Open Your Shoulders with Gomukhasana (Cow Face) Arms with Hayley Beth Worthman

Transcript

hi there Haley Beth Worman here at by yoga in the beautiful south side of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania with our wonderful demo here Laura so we're going to be going through how to safely get into gasana also known as cowface pose arms so from here let's begin so to begin Laura is going to reach her arms out like a tea to either side with her Palms facing the direction she's looking she's then going to lift her right arm up towards the sky inhale here and then turn her right bicep towards her ear and she's even going to take her left arm to help make this maneuver even a little more exaggerated and you can see her hand starts to face backwards which is exactly what we want from here she's going to reach her hand down between her shoulder blades or it might just begin at her neck she's going to take her left hand to her right elbow and gently draw the hand down the back and she's just going to pause here for a couple breaths get a little deeper into the posture and as she's here she's going to gently draw her head into her arm and her shoulders away from her ears to make some space now this is a great place to start it's a great place to be so if you feeling like your shoulders are really tight then this is where you're going to stay today and as you continue to practice this posture as on a daily basis just like your vitamins then you can move deeper and deeper into the oena into the posture from here she's going to release her left arm reach it back out to the side and just as she did with her right arm she's going to turn her whole bicep down towards the floor and notice that her hand now is facing behind her again exactly where we want her to be so she's then going to reach her left hand to her middle back pull her left shoulder away from her ear and she's just going to pause here and I'm going to hand her a strap because in a situation unlike Laura's where the shoulders are really tight props are really useful here so she's going to hold on to the strap with her bottom hand and her top and she can then feel nice and secure and stable in the posture so if she doesn't really have a strap available to her she'll let this go and she'll use her shirt as a tool once heard that the yogi uses everything at his or her disposal so that's exactly what we're going to do today and right now it's shirt so she's going to use the shirt to draw the shoulders away from her ears still gently pressing her head into her right bicep and pause now Laura has really open shoulders so she's going to start to walk her hands together and interlace her hands for the full posture now once again she's drawing the shoulders away from the ears gently pressing her head into her arm and her left elbow is drawn down towards the floor in addition to that she don't we don't want to have an arch in the the back Laura is going to draw her ribs her bottom ribs down to meet her hips to get rid of that arch in the back so from here you can see that Laura might have a little arch in her back so it's not too defined with her cuz it's really uncomfortable especially because she's clasping her hands right now but to have the opposite of that she's going to start to draw her lower ribs down to meet her hips and has a nice St straight back from here so when you next time are in a class and the teacher says fasana arms whether you're in the full pose with the legs or you're in verasa 2 Warrior 2 or maybe you're just seated know that this is the nice proper and safe way to get into it enjoy