How to build strength yoga, chaturanga and core focus

The goal for many people in yoga is to get flexible, which I reckon is great, because it’s a sneaky way to start a yoga practice.

Then you discover a little more about yourself, that your left side may be more stiff than your right side, then in certain poses, you just don’t feel great and that certain poses after a few yoga lessons become kind of nice (that’s how I felt about Downdog). 

Building self awareness, is what I now really cherish about yoga. 

I can notice my behaviour, my mood, feelings much more than I could before. It has made me more sensitive, but I’ve realised that’s not a bad thing. 

This wasn’t something I expected to discover, I had always wondered how I could stop myself from feeling emotional, or angry and I realised that there’s nothing wrong with feelings, emotions, it’s how you deal with situations that will help you to move on and not dwell on the little things. 

Only through building more awareness of myself, I start to build more on my strengths. 

To realise that things that I may, or may not think are normal, perhaps through conditioning of society’s expectations. Are just part of who I am, that they’re not a good or bad thing, if I want to improve on them, that I can take charge and I can, with love, kindness and a shit load of patience.

Flexibility + Strengh = safer yoga practice

The problem with flexibility, is that it is good to become more mobile, to be able to move around with more ease and less pain. 

However, it can become a way for your body to overcompensate for the lack of strength in your body.

For me this has been the case, I have focused on flexibility, with little to no regards, to the strength of my body or alignment while practicing at home.

What this meant was that I over compensated, to do the pose that I thought I should be able to do

The solution is to keep practicing, eventually you’ll get stronger, this happened to me with chaturanga, I was always too weak in my upper body to do this pose. 

With waitressing when I was doing a ski season in Jindabyne, in Australia (yes it snows in Oz), my right shoulder was so strained from lack of strength and holding heavy plates. 

 Plus with snowboarding, my legs are much stronger than my upper body. This is something I need to work on, as that’s imbalance in the body strength wise!

Then during my yoga teacher training, the pain in my shoulder was unbearable, from hours of practicing yoga.

So what to do if you’re too weak to do a yoga pose yet?

Take the easier pose! There’s no shame in trying an easier pose, that is “less” advanced. 

Eventually once your body gets used to a pose, you will one day be able to do it, without compromising your body’s strength (or lack of strength). 

In chaturanga, bend your knees to the mat, let the upper body slowly build more arm strength and eventually you’ll be able to chaturanga down from a plank pose. 

Much like flexibility, read my post about why you don’t need to flexible to do yoga, you also don’t have to be strong to start practicing yoga. 

These are things that you can build up, it will require patience and perseverance, like all great things in life. 

If you’ve scrolled all the way down here first, hi you cheeky scroller. Want to work on building your strength? Scroll back up to check out your “How to build strength” yoga video.