Balance & Inversions

Hi everyone, welcome to Yoga & You, rooted in India, flowing to you. I'm Sanjana Prasad, and we're on day five of our seven-day series on diabetes management. Definitely watch and practice day one to four, and then hop into this one. Today's episode is all about inversions, finding that comfort with inversions. Let's get into our practice.

When we talk about inversions, we immediately think about going fully upside down into a headstand. But if you notice, even doing a nice deep forward fold can work like an inversion, it is a half inversion. So that is where we're going to start today.

So I want you to keep your feet shoulder width apart, place your palms on your waist, take a deep inhalation, lengthen your spine. As you exhale, full forward fold, go all the way down, bringing your fingertips down to the mat. Take another inhale, look forward, find more space. As you exhale, try to press the palms down. You can even soften your knees here, you're not working more on the legs, instead we're trying to allow the upper body to hang loose over the legs. Give in to gravity, stay there and breathe.

One, if comfortable, you can start to straighten out the knees. Two, three, four, in your forward fold try to keep your exhalations long, draw the belly in, five, six, seven, eight. From here, you're going to step the right foot back, left foot back, drop the knees down, keep your knees at least mat width apart, get into child's pose. Arms extended forward, stay there and breathe. One, two, three, four, five.

Now, press your palms where they are. Okay, let this be the distance between your hands and legs, press the palms, reach forward, you're just going to lift the hips up, tuck the toes on the mat, push your hips up and back into Adho Mukha Svanasana. Now, we're not going to focus on straightening the knees or pressing the heels down. Instead, I want you to soften the knees, think about pushing your chest back towards the thighs.

One common mistake we see in Adho Mukha Svanasana, we try to straighten the knees and then you're stuck here where your elbows are tense, your shoulders are tense, there's a lot of tension around the neck. So, I'd rather you bend the knees and create space through the spine here. Lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, stay there, breathe. One, two, three, four, five.

We're going to pedal out the feet now. So, press one heel down, then the other heel. There is distance between your feet, we're not keeping the feet together, feet are about hip width apart. Two, three, four, and five. Now, lift your heels up without moving the chest forward. Keep pushing the chest towards the thighs and see if you can lower your heels as much as you can. One, again this is not through force, comes with practice, so take your time with it too. Adho Mukha again is a great prep for inversions. Three, relax the neck and the head, find your gaze between your feet. Four, and five.

Drop the knees down, heels back, take your hands back, relax into Shashankasana. One, two, three, four, five. Roll your spine up, vertebra by vertebra.

Another common mistake, or I wouldn't say mistake but kind of a waste of energy that I see in downward facing dog, is when you overtense the shoulders, where you're squeezing too much here and your hands are sticking to your ears. We want to create space where we are turning the hand out, and you just create space here, not because your alignment is wrong, it's just because you want to free up any tension around the neck and shoulders.

So, keeping all of this in mind, freeness around your neck, lengthen the spine, only dropping the heels down when you're comfortable. Let's practice one more round of Adho Mukha Svanasana. So, getting into your Adho Mukha Svanasana, starting first from your child's pose, press the palms where they are, tuck the toes, lift the hips up and back. Now, first bring awareness to your shoulders, are you pushing and tensing? If you are, relax the shoulders, let them be spaced around the neck. Then, lengthen and push the hips up and back, then finally see if you can drop the heels down. One, two, three, four, five.

Drop the knees and sit back into child's pose. One, two, three, four, and five. Roll your spine up, vertebra by vertebra, and we're going to lie down on the back.

Next, we're going to practice around the Setu Bandhasana. If you had practiced day four, you would have done a detailed practice of Setu Bandhasana, it's a great preparation for your Viparita Karani and Sarvangasana. So, we're just going to practice a few rounds, repetitions, dynamic, and then hold the practice. So, press into your feet, your palms, inhale and lift your hips up, exhale down, inhale and lift the hips up, exhale down, inhale, hips up. You're going to interlock the fingers underneath the back, bring your elbows closer, lift the hips up, stay there and breathe. One, two, three, four, five, release, slowly bring your hips back down.

Now, we're going to shift towards a wall space. We're going to use the wall for a supported Viparita Karani and Sarvangasana and then come back to the mat and try it independent. Let's go for it. You're going to find yourself a wall space and you're going to lay your mat down vertically against the wall. You're going to go sideways this way and see that your hips are touching the wall. You can lie down sideways first, get yourself closer to the wall, and then it's easy to get your legs up on the wall. This way you don't have to lie down and then make these adjustments.

