Thursday, June 16, 2011

Scorpions again

I have been revisiting my Scorpion pose. I may have held it once or twice for more than a second but since I can't just go into it, I don't really consider it a pose I have under my belt. Its such a work in progress!

Last week I took a challenging and amazing class at Thai Spirit. First we worked on doing handstand scorpion against the wall. I went into a handstand against the wall and then started to arch my back while I walked my feet down the wall. It felt pretty cool since it was my first time doing it but no way could I do something like that without a wall! THEN onto forearm scorpion. Here is my thing...I still don't really practice regular forearm stand! Previously, in my scorpion break down post I was attempting to get into scorpion from headstand. Its kind of a jolting way to get into it since you go into a headstand and then start arching the back, THEN plant the hands flat on the ground, which is where most people will lose their balance and which is why I only hold it for a split second. SO nowadays I started just trying to hop into it already on my forearms. This sort of works sometimes except most times I just flip over into a back bend.

So last week in class, I got this really helpful tip. I set my forearms up like I was going into headstand.
1- Sit on the heels, knees together.
2- place forearms on the mat by lining elbows up with knees BUT I bring my hands in towards each other. So elbows wider than hands and I even crossed my index fingers and thumbs, creating this sort of diamond shape with my hands.
3- Extend legs to a dolphin pose
4- apply mulabanhda and look forward
5- kick up with control, don't be afraid to flip over.

At first I really thought the whole overlapping of fingers would make the base so unstable. BUT that trick changed the pose so much for me. Don't get me wrong, I am still flipping over, but I am holding for a couple more seconds longer now! Kind of loving the scorpion now!

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