Gabrielle (The Hot Yoga Doctor)

Hi Connie

The bit about your feet almost lifting off the floor rings the bells for me! I am wondering about the tension in your shoulders. Do you have a sense you could shift them away from your ears to lengthen the neck.

Also I am going to PM you about something else I would like you to try!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi blue

I really enjoyed your knowingness around your process and no, it doesn’t sound silly at all. For me, having that mindfulness and self-connection is a liberation and a welcome ‘gift’.

And shopgirl1030 (because I like to use your whole name ;)) feel free to email me and I can point you in a direction that may assist you… if you would like some help that is.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Alexandra

Each class you may feel a little differently in your body so keep attuned to that. A couple of things to try.

** The shoulders towards the hips really works well, see how you can enhance that. My recent video may give you some clues. A transformational technique for your practice

** Try bringing your knees apart. Play with different distances apart and notice that your chest rises and your back arches well in this way. As you get more flexible you will be able to bring your knees together and still feel your lower back surrendering somewhat.

You are likely always to feel some compression in your lower back in any case. See how your body geometry responds to different knee distances and the way you hold your arms.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello ‘M’ 😉 or pa_yogi

I guess you are remembering that initial ‘robust’ and powerful stretch you were getting when you first started. I think that after a while that feeling across the long or stretching side of the body is less intense because the muscles are now longer and leaner.

Truth be known, that if you are going to be able to push your hips off strongly to the side, not only do you need movement around your middle area but your ankles have something to do with it. The more laterally flexible you are at ground level the more your hips will be able to shift sideways.

In answer to your question: focus on planted feet and legs (as a whole solid unit) pushing off to the side. Think of body moving up, out and then over to the opposite side. And for extra stretching ooomph shift the weight backwards into the heels and bring arms back.

My guess is that your question may simply be coming from your observations of how others can achieve what your body is finding difficult at the moment. A few things may happen: you are going to find a way to approach your pose which clicks for you (your aha moment), your opening hips and ankles will one day create the movement you seek, or you are going to find that where you are is about where your body will be. In any case, you appear to be approaching your practice mindfully and that is key!

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Stefan

I imagine you are feeling rather bewildered that what you are doing is just not working the way you wish it would.

My last post recommended the modified child’s pose. I am not sure if you practiced this but I would really recommend completely avoiding sit-ups for a while (maybe even until you have reduced the stiffness) and do the child’s pose as directed.

Can you answer me these couple of questions please? Do you do toe stand or do you stay in tree?

And how does your back feel when you do hands to feet and standing intense stretching poses?

Thanks for your comments on the blogs Stefan, much appreciated.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi maupski

You may have hit the nail on the head! These balancing poses are about patience and humility especially while you go through the process of building strength and balance. I wonder how much of your issue is about wanting to be somewhere perhaps before you are ready, based on your own judgment about what you SHOULD be doing…

There is no timetable for your progress. And really the reason why you don’t want to kick out before your other leg is locked is to minimize the possibility of damaging your back, by placing too much strain on it.

One thing at a time. There is a right and a wrong way to kick out. When you focus on locking the knee and you can do that unconsciously as your well ingrained habit then you have so much more bandwidth or conscious attention to make sure you can extend in total safety.

As a teacher I can tell you that the most poorly done part of this pose is the actual kicking out bit! I hope that in itself is motivation enough for you. :cheese:

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Great questions shopgirl1030 and yoga-flo

Yoga-flo, do you ever go out and eat that greasy cheese burger topped off by a fudge brownie? I sincerely hope that you do – sometimes :cheese:

It is terrible to deny yourself or to make choices out of a sense of guilt. Shopgirl1030 that is a very good question: how do you cultivate that intuition about what is right for you to eat?

I am hoping that others come and chime in with their own experiences. How did you develop your body intuition?

As you intimate, it is a process that either happens with a bang or a whimper! Just so you know my experience, I once had a weight issue (probably was 30 pounds heavier at the most). I went on a ‘diet’ and as a result of this particular style of eating I learned how to listen to my body.

It was basically an eating plan I fashioned based on SIMPLIFICATION and COMBINATION. I think this was my key… In essence I spent weeks starting on one food type per meal, eating as much of it as I wanted. There were three meals per day and I was supposed to eat the three meals per day. There were certain rules about the timings between meals depending on the types of food I ate.

