How To Do Iyengar Yoga With The Down Dog Pose Video

Iyengar yoga builds poses from the ground up. Learn how to do Iyengar yoga belts and the Down Dog Pose in this video clip.

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Come into Table Top position
Curl toes under
Lift knees off ground & extend arms
Breathe properly

About this Author

Cindy Mastry has practiced yoga since the age of eight, and also has a background in Jazz and Ballet. Active in the fitness industry for nearly twenty years, she teaches aerobics, kickboxing, and yoga at many fitness centers in the Tampa Bay area. Cindy trained with 84 year-old Master Yogi Monk, Baba Hari Dass at the Mt. Madonna Center in California and owns/operates "Yoga Etc Studio" in St. Petersburg, Florida. Cindy teaches yoga to people of all ages and experience levels and at very competitive rates.

CINDY MASTRY: Namaste. My name is Cindy Mastry, and in this clip Faith is going to help me demonstrate how to do Iyengar yoga. Iyengar yoga is a very detail-oriented type of yoga that builds poses from the ground up. So, Faith and I are going to convey this to you with using the down dog. So I'm going to have Faith come into table top. She's going to be on her hands and knees. She's going to bring her knees underneath her hips about hip-width distance apart. She's going to spread her fingers very wide. Now, I'm going to ask Faith to bring her hands forward, one hand print, and we're going to build this down dog by the ground, what touches the ground, and then bring it up. So, she's going press into the middle to the thumb of her--middle finger to thumb that L of the hand, and she's going to try to press into her finger pads and all the parts of her hand to take the weight out of the wrist. Good. Now I'm going to ask Faith to curl her toes under. She's going to inhale in and as she exhales, she's going to lift her knees but keep her knees bent and press herself back. So now using the pressure in the hands, she's going to inhale, lengthening through her hands and now she exhales, extending through her tailbone, so that she can feel this energy rising up through her armpits all the way down her spine to her tailbone. I'm going to ask Faith to inhale in, tilt her tailbone up and her whole pelvic girdle up a little bit more, leave it there, straighten her legs, come up to her tippy-tippy toes, and then as she exhales, she's going to descend her heels down slightly out and then up. Good. So she's pressing through her heels. She's pressing through her hands. The tailbone is the uppermost point and breathing, lengthening, trying to press her chest towards her thighs and widen out through her shoulder blades. So in this method of starting from the bottom, going through details of every single little part of the pose, this is how Mr. Iyengar comes to his style of yoga which is all about proper alignment, details, and honoring your body.

How to Do Iyengar Yoga With the Down Dog Pose Video

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