How To Crow Pose for Beginners - Learn to Fly in 5 Minutes

Transcript

welcome to this short and sweet crow pose tutorial crow pose is generally the first arm balance that people learn and masters if you're new to arm balances you're in the right place when we set up for crow photos you want to place our hands like we would for plank which means they're shoulder-width apart the fingers are lightly spread so that we've got a nice surface area to balance on we're making life harder for ourselves this way if we're small learning it's not a word but you know what I mean small earning the surface area we're balancing on so the fingertips are spread and the hands are ever so slightly turned outward so that usually it's your index finger that points forwards towards the top of the mat from there we also want to make sure that our eye of our elbow is pointing forwards so by that what I mean is that the arms are all forwards and as you do that you should feel that your shoulder blades are broadening across your upper back and if they're not broaden them so we're thinking of rounding the back much like when we do in our yoga class we do cat and cow cat pose is this pose like this so we want to think of cat pose whilst we're doing crow pose all these different animals added together so with those hands shoulder-width apart with the fing index finger pointing forwards we're rounding our upper back and turning the eye of the elbow to face forwards from a little squatting position so you can come onto the balls of the feet we want to think of lifting our hips nice and high so crow pose is a counterbalance all arm balances are counter balances you're trying to make the weight in front of your wrists counterbalance the weight behind so generally that's your chest and your head counter balancing the weight of your pelvis and your legs now your pelvis and legs are very very heavy which means most arm balances you always need to go further forwards than you ever think we always want to think of a forwards motion rather than a down so we place the hands shoulder width apart we roll the elbows to face forwards we find a cat back with broad shoulder blades we lift the hips towards the sky and then we're ready to try and find our crow pose so the chunky bit of your knee on the inside of your kneecaps at this bit just here is gonna come to rest onto your triceps the back of your arms which are which are they're in line when your elbow is facing forwards we find that point on the back of the arm where the knees want to rest with those hips in the sky when we're making that counterbalance so the chest comes forward the chest and the head are trying to weigh more than our hips until our feet may or may not leave the floor so in order to find this balance we have to go forwards with our body weight knocked down which means we want to look forwards as well generally we follow the direction of our eyes if we're looking back towards our feet we're gonna go down and that's when we start to go splat we find people in our little splatty pose so the thighs have to squeeze in towards each other as we pull the belly up towards the spine because this is obviously using quite a lot of core to hold your body weight onto your arms so again with the knees on the back of the triceps the hips are high squeeze the knees into the woods that arm so much so that they even might start quivering towards each other just as a demonstration of the effort that you're putting in so squeeze the thighs in I have the elbow faces forwards the chest and the gaze are going towards the front of the mat now you can stay here your toes can stay on the floor so you're taking the balance element out of it but you're still getting all of the strengthening aspect the upper body is still strengthening you're still having to use your core to balance and you're working on keeping as little weight into your toes as possible you could work on one foot cut me in towards your bar trying the other foot or another handy little trick it's use your block underneath your feet bring your little squatty pose onto your block instead all the same applies hands on to the mat lift the hips knees onto the back of the triceps but you're already lifted that little bit further away from the floor so it becomes that little bit more accessible to find that counterbalance point between the two one other way that I like to practice or teach people to get into this one is to pop the block in front of you and that's going to be where you're aiming your forehead so you make a big triangle with their two hands and your block so we're setting the hands just like we described as if we're doing plank we're lifting the hips high we're taking the knees on the back of the triceps we're leaning forwards I can let my forehead rest onto the block so I've got another balance point here now making sure that if we're taking this very eighth [Music] making sure if you're taking this variation you're only ever so slightly resting your forehead on to the block you are not dumping the entire weight of your body through your neck and onto that block in front of you if anything it's just a little bit of a safety blanket or something to aim towards to encourage you to go forwards rather than down when I learn to do crow pose I took a big pillow and a cushion and I stuck it there on top of my mat and that was a good way of getting over the fear of wanting to go forwards because if I was going to fall I had a lovely soft landing underneath my face thanks for watching I hope your Crow found some flight you can check out this playlist for some beginner friendly yoga flows or this playlist for some other individual pose break down tutorials don't forget to hit if you want to be notified of my latest releases welcome to this short and sweet crow pro welcome to this short and sweet crow probe I can't say it I can't say it anymore crow crows