Okay, I am struggling with sending my knee forward into lunge from down dog.
Some tips for this transition:
1. From down dog, push back with your arms to get a deep knee bend. Then you can use the power of your legs to spring forward into the lunge position.
2. If you foot doesn't make it all the way forward into the lunge, reach your hand back, grip behind your ankle, and pick your foot up to bring it forward the rest of the way.
3. Remember that strong core you have been building through all of your plank work. Sometimes what is needed is a little more lift from our core to get our body out of the way to make some room for the foot to come forward.
4. Some people find it helpful to lift their leg up and back into 3-legged dog before bringing it forward into the lunge. This can help to remind us to create length through our whole body, and to lift through our core, so we engage our whole body and create the space we need to move our knee forward underneath us.
There is a lot going on in the down dog to lunge transition. And yet so often we move through it quickly in the vinyasa flow, and there isn't time enough to cue even half of what we need to be thinking about to complete the transition successfully.
Adriene Mishler has a great video that really breaks down the transition and also offers some drills to help build/engage the strength necessary for success in this move.
Beginner Yoga Review
Okay, I really enjoyed this. I have already seen some improvement in my range of motion and in just how I feel afterwards. I will be continuing my yoga practice, but I will need to find a way to also work in some strength training into my routine. Loved all three instructors, so that was a win.
A lot of yoga is strength training! (Try out the videos Adriene offers in the video I posted above, for some examples.)
One more win today: I finished the last of my batch of dragons for my shop, so I'll be working on getting them posted this week, along with all the earrings I made like a year ago. So yay, creative projects.
I love your dragons!
1-minute Yoga 5 -
I was not a fan of this pose. It felt unnatural and I couldn't get my hands right.
I believe the intention here is a sort of modified Camel Pose. The same hand position won't work for everybody, and trying to force it can feel really crunchy on one's back.
Backbends I think can be problematic because really bendy yogis tend to make them look like the point is to achieve maximum bend in one's back. The fact that we call them "backbends" doesn't help matters either! Yoga instruction often shies away from using the correct technical terms for how we're moving our bodies. (Yet it's common to expect students to understand terms in Sanskrit--a language that is literally nobody's first language in the 21st century!) But I think it's helpful, especially with "backbends", to use the correct, modern anatomical term for what we're trying to accomplish with this family of poses:
spinal extension.
In anatomical terms, "spinal extension" simply means backward movement of the spine. But the more common meaning of "extension" as "lengthening" helps us here, because it reminds us that all backbends/spinal extensions need to start with lengthening the spine. The purpose to practising spinal extension is to lengthen one's front body and strengthen one's back body. Crunching the lumbar spine to achieve a specific look--which is, unfortunately, what happens far too often--is not healthy and should not be the goal of these poses.
If the Day 5 pose doesn't work for you as depicted, I would suggest subbing with
Camel or a
Supported Camel. Place your hands wherever/however works for you to give yourself the support you need to achieve maximal front body opening and back body strengthening.
just some plantar fasciitis to deal with. So now I have exercises that I neglected to start on this day.
PF is no fun. The exercises do help though, both to heal the current injury, and to strengthen our feet to help prevent a recurrence. If you have one of those therapy balls that can be frozen, rolling that under your foot can help too. (A frozen bottle of water works in a pinch too.)