TOPPLING TREE POSE
![](https://www.jamescraigyoga.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/IMG-0317-768x1024.png)
Benefits:
For your body:
- Strengthens your psoas muscle and pelvic floor
- Stretches your shoulders, elbows, and wrists
- Increases the control of your eye muscles and how not to engage them too hard as you hinge forward
For your mind:
- Connects your mind to creating breath and body movement
- Extends your focus to balance on just one-leg
- Centers your mind on relaxing your gaze to think clearer
For your spirit:
- When you fill-up too much, you need to pour out and give to others
- This takes time, patience is the key to unlocking the movement that supports the body the most
- Tension is a disguise and its time to peel these layers back
(Your body is your own so be sure to do these poses the certain way your body needs to do them, not the way my body does them in the pictures.)
Modifications:
- Airplane your arms behind you.
- Bring your hands to your chest in a prayer position.
- Put blocks in at the top of your mat to give yourself the confidence to tilt forward.
Pose Description:
- Start in a standing position.
- Interlace your fingers behind your low back.
- Open the width of your shoulders to stretch your chest.
- Step your right foot forward and place your body weight there.
- Lift your gaze and your back left leg.
- Punch your interlaced fingers back.
- Ground your right foot and kick your left leg.
- Diverge your eyes and breath here.