How to do Janu Sirsasana - Head to Knee Pose - Yoga Tutorial, Modifications, plus Tips & Tricks

Transcript

[Music] hello my loves and welcome back today i want to talk about janosha shasana so it's quite a interesting pose and there's a lot that can be going on in this pose that makes it a little bit of a struggle for some people so we'll discuss how to do the pose some modifications and adjustments that you can make to make it a little bit more comfortable and accessible and also a couple of little tips and tricks along the way that can make it a little deeper all right so we're going to start off [Music] sitting in dandasana legs extended here out in front and you'll draw your left leg up and let your left leg come out to the left side now traditionally the foot comes in towards the groin but i'm just going to let your foot decide where it wants to be and then from your right hip crease just fold over your right leg and we'll be here in general this is the normal way that it's taught here it's not necessarily my preferred way but this is the basic steps of janoshashasana here you should get a nice sensation of length all the way from the bottom of the foot all the way into this extended leg all the way along the calf hamstrings lower back and upper back it's a stretch for the whole back side of your body and then you'll rise back up help the left leg up and out and then let the right leg come up and open out to the right and as you do that from your left hip crease hinge forward and fold over your left leg letting yourself rest wherever feels comfortable for you you don't have to hold the foot holding the foot is not necessary you can put the hands on the shin you can put the hands on the floor wherever you feel is right for your body you're kind of noticing here what is screaming the loudest at you here it could be that you're feeling it more into the hamstring maybe it's the cough maybe it's the lower back so just notice and then rise back up and then help the right leg up so as we think about this pose we have one leg extended forward one leg bent out to the side and then we hinge at the hips and fold forward so there's a lot going on we have extended external rotation and then flexion it's a very intense pose no pun intended and as we find this what happens is people get stuck into these ideas of where they should be so the first thing that i want you to notice is that i have a little bit of cushion for my bum i like to have cushion underneath my joints that's just how i roll but the first thing i want to mention here is this leg does not have to be straight for many people the limiting factor to kind of feeling this length all through the back body rather than just into the hamstring is that this leg is too straight having the leg straight is limiting you from feeling the pose elsewhere so if you need to you can either place a block or maybe it's a rolled up blanket or something underneath your knee and i'll show you the variation with a rolled up blanket [Music] so you just take that big sausage roll underneath your knee and the other knee is bent foot close in towards the inner thigh here and then fold over into jano shushasan and if you try this version you might notice that you can get a little deeper forward into the pose so that is the first thing that i always suggest is fold forward with a bent supported knee so the second thing that i want to mention here is this bent leg so this leg that's extended forward doesn't have to be straight but this bent leg this leg does not have to be close into the groin it just doesn't find a position that works for you for some people that might be that the foot is a little further away from your extended leg here that's fine but find a position that works for you now for me when i'm doing this there's a big difference in how my right side behaves compared to my left so notice that for you when i'm doing this pose for my right leg i don't have any support if my right leg is bent it's perfectly connected to the floor when my left leg is bent and out to the side i like to give it a little bit of support with a block or a cushion or a blanket or something and i do that because this is my hip that's a little tighter on this side so that would be my suggestion as well if you find that you're in this position and the leg is lifted away from the floor give it some support and then come forward adjustment number three that you can make is tipping from your hip and not your back so typically the biggest thing that i see in classes is people will come into the setup with their legs one knee bent one leg extended and then they'll do this it just doesn't work because you're moving from your thoracic and lumbar spine that's not what we're after what we want is the pelvis to come forward so as your pelvis is connected to the floor here your sit bones are connected to the floor you'll tip forward with your pelvis not your lower back you're not rounding think about reaching the forehead forward and up first and then fold towards the leg it's basically the same movement that you have in forward folds and in cat and cow it's that movement of the pelvis over the head of the femur all right so now for the biggest tip i feel that it's going to help today and that is to make the pose a little more accurate for what we want for our body so when we lift one knee and we send the leg out to the side our pelvis shifts there's a little movement of the pelvis so as my pelvis starts off square to the front of my mat i lift my knee and as i send my knee out my pelvis shifts my right hip goes forward my left hip goes back now that kind of misses some of the length in the hamstring as i then come forward and it also kind of adds a little bit of torque into the lower back and the sacrum which i don't want so what i suggest you do is that as you find yourself set up in this position you then lift the hip of your straight leg and send it to the back of your mat now visually i can feel this is different because this knee as i said my this is my tight hip my knee will lift up and away from the floor if i'm here it doesn't because i'm compensating here i'm compensating for this hip being tight by shoving this side of my pelvis forward and reaching towards the front of the mat that's not what i want if i want length through the hole of this back side of this leg and through this right side of my body so i'm going to lift the hip i'm going to send that side of the pelvis back and then support my leg then when i come forward i'm over my extended leg my bent leg is supported and i find myself settled in genocide here all right so the final thing that i want to mention is that i've already said that you don't have to hold the foot but the thing is holding the foot makes things a little bit more intense because we start to then incorporate some length into our calf if we have the toes pointed it's a little easier if you have tight calves to then come over into janoshoshasan if you want more of an intense sensation then you can take a strap around the ball of your foot and have the ball of the foot pull back towards the hip here and then pull forward if you're looking for more of a sensation into the calf that might be it if you can hold the foot then you can hold the foot instead but if you're holding the foot and the foot is pointing forward then maybe think about using the strap and pulling back first and the final way to make this a little more intense and a little deeper is to use a block so if you're a flexible bendy person the first thing i suggest is trying it with the straight leg hip pulled back because that might change things completely and you might find that you have more of a hamstring stretch in the pose the second thing is to use a block place the block behind your foot so now your foot has to be flexed so the toes have to point up towards the ceiling and then you pull on to the block and remember your block has different values and if that still feels it's a little too easy use a couple of blocks all right my loves i hope that helped give you a couple of tips and tricks on how to modify and make zhang shushasana a little bit more comfortable and also for those of you that need it a little bit more intense if this helps then give me a thumbs up and and remember my loves that karma is only a if you are so be nice be kind and be the change that you want to see in the world [Music]