21-Day Yoga Challenge:
Pose a Day
Today’s Pose is:
Vanarasana or Lunge Pose
Vanarasana or lunge pose, like so many of our poses, can be performed in various ways. Hands can be on the floor or raised toward the ceiling and the back knee can be on the floor or lifted, pressing the heel back. Try this pose with one foot forward and then the other. Try with modifications and note the difference in your body. Hold for at least 12 breaths to each side.
The Cues: From hands and knees position, step right foot forward between hands. Knee is over ankle. Back leg knee may rest to floor or be lifted. In lifted version, contract quadriceps and press back through the heel. In either knee lifted or to floor, imagine long line of extension from your heel to the top of your head. Consider these three thoughts: lift your ribs off of your pelvis; draw your shoulder blades down to broaden your chest, stabilize the sacrum by engaging your core. In the back leg, lifted knee version contract your quadricep toward your hamstrings.
The Benefits: Lunge pose is beneficial if you have tight hips, psoas or quadricep muscles and/or low-back stiffness. In the arms raised version, balancing comes into play while the side body and upper body opens more fully.
The Modifications: Add blocks under the hands or place hands on a chair seat to add more lift to the upper body and aid in balance. The chair opens a whole new set of options for this pose and I definitely recommend adding it to your practice on occasion.
Do you practice lunges regularly? What is your favorite lunge. Share your thoughts: leave a comment or post to FaceBook @thinkyoga or on Instagram @21dayyogachallenge.
Order The 21-Day Yoga Challenge: Inspiration for a Lifetime of Good Health by Ann Fitzmaurice and illustrated by Altina Layman. Click to order!
What’s in a number? So much and simultaneously so little. When my girlfriend and I were eight, her mother told her that she could invite as many friends to her birthday party as she was old. We immediately thought ahead and realized that meant she could have 21 friends at her twenty-first birthday. We never imagined birthdays without parties or days where we didn’t rely on our mother’s to provide them. Yet, here I stand on the cusp of another birthday and I know my mother would approve that I would invite more friends than my age and they would all provide me with the gifts that keep me celebrating life: loving kindness.
Here in the states we have begun to experience the time of the year that follows winter: Road Work Season. This means detour signs will be aplenty and our regular routes may be upended. The common use of the detour sign inclines me to think: inconvenience. However, after a recent trip across the pond, I am reminded that other words – with the same purpose – strike me differently. Perhaps this is just the Anglophile in me projecting, but I like the English use of Diversion. What is a diversion, but a detour? Yet to me, diversion suggests an opening for opportunity.