Divas That Care Network

Oh My!

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 14

Share episode

Gia-Raquel Rose, owner of Airs Above Yoga, LLC and a real estate sales associate in Tewksbury, New Jersey has had a love for horses stemming from early childhood. Growing up in “horse country” afforded her the privilege of beginning to ride from the tender age of four. It was a childhood illness, which brought her riding aspirations to an abrupt halt. It took twenty years before she was able to reunite with her long lost passion for horses and their ability to heal. In that time, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Corporate Communication from Arcadia University and became a twice two hundred hour certified yoga instructor in both Hatha and Vinyasa. It was the loss of her mother, Rose, to breast cancer, which ultimately shifted her trajectory from the corporate world to the internal work for which yoga, as a practice, is renowned.

Have you ever felt a brilliant creative spark only to watch it fade away without action? You're not alone. The bridge between receiving intuitive inspiration and manifesting it in the world is something many of us struggle to cross.

In this enlightening exploration, we dive into how specific yoga postures can stimulate our upper chakras—particularly the crown and third eye—to enhance our connection to intuition while building the courage to bring our unique creations to life. Our chakra systems are inversely linked, with the crown connecting to root, third eye to sacrum, and throat to solar plexus, all bridged by the heart chakra.

Child's pose creates powerful contact between our third eye and the earth, fostering humble receptivity to inspiration. I share several modifications for those with knee sensitivities to make this posture accessible to everyone. Downward facing dog, when properly aligned with weight distributed through the legs rather than dumping into wrists and shoulders, creates a beautiful energetic current from root to crown—a true invitation for creative flow.

For those ready to explore deeper, we discuss safe approaches to inversions like headstand and handstand, which offer profound crown chakra stimulation while building physical strength and confidence. Alternatives like legs-up-the-wall and inversion tables provide similar benefits for practitioners with limitations.

The world needs your unique creations—those inspired ideas that come from your intuition and no one else's. By stimulating these upper energy centers through mindful yoga practice, you create the conditions for enhanced creativity, clearer intuition, and greater courage to manifest your gifts in a world hungry for your contribution.

What intuitive hit has been nudging you lately? Perhaps it's time to get upside down and let that inspiration flow from crown to manifestation.

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

Speaker 1:

It's Divas that Care Radio Stories, strategies and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas that Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit DivasThatCarecom after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.

Speaker 2:

Namaste and welcome to the Divas that Care Network. I am your host, gia Raquel Rose, owner of Heirs Above Yoga, and you are listening to Above the Ground podcast, if this is your first time. Tuning in our network is in its 15th year and listened to in over 30 countries. I would like to take this moment to personally thank you for giving me the gift of your time. It is always my honor talking about creation and cultivation, and we kind of went a little bit last time into ways that what seeds are we planting? It was a big theme was seeds and planting seeds, and those seeds could have been anything. It doesn't necessarily need to have come from you. It could be things that you want to implement into your life. What I want to talk about now is actual creation for you, things that are going to, that are coming from you, that did not exist until you put them out into the world, and how certain yoga asanas can help you to begin to get in touch with the creative centers in the body through your chakra system, and what postures are best supportive of that. And we haven't really gotten into the ones that I'm going to talk about too much so far, and the reason for that is because, predominantly, when we think about our chakra, I, I generally talk about them from the ground up, and when I go through yoga practice, I generally lead from the ground up. And but a lot of times we think about energy and we think about intuition. A lot of times that energy flows from the, the, the crown, or the top down right. That inspiration is coming from somewhere. So I want this to be an inspiration and I want this whole sequence and this, this next series of episodes, to be towards that inspiration and ways for people to bring their own wisdom, their own intuition, into fruition, into creation in the world around us, so that we can all benefit from. You know, every, every person's special snowflake ideas, right, like the, everything that we love and look up to in this world originally came, generally speaking, from the mind or the intuition of a human person, and so if we can cultivate our own intuitions and actually take the inspired action to create them in the outside world, think, if you ever, if you haven't seen it, I encourage, I encourage. It's very, very. It's sad, but one of the most romantic movies. Ps, I love you. Right, it's to steal from Hilary Swank, it's a piece of you and it's out there and it's you.

