How to Use a Yoga Strap: 11 Easy Tips

Transcript

[Music] Hi guys, namaste. Welcome to fit and calm. This is Tjisui. So today we are here to learn how to use the yoga strap from facilitating proper alignment to opening up the tight hamstrings and the hips. It also helps to bridge the gap in certain poses and binds. Wear something comfortable. Get your strap and get ready for the practice. [Music] So let's begin. I'm using the Juru yoga strap which is in beautiful purple color and it has a soft grip in 100% cotton which is 6 ft long. So grab your strap and we'll look at few asas which are made easy by the yoga strap. So the first one that we going to do is the pashimotanasa. For that just spread your feet forward, pull your toes in. So normally if you have to do pashimotanasa you stretch your hands up and when you go forward and down there is a tendency to arch the back and then you know you try to you struggle to come down. So instead if you have a strap just place the strap on the soles of the feet just catch it comfortably wherever possible and from the hips start bending forward. Keep bending forward as much as you can and then see if you can walk your hands forward on the strap and just hold it there. So if you observe the back is straight, you're looking straight and then you relax. And now the next one is the gokasana. So for gokasana you place the left foot beside the right hip, right foot beside the left hip and the knees are stacked one above the other. And now we take the right hand from below, left hand from above and we interlace both the hands. So but then if you're not able to interace the hands so we can take the help of the rope you can just catch the rope and then keep pulling the hands. So we can catch the rope and keep pulling the hands closer to each other until you're able to interlace both the hands. So here even if you're here you can just walk your hands up with the help of the rope and then you relax and the next asa that we're going to look at is the raj kaput asa. So for that just put make a loop with your uh strap and place keep that loop onto your leg and then let the leg go back. The right leg is forward. Left leg is back. Now bend your left leg from the knee. So if normally if you're able if you want to catch this and you're taking your hands up and bending it is very difficult. So otherwise you can just take the strap take your hands and then bend. And now slowly you can start walking your hands back and then relax it. So it gives you more space. So the next one that we going to do is the boat pose. So normally if you have to lift up and then you have to straighten the legs, there's a tendency again to arch the back and you lose the balance. So with the rope it becomes much easier. So just place the rope on the soles of the feet. You can catch the rope on the sides. Lift the legs up. Just see if you want to loosen your hands. straighten the legs, it becomes way easier. So we'll also see how to do it with a longer strap in case you have it with a strap which is 10 ft. So for that just take it behind and place the other end of the loop towards the sole of the feet in the top. It is at the back of the chest. So now slowly taking the support of your hands, lift the legs up. Just hold it there. See if you can straighten the legs. Just stay there. And once you know you've gained the balance, you can slowly release the hands. You can catch the rope and then release the hands. You can stay here. This really helps. and then slowly relax and release. And the next one is a restorative pose. Very good for opening the hips. So we'll just take the loop behind and join the feet into butterfly and then place the rope around the legs. So it looks this way. And you can tighten the rope. Get the feet closer as much as you can. So it is you can just lower it down as much as you can. And now slowly we lie down into the saakunasana. Just stay here. You can stay here as long as you want. This is a very beautiful restorative pose. And then slowly inhaling you come up and relax. So release the rope. Relax. And now lie down on your back. So lying on the back we lift our leg up. So it's if sometimes it becomes very difficult to keep the leg straight. So then you just take the rope, keep this, keep it on the sole and you can just catch it this way. So this helps to keep the legs straight. You could also do it with both the legs. So here we make sure that the shoulders are not strained. We keep going up and we hold it here and then relax. In case you have a longer rope in the same thing you can just place the one end of the loop towards the back of the chest the other end on the soles of the feet and just hold it there. So here you need not even lose your hands. We just stay here and rest. So this is also very good restorative pose and we relax. So the next pose that we going to do is the chaturanga dandasana. So for chhatranga dandasana normally when we come down it is very difficult to hold the posture for long keep tend to fall down. So when we use the rope it'll help and so for this make a loop which is shoulder width distance and then just wear it on the biceps. So your ribs just below the chest should be resting on the loop when you go down. So just place your hands and then come into the plank dandasana and slowly shift your weight forward and lower down and we hold. So the strap gives an extra support for us to hold in this posture and we come back. And this one is very useful for all arm balances too. So in arm balances it is very important to maintain the distance between the hands and when you have a strap the hands don't go apart. So we'll just see that with the crew pose. So just come up. We tuck the knees into the arms and we slowly come forward. Shift the weight forward. Lift the legs up and down. So you can just try it out. Now we'll see the atamatsiendraasana along with the strap and the bind. So stretch out your feet and now bend the left leg from the knee. Place it beside the right hip. Right foot comes on top and now normally we just twist back and then with the left hand we try to catch the ankle. So in the bind you take the left hand right hand from behind and we see if you can catch both the hands but if this is not possible you can always use the strap here with one hand. You can catch the strap wherever your hand is and then keep twisting. So now on the rope you can just walk your hands towards each other with the help of the strap. Keep looking back. You will also feel the twist and relax. So these are few asas uh where you can include the strap. You can just experiment in your practice using the strap in various postures. 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