Melting Heart Yin Yoga Tutorial | Modifications, Props, Tips

Transcript

[Music] hello my name is April and welcome to the yoga Ranger studio and welcome to this tutorial for melting heart pose or what a lot of you may have heard of as anetha sauna heart opening pose I recently had a lot of people reach out to me via email or messages and asking for a tutorial on this pose because of several different things so if you have less opening in the shoulders and chest like myself this pose has some things in it that you might need to sort of accommodate differently if you are someone who has a lot of opening in the chest and shoulders and maybe even really really full opening it also has some things that you might want to readjust to find a pose a sustainable and gives you what you want out of the pose as well so and you're getting practice you're looking for certain things certain sensations so we're gonna look at a lot of different props to do this with so I'm gonna start with just the pose itself what it normally looks like and then we'll add in some stuff to see where we can go from there so this pose is starting on your hands and knees knees about hip distance apart toes flat or flipped it actually doesn't really matter which one I like to start here and then take my hips a little bit back behind my knees because I know I'm gonna walk forward and I don't want to end up too far forward walking the hands out now some people may be right here or up higher putting their head on a block or otherwise we can come all the way down a variation is to take the hands super wide to get more opening in the shoulders or the upper back or straight out in front of you right above the shoulders for more of just the top of the shoulders and right along the side waist now here's where we come in to some of the considerations if you are someone with limited mobility like myself a lot of tension and tightness getting your head all the way down may become quite a fun adventure so what you might want to try is to put a bolster underneath your chest to give you a little profit here you can stack the block or both or whatever works best for you or what you happen to have at the time so if you don't have a bolster you can take a block a bolster or a blanket underneath your head so I've had some people say that coming down is really hard for them it's really hard on their necks and heads so putting a block gives you a little bit of a lift you can put blocks underneath your chest stacking them up a little bit taller so the depth of your pose changes just a little bit another variation is to go ahead and shift back a little bit further into more of a puppy pose instead of having that walking the hands out further and putting more basic in there if this bothers your back you can engage the core just a little bit find yourself here and I've had a lot of people I've often seen this in many many classes vinyasa Andean people dropping their elbows down to the floor that's fine you're not going to quite get as much stretch in the shoulders and upper back but you will get some of the lower back and hips so another variation to offer there for people who have a lot of opening the chest shoulders and back you might need to add some height to your hands so if you feel like your face is kind of smashing into the floor I sometimes feel like this pose does that to you you can take the pose and take blocks underneath your hands to let you drop in between maybe your head still gets to the floor maybe it doesn't you can shift the height of the blocks I've had some people who can really go a lot higher in this pose and some who can't so once again you can either shift back further or walk your hands further and be in the other pose with a little bit more depth and opening adjusting your back by engaging the core pulling up just a little bit if that's too much for your lower back now in this pose you can really drop the belly down and have more curve in the spine and that's going to get a little bit more of that backbend action you might feel it maybe more or less in the shoulders depending on your mobility but if that's not something that feels good for your lower back definitely lift up and have a more flat back versus a more kind of the backbend curve to it so you can also do this with a blanket instead of just blocks or a bolster and you can kind of shift how that works so if you find the compression on your wrists is a lot you can take the hands over the blanket and let the hands just kind of drop down this is going to put you know a lot of weight into the shoulders so if you have a shoulder injury you might kind of want to read aside how to use this or you can put that blanket this way underneath your head some people find that they want to take their chin to the floor that's okay normally a vinyasa class but I've not seen that holding that chin position and putting the pressure on that chin for a three minute hold for melting heart pose is probably not as comfortable but if that works for you that's always an alternative last but not least for both groups of people those who are a little bit more tense and tight across the shoulders chest and back or those who are really open might find that using a chair now this is a feet up trainer so you don't have to have one of these really but you can use just a chair edge slide this out walk your hands up it and drop it down here this is a lot of the same pose you might get a little bit more opening here you could have a bench that's a little bit lower this doesn't have to be quite as high I find I really love about this height though