The first 10 or so days I only ate one type of food per meal and over the next couple of weeks I started to introduce different types of foods and then combinations of them.

What happened during that time was my body was actually able to discern how it felt because the foods were so simple. Contrast that with eating a heavy interesting complex meal. You may not know what it was that made you feel a certain way because it was harder to analyze the specific effects, but you remember, for example, that it was delicious, or even that you had too much of x or would have liked more of y.

After I ‘finished’ the plan that I had made I noticed that I could literally work out what I wanted or needed based on my feeling. I could literally say, what I really need is a stir fry, a salad or yes, even a pizza. I KNEW how I would feel afterwards by how I felt before.

That was my journey. For me the key was being able to have simple stuff going in, and naturally intuiting how it affected me (which happened largely unconsciously). Actually one of the great revelations I had was that my body didn’t like certain things: one of them was meat (my system shut down for over 3 whole days :gulp: . I am not espousing any type of doctrine here, it is up to the individual to decide what they eat.

Anyway, let me know if this is of help to you.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello jstein

For the kind of shoulder opening that you get in this pose the idea is to start with your arms in that position and then keep them there. This is interpreted by many in different ways, hence your question.

This is the way I look at it (and teach it :cheese:):
If you are being asked to lift up everything at the same time then for me it stands to reason that you can break what each body part does down to work out what they all will do.
* The legs go up. You aim to keep them how they started: long straight and strongly together and as high as you can.
* The head lifts and looks up
* The spine lifts up too. It goes from straight on floor to curved.
* The arms lift up. They are attached to your torso, so the way they move is also going to be affected by the destination of the spine/chest. Try to PRESERVE the relationship of your arms to your chest and shoulders. They start facing the same way as the space between your shoulders – flat on the floor. As you lift your spine your palms stay in that same relationship. Here’s where the tricky bit (to explain) comes in. You are ALSO lifting your arms up off the ground. If you isolated that movement and ONLY lifted your arms and didn’t lift anything else your arms would come off the ground at an angle. When you combine that movement with the curving up of your spine the arms APPEAR to be coming back in an angle. You don’t have to move them into a smaller angle. And you don’t consciously keep them perpendicular to the body. I want the shoulders to open so I ask my students to focus on the lift and preserving the relationship of the palms to the upper chest, and not trying to preserve the direction the palms will face, because that changes from person to person due to their OWN flexibility and ability.

If you are using purely the lifting movement I describe, when you lift your arms up off the ground as you lift your chest, it will only SEEM to create an angle with your body. It is almost an illusion. 😉 You don’t have to try to create it, it happens by itself.

So how do you do it? Have a little experiment first. Lie on the floor ready for the pose, and only lift the arms up as high as you can VERTICALLY only without any backward movement. Now try this again and lift everything up.

I hope that helps

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi jstein

Nice noticing: for both in and outside of the studio :cheese:

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi yoga-flo

Boy, don’t I know the feeling! Sometimes I can be so ravenous… Firstly I try to replenish some fluid, straight after class. That’s really a no-brainer :cheese:

On the way home or when I get home I want something instant. Raw foods work well as an appetizer. Munch on a carrot, an apple or some nuts while you are making your dinner!

Have something planned on hand, means you can make body-intuitive decisions and not instant fill-my-stomach-now decisions that you would not normally make. 😉

We often make miso soup with finely diced vegies, or spread miso paste on toast (yum) as snacks. I posted a great idea for what we call a Super Salad, on the blog. Super Salad Recipe

I know you hear it a lot but really listening to what your body wants is a skill worth both practicing and cultivating.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Margot

You show very good body awareness by your question. 😉

It is so common for one hip on one side to be up. I know it is hard but your mission is to try to roll that hip down. The hint there is to START with great alignment. Work on your hips being parallel to the mirror (and square to ground) first and then try to maintain that right through til you are in position. Yes, I know, not easy! The other thing is to put your effort into elongating yourself.

One hip is often more flexible than the other, which means that by adjusting the other leg into alignment (even if only tiny amounts of change) you may find some improvement.

If you find that your hips are really out of alignment then try first set at a smaller rotation getting to the point just before your hip rides up, then second set in the ‘T’ while working the hip.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