Speaker 2:

And so, coming from that notion of bringing something that intuitively came to you, that came from your mind, from your heart, from from your, from the inside of you, to the outside of the world, and how can we best support that, how can we start to inspire and how can we start to cultivate not only the intuitive hits, because I feel like and I'm guilty of this, but I feel like a lot of people have ideas and then they just don't do anything about them. And that's that's where I think a lot of the disconnect between for creation itself exists, is that disconnect of oh I have this idea, but what if? And all of the associated implications that come from what if? And basically, we all know those are the self-sabotaging thoughts, those are the doubts, those are even, you know, unfortunately other people who maybe never follow their creative path and so they want to squash those that are trying to, which I don't love, but you know it happens. And so how do we tune all of that internal and external noise out and essentially bring ourselves into the place where we can not only receive the intuitive hit as to what our special creation it doesn't have to be one, it can be multiple what our special creations are and how we can turn them into reality in the world and the existence around us to make it a better place for all humans, all humanity. And so how are we going to do that? Well, one of the best ways that I can give you is to start to think about our upper chakras, right? So, when we're talking about going off of things that are meant for us, things that come to us, things that find us, dreams that we have that inspire us, or, you know, insights that we get while we're meditating, all of these are different things that will hopefully give us a glimpse into our path, into our next best step, into what it is that are.

Speaker 2:

You know, as I, as I do before, like I'm not a scientific research deep diver. I was never meant to be in the medical field. I do not like. I do not like gore. It scares me. If something bad happens to an animal, I won't even watch a movie like that's me. That's not my path. But if we didn't have doctors and surgeons and people who are absolutely inspired to create these you know medical marvels well, we'd be in a very, very bad place in society.

Speaker 2:

So just to just to preface by saying it doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's not harmful. Do no harm, right, that's, that's their creed, but mine too, and for yoga instructors as well, there's a do no harm policy and I firmly believe that no matter what you do in life, no matter who you are, not harming should be ahimsa in yoga, no harm, not harming should be you know the first thing and then hopefully it's it's a benefit to others and that should be you know the goal right. Not just, not just selfishness and doing it for your own sake or for credibility or notoriety or financial abundance, whatever it might be. And those things are all wonderful and good and come hopefully with with success. But this is this is about, about the true inspiration and the heart led, heart space, inspired creations that hopefully bring love and light into this world. And to that end, let's get into the asana.

Speaker 2:

And so, thinking about the chakras and, as I said, we've done a lot of work recently with your creativity coming from the sacral chakra, your second chakra, root and groundedness, rooting and groundedness, safety coming from that root chakra, your power, coming from your solar plexus, and I feel like we're kind of skipping ahead, but to that end the chakra systems are linked um inversely. So your safety, your root chakra is inextricably linked to your crown chakra and vice versa on the way down. So root to crown, third eye to sacrum, creativity, right, inspire, and receiving that intuition from your third eye and meeting it and creating it through your sacral chakra, your throat chakra and your solar plexus chakra are linked and then, as always, my personal favorite your heart chakra is the bridge that links all of it together. So we're going to talk, as we've talked a little bit about grounding, we've talked a little bit about our sacral chakra and creativity and, you know, hip openers to help to open that, that potential creative block and kind of remove it so that we can flow more freely. Now we're going to start to talk about a little more of the upper chakras and I know we're jumping around, not necessarily going linear, and probably no one cares about that but me. But I do want to note that this is specific, to kind of go with that cross alignment between the upper and lower chakras.

Speaker 2:

So when we're talking about our upper chakras, a lot of times, you know, people are wondering okay, well, how am I going to do a yoga pose for my crown chakra. It's not, you know, in my body, technically, right, it's in my energetic body, not in my physical body. It's there's. No, you know, there's no tangible thing. So, really, what we're thinking about when we, when it comes to a lot of associated asana that goes with inspiration, intuition, divine, if you want to go that route, fine, we're talking about generally prone or inverted postures. So, with that in mind, think of, you know, a child's pose, think of a downward facing dog, think of any pose, even headstand, handstand, and I'll touch on those a little bit more.

