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The priority I hear most from students, except for not being flexible, is “I’m bad at balancing.” My response after I hear that is, “Me, too!”

That’s not what most individuals expect to listen to from their yoga teacher. However it’s true for me. Over time, though, as I proceed to point out as much as my practice, I’ve realized something that has completely modified my approach to yoga balance poses: Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice means that you can witness your process.

Balance yoga poses aren’t concerning the end result. While you practice asana, you’ve got the exquisite opportunity to note the way you reply to challenges, particularly wobbles and falls. The moments once you lose your balance are the moments that teach you the right way to regain equilibrium in your body and your mind. Moderately than specializing in the end result of the posture, you as an alternative observe and learn out of your process before you are attempting again.

Curiously, the more you learn the right way to balance in your mat, the more you’ll have the opportunity to take a way of stability and ease into the world around you.

3 ways to seek out your balance in yoga poses

The next tools can enable you to maintain a way of steadiness in balance yoga poses.

1. Your feet (or hands)

Have you ever noticed how, once you scrunch your toes or lift the periphery of your foot in a standing posture, you lose your balance? It’s easy science: The less surface area that’s involved with the bottom and supporting the load of your body, the less stable your balance. While you spread your toes wide and ground down through all parts of your foot that touch the mat, you’ve got more surface area to support yourself.

This principle also applies to arm balances and inversions. You possibly can take up extra space along with your hands by spreading your fingers wide in intense inversions, equivalent to Handstand, in addition to in additional common poses equivalent to Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose).

Don’t attempt to completely flatten your foot or hand on the mat. While you pull upward within the natural places that lift, whether the arches of your feet or your palms, you create a suction cup-like seal through your feet. This further supports your balance.

2. Your gaze (drishti)

Have you ever ever taken note of what your eyes do once you’re anxious? They might dart around and take a look at to decide on something that makes you’re feeling protected and stable.

Your sense of sight is directly connected to your nervous system, so making a sense of steadiness and ease in your gaze will help your body find comfort in a discomforting situation. Even in case you’re fighting a balancing pose, once you keep a gradual gaze, or drishti, you create a way of stability for each your mind and your body. Let your gaze focus softly on a single point.

3. Your breath

Some of the common things I observe after I cue students right into a difficult balance pose is that a whole lot of them stop respiration. I understand why. While you’re in an unfamiliar or difficult posture, there’s lots to take into consideration! Along with the cues your instructor is perhaps sharing, you’re observing, through your peripheral vision, other students falling or wobbling. After which there’s the non-stop chatter of self-talk (including self-doubt) running through your mind.

As difficult as it could possibly be to maintain a good respiration pace, it’s essential to maintaining your balance. Because your body must breathe to remain alive, if there’s one thing that’s going to trigger your nervous system out of its protected zone, it’s holding your breath.

When you find yourself attempting a balance pose, I encourage you to focus more on whether you might be actually respiration than whether you may hold the balance. While you regular your breath, you could notice that the balance comes by itself with practice. Allow the method.

Explore your balance and practice together with Neeti Narula in her recorded IG Live sequence for locating balance.

About our contributor

Neeti Narula is a yoga and meditation teacher in Latest York City. Her classes are inspired by various schools of yoga. She is thought for teaching alignment-based classes infused with thematic dharma and yoga philosophy. Neeti believes that the best way you progress and breathe in your mat shapes the best way you progress and breathe in your life. You possibly can practice together with her in person at Modo Yoga NYC. To learn more about Neeti, try her Instagram @neeti.narula.