Saddle Pose - Yin Yoga Pose Breakdown with Dr. Truth Robinson and LIVING YIN

Transcript

[Music] we're gonna have a look at half saddle and saddle pose now now with this position i generally like to prop quite a lot and there's a few little nuances to this position that is the difference between a beginner's practice and an advanced practice and quite often we confuse the two so we when we prop it up we think oh that's the bit of inner variation but i explain to you your own biases of what we expect to see from the yoga journal from instagram and the reality of of what an actual advanced pose is and what makes the pose advanced so in this position i generally like to use a lot of props so you're going to have a bolster and at least a block and then you may want to towel for the ankles as well because it can be quite strong on the front towel a blanket for the front of the foot as well towels work as well i guess because it can get quite strong when you're in this position for a long period of time and a little bit of props you can make this more comfortable for your students so in this position i generally will teach for the majority of my students half saddle so saddle is a fairly inaccessible pose for a lot of people i will offer it to students and say hey look if you're coming into half saddle if you just want to come into full saddle feel free to do that but understand we're going to do five minutes on the left side and five minutes right side so they're going to spend 10 minutes in saddle a lot of students don't really mind by this because they're pretty comfortable in their saddle pose they're happy just to come into it for 10 minutes anyway so the way we'd start this off is i'm actually going to start on the wrong leg first just so you can see what i'm doing but you're going to have the right foot out in front of you left knee bent block goes underneath your right sit bone and i do this to keep the hips a little bit more level so when we're lying back we're not lying back and twisting the spine as well we're just lying straight back so the hips stay level now the other reason why i do this is because we want to try and get the heel to the bum as much as we can so we're going to understand what the target area of this pose it's the stomach pathway but in particular it's not going to be your iliopsoas as much as it's going to be more erect fem if your psoas is tight then you're definitely going to get into it but our rec fem needs to have the knee bent as much as it can for us to really access it properly and so with the block underneath the bum heel is up into the buttocks now depending on the bulk of your thigh you will require less lift so you know if you've got a big bodybuilder dude that comes into class he's got a big bulky thigh then he's going to need more lift underneath his right hip bone to actually find that balance that stability in this position now if i was to remove that block from underneath my bum and drop down so look at that space i now have in between my my calf and now my thigh so even though when i come back there's all this space going on here so now it means that my knees not as bent so if you see somebody like lying back with the knees out to the side and particularly if they start to put their foot out to the side like this so if somebody's got a lot of internal rotation in their femur bone they'll tend to want to do this because it's easy but it's not actually more advanced they're just relying on their skeleton to help them get down deeper into this position they're kind of cheating so they can look like instagram or the yoga journal they're not getting as much benefit so it's fine but you have to ask yourself why are you practicing do you want health benefit or do you want to you know find the right form that matches what you've seen on the internet so in this position again foot tucked in and as close to the bum as possible and that helps us to open up through the front of the ankle so foot out to the side you're also externally rotating your shin that's going to be really bad for your knee in the long term so it does externally rotate a little bit but not as much as we'll end up doing it for some people and you'll start to get issues with your knee and then we're skipping this opening through the front of the ankle if we're doing that so foot tucked in as close to the bum as much as you can and then again because there's now space in between our calf and our bum we use a little bit of stacking underneath our buttocks to try and get it so there's now no space in between our calf and our thigh now you can't get any more out of that so there's no point trying so that's your range that's your effective range there's no point trying to get any more than that that's all you're going to use in your day-to-day life so be super content with that you've you've finished you've finished the bending of the knee no no need to work more on that now you're going to have the bolster back behind you like so now you're going to allow yourself to come into this very sensitively because a lot of the time we just jump back into this and we don't necessarily feel the compression in the spine when we're in it but we feel it when it comes out of it so it's very important to understand that the body over time will open up for us so initially there's a stress re stretch reflex of the muscle the muscle feels stretched and it tightens up a little bit just to protect itself then over time we relax and we experience the phase change and as we experience the phase change you notice the muscles lose that tone so it just relaxes a little bit and as it loses the tone it lengthens and that's what we're really looking for here to access the muscle a little bit more but because we relax not because we force and then over time you'll start to allow yourself to go further and further back maybe you remove the bolster start to come back maybe you bring the bolster back and bring the ball start underneath the elbows maybe you'll be quite comfortable now to to lie straight back on top of the bolt still and then