Plank Pose

Okay, here we go with a little plank pose. Thank you again for being here, Alana. So we'll look at the essentials of the alignment and then take a little pause and return for some adjustments, right? So Alana will come into it and here's what we're looking for. The shoulders are in line with the wrists, not pitching forward and not dropping back.

The belly is strong and engaged. Alana, would you do me a favor and just sink through the belly and the hips, right? There's a collapsing of the low back here. We do not want that. So lift again.

There it is. Beautiful. Energy is awake through the legs. Energy is moving out through the soles of the feet. And then energy is moving out through the neck and the crown.

And Alana, again, would you do me a favor and just drop the head? So we see this sometimes, the head falls and the neck collapses. In which case, would you look forward a little bit so the neck is in line with the spine? Beautiful. Okay, you can go ahead and come down and rest for a moment.

Thank you. Okay, so those are the essentials of the alignment. Now we'll move into a few physical adjustments as well as some verbal cues to help facilitate the student deepening into the posture. All right, when you're ready, come on back. All right, so again, would you think a little through this hips and the belly?

All right, I don't love touching the belly of students. It's a really vulnerable spot. If you feel very comfortable with your student and you'd like to, you can take just a few fingers to the deep belly and lift up. Or you can simply say, engage through the core, lift through the center and send the tailbone towards the heels, okay? If you're seeing the legs are collapsing a little, you can just take a few fingers under the thigh and say, lift and engage through the legs, fabulous.

You can also place a palm on the soles of the feet and say, press back into my feet, right? Just to engage and wake up the legs a little bit, nice. And then again, if the head is falling, would you let it fall a little? You can say, can you look forward a little to help the neck lengthen in line with the spine? Yeah.

It looks fabulous. Go ahead and come down. All right, yeah. So a lot of plank is verbal, using your eyes and using your voice to help them adjust, not too much with the hands. But if you need to, the lift of the thighs, the grounding of the feet, and maybe if you feel it's intuitive or intuitively right with some students, a slight lift, touch through the deep belly.

Otherwise, just use your words, all right? Thank you so much, and thank you, Alana.