While yoga traditionally requires minimal equipment, the integration of props such as yoga blocks can greatly enhance and deepen your practice. Here’s a few reasons we encourage you to integrate the use of yoga blocks into your practice.
Enhance Alignment and Stability:
One of the primary benefits of using yoga blocks, and one you might be most familiar with, is their ability to improve alignment and stability. Yoga poses often require reaching the floor, but not everyone has the flexibility or range of motion to do so comfortably. By placing yoga blocks under your hands, you can elevate the ground and bring it closer to you. This elevation helps to maintain proper alignment, especially for beginners or individuals with limited flexibility, ensuring a safe and effective practice. The stability provided by yoga blocks allows you to explore postures with confidence and reduces the risk of injury.
Deepen Your Sense of Body Awareness:
Yoga blocks are fantastic tools for deepening your understanding of not only the large superficial muscles we use in our yoga practice, but they can also help shine a light on some of the smaller, deeper stabilizing muscles we don’t always connect with or pay attention to. For example, in standing poses like Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), you can place a block on the floor to rest your hand on, which provides stability and allows you to focus on some of the fine tuning options available in this pose, like elongating your spine, rotating your rib cage, engaging the gluteus medius and tuning into the various isometrics options (muscle engagement without movement)
Access Challenging Poses:
Certain yoga poses can be challenging to attempt due to the necessary balance and flexibility. Yoga blocks can be valuable tools in accessing these poses and gradually building up the necessary skills. For example, when attempting Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose), placing a block under your hand can provide additional support and height, making it easier to lift your back leg off the ground (and maybe even bind the foot). As you build strength and confidence, you can gradually lower the height of the block until you no longer need it.
Modify and Adapt to Your Body:
Every individual has a unique body structure and range of motion. Yoga blocks can be immensely helpful in modifying and adapting poses to suit your body's needs and limitations. They enable you to find variations of poses that work best for you. Whether you're dealing with tight hamstrings, limited flexibility, recovering from an injury or any other physical limitation, yoga blocks offer a versatile tool to make yoga accessible and enjoyable for everyone. By using blocks (and other props like bolsters and blankets), you can experience the benefits of each pose and gradually work towards greater flexibility and strength when you’re ready.
Looking for creating ways to use a yoga block in your home practice? Try our class “10 Ways to Use Yoga Blocks” on our YouTube channel and stay tuned for a new class coming your way soon “10 More Ways to Use Yoga Blocks”.
Click here to take class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMDwfdvXwA0&t=966s