Waking Energy 7 Timeless Practices Designed to Reboot Your Body and Unleash Your Potential

Dragon
Meridian pair: Spleen and stomach
IN BALANCE: Trust, openness, contentment
Shadow emotions: Anxiety, worry
I would like to remind you that the Dragon is the pose that started it all for me. There’s a reason I
had a doozey of a somato-emotional release doing the Dragon in my first ever yin practice: the
Dragon is one of the more intense yin poses. As soon as you get into it, you’ll understand why.
Although you can expect intensity from the onset, do something counterintuitive: instead of bracing
yourself for something unpleasant, greet the pose with an open mind and welcome whatever you feel
by leaning in to it. You’ll find that the intensity diminishes, and in its wake is the gift of energy.
1. Starting on your hands and knees, step your right foot between your hands, coming into a low
lunge, lining your toes up with your fingertips. Lengthen the left leg down and back away from
you, keeping it slightly bent, allowing your pelvis to drop down toward the floor. As you come
into the pose, you’ll feel a significant stretch in your left hip flexor and in the muscles at the front
of the left hip.
2. Breathe into any sensations you feel and allow the weight of your head to drop toward the floor.
At this juncture, you have a few options. Experiment until you find the one that suits you best. You
can stay exactly where you are now and see what comes up. As your tissues open and the
restriction you feel eases, you may want to move on to one of the following variations.
Variation 1: Grab a yoga block. Turn the toes of your right foot out to the side, coming into a
slight external rotation in the right hip, and either place your palms flat on the floor inside the leg
with straight arms or drop your elbows softly down on the block, dropping your head and
continuing to melt into the pose from there.
Variation 2: If you are more open and have a greater range of motion, you can forgo the block
completely and drop down onto your elbows directly allowing your upper torso to ease down
toward the floor, where you can come to rest your head on your cupped fists or by interlacing
your hands into one fist. This last option is the most expanded, fullest expression of the pose.
3. Inhale and send a sweeping breath, like a soothing waterfall, all the way down the length of the
back of the body, starting at the crown of the head and releasing it out through the back foot, and
let go. Take another full-body breath in through the back foot and send it up the front length of the
body through the back thigh, hip, pelvis, belly, and chest. Let it move all the way into the face and
out through the crown of your head. Let go completely, and let your head weight drop further.
Feel like the Komodo dragon, a lizard that is at one with the earth. Allow its steady heartbeat to
inform your grounded, measured movements.
4. Breathe into the areas of greatest sensation and let go of anything that no longer serves you. The
Dragon, because it is the most intense of the poses you’ll have done so far, will likely “stir the