Hip joint is very important in human body structure, not only because of skeletal joints, but also because it exercises muscles with different functions and carries sophisticated reproductive system and visceral system.
In order to practice the horse character and make the pose look cool, you used to open your hips, but wrong practice and excessive squeezing may cause damage to your pelvis.
Key points of hip opening
Keep the right posture.
In yoga, there are many hip-opening postures, such as squatting posture, pigeon posture, warrior series, frog prone posture and so on. All exercises require the pelvis to be straight, so as to effectively stretch the hip muscles. If it is based on dislocation, the pelvis may tilt.
Right force
In hip opening practice, we require the flexibility of hips, not the flexibility in dancing. There is a difference between the two. What is needed at this time is muscle strength, not joint strength. This is the key point to open the buttocks.
Hip-closing exercise
Hip has six moving directions (see the previous article if you don't know). Only when the six motion directions are stretched to the same extent can the flexibility of the hips be guaranteed.
This is similar to the short board effect. Even if you open your hips well, the short board that closes your hips determines the amount of water in this bucket, which is the flexibility of your hips.
After practicing the open hip pose, you must practice the closed hip pose, not only to balance the pelvis, but more importantly to enhance the flexibility of the hip bone, just like the rubber band needs to be relaxed when it is tightened.
There are many hip-closing postures. Today, I recommend two commonly used and very practical hips.
Bird Feng Wang
The bird-king posture is the most common hip-closing posture, which can not only relieve the hip tension caused by hip opening, but also effectively stretch the hip muscles, which is very helpful for us to practice hip-closing.
Niumian style
Only from the effect of hip retraction, cow face can effectively stretch and relax ankles, hips and thighs, and maintain the elasticity of hip and leg muscles. Coupled with the hands locked behind your back, you can flexibly shoulder the joints.
If you combine the bird king style with the cow face style, is this the effect?
Opening the buttocks has many advantages, and so does closing the buttocks. Yoga practice can't just pursue one aspect. Every yoga pose is a whole, with yin and yang, left and right. As a yoga practitioner and even a yoga teacher, you should understand the concept of balance.