Half Moon Pose Yoga Tutorial

hi friends wanted to check in here i know i haven't posted in a while because if you don't know this about me i do produce a lot of online series and trainings and i am thick in production of a 300 hour advanced online yoga teacher training so i've got some good reasons but i haven't forgotten about you and i've also noticed there's quite a new followers on here so i wanted to check in drop in a tutorial for this week i'm going to do my best to continue to post once a week every friday would love to hear some of the things you're interested in from me so i do do a lot of tutorials because i do train teachers on how to be yoga teachers so alignment is something i'm really passionate about and if you are too or if you're new to yoga you've been practicing at home not really sure if you're doing the poses right i'm a great resource for you i have a lot of free ebooks you can go into the description box check out my asana guidebook ebook i also have a beginner online yoga series and honestly a series for everyone handstands core flexibility you name it i got you so for today's tutorial this is actually one of the tutorials in my online 200 hour yoga teacher training as well as my online beginner series called align your asana beginner yoga series so it gives you a little taste of the kinds of information that i can give you on your yoga poses i hope you enjoy don't forget to hit that subscribe button give me a like a share and a comment below half moon pose arda chandrasana so now we have a standing balancing pose with an open hip so we'll talk about that here we'll have uh katie go ahead and take the posture have a quick look at it so you can see that her hip joint is starting to open so it's moving one away from the other and um the standing leg because the hip is open the standing leg femur bone is rotating outward her heel is in line with her hip shoulders in line with her heel and the wrists and shoulders stacked on top of each other her standing leg is like her tadasana leg so toes are pointing forward crown of the head is forward so we'll review some common misalignments here starting with the foot so oftentimes what you'll see is students pivot the standing foot and this is happening for two reasons one they're trying to distribute the weight of that bottom foot in an effort to be more balanced and stable two it's also coming from the hip joint so i just talked about you can go ahead and stand up katie how the standing leg is actually externally rotating even though it's pointing forward of the mat and that's because the hip joint is now opening up on top of that standing leg and so if you can imagine here as as without even fully coming to the pose as this hip joint opens this way and we're calling for the leg femur bone to still face forward it's actually externally rotating in the hip joint so i want you to just like let that sink in hips are going that way the thigh bone is going this way now if we turn the foot what did we just do we close the hip so in fact it's doing kind of a disservice to this pose by by pivoting that foot in so that's one of the very first things you want to look for and it's very common so um because we know that that's coming most likely from a tight hip joint the student would really benefit and it's also coming from being imbalanced or the inability to balance rather student would benefit from placing that bottom hand on the block now notice the block goes away from the body a little bit because she's got to shift her weight forward the shoulder still stacks right over the wrist and it creates a really nice line actually with the block because when the hand is down the shoulders go down and the body becomes a little bit more diagonal but now we've got this nice line from shoulder to hip to heel this thigh's going in that external rotation pointing forward this hip is deeply opening up and in order to open up we need a strong glute medius of the bottom leg as well as the top so have you turn around so we can see those muscles here so when we are not using our glute medius muscles and the the leg is going to begin to abduct away and on the up and the bottom here so if we have her really engage the outer standing leg hip she squeezes it in you notice how that pulls the thigh bone into the midline there and then same with the top leg she's actively engaging the glute medius and that's helping the external rotation so the glute medius is one of the external hip rotator muscles so it's helping open the hip and stabilize there now a common tendency is that with this back leg to go behind the hip a little bit that's it and we know that when the leg does that we've gone into extension in the spine and we're probably losing our front core muscle some of this is just awareness so we could actually ask the student to take a peek towards their right toes and if they can't see them then we know that they need to bring those toes a little bit more forward until they come in slightly into view there excellent have you take a quick break come on out let's move um actually before we move up to the body just a quick reminder you know anytime those legs are straight you want to engage the quadricep muscles straighten out the knee feet are flexed here so keeping the calf muscle the back of the leg stretched and active let's talk a little bit about the upper body some of the common tendencies we see here and then the alignment points so oftentimes we'll see a leaning forward so and just kind of lack of engagement shoulders rolling forward amazing so for for katie using the block or if the hand was on the floor you can actively push down into the to the block or the floor and that will straighten up the arm and then we'll have her roll her right shoulder back so the shoulder blades are going to draw in towards the spine and then same thing we'll have her straighten her left arm here and retract the shoulder blades towards the spine and you'll notice that retraction is what's opening up her chest so let's see that from the other side so we'll look at the common misalignment there the shoulder blades are spread away shoulders heads of the arm bones are internally rotating so we're going to ask her to straighten her arms push down through the block retract the shoulder blades together and then she gets that nice straight line great let's talk about a couple adjustments here so she can i will stand over here you can say right there let's say her hip was closed i would stabilize hip to hip take my hand to the front of her her hip bone point i'm going to open up i'm going to show this on both sides as well so i can also be right here if the top arm shoulder is rolling in and give her an upper body adjustment as well excellent now if i saw that the hip was closed and the foot i'm going to have you switch sides and the foot was um not straight from the hip instead of turning towards her upper body i would be here stabilize through the pelvis with my hand on her fr