Peak Pose: Revolved Triangle

Hi, today we're going to work on Revolve Triangle. So coming to a seat sitting on your heels, interlace your fingers, take them overhead, and press down through the heels. Then the side body, reach up, and then change the clasp with the fingers to the one that feels like you're not holding your own hand and try not to panic. Keep reaching through your side body here and getting some length. Lovely.

And then we'll come on down onto our backs. So you'll need a strap, we're going to stretch our IT band. What's important about this is keeping your pelvis on the ground. So it's not a twist, but we're getting a stretch along the side and into the outer hamstring. So put your strap around the lower part of your heel, find your boxer tape wrap, straight leg.

This doesn't work very well if you bend your knee, you don't get a whole lot of sensation. So really working on that straight leg, extend the bottom leg. The direction of my foot is moving in and then over towards my nose. I'm keeping my right sitting bone on the ground, so I move in slightly and over towards my nose. And I'm already getting sensation here, just with that little bit of movement.

So you might not need a lot to get into this area of the body and keep going in just a little bit and towards the face. And it can be pretty intense in the sensation and the tendency is to want to bend the knee. So really working to keep that straight and take a few more breaths here, keep moving closer towards the face and just across the center line of the body. Just barely getting there. You can even start to feel this in and around the glute and into the lower back even.

We'll release this, switch the feet. I like to do it in this funny, cute way. Release the other foot down. And so I like to joke that it's like you have to humble yourself about your hamstrings in order to straighten your leg. So really allow that to happen.

Ground through your sitting bone. Take your foot a little bit closer to your face and then towards the center line. It doesn't have to go very far in order for you to get sensation. And so it may not look like I'm doing very much, but there's a lot happening here for me. Some of us have more mobility here, so you might be able to go a little bit over farther.

But what I'd rather have you do than go over is go towards your face and then towards the center line. So if you have a lot of mobility, take the hamstring farther in and then move over versus just going into the twist. Another few breaths. And with each, maybe exhaling might be able to get just a little bit in, a little bit farther in. And then we release this.

We put our strap off to the side. We'll use it again in a little bit. But now we're going to come into a supported bridge pose. And you'll need one to two blocks. So depending on your back bending scenario, right, one to two blocks.

So knees are bent, feet are on the floor. Press down through the big toe ball mount and lift your hips. Option one is to stay here on a low block. You might do a medium. If you're wanting to do higher than medium, put it back down onto your low and then take in your second block, placing that underneath.

I have to come up onto my toes to get that to happen. But then I can reground through my feet. And this is just like a wider base of support for your lower back than trying to flip the block onto its little side mini side where it's like a little guy digging into your sacrum. This is nicer. It feels more comfortable.

I'm going to root my shoulders into the ground and I'm going to take my arms overhead here. And I'm going to lengthen through my side body. And so I can feel, right, my shoulders coming up around my head. And I'm going to keep rooting shoulder blades into the ground and inner thighs into the ground and try and get it along the side body. Another few breaths here.

If this becomes too much at any point, you can always bring the hands back down. Otherwise, we're here for a few more breaths. If you've got pain in the lower back, making sure to lower the seat on down. And then we'll take the hands down, bring your feet underneath yourself so that you can really root, lift yourself up, move the blocks out of the way. And then we'll come into downward facing dog.

So sitting up, I like to use my blocks here underneath my arms and coming into downward facing dog. So from your downward facing dog, step your right foot forward between the hands, ground through the back heel, straighten into that front leg. I like to take my blocks up to their higher setting and then I can always move them lower. Strong inner thighs, up and over the femur, find the inhale, and then exhale, start to come into the fold. And it might just be a little bit at a time, lowering the blocks as needed.

And then eventually releasing the head and softening hip crease, inner thighs working on both legs. This is our base for Trikonasana, for Revolve Trikonasana. So really working, thinking about what's going on here when we're in a more enjoyable version. And then we'll shift forward here, Bhutanasana, forward fold. Notice the difference between the two sides.

Step on back, downward facing dog, and then your left leg comes forward here. Step between the blocks, the hands, again start on your high setting, ground through your inner thighs, soften through the hip crease of that front leg, out to the side and back through the glutes as well. Get up and over the femur, and then fold if it's useful. So my two sides are pretty different, my left side is a little bit tighter than my right. And so I take my time here a little bit more, I don't round as much because I have a lot of sensation here, just being like this.

