Last week, I talked about how to find the right position of your pelvis to find the best stretch. I gave several different suggestions on how to think about moving your body, including one of my favourites – tipping your tailbone.
When I say tip your tailbone up or down, the tailbone itself is not the important thing. It’s actually about the muscles you use to move the tailbone in a particular direction and the resulting position of your pelvis and lower back.
So if you’re not sure what I mean, try this exercise focusing on just tipping up or down.
You’ll need something to hold on to – a wall, desk, table, chair or kitchen bench works well.
- Start with your hands on a chair or other form of support (best if same height as hips).
- Walk your feet back underneath your hips. Feet hip-width apart.
- Keep knees bent. It’s easier at first if knees are bent quite a lot.
- Now try to tip your tailbone up and down. When you do this, you’re actually tipping your pelvis up and down – using muscles in your legs and back to create the movement.
- If you find the movement easy, slowly ease your legs a little bit straighter and you’ll find a deeper stretch when lifting your tailbone up.
When you tip your tailbone up, you should feel more of a stretch in the back of your legs. At a basic level this happens because as your bone structure moves up, the muscles attached at that end move further away from their opposite attachments and by default the muscles are stretched or lengthened.
You can use this same movement to improve the stretch in your hamstrings (back of thighs) in down dog. Remember, it’s much easier to do this with bent knees.
