Starting Thanksgiving off with a great hot flow class

My studio offered a 9:30 hot class this morning.     What a great and hard class.   I think that the instructor was trying to make us pay for every bit of pie to be eaten .     It was a basic flow class with tons of intense standing work, lots of chaturangas  and no breaks.   The kind of class that if you are ready for can be great.   It hot (95 degrees when we started and it only goes up from there) and keeping your breath with the poses was not easy.     She even snuck in a Bird of Paradise in the midst of it all  (well maybe not snuck in).   Too bad I cannot get my legs very straight in that pose.     I feel pure, whole and ready for the day..

It is funny about some classes, you look forward to going and when you are in the middle of it, you look forward to it ending. 

Bird of Paradise

Basic Chaturanga Flow - Not taught very much in classes.

Chaturanga is part of a four  pose flow that brings you from Plank to Down Dog.  It is part of the Sun Salutation sequence,   but many times,   you are asked to do a flow when moving from pose to pose.

The flow involves Plank, Chaturanga Dandasana,  Up Dog and then Down Dog.  (See the flow below).   It is a great flow because it is a core,  shoulder,  arm, pelvis and hip strengthener.   It is also great because the breath for each pose is very self evident.  The flow also allows you to stay in Down dog for up to five breaths to relax and return to your regular breathing.   This is very important after an intense standing sequence, for example,where when you are done,  you go through a flow to go to down dog to relax for five breaths.   



For a long time,  I was doing my Chaturanga flow incorrectly (well less incorrectly than I am doing it now because no matter how long your practice,  you can always get better) .     I was under the impression that when you go down from Plank to Chaturanga,  you were supposed to bring yourself all the way to the ground and then go up to Up Dog.    I see lots of people do this but a few months ago , one of my instructors went through the process of explaining the step of going down  (sort of like a reverse pushup where you slowly go down with your elbows to your sides) and then before your chest hits the ground,  you flip your feet and rise up to Up Dog.    This was the first time in 2 years anyone explained how to do this.     In the past week,  with people new to Yoga in each class that I was in,   not one teacher explained the basics of this very fundamental and critical linchpin in the flow of Yoga.  I especially saw the new people doing it somewhat wrong.      I am glad that I was shown how to do it better and I really wanted to stop and say,  this is how you do it.   But then, that is not my place is it.



 
 (I will explain my feelings about teaching versus instructing in a different post) . 

Kudos to the one who took the two minutes to show us how to do our flow better. 




Here is a link to a good video flow

Plank

Chaturanga

Upward Facing Dog

Downward Facing Dog