Speaker 2:

But again, I, my focus is always on safety, especially as I put, as I put, my creation of above the ground podcast out into the universe, not knowing where it could go and where it could land. I just always want to say that, as we talk about inversions, I'm hesitant to even teach inversions in my classes or with one-on-one students because of the implication, with improper alignment, potential harm to the head or neck. Now we're talking about, you know, the big ticket items there, right? So when we talk about this, I'm going to focus on the gentle ways to be able to inspire. Then, of course, child's pose is going to be, you know, one of the most easy ways except for people that have bad knees, and there's always a way to prop and figure that out, except for people that have bad knees, and there's always a way to prop and figure that out and downward facing dog.

Speaker 2:

But we want to think about that idea of of being prone in humility, being humble, having that, that contact between your third eye and even your crown chakra, like so, for example, I love downward facing dog for this idea of how am I going to target my crown chakra with asana. Well, you're going to point your crown chakra at the floor in downward facing dog or even in a posture like headstand, but the bottom line is that you're stimulating, physically and energetically, flow of prana, flow of energy, flow of your consciousness into these areas. And thinking of the contact between the third eye and the crown chakra. And the ground is, you know, something that we generally don't do right? Little kids do it, gymnasts do it, yoga instructors, yoga practitioners do it. But on a whole, on the daily life, you know, as you're going through about your day, there's not a lot of time where people spend upside down. It's just not necessarily a thing traditionally Right.

Speaker 2:

So, as we talk about it, um, and and I will give a little bit of a nod to, uh, the interview that I just did with Nick, because one of his favorite postures, asana's was and is child's pose. Um, and it's never been one of mine because I had and have had for many years since I was a child I have a knee injury, and so when I compress my knee so if you're talking about child pose generally, it is done with the big toes touching the knees, spread wider than the torso, wider than hips width, and then you create that gentle V angle for your chest and torso to lay comfortably with your arms outstretched, and this is one way to to kind of submit into that pose, surrender into that pose. Now, if you're like me and you have knee injuries, a couple things can go wrong here. One you don't want to be compressed through the knee, so to prop for that you would take a towel, a blanket. Bolsters are going to be too big. You want something that has a little more give and you'd put it not directly behind the joint itself but to lessen the compressive angle in that joint by placing that, that prop behind and in between the thigh and calf to alleviate that angle, to give a little bit of space and to still be able to relax your back and your hips into the full expression of the pose, wherever you are in that moment. So that's one way to prop for that. Another issue that can come up is literally having, you know, more body weight on compressed knees, and while that's more of an issue when you're talking about kneeling postures where you're actually on, like the platella, which can be very uncomfortable for some people present, company included, and I've had students that have the same concern that would be stacking a second mat not rolled obviously either, either just creating more cushion underneath that knee is another way. So you could have a blanket or a second mat, either on its own or folded under the knees and then even prop between the knees on top of that as well.

Speaker 2:

But when we're talking about child's pose, when I take it one of my favorite things to do and this is because of my neck and shoulder injury, but also because I think it's always great to be able to deepen and open through the upper back and shoulders because so many, not just women, so many of us just from, like I'm doing right now, sitting at my computer, looking at our phones, just our lives are spent forward and hunched, and if you're a woman, doubly so because we carry the extra weight of the world right in front of us and it creates that rounded spine, that kind of turtle looking neck posture. It's not very pretty, where you're kind of your chin juts out, your shoulders collapse and then you kind of look like this and it's no fun and it pulls in all the wrong places and it's just generally bad juju. So because of that, this is one of, for me, with a neck injury feels lovely and, assuming that you are relatively propped appropriately or set up comfortably in your knees, legs and hips for for child's pose, I like to take blocks and instead of coming into child's pose, where you would shift your hips back so your hips are literally resting on your heels or just above them, if you're propped and supported as you shift your hips back, you reach your arms forward, traditionally straight out in front of you, palms facing down. I like to take blocks and you can start on the thin you know the thinnest section, so the gentlest lift, and I like to take the blocks and make sure that I place them under my elbows, so then my elbows come up a little bit higher. It creates a little bit of space for the shoulders and the chest to drop below and it really creates this really awesome gentle collarbone opening, shoulder, shoulder, head opening. It feels lovely and then I take my hands into prayer behind my head and I let my forehead come down through the blocks.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you don't have open shoulders, this can be aggressive and I would advise you to skip it or start by placing your hands on the blocks to get to start to work the shoulders up and back so that you have a little. You start to understand what it's going to feel like to let your head come below the line of the shoulders and the torso. For me it really, really feels wonderful and it also gets that forehead. Either way, your forehead is going to come in contact with the floor, which is the point to stimulate that third eye chakra right, we are talking about in this instance, and not to say that it doesn't also benefit the crown chakra. But if we're being as literal as we can be for the sake of asana, physicality and posture, we are talking literal third eye to the floor and so, with that in mind, this is a really great way and then you just breathe and you melt into it.

