Balancing Poses

[ailelie]

Hello, this is my first time posting here. I found out about this community through rydra_wong . I recently started my practice and am fumbling my way through a weekly class and am trying to get started at home (I have a mat now).

This week we did balancing poses in my class. I had a lot of trouble staying balanced and often had to start over. I was wondering if anyone here had any advice on keeping balanced or good poses to practice at home. Or, even just in general, what are your favorite balancing poses and how did you overcome any problems that you faced (whether keeping balanced or something else entirely)?

Comments

[beachlass]

What kind of balancing pose were you trying?

I regularly include Tree Pose in my morning routine, and it definitely took me a while before I could keep my balancein it.

[ailelie]

I think she called it the Dancer. We've done one or two others, but I don't remember what they were called.

(The Dancer (I looked it up in Google Image and that is it after all) gave me double as much trouble because my shoulders don't like to bend backward. I never realized that I had gone from being able to shake hands diagonally behind my back with relative ease to barely brushing finger tips.)

[viklikesfic]

Welcome!

I would consider Tree Pose a better beginning balancing posture than Dancer, personally. I have good balance anyway, but even so I've noticed that the more I do it the easier Tree is. Before, I wouldn't fall out of it but my foot would sort of wobble. Now it stays pretty much rooted. My advice, which is true in both dance and yoga for balancing, is to have a good fixed point to focus on (a drishti). If you don't have obvious things to focus on at home, or if like me you do yoga without your glasses and are mostly blind, you can get a small colored sticker like people use for yard sales and stick it on your wall. Stare at that point and soften your gaze. Focus on grounding through all four corners of your foot. You also may find tree pose easier with arms extended and palms up than with hands at heart center.

Above all, don't stress about it. If you have to let your leg come down, then let it come down, recenter, and get back into it. This is how I overcame my difficulties in other areas, such as lunges and wheel pose (still can't even do that for more than two seconds). Do the pose in whatever easy, modified version you need (so Tree, for example, is going to be way easier than Eagle if you have balance issues; for me it was a matter of not lunging too low) and hold as long as you can. When you feel like you have to fall out, fall out. Keep breathing. If you need to take a moment after falling out to get back to your breath and come back to balance, do so. If you're doing an audio or video course and you just can't get back into that pose, wait for the next one, and breathe while you're doing so. It'll come in time :-)

[muck_a_luck]

In this post, at the bottom, you will find a couple of nice resources on how balancing poses work.

Of course, if your problem is not balance, but opening your shoulders, there are ways to work on that, as well. This is a nice sequence I found on YouTube.

In Dancing Shiva, you could try the simplier variation that does not involve taking your foot with both hands. Instead, extend forward, palm up, the arm on the same side as the lifted leg , grasping the foot with only one hand. Open out, keeping the hand level with the foot. This variation is illustrated here. CorePower instruction on YouTube, in case this is helpful.

[ailelie]

Thank you for the links. I will definitely try that variation to see if it helps me out.

Welcome!

[rydra_wong]

Ooh, balancing poses *g*.

Seconding what everyone's already said about starting with something simple like Tree. Tree's also easy to modify in various ways -- put your foot on your shin instead of your thigh, or even touch the tip of your toes to the floor. It can also help to stand where you can put a hand on a wall if you need to.

Focus on getting all your weight into the standing foot and finding the sense of balance, rather than where you get the other foot to.

I actually find it helpful to think of shifting all my weight into the standing foot before the other foot even lifts off the ground (then it's "weightless" and you can do whatever you like with it *g*).

Once you're in the pose: expect to wobble. Don't try to be still like a statue (that locks all your joints and ensures that you topple). Think of your ankle and knee as being active shock-absorbers, working to stabilize you in the wobble.

Then play with it! It can be fun and/or useful to play with balance during the day; I have been known to end up standing with my legs in Tree while having conversations with people, without noticing. It's become a comfortable resting/thinking position for me.