Yoga

Every Wednesday we have an hour of yoga at the beginning of the day. The aim is to understand and know how your body works and what it needs. As an actor you have to take responsibility for yourself and take care your body, to make sure its fully wormed up and safe for you to perform. In this part of the blog I will note down all the things that may be useful for the future. 

At the beginning of every session we start in the position of constructive rest: lying on the floor with our knees up and hands on our ribs with our eyes closed. this is to start getting your body and mind into focus and to forget about any distractions that may have occurred during the day. We may then start to take some deep and plentiful breaths to open up our lungs with a long out breath. This breathing exercise also begging to wake up the diaphragm which lies near the bottom of your rib cage- an extremely important domed shaped muscle which is key to warm up as an actor.

 

From this position we can then go in to a form of resistant stretching- helping to strengthen the arms and legs, while also opening up the spine. from the position of constructive rest we raise one or both our heels and lower them with restraint while are hands are back to back on our chest. we can then add in the hands and arms, forming our hands into a flower bud shape and while lowering our heels open up one or both our arms again with restraint. while doing this we find that our pelvis automatically lifts from the floor giving a stretch all across the spine leaving the shoulders, head and neck on the floor (with the whole body blossoming lie a flower). We can incorporate breath into this exercise by using and elongated outbreath to open the body out to and stop when breathing in and repeating.

You can also use this exercise in a standing position, starting in a crouched position with activated hands and feet, lowering the heels which automatically lift the hands from the floor as the body grows up while using the same resistant techniques. you can play around with the placement of the feet and hands to give more of a stretch on a specific side of part of the body.

You can also increase the impact of this same stretch on the diaphragm by holding after the out breath and sucking your stomach under your ribs without breathing and then finding and automatic impulse to take a breath. I found that the sucking did feel uncomfortable at first simply because I was unused to it, however after it completely opened up my lungs and my breathing became so light- almost un-noticeable and my rib cage felt open and free not closed as it did before.  

The resistance stretching can be used in most position to be able to get the greatest impact from them; such as the child pose with activated feet and hands but using resistance in the arms as you slide into the pose.

Another great pose is going from a cradle like position into collapsing on your side which you can either resistance stretch your arm and cervical spine to the opposite side with your outer knee towards the celling and with both your feet activated. Moreover you can also go from the collapsing stage into a leg stretch, holding the foot of your outer foot and pulling it upwards in a gentle manner.