Want to Intensify Your Yoga Practice? Try Yoga at the Wall.

I stated what I stated: the wall is a prop, similar to a block, strap, or bolster.

I feel there’s a sturdy false impression that utilizing the wall is seen as a solution to make sure poses much less difficult. That positively may be the case, corresponding to in Legs Up The Wall (Viparita Karani), which is a relaxing and easy restorative posture. However the wall may also be a device to intensify your expertise of many poses.

Working towards yoga on the wall can present help, stability, and a chance to reinforce your follow. Any clean wall can be utilized to amplify sensations, isolate particular muscle mass, and take your follow up a notch.

My perspective shifted once I began to think about the wall as a prop that could possibly be utilized to reinforce my follow, relatively than one thing that makes poses simpler. Should you’re practising yoga at dwelling or are a trainer seeking to shake issues up in school, the next postures may be enhanced by counting on the wall.

12 Methods to Intensify Your Yoga on the Wall

1. Reclined Determine 4

Though it’s a typical restorative pose on the wall, Reclined Figure Four may also be intensified on the wall. Scoot your self nearer to the wall to go deeper into the stretch. For extra depth, lean the knee of your non-wall leg away from you. For  added core work, press via your foot that’s in opposition to the wall, interact your core, and elevate your hips barely off the mat earlier than decreasing them again down.

2. Plank

You could have heard a trainer cue “Press via your heels” throughout Plank Pose. This difficult wall variation ensures that you just interact your muscle mass in all of the supposed methods. Sit along with your again on the wall and spot the place your heels land. Place your fingers there and press your toes flat on the wall as you come right into a Plank place. This engages your core muscle mass much more than a daily plank, whereas additionally difficult your stability. From there, you’ll be able to attempt lifting one hand off the bottom after which the opposite, and even one foot away from the wall after which the opposite. Or you’ll be able to merely focus in your Plank and remembering to breathe.

3. Hand-to-Large-Toe Pose Variation (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana)

I like to show Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose on the wall to take a number of the balancing points out of it. Usually college students have hassle stretching their lifted leg all the best way to the facet as a result of they lose their stability or just can’t attain their toes. By urgent your  lifted foot in opposition to the wall, you’ll be able to expertise that very same stretch alongside the again of your leg. Concentrate on standing tall and urgent away from the wall to stability. From there, you’ll be able to attain to your huge toe along with your hand…or not.

4. Boat Pose (Navasana)

I like bringing this posture to the wall. By urgent resistance into the wall along with your toes, you’ll really feel that one thing further in your core. Sit down and place your toes on the wall in entrance of you, then lean again. From right here, you’ll be able to attain your arms alongside your legs or take them overhead. Relying in your desired depth in Boat Pose, you too can play with retaining a bend in your knees,  straightening your legs, or bringing your toes additional up the wall. This one is hard!

5 and 6. Triangle Pose (Trikonasana) and Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana)

Whereas the wall can be utilized so as to add depth to postures, it might probably additionally enable you to discover alignment that’s, and I’m hesitant to say this, what is taken into account to be “extra conventional” alignment.

I like to think about Triangle Pose and Half Moon Pose as sister poses and I educate them alongside one another when doable. If a scholar doesn’t really feel like balancing, Triangle will give them a lot of the identical sensations and advantages as Half Moon.

It’s quite common in each of those shapes for individuals to not lean again sufficient, which means you could attain one arm overhead however hold a small spherical or hunch within the again. I like to make use of the cue, “Create one lengthy line out of your backside hand to your high hand, opening via the chest.” Should you’re going to elevate your again leg for Half Moon, I like to contemplate the cue “Stack the hips one on high of the opposite.”

A good way to convey all of this collectively is to truly follow each these postures along with your again in opposition to the wall. The primary time I did this, I couldn’t imagine simply how far I needed to lean again so as to obtain the alignment that the trainer was speaking about. The wall allows you to expertise this with out toppling onto the particular person behind you in school.

7 and eight. Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III) and Standing Splits

Warrior 3 and Standing Splits additionally work effectively collectively. By offering help in Warrior 3, the wall takes the balancing facet out of the pose and lets you deal with getting—and retaining—your leg greater than you usually would.

For Standing Splits, you may face away from the wall, place your fingers on the bottom or blocks, and use the wall equally to assist convey your leg greater than you’d with out the help.

9. Chair Pose (Utkatasana)

How usually do you hear a yoga trainer cue, “Sit again in Chair Pose”? (For me, it’s so much!) It may be actually difficult to maintain your higher physique upright on this pose. However by leaning your again in opposition to the wall and sliding your self down into Chair Pose, you’ll be able to faucet into that alignment that’s most difficult and helpful.

Chances are you’ll discover that this model, usually referred to as a “wall sit” in exercise courses, intensifies the pose greater than sufficient for you, though you’ll be able to mess around with making it much more difficult by bringing your arms overhead.

10. Certain Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana)

This pose is commonly practiced with the higher physique relaxed and leaning ahead, which brings the stretch into the low again, hamstrings, and hips. However by sitting tall along with your again in opposition to the wall and releasing your knees towards the ground in Bound Angle, you’ll be able to isolate the hip and internal thigh muscle mass to accentuate the stretch.

11. Frog Pose

One other nice hip opening pose that leverages the wall to amp up the depth is Frog Pose. By putting your toes in opposition to the wall, you can begin to scoot nearer and nearer to the wall for a deeper, extra intense stretch within the hip flexor and abductor muscle mass.

12. Reclined Splits

A posture from my dance class days is Reclined Splits. It’s just like Legs up the Wall, however as an alternative of retaining your legs vertical, you allow them to slide aside into center splits. Counting on the help of the wall and the delicate power of gravity in your legs lets you chill out deeper into the pose. You may make this pose extra intense by putting actually mild stress along with your fingers onto the tops of your thighs. Or, you can also make it much less intense by putting blocks underneath your thighs to help them.

Perhaps the subsequent time you end up practising in an area with a clean stretch of wall or instructing to fewer college students than common, you’ll give yoga on the wall a attempt.

About Our Contributor

Ellie Sheppard (she/her) is a yoga trainer based mostly in Ottawa, Ontario, with a ardour for creating protected, welcoming yoga courses for all our bodies and expertise ranges. Coming from a background in dance, Ellie was first drawn to yoga as a solution to combine motion and creativity again into her life with a mixture of energy, stability, and mobility for harm prevention. Ellie is a agency believer that there isn’t a full expression of any yoga pose—there may be solely your expression of the pose. Her mission as a trainer is to encourage college students to discover their very own expression of a pose so it feels good and welcome in every particular person physique. Outdoors of yoga, you may discover Ellie falling off her paddleboard, faucet dancing, and spending time at native espresso outlets, breweries, and vineyards.