How to do Hero Pose - Virasana - Yoga Education

Transcript

hello what magnificent human beings my name is Landon with yoga New Mexico where we focus on empowerment alignment and strength you are in the right place capable and strong what are we going to do today well it is vairocina hero pose and yes I got a block because we might need this thing so if you don't have a block maybe like some towels or something like that that might be able to help you this class is our educational piece if you will really gets into the details of how to get your butt down on the ground like if you are one of these people who have just like an inch of being able to almost like have their but come down to the ground and you've been there for a while this is the class for you I really hope that after this one you can think all the way down and if not I'm still going to give you some things to look out for and ways to amplify modify all those good things so go ahead roll out your math and I will roll the intro screen [Music] so very often our hero pose now some folks love this posture some folks think it's the devil and I can really say that this is not one of my favorite poses for a long time because I just it was very confusing to me when teachers would explain it they'd say you know okay so bring your knees together separate your feet and then sit all the way back and I'm thinking what like how you know it feels like my knees are going to explode out of my body so after you know going through through teacher training and everything and then learning lots of little subtle things of how to help to come deeper into this posture I enjoyed a lot more so I want to share some of these things with you now there are a few different ways to get into hero i'm going to show you three different ones the most normal one you hear a different one and then kind of like an extreme way i might even show you a fourth one I don't know there's lots of ways to come into this posture so here's the normal way most people say right like let's say you're in tabletop you know they say ok bring your knees together and untuck your toes and just sit back into your hero pose now what's interesting is you can't see this right now but my butt's not touching its it's about like a half an inch off of the ground it's really close but it's not touching and I think it's because I didn't do any sort of these little secrets or hacks or you know things to help get your body to be able to accept the pose even better so that's how most people say to come into hero and I think we leave a lot of little things out when doing this so come back up another disclaimer about this if you're watching this video trying to come into hero cold I would recommend not doing it like watch this video after taking a yoga class or doing at least like a 30 minute class to get you warmed up because if you already have trouble coming down it's not going to help you if you're cold and you know not warmed up and try to come down anyways so short little disclaimer but continuing on yeah that's kind of the most way I think you will say to get into hero here is another way which this way helps me a whole lot between your tabletop right Peter untucked bring your knees together and here's the secret is to squeeze your knees like these are your knees down here your fist my fist my fists are your knees and instead of just squeezing them together like this is to have a gentle kind of like inward rotation like you know the little kids have to use the bathroom and they're like kind of hunched forward and they're like you know kind of look like waddling really bad because they're holding it that's kind of the same thing you need to do because you want to have this inward rotation of your leg bones here so tabletop bring your knees together and then do that inward rotation thing you're going to notice your spine maybe starts to curl a little bit and that's fine because this is just all preparatory stuff or not staying in this posture for a while so knees together and then like oh I gotta pee I got to pee just like round a little bit and then so you're really squeezing those knees together so hold that and hold that squeeze as you sit down and it's hard because the second we start going back we want to stop squeezing our knees but that's where the magic happens hold that like that squeeze there for as long as you can until your butt comes all the way back so check it out tabletop needs to get squeeze your knees together and like you're going to brown that back littles out kind of get that sensation of those those those leg bones rotating in words and then squeeze squeeze squeeze and then keep squeezing keep squeezing keep squeezing all the way back squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze move your calf out of the way and then BAM now my butt is actually all the way on the ground I don't feel a lot of tension in my knees maybe like five percent it's very slight nothing serious and I'm relatively comfortable that is the big secret that helped me get my butt to come all the way down coming back up so i'm going to show you modified version now with the block and really the best thing is is uh just kind of squeeze the block together with your ankles and then fit on back and wherever you are in your hero whether it's here in this modified version or whether you've come all the way down you don't want to like hunched forward you always want to grow and lift up if you hold strong in your hero and the best thing I can say also is practice because it's going to take a while before you know if you're really far from your butt being pretty far up being pretty far down it's going to take a while for you to be able to get it all the way than that but you will take that journey much quicker and you will enjoy it more if you actually close your eyes and focus on those feelings in those sensations that are coming up in your body and in your legs this is opposed I think often where we might get sharp shooting pains because of whatever reason that happens back way off and try to come into it a different way because that's like nerves screaming at you and you know you don't really want that at all discomfort is cool but you know the sharp shooting pain is not cool so maybe you're on this level of your blog maybe you're on a higher level whatever it is you know your journey is kind of to be able to get a small on a smaller and smaller block until eventually you know your butt can come all the way down so that's the modified version and then now here is kind of a more extreme version because I never see this really taught but I think it really helps us to focus on getting our knees and our legs to where they need to be so that you can come all the way back and it looks weird but just try it maybe this will actually help you so lay all the way down on your stomach so you're laying down on your stomach and then you bring your legs together but what you want to do is waddle your knees in so again it's this whole inward rotation of these leg bones right like if you're laying down you don't want your knees flat on the mat necessarily you want like this outside edge to be on the mat so you bring it in you bring it it feels weird right but it's this whole same principle of squeezing your knees together and getting that inward rotation of your legs so walk in a man I know it's so strange right like and you probably not be able to set your ankles down which is ok but from here keep squeezing those knees together squeeze and squeeze and squeeze them and then push all the way back into hero squeeze squeeze squeeze push all the way back don't do it fast or kind like a smooth motion you know and sometimes that helps because I think in a hero pose that's the thing that you are not talked about is this kind of like camera rotation our legs your knee joints aren't stretching like joints don't stretch it's how you position the other bones in your body to allow your butt to come down to the ground here's another way to come into your hero pose so if you're sitting in your staff posture come into a half hero bringing whichever leg you want on back trying to fit equally on your sits bones as best as you can and then bring your other knee back you're going to have to pick yourself up just a little bit so you kind of push over to the side and then bend your other knee back this has helped some people to come into hero pose as well because again it just kind of sets you know your need your knees and your leg bones up for success looking at the opposite way lean over to whatever knee is bent and then bring it on back incident so those are some tricks tax tips and everything to be able to get your butt to actually touch in your hero pose think about the inward rotation of your legs and squeezing those knees together and that is what has helped most of my students to be able to come that last one inch and you know what pose kind of depends on the day right like like when you wake up in the morning you look at yourself in the mirror you go like I look pretty good today or you look at yourself in the mirror you go like oh god I should stay at home today it's kind of like you know hero should have stayed home some days but other days it's awesome in your practice so I really invite you to try these tips and tricks and go ahead and put some comments below ask any question you want I'll get back to you let's have a conversation want to say thank you to all the patreon supporters as well and from my heart to yours you are a magnificent human being you're in the right place capable and strong namaste [Music]