Using Yoga to Get Up and Off the Floor
/If you practice yoga, or have young kids or grandkids, you likely spend a fair amount of time getting up and down off the ground. Whether it's flowing through sun salutations, transitioning into seated poses, or playing with toys, these seemingly simple movements offer a fantastic opportunity to cultivate mindful movement, build strength, and enhance connection with yourself and those you love.
For those who are new to yoga, dealing with injuries, or simply wanting to move with more ease and stability, getting up and down from the floor can sometimes feel a little stiff, difficult, and downright tiring. However, yoga provides us with tools to approach these movements with grace and confidence.
Why This Matters: The Importance of Floor Mobility
While it might seem basic, getting onto and up from the floor presents a challenge for many. This transition is surprisingly significant for maintaining our long-term health, independence, and overall quality of life.
Indicator of functional fitness: The ease with which you can rise from the floor without assistance is a strong indicator of your overall functional fitness, particularly lower body and core strength, balance, and flexibility. Studies have linked the inability to do so efficiently with an increased risk of falls and decreased longevity, especially in older adults.
Preserving independence: As we age, maintaining the ability to perform everyday tasks independently becomes increasingly important. Being able to get up after sitting on the floor, playing with children, or tending to a garden directly contributes to this independence and reduces reliance on others.
Injury prevention: Practicing safe transitions on the yoga mat helps build the strength and stability needed to prevent injuries in everyday life. Developing body awareness and control through yoga helps you better navigate uneven terrain, a misstep, or awkward movements.
Connecting with the ground: On a more subtle level, being comfortable moving to and from the floor allows for a deeper connection with the earth. Engaging in earthing—or just connecting with the ground and nature—can promote stress reduction and reduce inflammation. Not worrying about getting up from the ground can open up more opportunities to have a picnic in the park or plant flowers in the garden, which can provide many physical and mental benefits.
Building confidence: Knowing you can navigate these transitions contributes to a greater sense of physical competence and well-being. Worrying about whether you can play with your grandkids or function on your own directly affects your confidence and desire to participate in your life and relationships with others.
By consciously practicing these movements in our yoga practices, we are not just improving our flow on the mat, we are investing in our future selves and cultivating a greater sense of freedom and resilience in our bodies.
Here are a few ways you can use your yoga practice to develop safer and more fluid transitions to and from the floor:
1. Cultivate Core Engagement
Engaging your abdominal muscles helps stabilize your spine and supports your movements.
Incorporate core-strengthening poses: Poses like Plank, Boat Pose (Navasana), and even gentle twists can help build the necessary core strength. Don’t just push yourself in the pose—focus on engaging your abdominal muscles more than trying to make the full expression of the pose. For example, if you don’t feel stable or strong core engagement and control, put your feet down in Boat Pose or your knees down in Plank. If you need help building your core, check out my post on cultivating your center to build balance.
Engage your core during transitions: As you move from standing to a seated position or vice versa, consciously engage your core. This helps support the movement and prevents unnecessary strain on your lower back and joints. Being aware of core engagement as you move is key for improving core strength.
2. Strengthen Your Legs and Knees
Strong legs provide the foundation for stable transitions.
Chair Pose
Practice squats and lunges (Chair Pose (Utkatasana) and Low Lunge (Anjaneyasana) variations): These poses build strength in your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes, which are crucial for controlled lowering and lifting. Pay attention to proper alignment, ensuring your knees track over your ankles. Get Chair Pose alignment tips in my post on improving alignment with leg length discrepancies and scoliosis.
Pay attention to alignment: When coming down, try to maintain a sense of control and avoid collapsing. When rising, push firmly through your feet and engage your leg muscles.
3. Utilize Your Hands and Arms for Support
Your hands and arms can be valuable allies in navigating the transitions.
Use blocks or a chair: Yoga blocks or chairs can bring the floor closer to you, reducing the distance you need to travel. Use them to support yourself as you lower down or push yourself up. Experiment with different heights of the blocks and work to ensure stability. Foam blocks or a chair on a wood surface, for example, can roll or slide so ensure they are fixed before using them to get up or down. And while I encourage the use of props, be mindful that you might not always be near props and supports if you fall; a goal (achieved or not) should be to be able to get up and down without them.
Mindful hand placement: Notice where your hands naturally want to go for support. Try to keep each side balanced and symmetrical, and ensure they are placed firmly on a non-slippery or moving surface and evenly to distribute weight. Aligning hands and wrists under the shoulders can provide increased support.
4. Break Down the Movements
Instead of trying to go from standing to seated in one motion, break it down into smaller, more manageable steps. This allows you to focus on the control and stability in each movement.
Going down: From standing, you might first bend your knees, then place one or both hands on the floor or chair for support before lowering your hips.
Coming up: From a seated position, you might bring your hands to the floor beside you, engage your core, and push yourself up, perhaps coming onto your knees first then bringing one foot out in front, similar to Low Lunge.
5. Listen to Your Body and Modify
This is perhaps the most important aspect because it will guide your awareness and how you move and practice.
Be aware of sensations: Pay attention to any discomfort or pain and which part of the transition is the most challenging and uncomfortable. Also become mindful of what is engaging (or not) in order to improve muscle utilization and strength.
Experiment with variations: There are many ways to get up and down from the floor. Explore different approaches and ways of utilizing support to find what feels safest and most comfortable for your body. Because of the required components inherent to getting up and down, you may not be able to skip parts of the transition that don’t work for you or feel right. However, through being aware of your body, you can practice certain parts of the sequence or find other methods of strengthening or improving the mobility of the related muscles.
Don’t rush: Mindful movement is key. Take your time with each transition, focusing on control and stability rather than speed. Approach working on this transition as a practice and exercise in itself. Though it is a method to enable something else (e.g., gardening or playing with children), it is very much a functional skill that needs to be performed regularly. So, give it the time that its value deserves.
Incorporating these principles into your regular yoga practice will not only make your time on the yoga mat more enjoyable but will also translate into greater ease and confidence in your daily life. Even if you don’t have a regular or established yoga practice, you can incorporate yoga poses and these techniques into your day to strengthen and improve your quality of life.