Dirty Yoga Co.'s Tips and Tricks

How to Bend Over

This quick video tip shows you how to bend over forward. If you aren't aligned properly, you aren't getting the most out of a seated forward bend. In fact if you aren't aligned properly, you're cheating your hamstrings. Don't cheat your hamstrings, they'll get you back. The tighter your hamstrings, the better the chance of an injury. Tight hamstrings can also lead to a bad back. So get your yourself aligned and treat those hamstrings right. You'll need them later to pick things up--little things, like your kids or grandkids.

 

Loose Hips

Here is a gentle little hip stretch you can relax into to loosen those hips. It's a stretch you can hold for a while so it's good for everyone but especially good for those who have trouble sitting cross-legged, and they, more often than not, are guys. So, come on guys, get down on the floor, stretch those hips, and you'll be sitting pretty in no time.

 

Try A Little Crow (You Might Like It)!

If crow is a yoga pose that you find intimidating, this tip is for you. Using blocks, it shows you how to make that first leap into crow without the usual leap of faith required. Once you're up, you can work on staying up. Crow is one of those poses that are almost equal parts strength, physics, practice, and bravado. The blocks will help you a little with the physics and the bravado. You'll still need to build your strength, and you'll need to practice until the pose is in your body, but it'll be worth it. Crow certainly does look impressive, especially to your non-yogi friends. So, try this tip, keep practicing it, and you'll soon have something to crow about.

For more yoga tips, take a look around this Tips & Tricks blog, and for more yoga, come see us at Dirty Yoga Co.

 

Post-Run Stretch

Here's a five minute, post-run stretch for all you runners out there. It'll work for cyclists, and hikers, walkers, and cardio-machine users, too.

Twisted

Twists are hard because they're not something we do in everyday life. So, why do we twist in our yoga workouts? Well, as we grow older our spines lose flexibility, and we lose our range of motion. Both are things we'd like to keep. Twisting helps us do that. Here, in this video tip, is the low down on how to get the most out of your twists. That way you can grow old gracefully. So, twist and shout. Work it on out.  

Hold on to Summer!

Okay, so we've all wanted a perfect, lazy summer day to last forever. Or if not for ever, at least for a week or so. And we've all wished that summer would never end. But it always does. September rolls around faster every year. We can't hold on to summer so we (at Dirty Yoga Co.) are going to have to satisfy ourselves with holding on to our yoga poses instead. And, if you follow this little video, you can too. Take 15 minutes, hold a few poses a little longer than you'd like to, test your stamina and stability and build a little heat to replace that fading summer sun. We can't and don't want to look backward, but we can slow things down for just a few minutes, before we say bye bye summer. Besides, the stronger you come out of summer, the better you look in all that great fall fashion.

Try a little Hold now:

 

That was a taste of Hold. Hold is a challenging DirtyYoga® workout designed to build your endurance and balance.

Build a Bridge

A lot of people think they're doing bridge pose when they're not. They're doing something else instead. Let's call it lie-on-floor-and-lift-your-butt-up-a-bit pose. The problem is when you get bridge pose wrong, it tightens your back instead of opening it. Bridge pose is a backbend you'll find in many Dirty Yoga workouts that prepares you for deeper backbends. Use this tip to get it right, to go deeper and make more space in bridge pose. Build your bridge properly, and just like a real bridge, it'll get you from here to there. "There" being all the fancier backbends we'd like to use to win friends and influence people.

 

Crescent Pose

Here's how to get into crescent pose and how to get the most out of it while you're there. Crescent pose is great preparation for more advanced backbends because it's relatively easy to hold for a while. (If it's not easy to hold, you need to do it more.) Crescent also opens your front (psoas, hip flexors, and quads) as well as your back. Backbends are not just about flexibility in your back, they require flexibility in the front of your body, too. And crescent is an excellent way to get both. So go ahead, make like a crescent. Your body will thank you, if not immediately, then later when it can do all kinds of bendy things.

 

A Home-Made Yoga Strap

Straps, when used properly, help us to increase our flexibilty in poses where our lack of flexibility prevents us from doing much at all. Straps also let us hold those poses we wouldn't be able to hold otherwise. All great stuff, you say, provided you have straps just lying around at home. But you don't actually need a strap to use a strap. Here's a little video that shows you how to use a towel (something you should have lying around at home) as a strap. Happy stretching, people. Remember, it may hurt now but it'll feel really good later.

 

How to Build a Boat Pose

Boat pose is dreaded by many because it makes you dig deep in those abdominal muscles to find it, then hold it. Holding it is the hard part. But here's the secret about boat: it gets easier the more you do it. It's one of those no pain, no gain poses that will hurt less as you build your muscles and stamina, and your reward will be, well, that you can hold boat pose for longer. You'll also have a rock solid core that will make other yoga poses seem like a piece of cake. Here's how to do boat the right way. Hope this tip floats your boat: