How to do King Pigeon Pose | 20 min Follow Along Yoga Pose Tutorial

Transcript

welcome to this class which is one of my absolute favorites because we're going to work towards King pigeon pose which is one of my favorite poses CU I think it just looks so beautiful and aesthetic but also because of the way it feels it gives so much shoulder and chest opening and also stretches deeply into the hips so yeah it's just an amazing pose and it's exactly what we're going to focus on in this class lots of shoulder opening and hip opening and we're going to need need a fabric band or anything long you have around your house and a chair or some kind of surface like a couch or just anything that you can use that's around the height of a chair and then we're going to start sitting on our shins resting your hands onto your knees and start by closing your eyes taking a deep inhale in through your nose and a deep exhale out trying to relax your face your [Music] shoulders and keeping the eyes closed we're going to bring the right ear towards the right shoulder stretching into the left side of your neck and from there dropping your chin to your chest and rolling your head over to the [Music] left and if it feels okay then you can drop your head all the way back and bring it back over to the [Music] right and continuing in that direction switch into your chest and the head over to the left maybe all the way back and over to the right and let's switch directions dropping the head back moving to the left into your chest over to the right and one more time circling the head and then whenever you're done you can come back to Center blinking your eyes open open interlacing your hands press the Palms forward away from you and with the next inhale we're going to reach the arms all the way up look up arching your spine and with the exhale reverse so chin to your chest pressing the Palms forward round two more like that inhale reaching up exhale to round forward and the last time inhale reach with your exhale release your arms and draw the palms back and back to a neutral spine from here let's reach the right arm up and the left arm down with the Palm facing back try to draw your belly button in to sit tall and then reaching arm and but both arms back so pressing both arms back and switch left arm up right arm back and try to really press them back while keeping your spine long so we're not arching we're keeping a long line and switch right arm up left palm back switch switch one more time each [Music] side perfect and release now we want to take our fabric strap or anything long you have for some shoulder flossing it's something that I've been doing since my first teacher training where I learned about this I've been doing it regularly and it really changed my whole shoulder range of motion so we're going to bring the strap really wide so that we can keep the arms straight and from there we're going to reach the strap all the way up and back try to find a distance with your hands that allows you to maintain straight arms if you feel like it's easy then walk your hands closer together and we'll just do this a few times to really warm up the shoulders and if you hear any sounds in the shoulder joints that's so normal so nothing to worry about maybe walking your hands closer together the more you do this the closer you'll be able to bring your hands now hold in the point where you feel the most sensation holding it there breathing here for three 2 one start to slowly bend your elbows drop them in slightly being really mindful here three two and one and release bring your arms back up widen the distance of your hands and we're going to from here keep the right arm up while we draw the left shoulder down so draw the shoulder down and away and then switch left arm up and the right shoulder down and switching really try to keep your arms straight one more time on the other side good and release so now we're coming onto hands and knees and start with some cat cows inhaling drop your belly lifting your tin Arch or spine and exhale chin to your chest press your palms into the mat and round again inhaling looking up Arch bend your belly down exhaling to round and the last time coming into our cow pose so arch your spine and from here make your way into puppy pose walking the hands towards the front of the mat and then either bringing your forehead down or chin and chest come all the way down into the mat holding here for three breaths and just a side note for our poppy pose make sure you're not back here with the hips I often see that people like this is almost a child's pose right we want to have the hips either on top of the knees or even more forward now wherever you are in your puppy walk the left hand back underneath your shoulder and keep melting the chest down for a deep stretch into your right side body the right shoulder inhaling and exhale and bring the left palm back and walk the right hand underneath your shoulder melting the left side of your body of your rib cage down towards the mat inhale and exhale so nice let's walk both hands back and come to our surface so your chair or whatever you're using and make sure that it's not slipping away so if you're using a chair then place it onto your mat so that it cannot escape and from here we'll do another really nice shoulder stretch we're going to bring our elbows onto the surface try to make sure that they're not wider than your shoulders so let don't let the elbows play out keep them in line with your shoulders bring your palms to touch Like a Prayer position and then walk your knees back so that you can bring your AR your head in between your arms and from there now I want you to draw your ribs in so we're doing the opposite that we did in our puppy pose so remember in our puppy pose we were arching the spine now we're doing the opposite we're drawing everything in press your elbows into your chair and hold it here for five 4 3 [Music] 2 and one slowly release and coming away from the chair let's do one more puppy pose so come back onto all fours