Speaker 2:

And if you're propped and sufficiently supported in this pose, you can hang out there for an extensive period of time comfortably, assuming that you've set yourself up as with any yoga pose. You can hang out there for an extensive period of time comfortably, assuming that you've set yourself up as with any yoga pose you know. Shout out to Annie and the yin yoga, as many yoga pose. You can do it comfortably as long as you set yourself up appropriately. So child's pose is a wonderful way, to you know, stay in your surrendered humility to have that contact of the floor with your third eye, to stimulate the energy, the consciousness, the flow to that third eye chakra. Another wonderful way to again bring the energy and we're talking about in theory, we're talking about inversions. Child's pose certainly is not necessarily an inversion, but there is. There is a pose and different schools of thought call it different things. I was taught rabbit and it is. I'm going to preface with a little asterisk by saying that if we're talking about this, posture is also a second way to take child's pose, again, depending on the school of thought, because you know different, different Western words have come to be associated with different yoga asanas. You know, bound angle and butterfly essentially are two, two things to bring that thought process into mind.

Speaker 2:

But when it comes to what I'm going to discuss, this is essentially another variation of child's pose where, instead of having your knees wide and again for people with knee issues, you're probably not going to love this one. So I would. I would steer clear of this potential variation. But your knees are going to be together and your feet are going to be essentially together, or you know, roughly hips width but next to each other, and you're going to sit directly on your heels. So your knees are bent, your shins are on the floor, the tops of your feet. If you have feet issues, this can be uncomfortable ankle problems for some people. So just to preface propping for this would really just be a roll towel or blanket under the ankle area and again, it does put pressure on the knees. Please know that I am giving you this information for the upper chakra, inspiration and creation aspects of it, not necessarily for the knee, the potential knee conflicts of it. So work with me on this one Once you are set up with your hips on your heels and again, another way to set up would be hero.

Speaker 2:

But the distinction between hero is you're upright first, but your heels are actually slightly wider than your hips and your knees are in, and so for rabbit and I'm using air quotes for those of you listening your knees and your feet are going to be more in line, and there's a reason for that. This formulation of child's pose rabbit, however you want to talk about it is also going to be with respect to the fact that once you're sitting on your heels, you fold forward into your child's pose and a lot of people will take at this point it's more of the forehead or the top of the head hitting the floor and the arms are going to wrap around behind you and you're going to grab your heels, if you can so comfortably. Otherwise, you're going to drape your arms, the shoulders roll forward and the backs of the hands are down by those heels and ankles resting comfortably and, if you're okay, there, like I said, the only thing that generally aggravates people in this position are going to be the knees and the tops of the feet and ankles. So avoid, if those are problem areas for you. But one of the reasons that you know I don't generally teach the rabbit aspect of this, while what I've just described as a child's pose variation, the rabbit aspect of this. You then gently cup the heels in the palms of your hands, you start to lift the hips and you start to gently tuck the chin in and roll ever so slightly onto the top of your head. Now, why is this relevant? Because this would be a way to begin to stimulate the crown chakra when you are in this position, in a child's pose position, it does, a way to prep for a shoulder stand to loosen into the back and the upper, you know, the upper back, the neck. It's also a nice way to begin to prep for a headstand. And when I say prep, I don't mean prep to get into the headstand, I mean, you know, like a posture that will start to loosen the muscles in preparation to support the entrance of the posture. Right, we're not going to go into the headstand from this direction, but just benefits to this pose. Now, the giant asterisk from the person with the cervical vertebrae injury is going to be no, I don't love it for the neck.

