Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Pose of the Week - Warrior II

Virabhadrasana II
1.  Start with feet wide.  Inhale extend arms to side.
2.  Turn your left foot in slightly (almost parallel with back edge of mat); turn right leg out directly to the side (front of mat).
3.  Keeping your legs engaged, exhale and bend your right knee to 90 degrees
4.  Hold for several breaths. To release pull legs to one another to engage the muscles, inhale and come out.

The "Big 3" Directives:

1.  Engagement - Engage leg muscles to the bone.  Draw muscular energy from the floor up into the pelvis.
2.  Alignment - Align right heel with left foot.  Keep torso vertical (meaning hips square to side of mat)  Outer spiral both thighs = Left thigh back and lifting away from floor.  Right thigh parallel to floor.  Right knee toward pinky toe = outer spiral of right thigh.
3. Gaze - Out past right fingertips.

Organic line of Energy - Heart to fingertips
Muscular line of energy - Hip to blade, knee to hip, knee to heel

"Crown-to-tail" is your Primary Line in EVERY pose.  Crown-to-tail means root your tailbone towards the Lord's foundation and lengthen your crown towards heaven and HIS wisdom.

"By wisdom the LORD laid the Earth's foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place."  Proverbs 3:19.

In class you often hear me say "action over form" - this also means "honor the primary line"- or I also often say "maintain integrity of the spine".  They all mean, come out of the pose if needed to honor the Primary Line. In this pose, for example, if one were leaning into the front leg or knee or taking the knee past the foot they would need to shorten their stance to maintain the Primary line.  Make sense?

*Final tips:
As you root down through the outer edge of your "back" foot, energetically lift the inner thigh toward your pelvis ("outer spiral").  It is the practice of giving and receiving.  It teaches us to exert but also be conscious enough (soft/supple enough)  to receive Him (Jesus)  in every thing we do.  It calls us to be intentional and present.


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