Published: Nov 2, 2018 by Lucy Tennyson
We all know we spend too much time sitting. It’s something I talk about in class often enough. A sedentary lifestyle can lead tight hip muscles in particular, as well as to obesity and poor general health.
But, if you have tight muscles from sitting (and I’m thinking in particular of the hip flexors), it can sometimes make things worse if you do overdo certain yoga poses such as triangle, warrior two and bridge. This is because we haven’t got enough flexibility to go easily into these postures.
And this can put extra strain on the back muscles which have to overstretch in this area to compensate. And in turn, lead to back ache.
We worked on the hips in class this week, first by noticing where we felt stiff and tight when sitting cross legged. Then after warming up we started exercising the muscles around the hips (‘picking apples’ stretches and the moving leg in cat).
Once these hip muscles were warm and toned, we went into some deeper stretching on the floor (lunges and a banana stretch). Then we were ready to end the session with some stronger standing sequence – triangle, warrior 2, side angle and half moon – before finally coming down onto the floor for bridge and the option of an inversion.