Take a few more breaths, thinking about the legs, and how would that impact here if we were in our Bhutanasana? What would need to happen? Again, we'll shift forward, Bhutanasana, noticing the difference of the first entrance. Inhale, extend, exhale, you might fold. So from here we'll step our left foot back, setting up our feet per side angle, bringing your block behind your foot on its tallest setting, and ground down through the hand.

I like to kind of check in with my body here, so I'm facing down, I'm letting this back hip rotate in, but I'm strong through my inner thighs and both legs. Hand goes up and over, shoulder blades are apart and they're broad, and the rotation comes from the spine versus the arm. Keep reaching through that entire side body, revolving from the navel. Inner thighs engaged, take the gaze down, bring the hands back to the blocks, step forward Bhutanasana, forward fold, and we'll come into side angle on the other side, so stepping your right foot back, having your block outside the ankle. The body's facing a little bit downward, setting up the legs here, strong inner thighs, soft hip crease.

And then the arm comes up and over, I'm broad in my shoulders, and then I'm coming to the rotation from my spine, so the tendency is to give our arm up here, and I really want to keep it this direction, so I'm focusing on side body length. Reaching our inner thighs, releasing that front hip crease in particular, really working on the length here, continuing to rotate from navel, bringing the gaze back down, stepping forward, inhale, exhale, folding Bhutanasana. In our left foot back, coming into Trikonasana. So straightening in through the front leg, our hands behind the ankle shin, the back pelvis is tilted in, sitting bone is moving back, inner thighs engaged, taking the arm on up overhead. Inhale here, exhale here, for this last breath we'll take the arm over the ear, so finding at the earline, the cheek, the face, and moving the arm up and over, really working from side body, and then finding that rotation from the navel.

This is really lovely here. Gaze comes down, step forward, Uttanasana, forward fold, finding your exhale, and straight into the other side, so we step back. Here with our right leg, left foot is forward, and my block for support, strong legs, soft front hip crease, finding the rooting through the feet, and then taking the arm on up. Breathing here, breath or two, rotating from the navel, and then I'm taking my arm over the ear, broad shoulder blades, strong internal rotation of my humerus, rotating from my navel. Keep reaching through the fingertips and that back pinky edge of your foot.

Another breath here, Gaze comes down, bending into that knee, stepping forward, Uttanasana, forward fold. So we've been upside down for a moment, so you really want to take a second before you stand up. Make sure you don't get dizzy. I like to bend my knees and bring my gaze up first. Take a breath like that, let some of the blood come on back, and then stand up.

Bring the arms on up overhead here, take the gaze up, reach through side body. We'll take our left hand down, keep the right hand up, find length here through your side body, and then like you're reaching into a deep cargo pocket, right, so we're moving down with one arm and up with the other, and then taking the side bend. Legs are working strong, and coming on up using the core, both arms come up, length through the spine. That's the difference in the two sides. Take the other arm down, we're reaching up left hand, so reach up, and then down right hand.

From there, with your exhale when you're ready, starting to side bend, exhale, keep reaching, down through your feet, a little bit further through the fingertips. Rising on up, both arms come on up, exhale, hands on the heart. Okay, so we're going to do a high lunge, but the focus here is to really work on our inner thigh. So you're going to use a block to step on. Sometimes this is a nice setting, and sometimes we might want it a little bit higher, so you might use even this.

I'm going to use that. If you are smaller in size, you might use less than this, and put my foot, it's a little bit tricky, right, to kind of get yourself situated. You're in a much shorter stance than you might normally be, and this is purposeful that it's wobbly, because you really want to work this back inner thigh. So I'm lifting up through the heel here, and I'm finding the inner leg line really strongly through here. So if I don't, I'm much more unstable, right, my ankle's moving around.

If I find it, I get the stability from moving from that line, and I have my whole body being held up by my internal strength here, and then maybe the arms come on up. So the purpose is really to identify that muscle. And then we lower the heel on down, and we'll switch sides, and just move your blacks over a little bit, awkwardly come into it, right. Get yourself set up, and then when you're ready, come on up onto the ball of the foot. Just notice what has to turn on, and it's not enough just to root from knee down, it's got to come from all the way into the pelvis.

There's this other space that happens, and there's other stability when we get there. But you're definitely balancing. There's not a lot of weight on this front foot, really working the back leg really strongly, which will come in handy when we do our trikonasana, reaching up through the side body. Another breath here, right, this is great if you have trouble with standing balances to work shapes like this on a daily basis, just really simple, okay. So move my blacks out of the way for just a moment.

