Balancing Act

 

Friday, October 7, 2022

The Breakfast Club

AO: The Woodshed

Q: The Force

PAX: Jiminy, Dough Girl, FitBit (Little Bit), Queen Bee, Preach, Captain Camo, Little Mitten, Clockwork

The Thang: Today was a focus on balancing poses, mainly on balancing on the tip toes or 'heels up'. We started out with a warm-up of inhaling the arms up and exhaling down several times (urdhva mukhasana to uttanasana). Then we put our hands on our hips and practiced going up and down on our tip toes. We added walking 'the runway', which was really just our mats, walking on our tiptoes back and forth. We switched to walking on our heels, back and forth. Then we moved into chair pose, inhaling the arms up and exhaling as we lowered into a squat as though we were about to sit in a chair (utkatasana). We repeated this about 5 times and then went into the pose again, this time lifting up one heel and repeating 5 more times. We did the other side and as a challenge, we added lifting both heels up while in chair pose and holding for 5 breaths. 

We then moved into fig tree pose (asvatasana) where we lift one arm straight up, the same side leg up and the opposite arm out to the side. We repeated both sides and then added the challenge of holding the pose with heels up. After that, we went into tree pose (vrkasana) and I demonstrated how they could hold the pose with their feet next to each other, on the calf, on the knee or inner thigh. We held each side for about 5 breaths and then challenged with our heel up. We moved into goddess squat and held for 5 breaths. I added lifting each heel up on each side, and then holding goddess pose with both heels up. As we were moving from pose to pose, I peppered in shoulder stretching breaks using the yoga straps. During these breaks we did windmills, side-to-sides, 'belly dancing arms', and prayer scapulars. 

From here, we moved down to the mat into child's pose. Then we came up on all fours in a table position into cat/cow (bidalasana/cakravaskasana). From here, we balanced on all fours, lifting the right arm up and left leg straight back, repeating about 5 times each side. The challenge here was to either reach back and hold for 5 breaths or repeat airplane, rotating the opposite arm and opposite leg out to the sides and back. Then we pushed back into child's pose. We went into thread-the-needle from here (cakravakasana parivrtti). We finished our balancing in a low lunge, the challenge here was lifting the upper body up and twisting over to the bent knee. 90/90 switches were next to warm up our hips for internal rotators with our legs. The challenge was either to alternate internally rotate our knees in towards each other with our hands behind our back or to get into a low squat (malasana) and internally rotating our knees while holding the squat, hands in prayer. We ended with 2 full minutes in corpse pose (savasana). 

The ladies were wonderful in trying out new ways to add to many of the poses they have already seen. We were all wobbly, but I hope the ladies learned something a little different to help them with their own yoga practice at home. Thank you!