Now, for Viparita Karani here, we're just going to stay with the legs up. This is also a great way to relax your legs. It helps to relieve any kind of stress, restless legs in the room. If you've been walking for a long time, if you've been standing for a long time, if you're prone to varicose veins, it helps with all of that, and it's just a very, very calming, relaxing posture. So you can stay here and breathe. If you stay for longer, maybe there's like a tingling numbness around your toes, which is very natural because of the blood flow, the circulation.

From here, we're going to bend the knees, place the feet hip width apart on the wall. So imagine you're doing Setu Bandhasana, but instead of the floor, you have the wall. Now, press into your feet, less into your palms. Start lifting your hips up, lift it all the way up, bringing your hips over the shoulder. Now, slide your elbows in, support the lower back. You can step your feet up, one time, stay here and breathe. One, two, three, four, five. Very gently drop the hips down.

We're going to repeat this one more time, but in this round we're going to try to lift the legs off the wall. So, press into the feet again, lift your hips up. Now, once your hips are up, we're going to lift the right leg up. Now, take this right leg slightly behind the head, okay? Now, if your hips are here and you try to lift the other leg up, it's not going to happen because weight is pulling you towards the wall. So, the first step you should be mindful of is to thrust the hips up, okay? Now, you can slowly start to come onto the toes of the left foot and see if you can lift the left leg also up. I'm not yet straightening my legs out here, so we are still in a variation of Viparita Karani. Stay there, breathe. One, two, three. I'm turning my neck to speak to you, but please keep your neck stable, neutral when you're doing this. Four, five.

Bring one foot back to the wall, other foot. You notice when I'm bringing the feet, I'm still having this alignment, if I start going here then lifting the legs becomes more challenging. Slowly bring your hips down, take a few breaths, relax. Very gently, open your eyes.

We'll try one more time with the wall. This time, after you take your legs up into Viparita Karani, we're going to try to shoot the legs up towards the ceiling into your full Sarvangasana. So, bend the knees, press into your feet, inhale, lift up, okay? Get your elbows as close as you can so that you have enough support, okay? We're not supporting the butt, we're supporting the lower back. Now, from here, lift one leg up, slightly behind the head maybe, come onto the toes of the other leg, add the leg up. Now, thrust through the hip, take your hands lower, legs go up, stay here and breathe.

Bring one foot back to the wall, put the foot back and release your hips. Relax here, watch your breath slow down. Slowly open your eyes, you're going to turn towards one side and let's come back onto our mat.

Once you start getting comfortable with using the wall and then going up into Sarvangasana, you can try it on the mat as well. Initially, you might need to take a little bit of momentum. Once you get that control and comfort, you'll be able to go up smoothly. So, you're going to start rocking forward and back to initiate that momentum. So, you will rock back, rock forward. Notice every time I'm rocking back, my hips are coming off the mat, back, forward, back, forward. There's a lot of space, my legs are almost going behind.

This time, we're going to support and lift up. Rock back, support the hips. Now, if you keep walking the hand lower, we are in Viparita Karani here. You can stay here for a few breaths. Once you get comfortable, bring your elbows closer and start lifting the legs up. Notice as my legs are going up, my palms are going towards my mid-back, start straightening out the legs. You can stay in Sarvangasana for a minute or 90 seconds. The longer you stay in these inversions, the better. It has a lot of benefits, physically with the breath and physiologically.

Once you're done here, you can bend your knees towards the face and roll down, vertebra by vertebra, with control. Come all the way down to the mat. Now, we've done Viparita Karani and Sarvangasana where the chin is tucked towards the chest. To counter this, we practice Matsyasana.

So, take your palms, tuck them underneath your lower back for support, extend both your legs forward. Now, lift your chest up, look ahead, you're going to expand your chest, drop the crown of the head on the mat. When you want to exit the posture, lift your head up, look forward, and release the back of the head on the mat. Release your hands, hug both your knees into your chest, give yourself a tight hug. Drop the feet down and settle into your Shavasana.

That was day 5 of our 7-day series. This is Yoga & You, from India with love and light. Thank you for joining me in this episode.