We'll ground through our feet here, take your right foot nice and strong into the ground, and then slowly start to lift up the left leg. We'll breathe here for a moment, finding the balance, and then you'll take your right hand to the knee, and you'll start to twist. So this is a great place to stay, where you might release the arm back for a little mini revolved half moon, or moonrise, and come out, and we switch sides. So rooting and grounding through that left leg, slowly taking on up the knee. Left hand comes to the knee, hand to the hip, pause here, this can be enough, remember those inner thighs, right.

And then if you want more, you release the hand back, a modified variation. You can always take this too with a straight leg if you want to challenge yourself, release yourself down, arms come on up, inhale, exhale all the way down, forward folding, grab a hold of your blacks if you like that support for your downward facing dog. We'll step our feet back. Breathing here, find a full inhale, full exhale. And then we'll shift forward to come all the way down into our belly.

So this is, I call this seal pose, I don't know if it's a real pose, but I like it. And it's somewhere between cobra and upward facing dog, and it allows for more spaciousness in the front of the chest, which is how I like to do revolved trikonosana. So you take your hands a little bit farther out, mine are actually almost off my mat, you can even go farther than that. If you don't like backbends that much, your hands can move farther forward. The farther back your hands are, the bigger the backbend.

We allow the fingertips to turn out here, we find our inner thighs. And then we start to press down and we get up to straight arms. So sometimes what happens here is that the shoulders go up. So I'm working to find that first knuckle and opening through the chest. And then I'm moving, so moving these shoulders back, but not letting the shoulder blades come together.

I'm doing it from a different place, and I'm really using the line of the arms here to get broadness through the chest, releasing the pubic bone away from the navel, and then of course, our inner thighs. Breathing here, the gaze might even lift, it's like a cute little seal on the ocean. We saw those once, they were really cool. Me and my family, we slowly come on down, and we'll come back to our downward facing dog, and this should feel nice, neutral here, pressing down through the hands or the hands into the blocks, long side body, slight lower back curve, strong legs. Our next shape is a modified variation of revolved side angle.

You'll need a block and a strap. So for me, I use about this setting. Some people don't need a block, so if your arms are longer or the proportions between your arm and your legs are such that you don't need a block, that's possible. Or you might need a higher setting on your block, so feel free to adjust as needed. We'll start with our left foot forward.

You'll put your foot through the strap here. You're looking for the strap to be below the knee and above the elbow. So below the knee, above the elbow. You're wanting more or less wrist underneath shoulder and your knee parallel to the wall, and then we're tucking our back toe and lifting our back knee, recalling back to that inner leg line work that we did when our foot was on the block from the high lunge, so really pressing back to that back leg through that line, noticing if your glutes try and do the work for it. Mine love to do the work for the inner thighs.

My glutes are like, hey, babe, I've got this. But I'm like, no, I can do it, glutes. So I'm going to keep working that, take my thumb here to my hip, and I'm just pausing, letting this be an okay place to be. This shoulder or coracoid is moving down. This shoulder is moving up, right?

And I'm coming in from that. And then maybe if it feels useful, arm can come on up. And I already forgot about my inner thighs, so I'm just like, hey, ladies back there, do some work, and then they do. And it's awesome. And then I come on down, and I'm going to switch sides here.

So taking the strap off your left foot, moving the block over, putting your right foot in the strap. Again, it's below the knee and above the elbow. The difference here is that this is like a very supported twist, and your legs feel that support, but like your sacrum really feels that. So we're pressing down through our hand, we're finding that inner leg line, and we're taking our right hand to our hip. And this might be enough.

Again, this is a place to pause. You might stay here, you might just start to take the twist. Or maybe taking the arm overhead and keep rotating the left shoulder towards the body and the right shoulder towards the head. Another breath here, gaze comes back down, can lower the back knee down, take the strap on off here, and we'll come into our downward facing dog. Move this off to the side.

Releasing here, finding that strong side body, pelvis, slight tilt, inner thighs working. I come back down onto my knees, all the way down to my belly for round two of my seal pose. This time I'm going to bring my hands a little farther back, and before they were here, I'm moving them farther back. You might do that as well if you felt like you had a little bit more space. You press yourself up all the way until your arms are straight, and it's okay if your pubic bone comes up off the ground.

We find our inner thighs, we move the shoulders back, the chest through, release the pubic bone away from navel, and start to take the gaze up. It's a big release for the belly, another breath. We come back into our downward dog, it's a neutral shape. This pose next is called Bridges Cross. It's basically a downward revolved triangle.

