SPECIAL SPLIT series for all levels

The Dancing Warrior Flow is a fun variation of the Sun Salutation. Flow around Warrior 2, Triangle Pose, Pyramid Pose and Twisted Triangle. These basic standing poses build up lower body strength - very important to hold good postures and Yoga poses. Train core strength also with the variation of lifting the arms up in these poses.

A Yoga flow that is similar to, but softer than the Sun Salutation. Yoga poses to gain flexibility in the lower body. In this class: Anjaneyasana (low lunge stretch) and Hanumanasana (split) refer to Hanuman, the Monkey God in Indian mythology. Anjaneyasana means the pose of the son of Anjane (Hanuman's mother). In the story, Hanuman always serves his best friend, king Ram, in a kneeling pose (Anjaneyasana). When Sita, Ram's wife was kidnapped by a demon and to an island, Hanuman helped to take her back by making a huge step (a split) to land on the island. Hanumanasana is an awesome and the most thorough stretch for the lower body. It looks ¨impossible¨ but trust the progress! No judgment about how you look, only observe and recognize. Next time you do it, you will see it!

Moon Salutation class but this time with the wall to improve Standing Split. Put the Split in another orientation (Standing). Try Hanumanasana and track your progress. Also, prepare the flexibility for the upcoming balance Yoga poses.

Learn this important action in hamstring stretch: pelvic anterior tilt. The pelvis, or your big hip bone, can tilt forward and backward. Namely pelvic anterior tilt and pelvic posterior tilt in anatomy. Imagine your pelvis like a bowl of water, if you tilt it forward (anterior) and pour water forward, your sitting bones will be lifted up (think of pointing your buttock up and back). And sitting bones are where the hamstrings attach to. When you lift the sitting bones up that way, your hamstrings will be lengthened. That's why pelvic anterior tilt is an important action in hamstring stretch. Let's do it many times today and see results right in this class. Stretching is not easy but it's very simple. First, you target the muscle group you want to stretch. And then you just stretch it out, again and again, until it becomes more flexible.

Learn Hip Square to target stretching the hip flexor group. This class is about stretching the back leg in Hanumanasana (Split). The muscle group that we target here is called the hip flexor group. This group flexes our hips, which means every time you bring your legs in front of you, hip flexor group is being shortened. How many activities in the day do we do that? Probably all. That's why this group is tight in most people. The hip flexor group has its biggest muscle and also the muscle that do most of the job: Psoas. This muscle is very large but hidden inside our body. It runs from our spine, through our pelvis, and down to our thigh bones. We can't touch it. In mostly everyone, it's tight. The other related muscle group is the quads. You can touch this one, it's your front thigh muscle group. Quads mean 4 as there are 4 muscles in this group, and one of the quads is a hip flexor. To target the stretch to the hip flexors, we need to keep our hips ¨squared¨.

An Over Split is something that is even more than a Split. A Split that is more than 180 degrees, often done with blocks underneath one foot or both feet. Wait?! Then how can we do that if we can't even do a 180-degree split? Just like any hard Yoga poses, we don't need to do the pose perfectly to gain its benefits. Support yourself with your full Yoga gears (blocks, pillows, wall) and gain full control of your body. Master the stretch and make it work for you and bring benefits to your body: stretching out the big tight muscle groups in the lower body. Not at all the other way round: become a slave of the pose and allow it to ¨torture¨ you. If possible, prepare 4 blocks for this class. If you only have 2 blocks, you can find a bunch of books in the house and cover a blanket around them to elevate your front foot. Otherwise, you can still do the class with 2 blocks. However, it would be less supported, and slightly less fun.