How to do Chair Pose and Twist in Chair

Transcript

[Music] hey friends we're going to talk about chair pose today otherwise known as looks good tough enough something that you should go over any time that you have a mirror available or in this case you can see yourself in a video setting which pretty much everyone can do these days three common mistakes see if we can make sure that we're not making them the most common one hi the most common one would be to see the vision of someone who whose knees suddenly start going way ahead of their toes and you can see this and very rarely do you actually see this with a neutral spine although sometimes you do so the real way to get this going and a method that is advantageous to your knees show you from the angle the real way to get this going is to avoid the situation of Purvis because and you start pulling your sit bones and your tailbone forward and tilting your pelvis back the knees have to compensate some pop so they have to go forward because you have nothing back here to distribute the way so unless there's a back problem that would discourage this I usually try to get people to think of a little bit of a booty hasta not here just to start and then I'll have people put their hands here so I'm addressing to problems in 11 position because one breathes the other so if you're familiar with cat cow you can do a little cat-cow motion here and once the inhale cow exhale cat drawing from the low belly in and up you'll see the curve my spine sort of goes straight low curve but it doesn't pop out so we want to do is want to keep you Trella T in the low spine we don't want to start popping out the curve because that's going to cause the issue of the knees going forward otherwise I can't balance myself so let's have anywhere from a natural curve to maybe on an exhale we support the front those fine in and up maybe even we connect the ribs from outer to inner the arms not really concerned about I tend to offer arms that are less extended just until at least the person gets this part figured out okay the third mistake that tends to come out is the person who's to booty Austin it up and this isn't as common unless you're dealing with you have a class full of gymnasts or extremist of dancers or just people who tend to have that body posture but you'll see a lot of people who aren't using anything in the front of the body nothing in the deeper core muscles and they're just all sticking it out well their knees may not suffer as much but they might be doing too much compression here and not enough support here so essentially if we just think about a little cat-cow the in yell is a little extreme and then the exhale goes to another extreme so what if we find the Goldilocks the inhale expand out in the exhale come in so there's less change in the low back curve and it's more of a in between experience rather than two extremes which you can start with sometimes you have to go extreme to get to your happy meet and then there's the use of the wall which everybody has even if you live in an igloo the igloos have walls so the use of the wall is particularly good not just for making sure that the correct part of your back body is making contact with the wall but also when you start doing revolved chair putter visits with katana so revolve chair has found a lot in classes and it seems to just be thrown out and even beginner classes but there's really so much going on so let's wall this so on the inhale I've got that's almost like my sit bones are going to touch the wall I don't really want that that might feel good for a moment or two but what I also don't want is like the top of my pelvis touching the wall I don't want my low back pushing towards the wall so let's find the happy medium which is more like the spaces around the sacrum pressing the wall right sacrum down here that's a pretty good spot and then think about the butt cheeks sort of breading rather than clenching in and then from here you can sit as lower as high as you want now when you go to twist we'll start with an upright twist as you go to twist the chest the sternum and low ribs to your right the left hip wants to get lighter off the wall twist with you you might lean to the right or you might just twist and the left leg might do what my left leg is doing now and come out of place and sort of go forward now is this inherently bad probably not if done knowing exactly what you're doing right but the tendency is for the twist to get hung up in that curvy little lumbar spine which is designed for stability not so much for mobility and it's got very small degrees of twisting about five or so degrees depending on the person right so from here I'm going to think of this I'm going to twist here which is to my left so I'm going to press the right back pocket my right back half of my pelvis into the wall where the sacrum is I'm going to press that into the wall and the way I do this is I really ground my right foot that's going to help press it in by my left foot too but the right foot I'm really focusing on because as I exhale on my hollow when I get a little bit of that cat motion going to twist towards you hello and now if I'm really rounding in to both be pretty equally my knees are fairly flush I feel my belly drawing back and most of that twist is happening in the lower ribs and to the sternum now I'm twisting to the left if I inhale really mindful e into the right lung I feel this little stretching and as I exhale I'm hugging the right belly back but pulling the ribs more to the left and I get a little more stretch in the back body and you can do this as you go lower and lower and lower and lower and lower you can even initiate the twist from a little bit of a cat pose not super charged in the low back but the upper back can round more can take a breath or two here take the twist and then inhale press into the opposite foot of the side you're twisting two and then press equally into both feet the heart pulls through the arms and you've got more of a heart opener than a twist right you have both you can be high you can be low but what you really want to do is make sure that you can have both pieces of your pelvis the sacrum back and flat before you start twisting otherwise it starts to look a lot you've probably seen this and you've probably done it i'm sure that i did it in my beginning days you see a lot of this where people forgot that it's a chair and they're so concerned about the twist they forgot about all the other cues right forgot about taking the armed men they forgot about the heart forward heart higher than the hips okay and if you set yourself into the pose a certain way to start once you get there you won't have as many corrections and it's a video for another time otherwise keep working on your chair pose it's really good for your leg strength and if you do it right it's going to be good for your hammie strength to write more of this not so great on the knees a little more on the quads here when you've got more of the sit bones reaching back and why knees I can see my toes you want to be able to see your toes when you're doing chair and I would venture to say any leg support pose that's a good sign to now get a little bit more the hammies in especially if you press your heels into the ground so it really can be a great all leg exercise and then if you want to add the inhale exhale cat cow it becomes a little core work as well and as you exhale you're not tucking the tailbone you're trying to keep everything side in front drawing in like a little suction cup and if you take those principles into your chair pose you should be able to save your knees protect your back and get really strong so thanks for listening happy chair