Speaker 2:

Plow pose is another one that this is a good you know precursor for. But again, I don't teach plow pose in my classes. I don't teach handstands or headstands. Handstands sometimes, but headstands I do not teach in my classes, or even with my private clients, unless I'm in the room with them and they want me to and they ask me to, and the reason for that is you just if you're, there's too many variables where you could severely potentially cause yourself injury and headstand specifically, while it is, you know, arguably one of the most, if not the most, crown chakra stimulating posture, I I don't want to take that responsibility and so I will not be responsible for the head and neck of another human being, knowing how fragile the neck truly is from my own personal experience. So that's my, my big giant flashing disclaimer when it comes to even such a gentle poses, rabbit, where you're not, where most of your body weight is still on the floor and you're really just kind of coming into that tuck of the chin and that elongation of the upper back in between the shoulder area and the neck, and the neck is the reason why I don't. I have practiced that and generally I will.

Speaker 2:

I just wanted to give you an idea of how to stimulate in child's pose by connecting the top of the head and the crown with the ground, because, again, it's a little bit harder to do, especially if you choose not to practice certain positions due to injury or, you know, just conscientiousness for the welfare of others, which is hopefully the space that I'm coming from. So again, child's pose with the chin tucked and the head towards the floor, as opposed to arms outstretched and the forehead, are two different ways to stimulate and receive that intuition and insight. Rabbit, again, I'm not saying that I recommend it, disclaimers, asterisks, all the things in front of that. But again, grabbing those heels, gently lifting the hips to roll a little bit of compression pressure onto the crown of the head, not necessary, you don't need to do that. I'm taking no responsibility for anyone that chooses to do that giant disclaimer alert for a second time Moving on. So, but those are ways that I that are that you can stimulate these upper chakras again in that prone position, starting to get that rare contact with your face and or the top of your head and the floor.

Speaker 2:

Now, one of the most popular, well-known, spoken about postures is downward facing dog and from a vinyasa standpoint, obviously it's a wonderful posture. I've mentioned it here before because, same same reason, my neck injury prevented me for almost a year from really being able to to fully support that posture and there are so many ways that you can modify downward facing dog and there are so many people, just from being a yoga instructor, that that are in downward facing dog and, unfortunately, are not completing the proper aligned expression of the posture, simply because either they haven't been taught how to set it up or they have too much tension in certain areas of their body. When positioned appropriately and done correctly, downward facing dog is an all-encompassing yoga asana. Not only does it stimulate the crown chakra and, honestly, probably all all chakras, it is one of the most accessible inversions and when we say inversion, we're really just talking about the alignment of the spine and the chakras being upside down from the norm, where they are again crown to root. When you are a downward facing dog, the crown is down and the root is up, and so, with that in mind, one of the one of the cues that I give that I find gets the most spinal alignment and engagement is thinking of a leapfrog.

Speaker 2:

And, instead of worrying, what a lot of people tend to do in downward facing dog is they dump directly into the one place you're not supposed to, which is up here, into the upper shoulders and the neck, and they're doing downward dog like this, downward dog like this, and the shoulders are up by the ears and all of their body weight is dumping onto the tops of their shoulders, which is not meant really to support all of your body weight in that way. Their backs are not engaged, their lower abdomen, their core, is not engaged, their hamstrings are probably excessively tight, as are their hip flexors, and so it's just, it's it's. It looks kind of like a C right rather than an upside down V, and so the cue that I find that gets people to eliminate or realign to the best of their ability is pressing your belly to your thighs. Do that for most people is to bend the knees so deeply that they come towards the floor and to lengthen that belly and that spine up and back. This also does two things it shifts the weight from height, hopefully from the arms and the hands, into the hips, which is where the weight's really supposed to be, and by bending the knees it creates that extra kind of torque in the lower legs. But a lot of times when people come into downward facing dog, they forget that their legs are still doing half the work and they kind of use their legs as as a balance more so than as a support, because they're just not used to distributing their body weight in this way. That's my understanding of why this happens consistently. So once you get them to lengthen through the spine by pressing their belly back and coming from that C into that B, because you've reduced the angle with the legs, then you can begin to ask them to pedal or begin to straighten one leg at a time, creating a little bit of a dynamic movement. So we're reducing the risk of potentially popping a hamstring right, we don't want that. So, now that I've given all of the you know, asana, postural kind of indications towards it, when we're talking about the spiritual implications of it, what I love about downward dog and why I think that you know.

