Downward Facing Dog

Welcome back. Thank you Winifred, I'm Matt and Julie for literally still being here. So we're gonna play with the exploration of Downward Facing Dog, Adho Mukha Svanasana, which we joke around here is the hardest working yoga pose in yoga today and what we mean by that is it essentially ends up being incredibly overused and overdone and because of that we could do an entire workshop on this posture but again the purpose of this particular show and this particular experiment is just to start to get used to seeing these shapes in different ways. Again the practice of yoga is to increase our capacity of seeing not narrow it and when we get into narrow definitions of how things are supposed to look well then we cut ourselves off from a wealth of opportunity. Okay so let's do it like this what we'll do is we'll come on to all fours so can each of you come on to all fours and take a moment to look at your hands and as you look at your hands and spread your fingers wide okay as you spread your fingers wide can you take a moment to appreciate your hands like all of you in this particular video have all your fingers have both your hands like awesome job okay let your elbows relax and as you let your elbows relax what you'll be able to do is you'll be able to get more rotation of your shoulders back and down a little bit easy in the neck okay and then just a little bit of rooting through that that index knuckle and just the slightest tone of the arms towards each other so you feel a little bit of engagement in the outer pec region okay we'll find plank pose tuck your toes under lift up through the backs of your legs wiggle back through the feet beautiful and now gently as you're ready root through the index and press back reaching your sit bones towards the sky so sweet now walk your dog off a little bit because it feels good so let one knee bend let the opposite leg straighten do that a couple times okay beautiful so nice and then eventually all of you just kind of settle in to the version of downward-facing dog that feels the most comfortable for you today and then just see the the request here relax your neck just a little bit the request here is can you please notice how you know Matt is intelligently choosing to let his knees stay a little soft okay that allows his hips to stay high can you notice again remember Winifred our our cheerleader her full time yoga teacher how it's quite easy for her to keep her legs straight and then our our sweet yogini friend Julie who if she let her if she chose to let her knees bend like Matt's doing yes could get a little bit more length easier okay last few moments beautiful okay all of you drop down child's pose for a moment take a break rest yes and then I'm gonna let Julie cuz Julie's been working hard the last couple of video shots really will stay in child's pose and what I'll ask is that we'll just hone in a little bit more on on Matt and Winifred just to see if maybe maybe we can get a few more details okay so will both of you please find your way into downward-facing dog in the way that you like to and just watch like watch how two yogis get into downward-facing dog like wiggle and wobble as you want this is one of the beautiful things about video okay video shows the process photography like like makes it seem like it's over okay like watch what they do with their shoulders watch what they do with their hands what they choose to do with their feet and like really like notice like the difficulty with alignment instructions is you'll hear an alignment instruction of bring your heels to the floor and you can see very clearly that yes Winifred because of the particular design of her hamstrings her heels find the floor Matt because of the particular design of the angle of his pelvis and his hamstrings his heels they're moving towards the floor this becomes really important when instructing the posture now just a couple more things just to notice like just to pay attention to is just notice like how the breadth of distance yeah that Matt has in his shoulders and just notice I'm probably making it so you can't see let me see if I can get a little better here just notice the breath of Winifred shoulders few more moments like just start to learn how to look at a posture as opposed to try to make a posture what you already know it to be you guys look both so beautiful thank you okay come on back child's pose both of you okay so again like the yogis continually have said that our problem is that we're not seeing clearly enough that what's causing us the greatest mischief is this quality known as a vidya a vidya not seeing clearly enough now that little root in their vid vid which vidya which means to see clearly vid is the same route that we have in the word vision in the same route as we have in the in the word video one of the grand experiments that we're involved in right now is how can we use this medium of video to help improve our vidya our ability to see clearly which means to be able to see more possibilities not less okay so as you find your down dog whether that's in your practice or you're in your teaching just you know report in let us know what you're finding and we'll continue this conversation together namaste