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Ever hear a yoga cue that completely modified your understanding of a pose or an anatomical motion? Or, on the flip side, have you ever ever struggled to decipher a cue that made no sense in anyway in your body or your mind?

Language is very personal. It filters through our unique perceptions and past experiences such that no single cue or phrase that may land the identical way for each student.

Nowhere is that more true than cues that relate to engaging our core. A coordinated community of muscles work together to surround and support our entire midsection, including our back and side body. But we regularly are inclined to overfocus on cues related to the abdominals, which may carry the loaded and misleading message that core engagement is synonymous with the imagined requirement of a “flat” or “tight” stomach. What we miss with this tunnel vision is an appreciation of the side and back body and the overall stability they supply.

(Photo: Eraxion)

How you can engage—and strengthen—your entire core

In fact, on a regular basis life actually asks us to recruit our core muscles on a regular basis, in various degrees, to support ourselves against gravity, create stability during movement, even assist our respiration. While a cue like “engage your core” works for a few of us in some poses, a more realistic strategy to tap into the core is to deal with a well-recognized feeling, movement, motion, or end result.

If certain cues mean nothing to you or appear to fall on deaf ears once you’re standing in front of a category, then it’s time to try alternate options. Approaching yoga cues with a less rigid mindset, whether you’re a student or a teacher, can result in alternatives that may also help cut through the clutter and confusion and assist you to or your students find the engagement, the strength, and the steadiness that we’d like.

(Photo: Andrew Clark; Clothing: Calia)

Poses that ask you to round your spine

Perhaps the simplest place to start out is in any scenario through which we wish to interact the rectus abdominis, our so-called “6-pack” muscle, to around the spine as we do in poses like Bakasana (Crow or Crane Pose) and even Marjariasana (Cat Pose).

Often it really works best to reference the visible structures so familiar to us on the front of our bodies. This includes cues like “scoop your belly” or “hole your belly,” in addition to “draw your belly in and up,” “pull your navel toward your spine,” “coil in,” or “curl in.”

But relating a cue to the motion on the other side of the body also can catch our attention and invite a distinct form of awareness. For instance, in Crow, you may “attempt to stretch the skin across your low back.” And in supine core work, comparable to crunches, you may “press your low back into the ground.”

(Photo: Andrew Clark; Clothing: Calia)

Back bends

These same core work cues that assist you to scoop your abs and round your back won’t assist you to in backbends. These poses require you to search out the other engagement and movement in your body.

In poses comparable to High Lunge and Ustrasana (Camel Pose), where gravity can move us deeper right into a backbend than our low back might appreciate, more subtle core support is required. To create a coordinated effort between the chest and anterior hips, try “draw your front ribs in and down” to deal with front body engagement fairly than focusing exclusively on the low back.

Or you’ll be able to as a substitute draw attention to the back body. “Inflate your kidneys” can highlight more targeted motion within the upper portion of the rectus abdominis. To spotlight the required motion within the lower portion of the identical muscle, try “draw your pubic bone toward your navel,” “lift your lower abdomen,” “lengthen your sacrum,” and even “zip up your jeans.”

(Photo: Andrew Clark; Clothing: Calia)

Standing poses that ask you to maintain your spine neutral

Poses that require us to search out an upright and neutral spine might be cued with common phrases comparable to “reach through your crown,” “stand tall,” and even “press the ceiling away,” comparable to Tadasana (Mountain Pose), Virabhadrasana II (Warrior 2 Pose), and Vrksasana (Tree Pose). These cues subtly recruit our deepest abdominal muscle, the transversus abdominis or TVA, which encircles our waist. Somewhat just like the corset it resembles, the TVA draws our abdominal contents barely closer to the spine and makes us feel taller, a subtle postural motion called axial extension.

(Photo: Andrew Clark; Clothing: Calia)

Horizontal or inclined poses that ask you to maintain your spine neutral

That very same axial extension requires more deliberate effort once we are asked to carry the spine neutral in a horizontal or inclined orientation to gravity. Here, the increased downward pressure or pull on our midsection from gravity creates the potential for sagging. Imagine being in Plank, Forearm Plank, or the variation to Tabletop with opposite leg and arm prolonged and hearing the suggestion to “hug the midline,” “cinch in around your waist,” “narrow your waist,” or “lengthen from head to heels.” These can assist you to engage in a fashion that sustains the vital engagement to lift throughout your core.

