Ashtanga Yoga - Twisting for Beginners, Marichyasana C with Kino MacGregor and Julia Lofstrand

Hi , I'm Keno mcgregor .

We're here at Miami Life Center today .

We're gonna be taking a look at in the sea .

This is a towing posture that comes almost halfway through the primary series of Tanga yoga .

This is a great challenge for the flexibility in the back , particularly the upper back and their shoulders as well as deep inside the hips .

If your pelvis isn't fully hollow , meaning you don't have a good sense of how to suck in the lower stomach .

This posture will be exceedingly hard for you .

Julie will be my model today and we're gonna be taking a look at how you can safely end the posture , right , starting off in , in a position , sort of a neutral position from which you can sort of figure out how you can best align the body since we'll be doing the right side .

Julie is gonna bend her right knee .

Now , this is the place where you can immediately start to see some complications .

She has a beautiful position of the knee .

Sometimes people place the foot all the way forward out here .

This creates way too much space .

You want to have a deep , good bend in the knee , you also want to have about a hands distance in between your foot and your thighs .

You can see a good bit of separation .

You also don't want to have the foot too wide , right .

Obviously , this takes the pelvis a little bit out of alignment .

So a good sense of alignment is that hand distance in between your foot and your thigh that will let the knee bend and get you deep within the hip socket from which you're rotating .

Since we're doing the right side , that's gonna bring the head of the right thigh bone deeper into the pelvis .

Once you feel that sense of stability , then you want to suck in the stomach and ground the pelvis .

So you feel the pelvis pushing down into the ground , that's almost your sense foundation , right ?

Weight is always going to be pouring into the foot .

You never lose the stability deep inside of the legs .

Once you feel that sense of stability , then we can begin to enter the posture .

Inhaling , we lift the spine straight up out of the pelvis and exhaling , we inwardly rotate the right thigh and lift the body twisting from the waist and over .

That little motion has to come all the way down deep inside of the pelvis .

A lot of people like to lean back somehow , there is a natural tendency to lean far back .

But you want to keep your chest as close to the thigh as possible .

Keeping the shoulder in close contact with the knee from the very beginning .

Now , we're going to take a look at how to bind the arm .

First , you'll notice that the arm reaches around , the palm is facing up .

In order to get the hand around , we need to rotate the arm downward .

It's almost like a downward spiral that takes the shoulder down and around .

It's very important that the shoulder keeps rotating down .

So we keep binds right .

Once this hand , the left hand reaching around the right knee is set in place .

You'll see that the hand is waiting in perfect position around the back .

Very important now that this hand is done working .

So we want to feel as you exhale that the other hand reaches around and we feel a deep rotation in the opposite shoulder .

You can see how our shoulder blade is dropping down the back .

So you'll see a twist through the clavicle through the collarbone , one shoulder dropping down while the other one rotates it's down the back .

Now , what can often happen is that the pelvis starts to destabilize a little bit .

So a great way to counteract that is to press weight firmly to the opposite sitting bone .

And that again is why we press down on the pelvis with the strength of the bund , with the strength of that sucking in of the lower stomach .

Looking over the right shoulder helps keep the twist through the entire spine one last little pitfall that people often do is forget that they're , that they need to keep the bne around the knee and they twist right off .

So sometimes if you twist up and up and up , oh , the shoulder just pops right off .

So I wanna try to avoid that as much as possible .

Let's see if we can just try the other side .

Normally in the Astana Yoga method , you would actually jump back , but we'll save you that for today and give Julie a little break .

So trying the left side , remember that nice alignment , that hands distance in between .

It's very important that we understand that the twisting motion comes as a result of that solid foundation deep inside of the pelvis .

Every twist includes a side stretch , meaning lifting from the side and reaching over right .

We can only do that when the pelvis is really nice and stable .

So feeling that sense of stability , inhaling , lifting all the way from the pelvis inwardly rotating the left leg and reaching all the way around , right .

So you can see how our body lifts all the way from the pelvis and reaches over .

This is the key element of this posture cleansing , the digestive system working with all of that lift deep inside of the low belly .

Then that rotating the arm , the spiral reaches around .

It's almost like you're just dropping the shoulder around .

It doesn't require that much effort .

Having the bne firmly established this arm is done working .

Then as you exhale , we spiral the other arm to make contact , guiding the opposite shoulder down the back .

So you can really see how our shoulder blades are in two opposite positions .

The shoulder that's reaching around the knee reaches a little bit up to keep the shoulder down .

While the shoulder blade of the opposite reaches deep down the back , giving a nice twist along the upper back , Keeping the opposite sitting bone from which you're twisting away grounded will help keep a sense of stability in the pelvis .

Remembering that the twist is deep in the body rather than lifting up , will prevent your arm from sliding .

After five long breaths , you can release and jump back .

So this is some good tips from , I hope you'll be able to give it a shot trying at home or with your teacher .

Thanks for listening .

I'm Keno mcgregor .