Triangle Pose Tutorial

hi friends Kathy mideo here I've got my brand new puppy joining me today her name's honey we'll welcome her to the channel today's video is all about triangle pose I'm going to give you a thorough breakdown on this pose grab a block if you'll be doing it with me and let's get started [Music] triangle pose is a common standing yoga pose in which the hips are an external rotation so we could say then that this is a hip opening pose but it's kind of a complex pose because not only is it opening the hips but the legs are straight so we know that it's stretching things like the hamstrings and since it's an open hip it's also stretching the adductors but because there's a bit of a fold and a little bit of a Twist in there it's also accessing the side torso muscles and outer hip muscles as well so again it's quite a complex pose and we're going to break this down the first thing I'm going to do is just quickly go through a demo of the pose so standing here with my front foot the heel in Center Arch alignment to the back foot so basically you could draw a straight line down the mat there from the heel to the center back arch the arms are reaching out long and I lean forward so that as I fold I'm folding through my hips here and the legs are remaining straight and the Hand may or may not reach the ground the chest is turned to the side and then your gaze would be upward now there's a lot of different variations depending on what lineage you practice with you might see some people with the hand forward or grabbing the toe you might see people with the hand up on the leg so for today we're going to just go over where to place the body in space and know that any of those little minor variations that is more style over substance in this case the most common thing I see happening in this pose is that people want to get the hand down or they think that the hand has to touch the floor and if the hand can't touch the floor because something's restricting it then the body will compensate in some way and so what tends to happen the compensation that tends to happen is people will reach forward and the whole torso will go forward in an effort to touch the ground now because this top arm has to reach up to the ceiling what happens when our chest is kind of in this flexed position then we try to turn up to this ceiling that creates another compensation in the top shoulder namely the shoulder starts to internally rotate you can see it's rolling forward and that could potentially cause some pinching in the shoulder it's certainly not going to feel good and it's definitely not stretching the chest which is one of the things this pose can do so we want to undo this situation and the quickest way to undo that is to back out of the pose here and place your hand on a block instead of the floor so there's no need to have the hand on the floor and if you don't have a block you could also just take your fingers onto the leg I like to place it to the inside of my leg at that point because then you can push your hand into the leg and leg into the hand to help align this shoulder here the bottom shoulder as well so when we're thinking about where the Torso is in space you want it to go directly over the leg so it's in line with the leg so it's not behind and it's not Reaching Forward so if the Torso is in line with the leg the next thing compensation I see happening is that students will fold here through the waist and you might see this kind of short looking triangle pose here with almost like a crescent shape through the Torso so we want to instead take the fold at the hip joint this is a hip opening pose so instead of folding here through the Torso you want the stretch to be happening along the outer hip so instead we're going to take the front thigh bone into the hip socket so that we can fold here through the hip notice my torso isn't bending at all it's remaining straight As I hinge to the hip joint and then at that point wherever your hand is going to land like we don't want to force it we're already in this nice healthy alignment that's where the hand is going to land so if it's on the floor it's on the floor it's on a puppy it's on a puppy or maybe your leg the other thing to think about is the chest so this is there's a bit of a Twist here because we're in this external hip position but the chest is oriented to the side ins in some ways what's happening is the bottom rib cage turns and that's where there's a bit of a Twist through the thoracic spine this is why I consider this quite a complex pose right so we're opening up the hips we're folding from the hip joint and then the chest or the bottom ribs turn to the side both of the shoulders the arm bones are in external rotation so you don't want them rolling in they're rolling away from the chest away from the chest so the Palms could be facing forward now in terms of the neck you want the crown of the head pointing because the whole torso is over the leg you want it pointing forward but you could shift your gaze ultimately up towards the ceiling up towards the right thumb the top thumb or if that bothers your neck you'll just shift your gaze forward but still let your neck be long rather than letting it dangle there because the weight of the skull is quite heavy right and that can pull something there so let's just review and I'll just I'll switch sides here so I'm going to now point my right foot forward in my left foot in and by the way the left foot because we are in an external hip rotation of the legs you don't want the toes pointing in because that would spiral the leg inward to inward rotation want to open the hips that means that the thigh bones move away in the hip sockets they roll away from the midline so your foot is parallel to the back edge of the mat the back foot and the front foot is pointing forward and remember we've got our front heel to back arch alignment so the thighs again are rolling away from the midline that's why this is a hip opening pose now we'll reach the right arm forward and allow that fold to come in the hip socket so the side body is remaining long and I'm going to add on another kind of a pro tip here if you if you come to your Edge and you notice the ribs start to the top ribs start to lift up you can take your fingers and actually press them down those top ribs down to help the lengthen through the side body so again your chest is turning to the side your gaze is either forward or Upward at the thumb now another common tendency is hyperextension at the knee joint because this is a challenging pose especially making our way down folks that have a tendency towards hyperextension which is where the joint goes beyond normal range and the issue with that with yoga is that then that means we're not using our muscles we're kind of dumping into the joints to access the pose and that can create some undue tension in there so one of the things if you notice your back knee is behind your thigh or the front knee as