Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app. When I show up to teach yoga and the attendance is a little lower than usual, I selfishly get excited. There’s nothing I love more than having enough space for everyone to move their mats and practice yoga at the wall, whether it’s a quiet, restorative class or a more fiery vinyasa class. Because what most people don’t understand is that the wall is often our most neglected yoga prop. I said what I said: the wall is a prop, just like a block, strap, or bolster. I think there is a strong misconception that using the wall is seen as a way to make certain poses less challenging. That definitely can be the case, such as in Legs Up The Wall (Viparita Karani), which is a calming and effortless restorative posture. But the wall can also be a tool to intensify your experience of many poses. Practicing yoga at the wall can provide support, stability, and an opportunity to enhance your practice. Any blank wall can be used to amplify sensations, isolate specific muscles, and take your practice up a notch. My perspective shifted when I started to think of the wall as a prop that could be utilized to enhance my practice, rather than something that makes poses easier. If you’re practicing yoga at home or are a teacher looking to shake things up in class, the following postures can be enhanced by relying on the wall. 12 Ways to Intensify Your Yoga at the Wall 1. Reclined Figure Four Although it’s a common restorative pose at the wall, Reclined Figure Four can also be intensified at the wall. Scoot yourself closer to the wall to go deeper into the stretch. For additional intensity, lean the knee of your non-wall leg away from you. For added core work, press through your foot that’s against the wall, engage your core, and lift your hips slightly off the mat before lowering them back down. 2. Plank You may have heard a teacher cue “Press through your heels” during Plank Pose. This challenging wall variation ensures that you engage your muscles in all the intended ways. Sit with your back at the wall and notice where your heels land. Place your hands there and press your feet flat on the wall as you come into a Plank position. This engages your core muscles even more than a regular plank, while also challenging your balance. From there, you can try lifting one hand off the ground and then the other, or even one foot away from the wall and then the other. Or you can simply focus on your Plank and remembering to breathe. 3. Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose Variation (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana) I like to teach Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose at the wall to take some of the balancing aspects out of it. Often students have trouble stretching their lifted leg all the way to the side because they lose their balance or simply can’t reach their toes. By pressing your lifted foot against the wall, you can experience that same stretch along the back of your leg. Focus on standing tall and pressing away from the wall to balance. From there, you can reach for your big toe with your hand…or not. 4. Boat Pose (Navasana)
I love bringing this posture to the wall. By pressing resistance into the wall with your feet, you’ll feel that something extra in your core. Sit down and place your feet on the wall in front of you, then lean back. From here, you can reach your arms alongside your legs or take them overhead. Depending on your desired intensity in Boat Pose, you can also play with keeping a bend in your knees, straightening your legs, or bringing your feet further up the wall. This one is tough! 5 and 6. Triangle Pose (Trikonasana) and Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana) While the wall can be used to add intensity to postures, it can also help you find alignment that is, and I’m hesitant to say this, what is considered to be “more traditional” alignment. I like to think of Triangle Pose and Half Moon Pose as sister poses and I teach them alongside each other when possible. If a student doesn’t feel like balancing, Triangle will give them much of the same sensations and benefits as Half Moon. It’s very common in both of these shapes for people to not lean back enough, meaning you may reach one arm overhead but keep a small round or hunch in the back. I like to use the cue, “Create one long line from your bottom hand to your top hand, opening through the chest.” If you’re going to lift your back leg for Half Moon, I like to consider the cue “Stack the hips one on top of the other.” A great way to bring all of this together is to actually practice both these postures with your back against the wall. The first time I did this, I couldn’t believe just how far I had to lean back in order to achieve the alignment that the teacher was talking about. The wall lets you experience this without toppling onto the person behind you in class. 7 and 8. Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III) and Standing Splits Warrior 3 and Standing Splits also work well together. By providing support in Warrior 3, the wall takes the balancing aspect out of the pose and allows you to focus on getting—and keeping—your leg higher than you normally would. For Standing Splits, you might face away from the wall, place your hands on the ground or blocks, and use the wall similarly to help bring your leg higher than you would without the support. 9. Chair Pose (Utkatasana) How often do you hear a yoga teacher cue, “Sit back in Chair Pose”? (For me, it’s a lot!) It can be really challenging to keep your upper body upright in this pose. But by leaning your back against the wall and sliding yourself down into Chair Pose, you can tap into that alignment that is most challenging and beneficial. You may find that this version, often called a “wall sit” in workout classes, intensifies the pose more than enough for you, although you can play around with making it even more challenging by bringing your arms overhead. 10. Bound Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana)
This pose is often practiced with the upper body relaxed and leaning forward, which brings the stretch into the low back, hamstrings, and hips. But by sitting tall with your back against the wall and releasing your knees toward the floor in Bound Angle, you can isolate the hip and inner thigh muscles to intensify the stretch. 11. Frog Pose Another great hip opening pose that leverages the wall to amp up the intensity is Frog Pose. By placing your feet against the wall, you can start to scoot closer and closer to the wall for a deeper, more intense stretch in the hip flexor and abductor muscles. 12. Reclined Splits A posture from my dance class days is Reclined Splits. It’s similar to Legs up the Wall, but instead of keeping your legs vertical, you let them slide apart into middle splits. Relying on the support of the wall and the subtle force of gravity on your legs allows you to relax deeper into the pose. You can make this pose more intense by placing really gentle pressure with your hands onto the tops of your thighs. Or, you can make it less intense by placing blocks under your thighs to support them. Maybe the next time you find yourself practicing in a space with a blank stretch of wall or teaching to fewer students than usual, you’ll give yoga at the wall a try. About Our Contributor Ellie Sheppard (she/her) is a yoga teacher based in Ottawa, Ontario, with a passion for creating safe, welcoming yoga classes for all bodies and experience levels. Coming from a background in dance, Ellie was first drawn to yoga as a way to integrate movement and creativity back into her life with a mix of strength, stability, and mobility for injury prevention. Ellie is a firm believer that there is no full expression of any yoga pose—there is only your expression of the pose. Her mission as a teacher is to encourage students to explore their own expression of a pose so it feels good and welcome in each individual body. Outside of yoga, you might find Ellie falling off her paddleboard, tap dancing, and spending time at local coffee shops, breweries, and vineyards.
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