just relax back like this and this is perfect no need to go any further it's important to realize what the compression points are going to be in this so if people have um they're in this position and they don't feel any sensation around here and the ribs are sticking up they're in compression it's as simple as that because if your ribs are sticking up it means that your psoas is tight which is attaches to your lesser tricanter and then attaches to the transverse process of the l1 l5 spinous spine vertebrae vertebrae up the spine and so it's pulling forward and as it does it's going to lift the ribs up now the other thing that could be happening is that you're getting into your rectem and your rectum attaches to the anterior inferior iliac spine and that's now going to tilt my pelvis forward which is also going to create more spinal extension here and so it's sort of like arching your spine a little bit more in either one of those things you're going to move closer towards this compression point more than anything but if you're got more range you'll be completely flat like your ribs will just be completely flat and there'll be no arch in your spine whatsoever now what we're going to get in this final position is eventually you'll remove the block remove the bolster and lie onto your back now using a block underneath the bomb is again more advanced in this situation again because you're lifting your hips up more and because of that you're going to extend your hips more so remember extension of the hips is knee going back and torso going back now you'll see people in full saddle so full saddle is just with the other knee bent as well lying on the ground and they're super relaxed nothing really is happening now they've kind of hit their range they look fantastic but they can't get any more out of that because the ribs are just relaxed down it's no longer having the psoas on tension you're not getting any sensation just below the frontal hip point in your rectus femoris they've got nothing going on ankle nothing in their knee so the way to make that stronger would be to actually lift their bum more so the more you lift your bum up the more hip extension you're going to get and the stronger this is going to get so i'm now feeling this more in the wreck femme like oh it's like really through here it's like super strong now for me and even though i've got more space between my bum and my ankle simply through that extra hip extension i'm getting so much more sensation in my rectus femoris so again same position for full saddle just with the other leg bent as well now the way i come out of this position generally speaking if you've got a knee issue you come out the way you came in so you'd um you'd have your elbows back behind you you'd push yourself back up and then you'd bring yourself back forward like this whereas for most people that are comfortable in their body they don't have an issue with their knees you can just remove the block roll to the right hand side and then roll over sideways now if you're in full saddle obviously use your hands use your elbows and bring yourself back up not really again many compression points it's just stuff in your spine but do remember using a block is both a beginner variation and an advanced variation and make sure people's feet are tucked underneath them so they can open out through the front of their their ankle there as well again we're targeting our stomach all through that rectus femoris and bending the knees through the the other three quads versus in medialis medialis and lateralis and then you're also going to get into your solas as well which is going to be your uh another one of your hip flexors so what draws your knee closer up and towards your chest you're going to be targeting through your tibialis anterior and then also all the connective tissue that comes over the front of the ankle there as well if your ribs are really flared you might get some stuff through rectus abdominis but it's definitely not a target area it's just a bit of a part of the pose that comes but yeah be mindful of people's knees in this one that's one that people will struggle with and so if somebody has bad knees the variation for this is actually going to be lying on their side and you're just going to use a strap for them so there's a pose here for everybody so even if somebody's had a little bit of surgery there's still a pose that we can find for them because they'll say i can't bend my knee and i was like well how did you get here you walked here of course you can bend your knee you just don't like to go to the point of full compression so full flexion of the knee because that's going to compress the knee and it's going to create a lot of pain so if you've had some surgery you want to try and get mobility very light sensation no pain whatsoever one two minutes max for those people initially and then over time a little bit more and so they'll just lie on their side and so as they lie on their side same thing same leg you'll just get the strap bring it over the foot now a couple of variations here what i like to do is um bring the the strap underneath the foot like that and then bring the strap in between the first and second toes now this is going to help to open out through the front of the ankle you can skip that as well so again big toe second toe just comes through that and kind of like looks like a thong now what do we call it flip-flops as well well i'm australian we call our thongs and then from here you're just gonna bend that knee up and ideally your arm is going to be straight just lying on your side and again just a little bit of sensation nothing painful and then people that have had some issues with their knee can still practice and scar tissue is going to be the thing that's going to be limiting their range mainly a little bit of stress is going to help to release collagenase collagenase helps to break up old scar tissue and ultimately put down healthy connective tissue in its place finding more range in the future and that's going to be your saddle pose or half that'll pose