She focused on opening and strengthening outer hips... we started out in firelog for what seemed to be ages. With hip openers, I love long holds - they are such a treat. Once I find my way into that 'hurts so good' place and begin to breathe steadily, I could stay indefinitely. It's not often that classes start this way.
She drew our awareness to strength and external rotation in a lot of the warrior variations & triangle. Something that resonated in my body in a new way tonight was when she cued us to notice if we were collapsing to our inner arches - that this was a sign we were losing engagement in outer hips. Sure enough, lifting that inner arch and pressing down through the outer edge of the foot fired up the sensation in the outer hip and stabilized my half-moon (vinyasa version). I've heard the cue to lift the inner arches many times, but never connected it to activating the external rotation of the outer hips... so now that cue will make a lot more sense for future classes.
At the end of class, came the tennis ball stretch... taking supine pigeon, we put the tennis ball about 1/2way down the glute on the same side as the raised foot, near the spine and gently rolled toward the outer hip - there's sort of a sweet (well, maybe bittersweet is a better word) spot as you near the outer hip. For me it hurts and makes my jaw clench and my breath get a bit ragged. Drawing awareness back to taking long steady breaths and softening everything around the ball helped a lot. We stayed here for many breaths on each side. Once we released the tennis ball, we hugged in the opposite knee and did the traditional supine pigeon stretch.
YUM. Hips felt amazing afterwards and I was able to sit in full lotus for the entire final breathing exercise with no discomfort. That was really a treat.
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