A Better Yoga Sun Salutation through Arm Connection

Name: A Better Yoga Sun Salutation through Arm Connection
Rating: 5.0 (1 reviews)

Understand fascial connection to improve stretch and strength in your yoga Sun Salute

Created bySharon Hughes

Last updated 8/2023

English

What you'll learn

Effectively use your arms get more benefits from sun salutations
Learn how your arms connect to your torso and effect better stretch
Learn the path of fascial arms connections to recruit strength when needed
Start to understand the mechanical communication that will bring more intention to your movement.
Use this new awareness beyond Sun Salutations for a more complete practice

Course content

1 section • 6 lectures • 1h 47m total length

Introduction5:13
Understand the basic concepts in play here and why they are important in making your yoga sun salutation practice more effective.
Pre Practice
Basics15:04
This video sets the the arm connections aside and just focuses on the version of sun salutation that we will use in the training. It also gives modifications for beginning and advanced students. If you already know Sun Salutations, still do all the variations from beginner through advanced, especially if you're doing this whole workshop in one sitting. It will provide a better warmup and prevent you from burning out before the end. If you're a beginner, don't assume that you have to do the beginner versions, find the movements that suit your current fitness level.
Basics Review
Connections9:37
Renown manual therapist Tom Myers has given us a map, an effective guide to help connect the arms into the body so that they positively affect movement. Learn the basics of that map here.
Practice31:52
Here is where we layer the arm lines onto the Sun Salutation. Feel free to stop the video in the middle and rest if needed. Yoga is not meant to be a breathless strain. While it's appropriate to feel challenged, if you can't breathe properly, you should rest and then restart the video when you're ready to continue. This is true in all practice, but especially here. If the muscles that we want to connect are exhausted, the body will shift the work into other systems and defeat the purpose of this practice.
Practice Review
Wrap-Up1:49
Sun Salute Class43:31
A short but complete class to let you feel the effects of the new arm connections in a true yoga experience.

Requirements

Some yoga experience is helpful, but not necessary.
All you need is a mat, space to practice, patience and and openness to new concepts

Description

Yoga students of all levels can benefit from learning how fascia (the body's connective tissue) links the arms into to the body and how you can use those connections to improve the stretch and strength performance in your yoga Sun Salutations.

The course will first introduce the core concepts, then it will go over the basics of the Sun Salutation. There are many variations out there, we will use a lunging variation that is accessible at many levels. There will be modifications for various levels including those who can't lunge or get on the floor.

We will then learn about the "map" we are using to understand these connections. This map, developed by renowned manual therapist Tom Myers in dissection research, will help us use our arms effectively. Next we will do the Sun Salutation again, layering what we learned about the arm lines onto the practice.

The assignments are just a series of questions to help you assess your personal progress in the work.

After a brief wrap-up, I've included a short, but complete yoga practice. This 45 minute practice will help you feel the work in a session that goes beyond Sun Salutations. Feel free to do the last video, first. Then go through the course and do the class again to experience the changes.

Who this course is for:

All levels of yoga practitioners should benefit from the information in this course
Beginners will start this practice with the right tools for success
Intermediate students may break through to the next level with these concepts
Advanced students may intuitively do this already, but they may also be experiencing pain or feel like they are causing damage. This may help diagnose and correct those issues.