photo from Bikram Yoga Kauai
With a tight grip and a lift of the hips, you can bring length not only to the hamstrings but quite literally pull space between the vertebrae (spinal decompression). The key to staying safe is to keep your chest pressed to thighs to avoid overstretching at the lumbar spine. If your hamstrings are tight and you need to grab the back of your calves instead of your heels, still try to feel the touch of your stomach on your thighs and your chest on your knees, and then keep them there as you try to straighten your legs.
You also want to draw the belly in to encourage the muscles framing the spine to lengthen and release more readily. Lift hips until you feel a stretch and lift the kneecaps up to engage the quads.
Please
be careful: if your back is sensitive or injured – BEND YOUR KNEES as
you lower your hands to the floor from Half-moon. You can even place
your hands on your thighs to protect your back better. - See more at:
http://theyogaoasis.com/padahastasana-handstofeet-pose#sthash.052MrPzG.dpuf
Beginners
Please be careful: if your back is sensitive or injured – BEND YOUR KNEES as you lower your hands to the floor from Half-moon. You can even place your hands on your thighs to protect your back better.
Take your time in the first set and soften, exhale, and relax. When it’s time to grab your heels, students with limited flexibility: do the best you can in keeping your hands and arms behind by bending your knees more. If you are NOT able to place your hands underneath the feet, grab a hold of your calves, or simply hold onto each elbow behind your knees.
Keep working to straighten the legs an inch at a time, using your arm strength to pull up on your calves, ankles or heels.
Be careful coming out of the pose, ascend the same way you went down, keep your knees bent and place your hands on your thighs, if needed.
Intermediate
Now that you’re getting close to straightening your legs, press your face into your shins, as you lift your hips forward and up toward the ceiling and front of the room. This combined movement will allow you to use your body for leverage in order to better stretch your hamstrings.
An important concept in understanding the dynamics of Hot Yoga is “isolation”: flexibility and strength, relaxation and intensity, softening and hardening. Soften and relax the area you’re trying to stretch. In this pose, it is the hamstrings (back of the legs) and lower back, both connected by the sciatic nerve. Strengthen your arms pulling up on your heels and contract your quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh).
Pull on your heels with your biceps, not the shoulders. The shoulders work BACK towards your hips and AWAY from the ears.
Advanced
If your legs are straight and your upper body is flat against your legs, don’t place your fingers under your heels. Instead, cup your heels from the side so the thumb, forefinger and the webbing between your thumb and forefinger touch the floor. If you place the fingers under the heels, it shortens the hamstrings and inhibits your flexibility. It’s going to feel weird at first, but after a few times you should start experiencing a deeper stretch.
One footnote: your hands will have a tendency to slide up, don’t let it happen, keep your hands down.
We’re not done yet! Halfway into the pose, slowly begin to look down at the top of your feet. Keep your chin on your shins, lift your shoulders up toward the ceiling, and pull your head to your feet. Don’t crunch your neck. Your neck vertebra should line up with your back vertebra. Toward the end of the posture, lift your hips UP toward the ceiling and then SCOOP your tailbone UNDER to stretch the muscles around the sit-bones.
The final position is to touch your head to your feet, knees fully extended, quads contracted.
- See more at: http://theyogaoasis.com/padahastasana-handstofeet-pose#sthash.7etq7wQx.dpuf
Please be careful: if your back is sensitive or injured – BEND YOUR KNEES as you lower your hands to the floor from Half-moon. You can even place your hands on your thighs to protect your back better.
Take your time in the first set and soften, exhale, and relax. When it’s time to grab your heels, students with limited flexibility: do the best you can in keeping your hands and arms behind by bending your knees more. If you are NOT able to place your hands underneath the feet, grab a hold of your calves, or simply hold onto each elbow behind your knees.
Keep working to straighten the legs an inch at a time, using your arm strength to pull up on your calves, ankles or heels.
Be careful coming out of the pose, ascend the same way you went down, keep your knees bent and place your hands on your thighs, if needed.
Intermediate
Now that you’re getting close to straightening your legs, press your face into your shins, as you lift your hips forward and up toward the ceiling and front of the room. This combined movement will allow you to use your body for leverage in order to better stretch your hamstrings.
An important concept in understanding the dynamics of Hot Yoga is “isolation”: flexibility and strength, relaxation and intensity, softening and hardening. Soften and relax the area you’re trying to stretch. In this pose, it is the hamstrings (back of the legs) and lower back, both connected by the sciatic nerve. Strengthen your arms pulling up on your heels and contract your quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh).
Pull on your heels with your biceps, not the shoulders. The shoulders work BACK towards your hips and AWAY from the ears.
Advanced
If your legs are straight and your upper body is flat against your legs, don’t place your fingers under your heels. Instead, cup your heels from the side so the thumb, forefinger and the webbing between your thumb and forefinger touch the floor. If you place the fingers under the heels, it shortens the hamstrings and inhibits your flexibility. It’s going to feel weird at first, but after a few times you should start experiencing a deeper stretch.
One footnote: your hands will have a tendency to slide up, don’t let it happen, keep your hands down.
