One of the ten movements of flowing yoga: warm-up exercises

In traditional hatha yoga classes, the arrangement of postures and movements is mostly based on the teacher's habits or experience, based on the principle of being able to stretch all parts of the body, but there is no fixed pattern.

Flowing yoga inherits the rules of Ashtangga Yoga. A complete set of flowing yoga must contain ten parts of practice. The order and category of the ten parts are fixed and cannot be changed without authorization. If we regard a class of flow yoga as a dance of body movement and fully feel the vitality that flow yoga brings to the body, then these ten parts are like the "ten movements" in one go.

Before the dance starts, let's open the music and get familiar with the notes.

First Movement: Warm-up Exercise

The warm-up here is not as simple and casual as rotating the wrist and ankles and moving the shoulder and knee joints. Instead, there are two complete, fixed and smooth warm-up exercises. They are Solar A and Solar B.

Both have the word "sun", but it is different from the "salute to the sun" in traditional classes. In other words, in flow yoga, there is no Japanese prayer, only Sun poses A and B are done, while in traditional classes, there is no Sun pose, only Japanese prayer. One thing in common is that they are all a complete and smooth combination of asanas rather than a single postures.

Sun Style A--

(1) Starting action: Standing Mountain Style

Keep your heels and toes together, and tighten your legs, buttocks, and abdomen tightly;

Arms are vertically downward on both sides of the body, and ten fingers are spread out vigorously;

Shoulders (inhale) open upward (exhale) and rearward;

Keep your eyes straight ahead.

(2) Inhale, open both sides of your arms and stretch upward; look at your fingers;

(3) Exhale and bend your body downward with your arms close to your legs; place your hands on both sides of your feet; keep your forehead close to your legs;

(4) Inhale, lift your head and stretch your spine and back;

(5) Exhale, walk backwards or jump, so that your body is in a wooden board position;

In the same exhalation, immediately perform the "elbow flexion"(as shown in Figure 5 of the diagram) from the wooden board position: bend the elbows so that the body is close to and parallel to the floor, but not touching the floor; at the same time, both arms and elbows are clamped together.

This pose requires a lot of arm strength. It is generally difficult to do it properly at the beginning of learning. Therefore, you can also bend your knees to land on the ground to reduce the stress on the arm.

(6) Inhale, pull your body upward to stretch the back of your spine, and transition your toes to the instep; open your shoulders backward as much as possible; your eyes can look at the sky or look straight ahead; your legs leave the floor and your instep touches the ground;

(This pose is the upper dog pose. We talked in detail about the upper dog pose when we introduced Vinyasa earlier. Remember vinyasa: Transition and Connection Asana of Flowing Yoga);

(7) Exhale, transition the instep to the sole of the foot, lift the buttocks and back, and the tail vertebra upward (Lower Dog Style. This was also explained in detail when talking about vinyasa.

One point to add here is that the transition from toes to soles depends on the flexibility of the toe joints. In the upper dog pose, the toes to the entire instep are on the mat. When you exhale to lower the dog, the heels are pressed downward. When you are about to hit the ground, you will find that the toe joints are already very painful and you cannot naturally turn the toes over and land on the belly of your toes. This is because when we first started practicing, our toe joints were not flexible enough, so we could lift our feet and land directly with the soles of our feet. As long as we persist in practicing the transition from toes to soles of our feet, our joints will soon be flexible and we can complete this movement standard and freely. If you practice for a while every day, you can do it in less than a week, trust me: )

In Lower Dog pose, keep breathing through five throats. Stretch your body fully.

(8) Inhale, walk or jump back between your hands, while raising your head and stretching your spine;

(9) Exhale and bend your body closer to your legs again;

(10) Inhale and open your arms from both sides to stretch your body upward; look at your fingers;

(11) Exhale, open your arms to restore your sides; stand in mountain posture.

In this way, from (1) to (11), it was successfully completed between breathing and breathing. The only thing you need to stay still is in the lower dog position (7), which usually lasts for 5 breaths.

We noticed that in step 5, the body was required to walk backwards or jump in a wooden board position, and in step 8, the body was required to walk or jump back between the hands. Why jump? This is a feature of Ashtangga Yoga and Flowing Yoga. The overall movement is very energetic and dynamic. You must have heard of "vitality yoga", which is actually another easy-to-understand name for flow yoga.

The standard requirement is to jump back and back. Walking is just a simple transition for beginners. When jumping, tighten three places: throat, navel, and perineum. However, to consciously tighten the three places while jumping is by no means something that can be done in a short period of time. In fact, it may take several years of practice. For beginners, by tightening the throat and slowly tightening the navel, you can achieve a lighter and controllable state of the body, making the jump look very light and soft.

Finally, by the way, from the diagram above, we see that the presenter's clothes are completely different from what we do in traditional classes. This is also a feature of flow yoga, because there are many jumping movements during practice and the overall rhythm of the movements is fast. If you dress too loose and elegant, it will stumble. At the same time, because I sweat a lot, try to wear less to make it cooler. Generally, male practitioners only wear shorts, and women only wear vests and shorts.

In the next article, we will introduce Sun Style B in warm-up exercises. (Editor in charge: Teng Yun)