How to do Cow Face Ams + Legs Pose - Vinyasa Yoga Tutorial

Transcript

hey guys my name is heather from rebel yoga on today's posture tutorial we're going to be going over gamogasana cow face arms and legs this is an awesome posture for opening up your shoulders your chest muscles tight triceps big hip opener and even stretches down into your ankles so you know i'm a big proponent of props so i'm going to show you the props that you can use that will really help age you and get really good alignment in this pose i am a big user of blocks so if you have really really tight hips you're going to want to sit up on this thing and you would sit on it just like this if you're really even tighter you can use another block i'm a happy medium i like to use the blanket i do need a little lift because my hips tend to run on the tighter side and you will need a strap if you have very tight shoulders or you can just simply use a hand towel that's fine so we're going to start this position off in the legs so extend both my legs forward i'm going to keep one leg straight and then i'm across the other one over we do want to stack the knees so if you have any knee issues going on this is the modified pose you're just going to keep your legs like this and stop there want to go on to the full pose i'm going to bend that bottom leg here and again you do want the knees to stack this doesn't happen for me when i come in this way so i like to lean forward and just kind of scoot that knee over a little yeah and tuck it behind the other one and then you'll see i have better alignment here and then you can just simply relax down through the shins and down through the feet if you want a little bit more heat and intensity in this posture you would flex your feet and slowly start to move your shins forward but this is good enough for me like i said my hips are pretty tight we're going to go into the arm so whatever leg is on top that arm is going to reach up here so i'm going to reach that arm up nice and high and then externally rotate it i'm going to drop it back behind my back i'm going to wrap my tricep in towards my face and lift my elbow up to the ceiling my other arm is going to go out i'm going to internally rotate that arm from the shoulder down to the hand reach back and this is where you can put the strap in the top hand or a towel or you can grip fingers to fingers here make sure your lower ribs are not jutting out so i encourage you just to pause and take a deep breath in good exhale maybe soften those lower ribs in if they are sticking out lengthen in the spine good and then from here press your head back into your forearm and keep wrapping your tricep in here towards your face you can add another layer to this pose so let me just rearrange my seat here you can add a forward fold so i'm going to set my legs back up reach my right arm up in my hand position if you like to see my hand i'm taking the full line so you can see that right here and as we start to fold forward you want to make sure you're rooting down through your sit bones right and you're not going to round your spine so you're going to slowly start to lean forward tendency is to round because our backs are tight a lot of us but i want you to keep leaning forward this is basically my end range right here i really can't go much further right some people can really fold in half when you come out yeah it can be a little tingly in the shoulder so let's do a little shoulder roll so i hope that was helpful for you if you have any questions about gabagasana or any other poses that maybe you're stuck on please don't hesitate to reach out to me my name is heather and you can email me at hello at rebel yoga.com or come and join me for one of my live stream classes or even one of my reporting classes thank you so much for joining me have an awesome day namaste you