Tips & Tricks Thread

[jordan]

I thought it might be handy if we had a thread to record and share any 'aha!' discoveries, no matter how small, (resulting from exploring a new (micro)movement, a slight variation, a change in focus...) members of this community make during their own limbering and stretching.

An example of this is how in the Slow Flow 2 series for hip flexor stretching, @oliviaa starts off in a semi upright position and extending the arm up into the air to stretch the torso.  that simple move made a massive difference in the speed and comfort in relaxing my hip flexors during my daily limbering, and a topic that might one day develop into a nice list of similar nuggets could do a lot of good for our practices!

 

I have been playing with one myself for a while that I would like to share (it would be bad luck to start such a thread without a contribution of my own..).  I've been spending time almost every day exploring the skandasana and cossack squat/Pu Bu, shifting my weight around, rotating my torso, etc to try and loosen things up and become friends with these positions.  

This might already be common knowledge, but I found stretching the calf of the extended leg while in the bottom of the cossack squat (with the foot pointed up) by pulling the toes up towards the knee in either a C-R or 'pulse' fashion both helps me get lower to the ground with less overall tension and feelings of discomfort, and gives a nice luxurious feeling to my perennially tight and cranky calf muscles.  Hopefully some other members get something from playing around with this little movement.

 

:-)

[oliviaa]

Great thread idea @jordan Here's a refinement on the 'sweeping the front foot through the floor' C–R in the bolster piriformis stretch. Leading with the little toe has always helped me to feel the contraction deep in the hip: pressing out through the big toe – so inverting the foot – prior to starting the contraction increases the effectiveness of leading with the little toe hugely.