What are the 10 most popular yoga positions and why? There are many popular yoga positions for various reasons. First of all, there's different directions of movement. The yoga postures are based on directions...
First of all, there's different directions of movement. The yoga postures are based on directions of movement of the spine. There's a forward bend, stretching the spine and compressing the front of the body and lengthening the back of the body. There's a backward bend where you're opening the front of the body and the back of the body is getting shorter. There's a lateral bend where one side of the body is lengthening and the other side is shortening, and there's a twist where the spine is twisting. And then there's these things called extensions, where the main purpose of the posture is to create maximum space between your vertebrae. They're all extensions in that sense, but there are some postures that are more, their focus is more to extend the spine; that's their primary focus. So I tried to pick postures from all of those different things that have different functionality for the body.
The second one would be Cobra Pose, Bhujangasana. It's in your stomach and lifting the chest. I was taught that in the very first yoga class that I went to. I still teach that position in almost every class that I teach because it's so beneficial for the low back.
Some type of warrior pose, and in different traditions it's taught different ways. In our tradition, the standing back bend warrior pose is the one that I probably use the most frequently. But there's a lateral warrior, there's a balanced warrior pose, in some of the other traditions, but some pose that is Virabhadrasana, the warrior pose.
Forward bend, the standing forward bend. You're going to do that in every yoga class you ever go to. It's neutralizing posture, reaching over and touching your toes. Everybody thinks of that when they think of yoga.
Some type of inversion, although I say that with caution because I think a lot of people are out there doing inversions that don't have the strength in their neck to do it. When you think about it, inversion is putting all the weight of your entire body on the smallest vertebra in your spine. So I think that people need to be very aware of going to a class when teacher puts them in an inversion, of being able to say, "that doesn't feel good on my neck and I don't think should do it.' And just to lie there and respectfully decline. If you have neck problems and disc problems in your neck, putting all your weight on your neck is a bad idea. And in the yoga community there's a lot of stuff around this whole thing "Oh we have to invert" because of this because of that, and yeah it's a nice thing to do as long as it's something that's beneficial for your body and your neck. So make sure that a yoga teacher warms, that you turn your neck and have moved your neck before you go into inversion and that you're okay about that and you feel that you know I can do this. You don't have to be a hero in any yoga class. If something's not right for you, don't do it. If it doesn't feel good, don't do it.
Just a standing, simple standing posture. Some people call it Tada-asana, we call is Samasthiti. That's in every class I've ever been in, unless they don't do standing postures that day. And I've taught a class where I don't do standing postures.
Savasana, the relaxation pose. Lying on your back, I can't think of any class that I haven't done Savasana, never.
Downward Dog. It can be a complicated posture and it's done badly a lot but I would call it one of those popular postures.
Some kind of twist, probably a seated twist, because there's standing twists, there's supine twists, and there's seated twists, and probably this seated twist with your legs kind of crossed, would probably be one of the more popular, although I've been to many classes where I haven't done that twist. Or maybe a supine twist, lay on your back and taking your knees from side to side would be, I felt like I had to include a twist.
A balance posture, and I chose Tree Posture. I think that you se it on the cover of magazines, you see it in a lot of the books. There's many balance postures but generally that's probably one of the first ones that people use, and recognizable.