Speaker 2:

For vinyasa specifically, and and I will put a little little detour in my line of talking to just touch on the vinyasa aspect and um, the movement really creating flow in the energy of the body, and one of the reasons that I was always drawn to vinyasa is the flow of it, the movement of energy, the moving meditation that it is versus Hatha, traditional yoga and I can't, I shouldn't say traditional, because it's all traditional, right, but static posture holds are in my mind. You really shouldn't have one practice without the other, because if you are new to yoga and you go to vinyasa class, you're not going to have an understanding of those postures with the speed with which they are moving through them, whereas if you have a hatha practice and you understand the postures, you will be able to more easily move into and out of those postures. Not only easily but safely. And that is the most important thing is to be safe in our practice. No matter what Right Our life practice, our goal is our own safety and the safety of others. Do no harm.

Speaker 2:

Remember so, with that in mind, one of the beautiful things about Downward Facing Dog and Vinyasa, and why the yoga teacher will laugh somewhat somewhat what's the word I'm looking for? Frighteningly, because it's a rest pose, so that the downward facing dog, which for most people is an extremely challenging, highly dynamic pose in a vinyasa class, that's your rest pose and child's pose is the alternative. If you've, you know, taken yourself to your edge and you really just need a break, then you come down to child's pose. Well, we just talked about child's pose and essentially the two postures are doing the same thing. One is significantly more strenuous, obviously Downward facing least. In downward facing dog, like a traditional child's pose with the knees wide and the spine long and the spine lengthened with the room for the torso, you have that spinal alignment, that chakra alignment, that line of energy from the hips through the head, and you're bringing in a traditional downward dog asana. You're bringing that energy from the root chakra. You're stimulating it and driving it up towards the crown chakra. You're also aiming that crown just like we were talking about before towards the ground which is creating that stimulation and having that out of the norm upside down. Having that out of the norm upside down inversion practice, relatively safely for most people.

Speaker 2:

I could probably do an entire episode on just downward facing dog and, who knows, maybe I will. This is not going to be that episode but, like I said, there are certain ways for modifications. A lot of people do have wrist injuries and or carpal tunnel and or that's where they feel this the most Well. One of the reasons for that is because they're probably putting too much of their body weight into their arms and shoulders. Another reason for that is because they are not. They are cupping and dumping into their wrists as opposed to elongating through the wrists and really getting into the hands themselves. So one of the big, the big cues that I'm going to share with you now for how to alleviate some of that discomfort in downward facing dog is twofold. The first fold is in order to get out of this and into the traditional shoulders broadened arms, extended aspect to get out of your neck and crunchy shoulders and into your back and to really strengthen. I like to take my arms, not shoulder but slightly wider than shoulder, with a gentle 45 degree angle of the hands that I'm making a little smaller just so it fits into the screen.

Speaker 2:

If you are watching or listening and not watching, I should say Other most important thing to think about is and a lot of people don't know this, unless you go to yoga teacher training or you have a really wonderful instructor one of the most important placements when we're talking about downward facing dog is this right here. It is the kind of ball if you will again air quotes for those of you that are listening ball of the hands, and it's going to be the, the, the on the palm underneath the knuckles of the index and middle fingers, and what that does when you press into that it elongates. It's hard to kind of hard to tell. It elongates the wrist and what this does as you ground into that, a lot of times you'll see people cupping in downward facing dog where they're like squeezing their fingertips in. Their palms are coming off the mat and their wrists are like taking on the brunt of their upper body weight. Their palms are coming off the mat and their wrists are like taking on the brunt of their upper body weight. So by pressing into this area on both sides, you are then grounding through your palms, you're extending through your fingers and you are taking the cringe out of the wrist, the bend out of the wrist, and really creating a stream of energy from the fingertips and the palms directly into the floor, up the line, through the arm and towards the back. And that is probably 99% of the time going to help alleviate that crunchy wrist, my wrist hurting, downward dog problem.

