Yoga Pearl Childs Pose | Relieve Back Pain | Yoga Practice | Gail Dubinsky Yoga

Transcript

i'm dr gail dubinsky orthopedic medical doctor and yoga teacher in sebastopol northern california welcome to my series of yoga pearls instructional videos on breaking down and making accessible foundational basic yoga poses and exercises for virtually anyone today's will be child's pose which seems like a simple enough matter but i have had many of my students and patients have trouble with this so i thought i would show some ways to make it easier and more accessible to virtually all or many people at least okay so child's pose is usually something that follows cat pose or dog pose but i'm just going to show it as a standalone at the moment so you usually come in at least from a all fours position and now for child's pose you can take your knees a little bit wider than normal than when we do cat pose or dog pose and if you have a belly you can take your knees as wide as you need to to make space all right so take a breath in it's always good to start any yoga practice with a breath in and as you exhale you're going to come back so the full pose as you may or may not know is this you're folding hands can be like this hands can be like this or this is sometimes called baby pose besides giving a really nice stretch to the low back because of how you're folded in on yourself child's pose takes you to an inner place of relaxation and calm what's essential in this pose is that your third eye point or the middle of your forehead is in contact with the floor or any other surface it's resting on as i'll show you in a moment now this takes a fair amount of flexibility in the knees in the low back so here are some ways to make it easier first of all you don't have to go all the way back at all you can just simply lower your head to the ground and this is better to have the toes turned forward so your feet can provide some support and you can just find a place for your spine to get the maximum relaxation without strain so you may even want to put a pillow or two under your hips here so then you can really relax and then for this position you may or may not you may want to get your head on the ground or you might just want to have your hand on your folded hands on your hand on your your head on your wrists or your hands and then you know relaxing and breathing now my spine still has a little bit of sway back or lordosis so if you wanted you could take your feet toes back and go back a little further so this is a way to accommodate both the knees and the spine if you're having trouble with your feet you can put a rolled up towel under your ankles for the baby pose you can also put your hands under your ankles like so the other variation you could actually put something under your head like so so there's there's all kinds of possibilities to make this work for you now if you don't want to be on the floor and we're doing yoga in a chair as i've been demonstrating the way you would do child's pose in a chair is you would be seated in front of a desk or a table and it's just sort of i always think of it as when we were in first or second grade and we put our heads down on the desk to take a nap that's basically what you're going to do you're just going to sit in your chair you're going to get the distance right and you're just going to lean forward and put your head in your hands with your feet on the floor and you're you know sitting in the chair so that's child's pose just in case you hadn't been able to make it work for you hopefully these suggestions with the pillows and props will help namaste