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Week 27 – Lizard Pose
We are going to work on opening our hips today and bringing a lot more flexibility into our pelvic area and therefore into our over-all practice and some would argue into our lives in general.
Tight hips can affect everything from doing many yoga postures as simple as a deep squat or as challenging as full wheel posture and it can even affect our everyday lives like being able to pick something up from the floor.
Releasing or opening the hips can give us improved range of motion, better circulation and help to reduce back pain. But in yogic tradition we believe that the hips are also a storage area for negative feelings and pent up emotions, so working on this area can lead to an energetic shift and release as well.
Opening the hips allows us freedom in the body but also in our unique expression of ourselves, creatively, physically and spiritually.
Our posture today is called Lizard pose and will take some work to move into it fully.
Start in down dog.
Exhale as you step the right foot forward between the hands, and bring the back knee down to the floor and point the back toe.
Move both hands to the inside of the right foot.
Sink your weight down into your hips and bend the elbows a little, check in with your body for a moment.
If you feel comfortable, lower down onto your forearms. Keep the chin lifted and the chest open.
Hold steady in whichever expression of the posture you are at for 5 breaths.
To come out of the pose, set your palms onto your mat and step your right foot back into down dog.
Repeat on the other side.
After the second side, from down dog, bring your knees to the floor and fold forward to finish your practice in child's pose.
Posture : Lizard Pose
Sanskrit name : Utthan Pristhasana
Benefits
*Opens hips, hamstrings, groins and hip flexors.
*Strengthens inner thigh muscles on the front leg.
*Opens chest, shoulders and neck area.
Avoid if : You have injuries in the lower back, or sciatica.
Beginners Tip : Just keep the arms straight and sink the hips as low as they will go, to begin with.
Serena is a yoga teacher and the founder of The OM Space . She is a passionate believer in yoga as a life enhancing practice and runs several classes in Colombo including the very popular Yoga for Children and Yoga for Pregnancy. Serena trained in the UK with the British Wheel of Yoga and is a UK Yoga Alliance registered Senior Teacher.
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