Your Manipura Chakra

or another reason why Core Strength is a good idea.

Throughout the year we have been looking at incorporating the philosophical ideas of yoga tradition into our physical yoga asana practice to support our health and wellbeing even more efficiently.  With the arrival of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, it was wise to include more core strengthening yoga asana into our yoga classes.  The idea behind is that the energy of spring supports or governs our third chakra, manipura chakra, often also called our solar plexus chakra.  This is the physical area around our belly button.  Surely, we work with bandhas, our energy locks, physically our toilet muscle, pelvic floor muscles and lower abdominal muscles, all throughout our more yang style yoga practices anyway.  The intention goes a bit further to include even more front, side, and back core strengthening asana at this time of year to stimulate our digestive system, to fire up our internal strength and willpower and to gain greater physical core strength.  So for your home practice and to give you a glimpse of what happens in yoga classes, enjoy this video of plank variations.  The plank pose in all its variations is a brilliant functional exercise to strengthen our core.  Practice on your forearms in low plank if you experience any wrist pain.  And of course you switch on all your core muscles, lengthen your tailbone, engage your thigh muscles, breathe smoothly and softly, have an inner and outer smile, your jaw is soft, your eyes are soft and you experience joy.  And if your breath changes, you stop or modify.  So here you see plank, plank knee dips, plank leg raises and plank side dips.  And you hear the water fountain.

Happy practicing, see you on the mat.  Let me know how this feels for you.  Enjoy a healthy season of Spring.