Yoga and body awareness have a mutually beneficial relationship. Practising yoga improves your body awareness, and good body awareness will make different asana more accessible. Body awareness is important off the mat too as it helps you to have good posture, balance and stability. Which in turn helps to prevent injuries and falls.
How to Practice Body Awareness
A fun little experiment you can do the next time you get on your mat, is practising these four poses:
Mountain Pose
How to: Stand with your feet about hip distance apart, arms by your side with your palms facing forward. Close your eyes. Lean your weight forward as much as you can, without lifting your heels. Stay here for 2-3 breaths and then come back to the centre. Do the same thing leaning back, but without lifting your toes. Then shift all your weight to your right foot, take 2-3 breaths, and change to the left side.
Once you have moved your weight in all directions, focus your awareness on finding your true centre. Can you distribute your weight evenly in all directions? Did you notice how turning off your sense of sight changes your relationship with balance?
Tree Pose
How to: Shift your weight into your right foot and lift the left leg, placing the sole of your foot on your calf or thigh. You can do this standing close to the wall, facing away from it, so you can lean back into it if you lose balance. Stay here for 2-3 breaths, bringing awareness to the foot of your standing leg. Feel how all the little muscles are working together to stabilise you in this balance. Can you close your eyes and stay here for 3 more breaths? If you have a little wobble, or fall out, just smile, you’re doing great!
Open your eyes, shake it out, and switch sides.
Warrior 2
For this pose, practice in front of a mirror, take a video or ask a friend for help.
Start at the front of your mat and mindfully take a big step back with your right foot, toes of the back foot pointing out about 45 degrees. Could you step back without looking where you’re going?
Despite being a basic and well-known pose, it has many variables…
- Sink down and bend the front knee to about 90 degrees. Can you feel how deeply you have actually bent your knee? Does the knee tend to fall to the left or right, or is it directly over your ankle?
- What about your pelvis? Is it level? Or is one hip higher than the other? Is your spine neutral? Or are you sticking your bum back a bit there? 😉
- Bring your arms out to shoulder level. Look over the left middle finger. Without changing your gaze, do you know if both arms are level?
- Now that you’re here, how’s your breathing? How do your arms and legs feel?
- Finally, step back to the front of the mat, and change sides. What feels different?
Savasana
Lie down on your back, and shuffle around until you feel your whole spine is straight. Your arms are at a 45-degree angle to your body with palms facing up. Again, you’ll need someone to tell if all your body parts are where you think they are.
Savasana is a great way to figure out how strong your sense of proprioception is. We often have a slight tilt to our head, or one shoulder or hip slightly shifted higher than the other for example.
Once you are settled in, stay still for about 10 breaths, merely focusing on which parts of the body move when you inhale and exhale.
If you tried it, let me know how it went!
Much love,
Rianne