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So we're going to look at Wide Leg Standing Forward Bend, and I love this pose. If I could
do this pose an hour in class and get away with it, I would, and variations and variations,
because in this posture, I get to be upright with my legs, and have my spine perfectly
upside down and supported. It's kind of like head balance, but I don't have to hold up
my body weight on the top of my head. This inversion of the spine is so wonderful. It
creates so much space, and refreshes you so much, so we start with the feet wide apart,
and with the feet wide apart, the skeleton allows the pelvis to turn over, almost a hundred
and eighty degrees. That is, you can almost come completely straight up and down between
your own feet, and people do. When you're first coming in to this pose, it's a little
bit, probably more like this. While you're first learning it, and the legs are building
up their flexibility, and so you're still getting a nice, you can, you have the opportunity
if you don't hold your head up. You get a nice inversion through the neck, and you begin
to get a foretaste of what the traction, the gravity that I'm talking about, the weight
of the head and that pulling down, can do for the spaciousness of the neck, and then
down the spine. As your flexibility increases in the legs, you're going to find, guess what?
more and more of your spinal vertebrae will come into this upside down, yet aligned orientation
with each other. Now some folks try to rush the job. Take the feet really wide apart,and
then put the head down. You can see it's not the same thing,not as good, won't work. Others
try to bend the legs. Neither will work. The only thing that's going to work, is to be
patient. Do this pose a lot, and let your legs stretch.