Standing Yoga Poses - Yoga downward dog pose

Part of any Vinyasa Flow practice is Downward Dog and if you've never practice yoga, you've probably seen this before. In Sanskrit, it's Adho Mukha Svanasana. And easy way to learn to engage yours shoulders before even going into Downward Dog is the simple exercise. Just taking your hands, and reach them towards the ceiling. As you bring the hands up, let the shoulder blades fall down and lock into your back. So just try that a few times. Lift the hands up, you can flex the hands towards the ceiling and let the shoulder blades engage down in back. And you should feel a nice lock in feeling in your shoulder blades. So press in towards the ceiling, shrug them on, let the shoulders come down and back and hug in. So keep that in mind as you start to do Downward Dog. So come down towards your mat, and go back into table top position, bring your hands nice and wide but shoulder width apart, elbow point facing towards one another. Slowly push your sits bones towards the ceiling and then back. If you can't touch your heels you can use a blanket, like I am or if you're a little more flexible in your ankle joints, and it's actually has nothing to do with flexibility. It's actually the bone against bone. If you can't touch your heels towards the ground, it's not, you may never be able to do it. It's actually the limitations within the joints that may keep you from going there. So, what you want to do, is remember that nice engage feeling you have, so shrug those shoulders up and then lock your shoulder blades in. Again, shrug your shoulders up and lock your shoulder blades in. You should feel your heart slightly melt towards the earth. The next part of Downward Dog is wear its a weight in your hands. Spread your fingers nice and wide, you pull too much weight into your wrist, you will get wrist pain from this pose. So you want to try to keep the fingertips suctioned cup, all five fingers on each hand, suctioned cup towards the floor. And again, shrug the shoulders up and back. The next thing is breathing. It's really important to remember to breath. So what you need to so is on an inhale, lift the sits bones up towards the ceiling, and on exhale, lengthen down through your back. Shake your head yes or no a few times and look towards your navel. And then slowly come back into table and back down. This will eventually become a resting posture as you build strength, just as Child's Pose is. And that's Adho Mukha Svanasana or Downward Dog.