I think it's about maybe 10 to 11 inches another alternative altogether if this is just not your friendly shoulder practice just don't like this on your shoulders is to take a prayer hands so elbows on the floor or on a chair or on blocks taking the hands back behind you thumbs to the back of your head this is going to give you a lot of stretch in the chest a little bit in the upper back but less compression on the shoulders themselves so I find a lot of people saying that putting their hands and stretching them out really kind of pulls on their shoulders in a way they don't like you can always take the prayer hand version where you're gonna get some nice deep stretch into the bicep inner arm chest shoulders but not quite as much compression into the shoulder itself and you might not get that kind of wrist position either so if your wrists don't like that pose you can also take this prayer hands version so those are a lot of different options for you use what you have in the house a towel a bolster a couple of pillows for your head so you don't feel like you're kind of crashing in there I like to put the block not all the way over my face but sort of either corner at the tip so you have right in the third high space or right on the edge or a blanket where it just softly holds that in place if my necks feeling a little bit particularly tender for both groups like I said though you might have to adjust a few things if you want more depth they're not feeling enough sensation and you'd like to go a little bit deeper you can use the blocks for height to kind of peel your face off of the floor or you can sit back just a little bit further in those heels it doesn't have to be directly over the hips you can shift back a little bit that's gonna take some of the compression out gonna feel a little bit better for you consider it's more of kind like a puppy melting pose than a full-on melting pose but same effect you're gonna have the same things happening it's gonna affect the same yridians same parts of the body same connective tissue so don't worry that any of these are going to dramatically change where you sort of emphasize it I use melting heart pose a lot in my practice simply because I don't have that mobility I'm looking to kind of develop that opening in my shoulders and upper back it's a great pose for a lot of the POE the meridians that focus on the abdominal area which is pretty much all of them it's great for your heart and lung meridians also great for pericardium Meridian getting the arms and chest and shoulders the backside of the shoulders for the sound John Brennan doesn't affect probably the lower body meridians quite as much but you're still getting some of that with the back band the bladder Meridian affecting the kidneys and adrenals so one of those poses that kind of hits a lot of different meridians in different ways and it's kind of a unique way because of the amount of time spent in the arms and upper chest and shoulders and there is less connective tissue up here than there is down there I don't recommend holding it a really long time oftentimes in the practices that I offer we hold it from two to three and a half minutes usually a little bit longer for that would be an intermediate class where you're feeling really comfortable you've been doing this quite a while and you know exactly where that edge is and you know when to kind of back out and stay a little bit further away from the edge your maximum pose so with less connective tissue you want to hold the poses just a little bit less time so take your time in this and maybe try it for one or two minutes maybe that's just kind of where you feel comfortable with make sure that you can still really breathe but you're not holding your breath that's going to help you settle into the pose get that really deep chest opening if this pose is just not your friend and nothing you do makes it better you can always just rely on a back bend where you fold over on your back a bolster or a rolled blanket or some blocks for a supported fish style pose arms up overhead or out to the side and you get a lot of the same effects the back bending action the chest opening the shoulder opening so always the alternative is to take a supine version of it on your back with a prop underneath the shoulders to open up the chest and heart I hope this helps you find this pose this is actually one of the poses that my local studio clients disliked the most even more than dragon pose I know that's hard to imagine so I kind of worked with a lot of different props to find what works for them they've still kind of don't like it a lot but at least they found a way to sustainably stay in it so thank you so much for joining for this tutorial I hope this helps you find a sustainable melting heart pose for you or a puppy pose for you please let me know what you thought in the likes and comments down below and I hope you will if you're not a subscriber already click that button there are tutorials as well as practices that come up every single week if you would like to join me for more and get to know me a little bit better and connect with me more the yoga Ranger vhx dot TV is my member site with live calls immersion playlists retreats journaling prompts practice calendar and exclusive videos of practices on there as well as recipes for essential oils and lots of extra stuff on there there's a free 7-day trial so you can check it out for seven days see if it works for you and if you have any questions always feel free to send me questions via email or through messaging love to hear from you have a great day