Working the hips

At yesterdays yoga class we focused on hips. Working on the hips can really trigger a lot of old holding patterns and a lot of emotions can come up. A beautiful way to end 2010. Letting go of old stuff and inviting the new.

We worked a lot with deep lunges all through the sun salutations and then deepening them into Eka pada rajakapotanasana. I'm working on going towards the full rajakapotanasana with my arms above my head holding on the foot. Now I manage easily to place the back foot in the elbow and the binding the front hand with the backhand. Making a firm stable base by tensing and drawing the back an front legs towards each other to get good muscle activation is quite tiresome but dose the trick. I will try a block under one hip to support the base more since I tend to fall to one side going for the full rajakapotanasana.

A new asana for me is a deep lunge with knee on the back leg on the floor, holding the foot with the reverse hand. Making a twist in the upper body makes a beautiful stretch in the hip as well as in the back - a new favorite pose.

Janu sirsansana - stretshing over both the outstretched leg then the bent one, twisting your spine, looking up towards the roof.

Then wild thing! Really fun and liberating.