When you start to develop a regular yoga practice, certain types of poses start to become simpler, and others just stay hard.
Once you pass the beginner phase of yoga and you have a good grasp of basic yoga technique, the next layer that you’ll face is how your psychological state translates into your yoga practice.
In the busy and sometimes frenetic culture most of us operate in, it’s had to lead a balanced life. Every moment brings more things grabbing for our attention, places to go, things to do, and people to see all pulling us in multiple directions at once.
No matter how physically able your body is, balancing poses tend to be tougher when you’re carrying mental imbalance from life’s busyness onto the yoga mat.
In my experience, my ability to sustain a balancing pose is directly related to how balanced or imbalanced my life is at any given time. If I’ve maintained a healthy work-rest balance, my trees and half moons tend to be sturdy. When I’m super busy and under-rested, I fall out over and over again.
So here’s a little exploration in the challenge of balance. This video covers 5 different ways of practicing balance — 4 poses on the feet (or, better put, foot) and 1 focused on the upper body.
Here are the poses and the way they’ll challenge your balance:
1) Tree: Can you balance on one leg while in contact with the other leg?
2) Knee Lift: Can you balance on one leg without contact with the other leg?
3) Warrior 3: Can you balance with one leg behind you?
4) Half Moon: Can you balance when your body is sideways?
5) Side Plank: Can you balance on one arm and one leg?
As always, I offer tips and options for you to explore each of these poses in a way that makes sense for your body.
As you come back to these poses over the course of your yoga practice, notice how their quality tends to fluctuate with your state of mind. This is one of the first clear signals of the mind-body connection brought to the surface by a yoga practice.
Enjoy it, learn from it, and stay curious.
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Read the blog post: https://icewateryoga.com/top-5-yoga-poses-to-improve-balance/
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