We’re not done yet! Halfway into the pose, slowly begin to look down at the top of your feet. Keep your chin on your shins, lift your shoulders up toward the ceiling, and pull your head to your feet. Don’t crunch your neck. Your neck vertebra should line up with your back vertebra. Toward the end of the posture, lift your hips UP toward the ceiling and then SCOOP your tailbone UNDER to stretch the muscles around the sit-bones.
The final position is to touch your head to your feet, knees fully extended, quads contracted.
- See more at: http://theyogaoasis.com/padahastasana-handstofeet-pose#sthash.7etq7wQx.dpuf
Beginners
Please be careful: if your back is sensitive or injured – BEND YOUR KNEES as you lower your hands to the floor from Half-moon. You can even place your hands on your thighs to protect your back better.
Take your time in the first set and soften, exhale, and relax. When it’s time to grab your heels, students with limited flexibility: do the best you can in keeping your hands and arms behind by bending your knees more. If you are NOT able to place your hands underneath the feet, grab a hold of your calves, or simply hold onto each elbow behind your knees.
Keep working to straighten the legs an inch at a time, using your arm strength to pull up on your calves, ankles or heels.
Be careful coming out of the pose, ascend the same way you went down, keep your knees bent and place your hands on your thighs, if needed.
Intermediate
Now that you’re getting close to straightening your legs, press your face into your shins, as you lift your hips forward and up toward the ceiling and front of the room. This combined movement will allow you to use your body for leverage in order to better stretch your hamstrings.
An important concept in understanding the dynamics of Hot Yoga is “isolation”: flexibility and strength, relaxation and intensity, softening and hardening. Soften and relax the area you’re trying to stretch. In this pose, it is the hamstrings (back of the legs) and lower back, both connected by the sciatic nerve. Strengthen your arms pulling up on your heels and contract your quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh).
Pull on your heels with your biceps, not the shoulders. The shoulders work BACK towards your hips and AWAY from the ears.
Advanced
If your legs are straight and your upper body is flat against your legs, don’t place your fingers under your heels. Instead, cup your heels from the side so the thumb, forefinger and the webbing between your thumb and forefinger touch the floor. If you place the fingers under the heels, it shortens the hamstrings and inhibits your flexibility. It’s going to feel weird at first, but after a few times you should start experiencing a deeper stretch.
One footnote: your hands will have a tendency to slide up, don’t let it happen, keep your hands down.
We’re not done yet! Halfway into the pose, slowly begin to look down at the top of your feet. Keep your chin on your shins, lift your shoulders up toward the ceiling, and pull your head to your feet. Don’t crunch your neck. Your neck vertebra should line up with your back vertebra. Toward the end of the posture, lift your hips UP toward the ceiling and then SCOOP your tailbone UNDER to stretch the muscles around the sit-bones.
The final position is to touch your head to your feet, knees fully extended, quads contracted.
- See more at: http://theyogaoasis.com/padahastasana-handstofeet-pose#sthash.7etq7wQx.dpuf
Please be careful: if your back is sensitive or injured – BEND YOUR KNEES as you lower your hands to the floor from Half-moon. You can even place your hands on your thighs to protect your back better.
Take your time in the first set and soften, exhale, and relax. When it’s time to grab your heels, students with limited flexibility: do the best you can in keeping your hands and arms behind by bending your knees more. If you are NOT able to place your hands underneath the feet, grab a hold of your calves, or simply hold onto each elbow behind your knees.
Keep working to straighten the legs an inch at a time, using your arm strength to pull up on your calves, ankles or heels.
Be careful coming out of the pose, ascend the same way you went down, keep your knees bent and place your hands on your thighs, if needed.
Intermediate
Now that you’re getting close to straightening your legs, press your face into your shins, as you lift your hips forward and up toward the ceiling and front of the room. This combined movement will allow you to use your body for leverage in order to better stretch your hamstrings.
An important concept in understanding the dynamics of Hot Yoga is “isolation”: flexibility and strength, relaxation and intensity, softening and hardening. Soften and relax the area you’re trying to stretch. In this pose, it is the hamstrings (back of the legs) and lower back, both connected by the sciatic nerve. Strengthen your arms pulling up on your heels and contract your quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh).
Pull on your heels with your biceps, not the shoulders. The shoulders work BACK towards your hips and AWAY from the ears.
Advanced
If your legs are straight and your upper body is flat against your legs, don’t place your fingers under your heels. Instead, cup your heels from the side so the thumb, forefinger and the webbing between your thumb and forefinger touch the floor. If you place the fingers under the heels, it shortens the hamstrings and inhibits your flexibility. It’s going to feel weird at first, but after a few times you should start experiencing a deeper stretch.
One footnote: your hands will have a tendency to slide up, don’t let it happen, keep your hands down.
We’re not done yet! Halfway into the pose, slowly begin to look down at the top of your feet. Keep your chin on your shins, lift your shoulders up toward the ceiling, and pull your head to your feet. Don’t crunch your neck. Your neck vertebra should line up with your back vertebra. Toward the end of the posture, lift your hips UP toward the ceiling and then SCOOP your tailbone UNDER to stretch the muscles around the sit-bones.
The final position is to touch your head to your feet, knees fully extended, quads contracted.
- See more at: http://theyogaoasis.com/padahastasana-handstofeet-pose#sthash.7etq7wQx.dpuf
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.