Type of Pose: Core Stabilizer

Benefits:

Strengthens the arms, wrists, and spine | Tones the abdomen

Step by Step:

  1. Start in Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog). Inhale, draw the torso forward until it aligns parallel to the flow. See that the wrists are directly underneath the shoulders, feet hip-distance apart and heels stacked over the toes.
  2. Lengthen the tail bone toward the heels and lift the low belly toward the heart, engaging your core. Bring a slight external rotation to the upper arms so that the eyes of the elbows come forward, press your outer arms inward, and then seal the thumb and index fingers to the floor. Hug the shoulder blades onto the back and then spread them away from the spine. Lift the back of the heart and spread your collarbones away from the sternum.
  3. Internally rotate the thighs and press them up toward the ceiling, as you resist your tailbone down toward the floor and lengthen it toward the heels. Extend the sternum forward as you press your heels back, so that you feel the body getting long and strong. Lift the base of the skull away from the back of the neck and look straight down at the floor, keeping the throat and eyes soft.
  4. Plank Pose is one of the positions in the traditional Sun Salutation sequence. You can also perform this pose by itself and stay anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute.

Beginner’s Tip:

To help strengthen the arms in this pose, loop and secure a strap around your upper arms, just above the elbows. Push the inner arms out against this strap. Release the outer arms from the shoulders to the floor, and lift the inner arms from the bases of the index fingers to the shoulders.

Practice with the knees on the floor, lower belly lifted and engaged.

Deepen the Pose:

Open the space between the shoulder blades. As you press the outer arms inward, push the inner borders of the shoulder blades into this resistance. Make sure you don’t narrow across the collar bones to do this. This is a useful action to learn for poses like Bakasana (Crow) and Sirsasana (Headstand).

 

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