Speaker 2:

Obviously, if you have a severe injury or something, it may not for you, but nine times out of 10, that's that cue is going to start to change your downward dog practice, coupled with the idea of keeping the knees bent and actually getting your spine straight and I again, we don't like to say the word straight, but I'll say lengthened in downward facing dog is another way that you're going to be able to start to get the weight out of the hands, out of the wrists, into the back, into the hips and down the legs. Don't forget about your legs, bend into them, bend those knees, lengthen through that spine and then begin to work through the legs, pedal out through the feet and shift that weight back and down to create that equal and opposite kind of physical reaction in your own body, with consciousness right on purpose, because that's that's the whole point, that's what we're doing. So another thing I touched on them briefly headstand, handstand. These are ways to go into that crown chakra and again, trying to bring energy there, to create that connection with your intuition, with your insight, with your creativity, with with the manifestation of what's in the mind out into the reality in front of us. And again, this is not going to be for the faint of heart.

Speaker 2:

So when we're talking about headstands, there is, there are different. There's one in particular and you can, you can look it up, but it is kind of a support system and because of my neck I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on it or its efficacy, other than I've heard good things from other people, but it is essentially a padded, shortened table with a neck cutout that you hold on to and kick your legs up and it is able to provide you, with your shoulders pressing onto it, a way to practice headstands without the actual body weight on the head and hands. I urge you to look it up. I would just Google inversion system and see what comes up for you. That's one way to attempt it and again, I'm not saying that it's, I'm not promoting it in any way. I'm just saying that that's a tool that's out there. Another tool that's out there that I do use but again won't promote.

Speaker 2:

We'll just bring up our inversion tables and they can be pretty aggressive for people that have again ankle injuries. You're literally hanging yourself up by your ankles upside down, but it's a great way for people that have a comfort level for that and don't have any contraindications physically for that to decompress the spine. There's a whole host of health benefits associated with inversion tables. You know, increased production of synovial fluid beginning to literally create that, that decompression by hanging upside down. So if you do, like me, stare clear of typical inversions such as a headstand, for good reason, or you don't have the, maybe strength right now to practice a handstand, which is, I believe, personally, handstands.

Speaker 2:

While the balance is more challenging, you can always use a wall and they are, in my mind, the safer option from a headstand. A because your elbows are not are are not grounded. Some people practice headstands in a tripod, which I don't love because of the instability of the neck. So anytime I do practice a headstand, or anytime I would help someone else, it would be with the elbows engaged with the floor and the palms around the back of the head as so, and that would be the only way I would teach it. I am not not a fan of the tripod headstand. It's just much too unstable for even with a wall, I just I do not hashtag, do not recommend.

Speaker 2:

So when it comes to a handstand, people might think, oh well, that's, you know, even more aggressive and technically you definitely need more strength for it. Technically it is more aggressive. You're only on your hands, but when your elbows are are in contact with the floor and your legs are up over your head, if you, if you can't really fall out of that without severe injury to your shoulder, whereas when you're on your hands, ironically enough, it gives you, if you fell out of it in a direction you can kind of move and kick your legs around because your neck and your spine are not engaged with the floor. So you have a lot more safe ways to emergency dismount out of that posture. And handstand definitely builds strength, they all build strength, but handstand really builds strength and there is a way to.

Speaker 2:

There are different ways you can L to build the strength, to build the balance with. You know, one foot against the wall, one leg up in the air. That's a little more challenging. You can kick up into a handstand. You are never, ever supposed to kick up into a headstand. It is contraindicated, right again, because of the head and the neck and the pressure on them. So a lot of times people will kick up into headstand because it's easier than using the core muscle engagement that it takes to get you there.

Speaker 2:

And so you know again, the prep like these all go in linear succession, kind of generally speaking, just because inversions are traditionally again throwing out that buzzword. They are a huge association with yoga because they bring in that energy right, going upside down, flips, flips things around. It brings the energy flowing back towards mother earth, up towards the upper chakras and and they are imperative to a comprehensive yoga practice. Yeah, pardon me, but we need to practice them safely and everyone everybody is different. So in an effort to give people options, if you don't have a neck injury and you want to be able to air quotes, play in an inversion, that table I mentioned where you can hold on to it it's its own sturdy area, with your shoulders supported and your neck and head quote unquote free, without the weight then that would be a decent recommendation. If you are just looking for the benefits physically of an inversion an inversion table and you can handle the strain on the lower joints, the ankles, the knees, it doesn't bother your lumbar spine. An inversion table is an amazing, safe and gentle way to go about that. I've mentioned legs up the wall on this podcast almost every episode. It's not a true inversion simply because your back is still flat on the floor. But if you really don't have a lot of accessibility for whatever your reason for these other options, then that's good enough. It's better than nothing. It's getting your legs up in the air. It's getting blood flow from your feet, your ankles, your lower legs up to the body. So it's still definitely a benefit If you are feeling frisky and you want to inspire yourself.

