the bolster because that can take the weight out of your knees and
ankles a bit so that way you have a more firm base so any poses where you're not
really moving from the waist and blow and a seat sometimes it can be a bit of
twisting or some shoulder or neck work that the instructor is doing then you
can come to this posture with the knees on either side of your bolster and then
just giving a seat on that now this bolster might at home one's a little bit
flimsier then definitely the ones we have in the studio so if I was at home I
would probably even add like I am now this blanket on top of it extra lift but
this way you can kind of bring the weight outside of the ankle and knee so
this is a really nice seat option when you're just working from waste and above
so some neck stretches and you don't want to cross the ankles or show them
your ratch good boy his water's right across
here so to the bowl so this um seated kind of straddle on a bolster is a
really nice option one way to use your prop to enhance your practice next way
that I really like is for an extended Child's Pose an extended Child's Pose
traditionally is having the knees as wide as your mat your big toes together
and then you just bring your chest down and your arms out front so it's this big
stretch for the lats and the lower back and the nice grounding posture but
sometimes the ground feels a bit too far away in this pose there are people that
come down and they're like nope not getting any further their hips start to
lift up and if that's the case your bolster can be used to bring found a bit
closer to you so that's when I like to place it just between knees here and
then slowly lower the torso down onto your prop and you can just look off to
one direction then and find comfort in the shoulders so this is a nice way to
use the bolster to support you in an extended child's pose if you want to
relax there but the grounds too far away you can bring this out and there's some
other ways we can combined it with a blanket if that's what you're interested
in let me know in the comments and I will do another video the last way that
I really appreciate using the bolster is in savasana with my lower back pain a
traditional savasana with heels to the corners of the mat and palms up by your
sides is actually painful in my lower back so
I will typically slide a bolster underneath my thighs and that will kind
of shorten my long hip muscle the psoas there so that it's not over stretching
and pulling on my back now so this lifted thigh can really help relax the
lower back in savasana so support its of Austin with a bolster underneath the
legs some people prefer it lower more underneath their knees
or down by their ankles you can experiment and see which one you like
but that bolster supporting the lower body just letting the pelvis kind of
tilt back a little bit can be a really nice way to find more comfort at the end
of your practice especially if you happen to be getting some that kind of
pinching in the lower back or a pulling feeling in the lower back try lifting if
that helps so there are three ways again that we can use our yoga bolster to
enhance our practice so that way you can keep enjoying your yoga more and more
over time making it a lifelong practice whether you're at home in your living
room going out to studio as regularly as you
can or just making time for it you know when you're out and about taking a
breath at your office stretching the hands in the car let's enhance our yoga
bring it with us out into the world so that you can enjoy the practice if you
enjoyed this practice let me know below in the comments let me know what you're
looking for in terms of tutorials because I really do like spending time
explaining and diving in and I would love to do that more with you this year
if you're looking to support town yoga there's always a link for one-time
donation below if this has helped your practice and you want to give a little
thanks you can do it with the support on PayPal or even just comment below and
longer term support head on over to patreon comm slash town yoga and check
out the community we have growing there I'd like to end this practice with hands
at heart center just like I would a traditional practice a space to let you
know that the light in me honors and respects the light in you namaste you