october asana of the month: Trikonasana

Readers you all know how much I love Trikonasana, I’ve written about it before.  It’s one of those poses that you can rely on.  It crops up in nearly every class and in this post I wrote about how you can make it more appropriate for beginners or those with sacro-iliac problems.

Trikonasana works into the muscles in the sides of the torso and the backs of the legs as well as helping to increase core and pelvic floor strength.  To really help the posture work into the sides of the body, I want to show you a little trick that I’ve found immensely helpful in this posture to bring length into both sides of the waist, not just the upper side.

Start by standing with the feet apart and turn the left foot out and the right foot in slightly (I’ve done a video for next week that will go into more detail about the feet in Trikonasana).  Then raise the arms alongside the ears making sure the shoulders release from the ears and the shoulderblades slide down the back of the body.

Then begin to reach out and down with the left arm.  The emphasis here is reaching out rather than worrying about reaching the floor with the left hand.  It’s easy to keep length in the right side of the waist but the further we reach down (especially if we are beginners, or have stiffness in the hips or lower back) the more likely we are to collapse into the left side of the waist.  So reach out towards the wall and then place the left hand on the left shin.

You will notice here that I am looking down to the left foot.  Try this for a few breaths whilst rolling the right shoulder back and down and feel the thighs rotating away from each other.  THEN turn the head to look towards the top hand if it feels OK on your neck.

Try it, see how it feels and tell me how you practice Trikonasana!

Love and oms!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 11th, 2010 at 9:24 am and is filed under asana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.