Reading Time: 4 minutesToday’s Poses – Cat-Cow Pose and Small & Large Intestine Clearing Pose
Cat-Cow Pose and Intestine Clearing Pose
Cat-Cow Pose and Intestine Clearing Pose helps remove the stress in the body and enable intestinal cleansing. Learn these poses with the Guided Yoga Series.
Cat-Cow Yoga Pose
Cat-Cow Yoga Pose – Cat Pose is often paired with Cow Pose as a gentle warm-up sequence. When practiced together, the poses help to stretch the body and prepare it for other activities. The Cat-Cow Stretch (Chakravakasana) is a yoga essential and for good reason. It involves moving the spine from a rounded position (flexion) to an arched one (extension). Each movement is done in conjunction with either an inhalation or exhalation of the breath, making this a simple vinyasa (linking breath to movement).
Steps
You can perform Cat-Cow on an exercise mat or a carpeted floor.
Starting Position: All Fours
- Start on your hands and knees, aligning your wrists underneath your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips.
- Think of the spine as a straight line connecting the shoulders to the hips. Try visualizing the line extending forward through the crown of the head and back through the tailbone. This is the position of a neutral spine.
- Keep the neck long by looking down and out.
Inhale and ArchÂ
- Curl your toes under.
- Tilt your pelvis back so that your tailbone sticks up.
- Let this movement ripple from your tailbone up your spine so that your neck is the last thing to move.
- Your belly drops down, but keep your abdominal muscles hugging your spine by drawing your navel in.
- Take your gaze gently up toward the ceiling without cranking your neck.
- Release the tops of your feet to the floor.
- Tip your pelvis forward, tucking your tailbone. Again, let this action move up your spine. Your spine will naturally round.
- Draw your navel toward your spine.
- Drop your head.
- Take your gaze to your navel.
Repeat the Cat-Cow Stretch on each inhale and exhale, matching the movement to your breath.
Continue for 5 to 10 breaths, moving the whole spine. After your final exhale, come back to a neutral spine.
Benefits
- Flexing and extending the spine can help improve circulation in the discs in your back. It’s a basic motion, but one that can be enormously beneficial in supporting the back and easing pain and maintaining a healthy spine, especially if you spend a lot of time sitting.
- Cat-Cow Stretch can help you improve your posture and balance. It is also believed to be a good stress-reliever and calming pose since you link the movements with your breathing.
Small & Large Intestine Clearing Pose
Transcript and Steps:
Hi everybody, welcome back. It’s Maurene and this is the yoga series for general support.
- Today, we’re going to be doing the cat-cow pose which is going to help improve our digestive fire as well as stretch out our neck and back and we’re going to be resetting the Ileocecal and Houston valves which is going to help assist in our digestion as well.
- Let’s go ahead and get started. We’re going to do the cat-cow – bringing both hands shoulder-width apart directly beneath our shoulders.  You want to make sure that the hands are directly beneath there and bringing the knees back directly beneath the hips.
- From here, you want to inhale dropping the belly button to the ground lifting that tailbone and gaze up towards the sky and with the exhale,  you’re going to reverse that position rolling out the back hollowing out the belly tucking the hips and pressing your hands firmly into the floor.  So repeat this with every inhale into cow exhale into cat.
- If you need extra support, you can feel free to tuck your toes too because the most important thing is that you’re in alignment and you’re breathing with this pose so to clear your ileocecal and Houston valves.
- You want to start by placing your pinkies on the top of your hip bones.
- From here, your fingers are going to be right on either side of your intestines.
- You’re going to take a big inhale as you press those fingers in massaging and pulling them up towards the lower of your ribcage as you exhale.
- Relax those fingers and begin again with the next inhale. Â Repeat that about five to seven times and then you can go ahead and clear your limps through the small and large intestines.
- It’s not what you think you want to find a comfortable place to fit extend your legs out in front of you
- Bring your hands and fists, I like to take one fist and the other hand right on the outside of it.
- We’re looking for the pinstripes of your muscles here on the outside size and the inner thighs.
- From here you’re going to take your fists.  I like to use my thumb knuckle to do whatever you need you can use your fingertips as well but from here I’m going to place that palm firmly up and just get them nice rounded massages from the knee up to the hip.
- On the outer pinstripes then I’m going to do the same thing on the inside using my pinky knuckle all and I’ll show you on this side, right here, pressing that palm in and gently massaging it all the way up towards my groin make sure you do both sides give them a really good massage feel those pinstripes as you do it and then you will be helping to clear your limp through the small and large intestine
