Thread the Needle Pose Yoga Pose Tutorial - Parsva Balasana Tips & Tricks

Transcript

hey everyone welcome to my channel my name is cassandra and i'm going to take you through a quick tutorial on thread the needle pose so this is a spinal rotation done from all fours that can really help to open up through the upper back and stretch through the shoulder blades and a little bit into the shoulder itself this one is i mean i think i do it probably every single day it's just one of those poses that feels really good to me especially first thing in the morning when i'm just waking up and trying to get rid of aches and pains but every time i teach it in my public classes i notice a lot of things that students are not necessarily being mindful of and i get a lot of feedback from this pose where people are like i don't feel anything it should be a pretty intense stretch so there are some specific alignment cues that i'll show you that can you know help you figure out if you've been doing this pose correctly or not at home especially if you're unable to go to a studio so we begin in a tabletop pose on hands and knees hands are underneath your shoulders knees are underneath your hips there's no flexion or extension of the spine it's just a straight neutral spine so i usually like to start it by reaching one arm up to the sky just to see what this range of motion is like because after the stretch it's likely to change so i check in first and then we thread the needle so right arm is going to thread underneath you until your shoulder and ear either lower to the floor or to a block so this is the first thing that we want to be mindful of here when we were in tabletop pose we had this alignment of hip over knee shoulder over wrists try not to lose this alignment once you thread one arm down so this is usually what i see as the right arm threads under people start to shift their hips back towards their heels and then it you know is not the most comfortable pose in the world and it also lessens the intensity of the pose so make sure your hips are staying stacked as you lower it down now from here we want to roll and draw our shoulder blades down our back so what we don't want is to collapse and contract into our neck and tighten everything up here so roll that shoulder back this is a different difficult one for me to talk through and show you at the same time but i'm going to do my best all right once i can relax my neck i want you to pay attention to the hips i always see this when i teach as soon as people thread the needle and get their shoulder and their head on the floor the hips will kind of lean over to one side we always need to make sure that our hips stay directly stacked over the top of the knees so if it was my right arm threading underneath me usually my hips will go to the left if i'm reaching my left arm up and threading the left arm underneath me automatically my hips are going to want to go to the right and i need to push into the left hip to realign the hips directly over the knees just doing this simple check in should really help you feel the stretch in between the shoulder blades and through your upper back the next piece of the puzzle is arm engagement so once you know that the lower body is doing what it needs to be doing you need to focus a little bit more on your upper back and arms so back of the hand is on the floor i'm realigning my hips over my knees right arm should be active i like to engage the muscles in this arm and almost push it into the floor this helps me stretch a little bit deeper into my right shoulder blade i also like to keep my left arm active maybe my left hand stays as it is and pushes against the floor while my hips are still pushing over to the right another alternative that you can try is extending your left arm up overhead and coming up onto the fingertips this might give you a little bit more range and often you'll be able to feel more of a stretch into your left shoulder blade now another option that you can play around with is finding a bind so your bind means that i'd be bringing my left hand reaching towards my lower back maybe even holding on to my inner right thigh crease as soon as we go for the bind the hips tend to want to release realign them over your knees keeping them there try to relax your neck so this will vary whether you're doing this pose in a half a based practice or in a yin yoga based practice so half the practices like you know half a power yoga vinyasa yoga you would be maintaining engagement in your body so the muscles are active i'm pushing my arms into the floor i'm drawing my lower belly in and up so my core stays engaged and i'm pushing into the hips so that the hips stay directly over your knees when we're doing this in a yin yoga-styled practice yin yoga usually we want our muscles to relax but not necessarily all muscles so we have to remember what the pose is trying to work in in this twist we're trying to work on the upper part of the body so it's okay if the muscles in my lower body are engaging in order to hold my upper body in this position but for the most part i might push a little bit into the extremities of my fingers but i want to relax my shoulders and relax my upper back because these are the connective tissues that i'm trying to target a little tone in the abdominals and in the navel is always a good idea in this pose but really the main cue i want you to pay attention to is your hips that's really just the number one thing that i can visually see in students when they go into this pose keep your hips over your knees and don't let them slide one side to the next and also as much as possible try to relax your shoulders down and away from your ears give your neck as much space as you possibly can if your head and ear don't quite make it down to the floor you can put a block underneath you or you can fold up a blanket and place it there but truthfully it might not be very comfortable i usually don't recommend that option so much it's really hard to do in a comfortable way and the tension that comes from putting some props under there can cause injuries if you're you know unable to properly relax or unable to actually engage the muscles that need to be working so i would just focus on increasing flexibility through other poses and once that range of motion is there and you're able to come in to thread the needle more comfortably then that's a good pose to start adding to your practice um this will be different for person to person so if it's okay for you to do this one it feels good to do it with a block underneath you or a blanket underneath you then for sure keep doing whatever works but if it feels like pain listen to that listen to your body telling you to back out and don't worry so much about this pose otherwise thread the needle a great way to stretch between the shoulder blades to increase rotation in our upper back and just a really great liberating pose overall there is more to it than meets the eye so go ahead and apply those tips let me know how it goes and if you have any other tutorial requests that you would like me to tackle please leave me a comment down below and in the description box i'll go ahead and link to all the other post tutorials that i've done if you wanted to go and check those out thank you so much i'll practice again with you soon namaste