Crow Pose is one yoga pose that can help you feel strong along with the messages you feed yourself.
Maybe when you start your balance pose initially, you’re not able to hold the Crow Pose without your feet or toes touching the mat or floor.
…But as you practice regularly, you’ll be able to! 🐦⬛
Crow Pose could be a goal this week that gets your mojo back to blood flowing activity and to keep moving and growing. 🥅
Building Strength Stability
If you want to become stronger, gaining arm strength is one impactful way. Strength represents resilience that’s needed to get through tough times… and build stability and progress.
One starter exercise way is to be in your push up pose. Alternating legs, pull one knee at a time closer up to your shoulders one side at a time.
Then like a push up, push straight up and down. Your hiked up leg is extra body weight to use as muscle weights for your arm. 😉
Then switch leg sides. After a weekly habit of doing arm strength building exercises, your muscle memory will remember (fostering stable reinforcements) and that’ll help you in your Crow Pose…
If only you could see how cool you look!
This exercise I just described (that I’m not sure if it has a name) helps you get to used to vertical arm strength that Crow Pose needs. Chataranga pose is another.
In good form, vertical arms will support your body along with your strong ab muscles. And speaking of the gut, I share below some strong food ways that complement your pose.
…But let’s not got ahead of ourselves. For starters, you may want to see where you’re at with your Crow Pose today. So give it a try today (or now) and fail forward or beam in your Crow!
Keep reading 👇 for tips…
Crow Pose For Beginners (Or Starting Again)
As a beginner, you can have a yoga block in front of you for strength and moral support. Set the soft-place-to-fall security block on the floor on the lowest setting side where your forehead would fall on… don’t worry, as this likely won’t happen.
The placebo effect is a confidence booster. 🤸🏻
…And that way you can enter the pose confidently without fear of injury that can stall your progress or hold you back unintentionally.
Especially when you want Crow Pose to build your confidence (and not build a fine line wall divide that keeps you stuck).
And when you move into your first Crow Pose moments, you can feel like you can handle the world in all its cruel ways that can sometimes make any of us feel like we’re broken down. Stay at peace. ✌️
When you look up and out with a grin on your face knowing you’re able to support yourself, the weight of the world crumbles into the mat.
Plus, you’re building up arms that are becoming more chiseled. 😊
And after you’ve mastered Crow Pose, you can advance to a taller Crane Pose or take a slight bend (detour break) into Side Crow.
There’s always a next or side step. Before you know it, you’ll be flying! 🕊️
Side Crow Pose and Crane Pose
In Side Crow Pose, you crouch down and tip your body to the side where the back of your upper arms catch your legs and side buttock. So you get a different muscle workout and perspective.
And if you want to lengthen taller and gain more stability in your moves, you can try a more advanced pose: Crane Pose.
Cranes are the tallest flying birds. They’re powerful so the pose matches the yoga pose name.
What I like about these two other poses is what they’ll tell you more about your core and arm muscle state.
Many women think they’ll build Popeye arms with regular 10 lb weights, but that’s not the case.
We underestimate ourselves and what we can lift. If you can lift your travel carry-on luggage up to the compact overhead bin, then daily 10 pound weights should be no problem.
If you look more compact, then you could have more muscle that’s lean mass which means it will become denser or smaller.
Think of a compact ball of yarn versus a loose skein that yarn is usually sold in. On the shelves, it’s soft. But if you take it home and unravel the yarn and make a tight ball 🧶, then it becomes hard like a rubber ball.
We want our muscles to have shape, tone, and hard compactness that a rubber ball represents. In between, it can be like a squishy stress ball.
Our arm muscles are easy to scope out, but the hidden body muscles that give us the most trouble and least strength are the ones we don’t use or stretch often. And in yoga, you can discover those small areas in poses.
Balancing Food Macros to Support Crow Pose Moves
If you’re like many trying to lose weight, be sure to amp up your protein so your body stays full longer. Proteins burn more calories.
Taking a step further, the body burns fat for energy after it runs out of glucose. And that’s why I’m so gung-ho on intermittent fasting for metabolic flexibility. On and off switching teaches the body who’s boss. 😊
As we age, we lose muscle. Our protein macros help make up the deficit, for especially women. We can include large doses of protein foods with specific amino acids to help us restore what’s lost.
Protein food sources also keep us feeling full that saves us time from taking time to eat so we can spend more time doing other activities we want to get to.
If you’re like me, after graduating from baby milk as nutrients, I started out life with sugary bowls of cereal and milk as a breakfast meal. That was what I woke up to, growing up. Protein wasn’t a priority.
With cereal, it’s not the sugary sides that’s the biggest problem… it was the starting with cereal as a meal. Cereal wasn’t and isn’t filling enough and also begs us wanting more sugar in our veins.
But as a snack treat to fulfill sweet cravings, low-sugar cereals are better and I prefer them over sweet alternatives like cookies (my love 💕). Many cereals are fortified with macros and minerals while cookies are mostly empty calories (unless you bake them with healthy goodness like I do these days).
But in my earlier years, I was in double trouble working in catering food management at the Doubletree Hotel known for their large paper weight-dense cookies. 🍪
And that’s how I started my breakfast morning at 8 am…
But decades later with better intentions and experiencing a season of excess sugar bothering my skin with eczema, I changed my ways. I didn’t think I could ever switch to starting mornings with a savory meal.
…I mean, forget protein like lean meats. But I let health motivate me and after many bites, savory foods grew on me.
…So I started adding proteins from leftover meals. Because eggs, tofu, and chicken aren’t necessarily the favorite first thing meal when your gut isn’t even awake yet…
And if that’s you…don’t give up on yourself! The a-ha change I made also made me realize that I could ignore my cravings (like unproductive thoughts) if I wanted to and focus on building healthy habits.
Protein substantial foods are also a better stomach cushion for coffee (that’s acidic).
…And you too can start the habit if you want!
Trust your feelings will follow. 💖
That’s how you can change tastes effectively for your health and build in more protein ma-crows in your life, so you can support your Crow Pose and other bird pose yoga areas calling you!
Yoga moves calling for strength can be the canary in the coal mine indicator to add more daily muscle and protein to your body and diet. 🌱
And doing a daily Crow Pose could just be the starting reminder.