It has been a while since my last post!  I apologize for the delay, lovelies, but life has been hella hectic over here.  This past weekend at Yoga School was focused on the third chakra, Muladhara.  This chakra center is located approximately at your navel and is associated with fire and its transformative properties.  Sometimes to transform we need to switch or “flip” our perspective… Enter inversions and arm balances!  See what I did there? 🙂  These next three posts will form a series to help you get started on this journey.

Always start with a warm-up

Since you will be putting an atypical amount of weight into your hands and wrists, it is key to add some additional stretches to increase mobility.  Later in this series, we will begin to explore headstand.  Warming up with halasana (plow pose) will decrease the risk of neck injury as we do so.  As a general rule of thumb, you should warm up the active muscle group in the peak pose you seek to achieve that day.  Follow along the video below to get started, and feel free to do a few rounds of Surya Namaskar afterward if you’re an overachiever!

How to: Chaturanga dandasana

If you’ve ever taken a vinyasa class, you’re probably relatively familiar with chaturanga dandasana.  In fact, if you performed Surya Namaskar after today’s warm-up, you’ve probably already done a chaturanga today.  While it may seem #basic, there is more to it than meets the eye.  Even if you’re a pro at it, I’d recommend watching this next video as the same principles apply to more advanced arm balances as well.  According to my calculations, I’ve done exactly one billion vinyasas and yet I still learning something new each time.  Ok. Not one billion exactly, but ensuring that you have a strong foundation in chaturanga will only make bakasana (crow pose) that much easier, which we will be exploring in the next part of this series.

Looking ahead

Now that you’ve learned to prep your wrists and honed your chaturanga skills, look out for the next post to take your practice to the next level!