arch your spine walking your hands towards the front of the mat holding it here for three for two and for one and let's one more time do our shoulder stretch here with bringing the left hand back and draw your right side of the body down into the mat and switch left palm forward right palm back feel that stretch through the whole left arm the shoulder your side body so nice and slowly coming back one more time to our chair or Surface bring now your palms onto to the chair and from here finding a distance sometimes you need to experiment a little bit with the distance what feels right start to bring your head in one line with your arms and we'll do the same thing we just did when we were on the elbows so pressing the Palms down into the mat while we draw the rib cage in holding it for three two and one and then gently release the belly down so arch your spine look up to your palms for three two and one and coming out good and we remov the chair we're not going to need it anymore so you can just put it to the side we're still going to need our band so keep that close now let's come into to a downward-facing dog lifting your hips up you can bend your knees pressing the Palms firmly into your mat and with your next inhale sweep your right leg up for a three-legged dog and then bring the right knee into your chest and place your shin down into the mat for a pigeon pose so we're setting up for our pigeon and I want you to make this a deep stretch so maybe bringing the right heel even further away from you the more you bring it away to deeper the stretch come onto your fingertips here lifting your chest inhaling and with the exhale we're slowly lowering all the way down over the shin bring your forehead down and we'll hold it here for a few breaths [Music] try to think of bringing your left hip forward and down while you draw the right hip back and slowly lift yourself up and now bring your heel closer towards you we're going to now move into our King pigeon pose and it really helps to stabilize by bringing your heel closer towards you so we want to find a lot of balance here now taking our strap and placing it around the left foot good and from here grabbing the strap from underneath so that you have it in your hands like that and start now to rotate your elbow up towards the ceiling this is our flip grip so lower the elbow down and then bringing it back up we'll just do this a few times maybe walking your hands closer to your foot with each time but take it in your own time here so don't go too deep making sure we stay really safe in our practice and we give the body time and then try to hold it at your deepest point so if this feels really challenging here then hold it [Music] here maybe we can bring the other hand up to the strap as well so holding it with both hands and then from there we're going to try to keep thinking of lifting your chest and sending it to the front of the room so good and if this is all great then maybe you can already try to do it without the strap so without the strap you take hold of your foot from the outside and then you rotate your elbow all the way up maybe reaching the opposite hand to your foot as well and the last step here is to drop your head back good and slowly coming out of the pose let's try all of that on the other side and it's really interesting cuz both sides can be completely different so don't be worried or annoyed if one side is much easier than the other side that's so normal let's lift the left leg up three-legged dog inhale and exhale knee comes all the way to the front lowering the left chin down and first we're going to focus on the hip opening so move your left heel further away from you and try to draw the right hip forward and down and if you feel like your hip is way off the mat here you can place a block or a pillow underneath your left hip let's inhale lift the chest and with the exhale we're going to melt all the way forward and down into our sleeping pigeon and we're just going to hold it here for a few breaths while we think of drawing the right hip down and the left hip back good let's lift back up and bring that left heel in a bit closer towards you making sure the right leg is straight behind you and then we're going to place our Loop or band or strap around the right foot and start to draw your elbow up towards the ceiling and let's just do this a few times so bringing the elbow up and down moving deep into our shoulder here so this is really a super deep stretch so don't get discouraged if it feels really really hard I promise that over time it will get easier and easier and it's just about getting more range of motion in the shoulder joint let's hold it bringing the opposite hand as well to your strap and staying here keep thinking of chest forward and either staying there with the strap or using your hand directly on your foot so grabbing your foot from the outside and then rotating the elbow all the way up towards the ceiling and then bring the opposite hand with you and maybe as the last step we can drop the head back and gently releasing so yeah this was our King pigeon pose let's slowly come out rolling back onto your sit bones and just moving your body here in any way you like and we'll finish off with with a gentle twist to neutralize the spine and we can you can either do it seated or I actually prefer lying down on my back for the twist drawing your knees in and then wrap your right leg around the left maybe finding a double bind with your shins and then drop your knees to your left while you look over the right shoulder and then you keep drawing the shoulder down down and breathe here inhale and [Music] exhale and coming back to Center and switching sides crossing the left leg around the right and let your knees fall to the right while you look over the left [Music] and back to Center draw your knees in and gently coming back up and I really hope you like this class and it helped you getting towards this pose let me know in the comments and I hope I'll see you in my next class thank you bye-bye [Music]