tiger variations

more easy tigers

photo by Joshua Lee @ unsplash.com

All creatures are beautiful. A tiger is simply majestic. Sleek, supple, moves with grace and ease. This is also what the tiger pose does for us.

Having looked at a basic tiger pose last week, today I'm looking at variations. 

Both variety and sameness are both important to us, because:

• our hormones and nerve patterns love doing the same thing over and over, and this is one way to keep our mind-emotion-body complex running smoothly
• but our muscles love variety, and in this way they are inspired to rebuild themselves

One way to do both sameness and variety in a class, or home practice, is to know how to do different variations of a pose. Hence today's post.

Tigers (and Cats) are great for:

• beginner to intermediate levels
• as warm up movements/poses for advanced classes, and vinyasa/flow classes

With tiger pose, we can make it easier by:

• when you lift a leg up behind you, do a cat lift (bottom and head up, chest open wide, abdomen down)
• when you return the leg to start, either do a cat tuck (spine raised up to ceiling, chin and tailbone tucked under), or just come back to all fours
• if you are bringing the knee forward to meet the head, do a cat tuck

tiger variations:

1. lifting one leg straight up and down, keeping leg long throughout, not bringing it back to start nor head to knee. Great for mobility, as are all tiger moves, as well as lifting and toning our front and back of our thighs, and our buttocks 
2. bent knee up and back to start, keep knee bent throughout. Toes point towards the head, and the knee is lifted as high as you can. Most people try to push the feet towards the head, however the key to making this effective, is to lift the knee as high as you can as well. This squeezes our back, the muscles, nerves eminating from the spine, kidneys and adrenals. And for cosmetic reasons, tightens our buttocks and helps our posture by strengthening the back. This can be useful for body tone as well. It squeezes all of the back of you on the upward motion, and then of course, stretches that whole area on the forward part. 
3. after you have lifted a leg, whatever variation, put your leg back to start position rather than head to knee
4. lift right leg high as you turn your head to the right. Exhale, head to knee. Repeat left leg up, head to left. A very doable variation which creates a lot of suppleness and is easy. I find that people who have lower back or hip issues can do this easily, which is great, as it frees up movement in that area. The leg will naturally go a bit out to the side, but this is not a deliberate "leg out to side" effort. One or both arms may tend to bend as you twist, which is fine

In variation 1. and 2. you can squeeze the buttocks for the lifting motion. 

Basic tiger pose (last week), and this week's variation one, can be used by beginners instead of half locust pose. Variation 2, can be used instead of a bow variation.

profound benefits from easy movement

I know that simple poses like cats and tigers can seem way too easy. But the grace, suppleness, restoration and maintenance that they give us is so profound. And they are not hard so that we don't feel daunted at doing them daily. I find that doing cats and tigers only three times each, on a daily basis is quite adequate in giving immense benefits.

relax after

You can relax after cats, and tigers, in any variation of child pose. When I first learnt yoga, this is what we did: we did our pose, usually three times, or once if we held the pose, then relaxed after. Effort then rest. A powerful combination.

If you can't do all fours, and sometimes we have injuries when this happens, then we can do them standing with a bench as an aid, instead.