Travis Eliot, Downward Dog + Vinyasa I UDAYA.com

Transcript

now speaking of downward facing dog let's take a close look at this pose because we weave in and out of it so many different times everyone meet lauren she was in the first test group and is also an amazing yoga instructor now we want to break down downward facing dog because we do this pose a lot within this program so if you're new to yoga listen carefully you want to spread the hands out a little bit wider than the shoulders the fingers spread out really really wide the feet are about the width of the hips and the heels press down towards the ground the hips slope up to the sky now if the backs of your legs are really really tight you can bend both of your knees and then you can modify the pose that way good lauren come back to a traditional downward facing dog now we want to go over what we call the vinyasa and there's a couple of different ways doing the vinyasa so let's explore the more gentler of the ways lauren's going to come forward to a plank pose her shoulders are positioned right above her wrist her arms are strong her heels are pressing back she's lifting the belly towards the front of the spine i'll take one last inhale plank and then just lower slowly all the way down onto your belly notice how she brought the knees down onto the ground good she releases the tops of the feet and then we're going to come into a cobra pose so she's going to gently lift her chest up to the sky now make sure that you don't jam your way too deep into this pose that's the last thing that we want to do within the spine so you lift up you roll the shoulders back down low and that's cobra the thighs are on the ground take one last inhale cobra and then downward facing dog curl the toes she's going to come on to the knees first and then lift the hips all the way to the sky so that's variation one let's look at variation number two inhale slide forward to plank and then lower down slowly all the way down onto your belly good her elbows are in her chest was extending forward her belly's down her thighs are down cobra pose on the inhale her chest is up her shoulders are rolling back beautiful back to downward facing dog lift the hips all the way up to the sky now we want to show you one last variation and that's the variation with chaturanga so she's going to come forward slowly on an inhale the plane and then she's going to lower down chaturanga where she hovers right above the ground her inner elbows are in her chest is forward her heels are pressing back now upper facing dog upward facing dog the thighs are lifted off the mat notice her arms are straight her chest is up and just like cobra her shoulders are rolling back low take one last inhale there good back to downward facing dog she doesn't push up and lift the hips to the sky so if you really want to build strength within those vinyasas you can always throw a push-up in as well thank you lauren feel free to relax you