Vinyasa Yoga Wide Leg Forward Bend Pose

Video Transcript

"So we're going to look at Wide Leg Standing Forward Bend, and I love this pose. If I could do this pose an hour in class and get away with it, I would, and variations and variations, because in this posture, I get to be upright with my legs, and have my spine perfectly upside down and supported. It's kind of like head balance, but I don't have to hold up my body weight on the top of my head. This inversion of the spine is so wonderful. It creates so much space, and refreshes you so much, so we start with the feet wide apart, and with the feet wide apart, the skeleton allows the pelvis to turn over, almost a hundred and eighty degrees. That is, you can almost come completely straight up and down between your own feet, and people do. When you're first coming in to this pose, it's a little bit, probably more like this. While you're first learning it, and the legs are building up their flexibility, and so you're still getting a nice, you can, you have the opportunity if you don't hold your head up. You get a nice inversion through the neck, and you begin to get a foretaste of what the traction, the gravity that I'm talking about, the weight of the head and that pulling down, can do for the spaciousness of the neck, and then down the spine. As your flexibility increases in the legs, you're going to find, guess what? more and more of your spinal vertebrae will come into this upside down, yet aligned orientation with each other. Now some folks try to rush the job. Take the feet really wide apart,and then put the head down. You can see it's not the same thing,not as good, won't work. Others try to bend the legs. Neither will work. The only thing that's going to work, is to be patient. Do this pose a lot, and let your legs stretch."