Beginner Yoga - How to do Crescent Lunge

Transcript

hey everyone i'm alexa and this is my beginner's guide to crescent pose or crescent lunge also known as anjanayasana in sanskrit and so i'm going to show you from the side here i'm going to start with our right leg forward and our left leg back so you can always just step out into this wide stance with one leg extended in front and one leg supporting you from behind or if you're coming from downward facing dog inhale reach your right leg high and then exhale step it through to the top of the mat okay and then take your time rising up so to start here we want to find our joint stacking so we have support and stability so our base of support here we want to stack our right knee above the right ankle okay and then press through the ball of the back foot in this case my left leg doesn't really uh the intention of the pose is not to get as deep as possible rather i'm going to stay safe find your base of support engage the core and then reach the arms up toward the sky so another key here if you're finding this a little bit challenging as far as stability and balance if you feel like you're a little bit wobbly here walk your right foot out or your front leg out to the edge of the mat right the outside edge of the mat so what this does is this widens the space between the two feet think of two railroad tracks it gives you a little bit bigger uh base of support there so that's always an option okay and then from here root the feet down so i'm actively pressing both feet into the mat and then i'm trying to pull them toward one another when you try to do that you will feel the legs engage specifically the inner thighs which will also help with core activation okay draw the low belly in and up lift the heart space toward the sky you can always bring your hands together at heart center you can even just rest your hands on the top of the front leg or fullest expression just reach the arms up toward the sky palms face toward one another soften the shoulders down but stay active and engaged so some things that tend to happen here especially when we reach the arms up is there's a tendency for the ribs to display out you want to keep the knit the ribs knitting toward one another that helps keep that core engagement of the front body so make sure when you're reaching your arms up you're knitting the low ribs together and then you just want to come back to your breath here take one more inhale and then exhale release you can step to the top or you can release the hands back down and come through down dog come back the way we started otherwise you want to make sure you do both sides so in this case i'm stepping my right leg back and then stacking my left knee above my left ankle pressing both the feet down drawing them in toward one another activating through the core and then reaching arms up toward the sky knit the low ribs together slow the breath down palms facing in and then take one more deep breath in and breath out another thing here that you can do you can bend into that back leg there's no reason that it has to be straight you can always take a bend into that knee so you can just see how that feels in your body too i hope this helps again that was beginner got beginner's guide to crescent lunge let me know if you have any requests for any specific poses have a great day