Introduction to Wall Yoga

while yoga takes yoga to an entirely new
level one that sometimes is even upside
down hi I’m Veronica watchmojo.com and
today we’re learning more about this
form of yoga and all its added benefits
how is wall yoga different from practice
that we do on the ground well number one
it’s an added prop so if you’ve ever
practiced with props props are meant to
support you to go deeper into your
practice it’s a really good anchor point
for certain areas of the body
for instance the pelvis a lot of times
in the poses we say drop the weight of
the pelvis down well here with the wall
you’re being anchored to the wall so you
really get that sense of stability in
the pose we use it a lot for inversion
so for whatever reason if people can’t
bear weight going upside down on their
head or on their shoulders then the yoga
wall is a great way to get the benefit
of an inversion without without
compressing the spine or the joints if
someone’s never done yoga before is this
a great way to get started it is an
advanced practice so we recommend the
way that we treat it here is we consider
it to be a level two restorative
practice so we usually suggest that you
start with restorative yoga which is
traditionally a floor bound practice
where you stay in the poses passive for
anywhere between three to ten minutes
supported by props and then once you get
comfortable being able to stay in poses
for a long period of time then we would
progressively challenge you in your
poses and inversions are very
challenging practice it becomes much
more difficult to breathe when you’re
upside down so we encourage you to be
able to breathe deeply before you come
onto the wall but once you can do that
then the wall is a natural progression
after practicing wall yoga while your
postures on the ground be better that’s
the idea whether or not that happens is
I think up to the individual but most
definitely I mean a lot of times people
will say the sensations that they get
while they’re on the wall are really
deep so there’s sensations they’ve never
felt before and that’s just because it’s
more difficult to do it without the wall
so you you get these sensations you feel
them they become an experience so when
you go back to working on the floor you
know what you’re sort of searching for
the body can you take us through a
typical class well I always start people
floor bound so we would start on the
ground get people into their breath into
feeling their body and sort of
progressively take them on to the wall
we would come on to the wall but then we
come off the wall go back onto the wall
so there’s this sort of play between
what does the wall do but then how can
you take that information and put it
into the poses that you do in your
regular yoga class and then of course we
would gradually build to a climax pose
either a deep back bend or a long-held
inversion and then in the end come down
and relax and cool the body off prepare
for shavasana how do people get over
their fear of falling out of this
harness well it happens pretty
instantaneously I would say usually
about one class on the wall you realize
that the wall is very sturdy you can
trust it
nobody’s falling out of it I think
people have more sort of excitement than
fear of going on the wall well thank you
so much you’re welcome thank you so much