It’s always been curious to me that so many yoga poses have animal names. Eagle, cat. cow, and downward dog. Some of them don’t make any sense. If you have ever seen or done eagle pose there is no way you’ve ever see an eagle doing that pose. EVER.
But downward dog is a different story. If you’ve ever had a dog, you’ve seen it is a common stretch for dogs to naturally do when they get up from resting. When you see a dog do it, you see it’s a perfectly natural way to stretch almost everything in one pose. And if you play around with it, it can be fun and entertaining and feel really good.
So here are 5 things to play with in downward dog.
1. Dog grow up from puppies. See video with Adriene (and her dog Blue) to see how to do puppy pose to prepare the body, especially the upper body.
2. Take time for some happy toes and ankles. From hands and knees, tuck your toes under and really press the hips back and let the heels spread out to each side so you feel more pressure in the baby toes area. Then squeeze the heals together and feel the pressure in the balls of your big toe area. Then untuck the toes and make circles with the ankles to find some juiciness there before you retuck the toes to go up into downward dog.
3 .Pedal, pedal, pedal. Once your lift you hips up to the sky, play with pedaling your feet. Take your time and really let the calves really find that surrender and softening to stretch down, one at a time. As you are doing this, release any idea that when you are in downward dog that your heels will ever reach down to the floor when you are in the posture. For most every day humans this will never happen. Don’t stress your self out about it.
4. Spiral your arms. Say what? There is the action in the arm where you are pressing into your palms and that rotates the wrist area slightly in toward each other. Then the eyes of the elbows begin to rotate out and shine ahead. The upper arm, the biceps area begins to spin out away from your body to open space at the base of the neck. The arms stay strong and steady directly under your shoulders.
5. Savor it all in child’s pose to complete. Yoga postures are never single experiences. They are sewn together in beautiful ways and the natural flow out of downward dog is back to hands and knees. Then spread the knees wide and let your head fall down to the mat. You can leave your arms extended long ahead of you or fold them back around your knees. Let it all go.
Be curious. Have fun. It’s your dog.