I Can't Get Into Lotus Pose! |

Hey Youtube! Denise here, nice to meet you! It's currently July of 2019.

For the past 1.5 years, I've been making instructional videos for Yoga teachers (primarily on Facebook and Instagram) that focus on the fascial lines, anatomy, alignment, and student progress and safety.

I'm currently in the process of uploading 150+ videos to this channel, which will be uploaded over the next month or so.

If you want to see the latest videos, please follow me below:

instagram.com/deniseyogaco
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A little bit about me:

I've spent my life learning everything I can about the Human body and movement - especially how to improve it! I started out with group fitness classes in the 80s, moved into personal training in the 90s, became a massage therapist in 2006, and ultimately became a Teacher and Director of a massage therapy college.

During that time I also studied Akhanda Yoga under Yogrishi Vishvaketu, and attained my ERYT 500. I taught Anatomy and techniques for his 200 & 300 hour trainings for the past 9 years.

My hope is to give Yoga teachers simple frameworks, concepts, and tools that they can immediately use in their classes to help their students make fast progress and learn to use their bodies confidently and safely!

As of July 2019, I'm working on transforming my "Movement Template" 3 day intensive into an online course. It's a massive undertaking, but the goal is to give teachers simple frameworks and systems that cover the most important things they need to know about safety, alignment, and anatomy. I bring together tested training principles, yogic technologies and years of researching and teaching about tissues and adaptation.

My system of activating fascial support lines to create stability and strength within yoga postures means no more needing to memorize dozens of cues for each posture!

You can find out more information here:

https://go.deniseyogaco.com/MTOnline
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If you have a question for me about a specific topic, Facebook or Instagram would be the best way to reach me for right now.

Thanks for watching, hope you enjoy the videos!

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FACEBOOK POST:

You can have a strong, beautiful and uplifting practice without ever getting into Lotus pose!

On the other hand, I love challenging the body and making even small gains in physical expression.

So, let me just say that if you find Lotus to be inaccessible or just barely accessible, you will probably be putting pretty severe compression and torque on the ankle, knee and hip if you drag yourself into that position and hold it for any length of time.

I have to talk in broad general terms here, but I want to give you some things to consider, so you can run your own experiment and see what happens.

What does full Lotus ask for?
Hip - external rotation, flexion, abduction
Knee - flexion, external rotation
Ankle - plantar flexion
Hind foot - supination

If none of that means anything to you, no worries! Basically, we need a lot of range of motion at the hip, the knee and the ankle/foot.

BUT, this has to START with the hip. If we don't have enough hip movement, we will try to borrow it from the knee and ankle/foot.

In this video I suggest these steps:

1. Myofascial release with a Yoga Tune Up ball.
What do I mean when I say "soften everything up"?
Compression and shear with balls or other tools can temporarily reduce stiffness and resistance in the tissues, making it feel better to lengthen them. (that's called increasing "stretch receptivity")

2. Joint mobilization
This just helps lubricate the joint surfaces, allowing a fuller expression of range of motion. Keep the movement loose and flowy.

3. Isometric contractions (no movement), isotonic contractions (movement), and eccentric loading to reduce tissue resistance in the short term and improve tissue resilience in the long term (so it's less prone to injury).

Hmmm, I generally don't recommend stretches, just because I get a better faster result with these other techniques. If you want to do stretches, go for it! Just do all the other things first!

All the steps you take on the way to Lotus are more important than actually attaining the posture! We learn the most while we experiment and observe!!

Hey, try this out, and let me know it goes!