You're going to take your right knee in towards your chest, and then you're going to take it out underneath your left arm, and then you're going to let the whole thing lower on down. Then you can move your blocks out of the way. Checking out your legs. There's a way to be here, and we can be really relaxed, but we want to have some engagement. You're not kicking someone in the face, but there's some integrity here through your leg line.

Our hands are facing the front of the mat. This might be more than enough breathing here. This is a great indicator of what's going to happen in your body, and where is it going to feel good to stop your revolved triangle? If you're laying down on the floor and that really bothers your back leg or your pelvis, that's an indicator that you're not going to want to cross over the leg line. For some of us, we might be able to come down into forearms.

That's where I stop. I don't even kind of even quite get that other forearm down. I can, but I have to compensate. Noticing if you're trying to come down and then what happens to your legs, so can you keep that integrity, and where do you really stop? Breathing here.

You've got gravity on your side, so it's a little bit easier and a little bit more accessible for most people. It's a big twist, though. Push yourselves back up onto our hands. You'll tuck that back toe, draw the leg in. Come back to downward dog just for a moment as a transition.

Coming into the other side, taking your left knee in towards the chest, and then shooting that out underneath the right arm, lowering the hip sign down. Then pausing here. Take a look at your legs. A lot of times we don't look at ourselves, so really just check it out. Where are my legs?

Are they straight? Are my knees bent? All of those things are good information. Notice how this is different from the other side. For me, it's pretty different, and I already know that I need blocks, which is this much difference in depth than the other side.

Those are things that I can use to really make my revolved chicken asana when it's standing, be something that really suits me and feels nourishing versus painful or uncomfortable or something I can't stand and I never want to practice. Take another few breaths here, and then I'm going to use my blocks. Tuck my back toe, draw my leg in, and breathe here, downward facing dog, and slowly bring my feet towards my hands, and come to tenasana, and then rise on up, taking my time. Here we are. We have made it to the land of chicken asana.

I don't know. A lot of people dislike this pose, and myself included. I am always working on ways in how I can change my relationships with postures. What I've found is that if I let this be more about the chest opening and more about the revolving than about where my hand goes onto the ground, so I'm taking the hamstrings out of it, I don't get as much pulling on my sacrum from my tight hamstrings, which means I don't get as much back pain, and then it feels like a really actually nourishing wonderful pose. So I don't know, you might try it this way.

This is going to be my suggestion, taking your block, low setting, high setting. And it's about in line with the back leg. So if we're left leg forward, the blocks are about in line with the back right leg, and our legs are straight. If you're a hyperextender, really working on finding big toe ball mount, moving the shin forward so your leg is straight, but not moving so much that it's getting into that microbend, finding that place in between. And then we're strong through inner thighs on both legs, that is what's supporting your back here.

We want to go up and over the femur, so we're lifting up and over. And I can already feel this, even at this point. So just coming down a little bit more is really as much as I'd like to go. And again, this is my more challenging side in this shape here. And I stop and I pause, and I bring my hand to my hip.

And this may be all I do some days. I'm really just working my legs, getting this glute to stop freaking out, which translates to my lower back freaking out. So that work is real. If you feel like you want to go further, you're pressing down here through the block. And we're starting to come into the revolve shape.

So the tendency here is to let things like this happen. And that's how I've gotten injured a couple times during this. So I'm really strong through my inner thighs, which is supporting my sacrum so that the twist is coming more from the spine and into the chest. And it's pretty all right here. Do I want to have lunch in this pose?

Probably not. But it's made its way into my practice, even when someone doesn't make me do it. So taking the gaze back down, bending into that knee, getting some support here underneath yourself. And then we'll switch sides. So I'll move my block situation over.

I'll take my right leg forward and my left leg back, again, setting up the foundation, finding those inner thighs, stabilizing the pelvis, checking in what wants to work here. What should I let go of? Where is my front leg? Can I find it straight? And then I'm drawing everything up to go over, taking that left hand down, pausing here.

My right hand comes to the hip, again, checking in, not letting things like this happen or this happen. We all kind of have different habits. So really finding that leg line, keeping the torso up and off. And then the twist comes from the back. So because I'm long, I need to sort of whoop up and along through my spine as I press down and revolve.

And, again, this is, like, pretty all right. And in particular, if you're someone who's pretty mobile in this way, it might be really interesting to find out what it feels like to do this in this really different way that's more strength-building, right, than flexibility. So we'll move these out of the way, and we're going to come on down onto our seat here for a bada canasana. And so I'll grab my blanket, and I'll sit down. So here we're just releasing some of that tension that might have been created in the pelvis from sort of drawing everything in and being really tightly held there.