The challenge of maintaining a neutral spine in a pose increases as we consider our limbs. In Navasana (Boat Pose) or reclining leg lifts, where the burden of our legs could cause our backs to inadvertently arch, a cue like “draw your front hip points toward one another” may also help increase the extent of TVA engagement.

The load increases much more once you consider the position of your limbs, comparable to in single arm or leg Plank variations or a neutral spine arm balance like Eka Pada Koundinyanasana II (Hurdler’s Pose), it could possibly help so as to add superficial muscular reinforcement to the more subtle support of the TVA. On this instance, you may up the ante with a cue like “brace yourself such as you’re ready for a punch within the gut.” (It runs counter to the principle of ahimsa, nevertheless it works!)

See also: Planksgiving: A Month-Long Plank Challenge

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

Twists and side bending poses

We regularly overlook the incontrovertible fact that core work includes twists and side bends. A lot of these postures demand engagement from less familiar core muscles, including our oblique abdominals and the quadratus lumborum along the side body.

Motion-oriented cues may also help us eke out that extra strength. In Utthita Parivrtta Anjaneyasana (Revolved Lunge), think “draw your sternum toward your front knee.” In an open twist comparable to Utthita Trikonasana (Prolonged Triangle Pose), consider “turn your chest toward the side wall” or “lift your side waist away from the ground.” Once you’re balancing in Vasisthasana (Side Plank), try “squeezing your low ribs toward your hip.”

Feeling-oriented cues, comparable to “rinse out” or “wring out your abdomen,” also work in the same way in twisting poses.

(Photo: Photo by Andrew Clark; Clothing by Calia)

Transitions between poses

Moving mindfully from one position to a different is probably the most functional ways we are able to employ our core muscles in yoga and in life. And, as with most things, less is more. A cue so simple as “exhale” might be the straightforward reminder we’d like to tap into the subtle contraction of the TVA. Adding a single word or descriptive phrase, comparable to “slowly,” “softly,” or “with control” may also help us profit from the coordination of core muscles without having to take into consideration them directly or individually.

In stronger or higher velocity transitions, some mindful cues include “land light” or “tread softly,” for instance, when stepping forward from Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog Pose) to a lunge or bringing your foot back to the mat from Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose). You possibly can try “float forward” to encourage control in the course of the transition between Down Dog and Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend) and “float back” for the other movement. I once heard a teacher suggest that we “imagine a sleeping baby at the highest of our mat” to encourage quiet landings during handstand hops.

(Photo: Andrew Clark)

Sneaky ways to cue the core

We rarely think concerning the have to contract our core in on a regular basis life. It’s simply instinctual. We engage our core muscles in various ways in which support other muscles in an array of situations.

So in lively yoga poses, perhaps essentially the most effective strategy to trigger core engagement could be to reference the sorts of actions or sensations which might be most familiar to us or students.

“Press through your heel(s)” or “press through the ball(s) of your feet” works well in poses where we’re vividly aware of the necessity for strong legs supported by a robust core. Consider Plank, Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana (Prolonged Hand-to-Big Toe Pose), and Navasana (Boat Pose).

“Squeeze your legs together” and “magnetize your feet toward one another” tap into the abdominal muscles via the fascial connections to the hip adductors and might be effective in poses comparable to Plank, Side Plank, Warrior 2, and Utkata Konasana (Goddess Pose).

Even an motion seemingly unrelated to the core, like “press your palms together” in Anjali Mudra (Salutation Seal or Prayer Hands) or “hug your forearms toward the midline” in Plank work to interact lesser-used parts of our core.

How you can navigate cues normally

Our core muscles sometimes work most efficiently once we don’t take into consideration them in any respect. So play with language that taps right into a feeling, movement, motion, or end result. Whether these cues be just right for you or encourage you to give you others, you will have nothing to lose from experimentation.

About our contributor

Rachel Land is a Yoga Medicine instructor offering group and one-on-one yoga sessions in Queenstown Recent Zealand, in addition to on-demand at Practice.YogaMedicine.com. Keen about the real-world application of her studies in anatomy and alignment, Rachel uses yoga to assist her students create strength, stability, and clarity of mind. Rachel also co-hosts the brand new Yoga Medicine Podcast.