Wheel

I will always be the first to admit I have little to no arm strength. Growing up I was an Irish Step dancer (think Riverdance). The only arm strength needed in this practice was to hold your arms firmly at your sides. Later, when I got into team performance we would have to hold our arms up for minutes at a time, but this worked our backs more than our arms. All this is to introduce why I chose wheel as my first challenging pose.

This fall I attended some Yoga classes at the college rec center. At the end of each class we would do an inversion pose. I finally worked up the courage to try plow:

but I was still terrified to try wheel and not be able to do it. Turns out, I can do it, it's just staying in the pose which is hard. To prepare and gain confidence in this pose I have been doing arm exercises and bridge pose:

to strengthen my back. My goal is to hold wheel pose for 10 full breaths.

I'll update later with the sequence I've been doing this week!
-A