So we're allowing some softness. We're not necessarily pushing or engaging through the glutes, but we're just kind of letting gravity do the work here. And then what should feel pretty nice is to bring your fingertips behind you. And so for me, in order to do that, I need to kind of bring my blocks behind me. It always creates a little bit more space for me.

And then I'm going to press down, and I'm going to open out through my chest. And this is like yum-yum, right? And chest gets a nice opening. It's nicer if your blocks are on your mat. They don't slip as much.

Breathing here. And then I'll release this. I'm going to use my blocks in a minute, so I'll have them off to the side. And I'm also going to use my blanket, but not right away. So I come on down onto my back here, bend my knees, plant my feet on the floor, and take a hold of my block here.

So again, this is one of those things where you might use one, or you might stop two on top of each other. For today, I'm going to just use one. The idea of this is to really reconnect and ground in a symmetrical shape, or a sacrum. So we're pressing down through our feet, lifting our hips up, placing the block underneath here. Hands are just resting along the sides.

And then I'm drawing one knee up, and then the other. This is a perfectly acceptable place to stay, right? And it can feel really nice to move the knees around and massage the sacrum. It should not be ab work. So if your legs are out here, it's going to feel like ab work, and that usually means either drawing the knees in closer or moving the block farther towards your feet.

And then if it feels useful, interesting, you can take your feet up overhead. And we're using this to really root in to the sacrum, into the pelvis. And we're here for a few breaths. And if you'd like to take it a little bit further, you might, I need to take my feet a little bit apart, but you might start to take a hold, it can be the thighs, it can be the calves, it might be pieced fingers around the toes. And I'm letting that whole backside of the body wash out in this nice supportive way.

So my butt's not coming up off the ground like in Halasana, I'm keeping it relatively on the block. And then I'll release this, bend the knees, pause there, put one foot on the ground and then the other. And then take the block out to the side. And then I'm going to take a hold of my blanket. And I'm going to fold it in half here, two times, so one, and then two.

And put it right down the center here, lined up with my seat so that my head ends up being on it. And then I'll take the bottoms of my feet together and my knees wide. And then I'll take my block, so little edge towards the little calf, big edge towards the larger part of the leg, the thigh, and the corner goes in the knee. And it's so comfy, right? Same thing on the other side.

I said it and then I did it differently, but now I've got it all set up. And then the arms can come out like a low V here. And you release on back. And so this is a really rusty situation here, right? Nothing to do except allow yourself to soften.

Place where you're holding tension, letting the ground support you. Finding a full inhale, full exhale. And so this might be a place where you pause if you're wanting to stay here much longer, if you're like, oh, yeah, I am happy, happy, totally hip-haws, right? And the way is if you feel ready to come up, you're going to help your knees lift up with your hands, plant the feet on the floor here, move your blocks out of the way. Sit up enough so that you can move your blanket out and then let it come back down or let yourself come back down onto the ground.

Feet go a little bit wide, knees come together, and we pause here, breathing, drawing femurs back in, grounding sacrum, letting the eyes close. This again is another place where you might pause and spend some extra time. Otherwise we're going to come into a supported variation of shilasana. I'm going to allow those femurs to move back into my body by bringing the blocks towards the edge of my mat on their medium setting. And I'm going to take this blanket and I'm going to roll it up and place it underneath my thighs.

So I'm purposely close to my seat so that my femurs are moving into the pelvis. I'm getting a little bit more lift. You can even set this up higher with your feet or have your feet on a chair. It can be really lovely here. And you might notice that this is really relieving for the lower back.

If you have a hard time in shilasana with your lower back, you might think about propping yourself up with the legs. So here we are resting. Taking a few moments here together. Checking in with the jaw. Letting the lips part.

Is there any residual tension in the body? Can you allow all of the support to hold you? The ground, the blanket, the blocks. And softening the ears away from the face. Letting the shoulder blades ground into the earth.

Letting the space, the center of the collarbones widen, broaden. And if you'd like to stay here for a little bit longer, again hitting pause. Being free to stay as long as you need. And whenever you're ready, and starting to bring yourself back into your room, you're going to come into your body. Move the fingers, the toes, and then we'll start to bend into the knees and plant the feet on the floor.

Pause here. Coming on over to your side. And again pausing there. Finding at least a full inhale, full exhale. We'll slowly press ourselves on up.

And to see bringing the hands to the heart, bowing the head on in. May the teachings nourish you. Thank you. Have a great day and have a nice day.