How to do a Torso Stretch in Yoga

Video Transcript

"GINA KENNEDY: Bharadvajasana is a great stretch, the torso stretch, which helps your hips, calves, and can help alleviate stiffness in the low back. It's also [INDISCERNIBLE] is good for indigestion. So Faith is going to help me demonstrate this and we're going to use blocks to help her come into it a little bit better. So, she's going to drop her hips over to one side and her feet over to the other side--yeah, good--bringing her foot into her ankle, ankle into her arch. Good. Now she's going to lengthen up and she's going to take one block to her hip and one block behind her back. Good. She's going to inhale, lengthen, and then as she exhales she's going to rotate using the blocks, and if those are too high, you can turn them down. You have to play with the blocks to find the proper length for you. But you want to be able to press your entire hand into it. So, inhale, lengthen up, elevating the ground through the use of the block as you press your hands into the ground, and then rotate into the torso so it's stretched just a little bit deeper. Good. Inhaling in and exhaling. So, with each inhale, you find just a little more length, and with each exhale you rotate and move into that length that you found."