Speaker 2:

Handstands are fun. They're fun to play with as long as you're doing so safely, under supervision, with support from a qualified professional. Again, I'm taking no responsibility for putting this out into the universe, other than to give you the ideas to implement with a professional. I'm always happy to help you, but please don't just start, you know, kicking up into handstands all willy nilly. It's just a way to again bring that stimulation into your crown chakra. And I will say, out of all of the above, probably my most fun has been with a wall and other people in the room, either in a class type setting or, you know, one on one with a friend or or another yoga instructor.

Speaker 2:

Playing with handstands can be. You know, as long as you're open to to laughing at yourself and you are under the supervision or are a qualified professional, then they they can be a lot of fun. There are different ways to practice. They're very strengthening, they engage your entire core, they engage your legs and that you can kick up against a wall and kind of take most of the balance aspect out, and they build confidence. Handstands truly do build confidence.

Speaker 2:

I will say since my neck injury I have not practiced a handstand and maybe, maybe this is the universe drawing me to my intuition to start, to start to work on that again. But I will say that I have had quite a lot of fun in my, in my yoga heyday, pre injury, playing with handstands, safely with a wall and a qualified professional. But they are a great way to again align the chakras and to challenge yourself right and to bring that energy down, up, up, down, up down into your crown chakra. And so all of these, again, are options. They're just options, but the point of this is to stimulate these lesser, I guess, focused on chakras. When we meditate, we're stimulating our crown chakra.

Speaker 2:

Right, it's not all about the physicality of it. When we're talking about yoga asana, we are literally speaking about the physicality of it, and so these are ways to tap into to, to pay, pay homage to to our, our upper chakras, our intuition, our connection to our higher self, higher power, whatever you want to call it zone of no judgment and to begin to stimulate these areas. Um, the science behind it is will be for another episode, um, but you know, you have your pineal gland, which is a huge, huge, huge um, that's that's. That's not even just one episode, that's a multi episode feature, um in in into itself and it sits right back there, um, behind the third eye, and so you know we want to. People call it the seat of the soul.

Speaker 2:

I'll just make it a little spoiler alert and I urge you to Google, because it is again one of the reasons that we practice these inversions, one of the reasons that we stimulate this, this spinal fluid, that we have our bodies in these different positions to overall stimulate health and well-being and, for our purposes today, stimulate our creativity. So, as I've said many times, I will post videos. However, due to my own limitations, which I'm aware of, probably will not be showing you videos of headstands and, if I can get there, maybe I will post a video of me laughably kicking up into a handstand once I have the okay from my doctor to do so for my neck injury. But I just want to thank you for allowing me to help you break into your creativity, align yourself with your chakras upside down or right side up and explore a little bit different ways that are, I hope, are accessible to everyone, for their highest and best good, to bring their inner dreams into their outer reality, pardon me. And so I would just like to say that I appreciate each and every one of you for sharing this space with me, and so I'd ask you to please share the same with your loved ones.

Speaker 2:

For more goodness. Follow me on all the socials at Above the Ground Podcast and visit my website, erasaboveyogacom. As always, I'm happy to help you with any assistance you may have with your own yoga practice. Please don't forget to check out all of my other episodes and the amazing sisters at DivasThatCarecom. You can find us on Spotify, odyssey, apple, amazon, iheartradio or anywhere else that you might feel guided. Again, my name is Gia Raquel Rose, owner of Heirs Above Yoga, and you are listening to Above the Ground Podcast, where every day is a good one.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening. This show was brought to you by Divas that Care. Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram and, of course, on divasthatcarecom, where you can subscribe to our newsletter, so you don't miss a thing.