Where Barre Meets Yoga

When I brought the barre workout to Northwest Indiana over 2 years ago, nobody really knew what “barre” really was. Some thought I was preparing law students to take their bar exam. Nope that isn’t me!   Some thought I was working at the local bar at night. Not me either! Some thought that barre was like Zumba and some thought Yoga. Well its not Zumba, although I love shaking my hips. And no, barre is not yoga either.

“But throughout barre classes, we have many yoga inspired poses that are mixed into our workout.”

For example, we do a Tricep Push-ups in class all the time.  In Yoga, this is called the Chaturanga Push-up in Vinyasa (Flow) Yoga’s Sun Salutation Series.  In this picture (Thank you to my fabulous photographer for catching me right where I look super strong), you can see my body is straight, heels over toes, elbows close to the body and crown of the head reaching toward the front of the room.  Ideally, you should start in a plank position, with hands under the shoulders and as you begin to lower your body to the ground by bending your elbows, the arms should glide along your side, until you carefully lower your body down. As in any barre class, body form trumps doing any movement.  So the modification is to place your knees down, pull your body forward, engage your abdominals and pull forward over on top of your thighs. This way you can lower down with control and avoid a sway back.

Next, we have boat pose used in Yoga which is more similar to some advanced Pilates moves rather than what we do in barre Class. We start boat pose by sitting tall on our sits bones, opening the chest forward. In level one, as you see here in this photo, (I tried a more advanced version and somehow my body said “No” to it yesterday.)  So just bend your knees from the hip flexors and hinge yourself back keeping your back flat. The more advanced version is bring the legs into table top or fully straight maintaining a V-position.  And in barre, we use the C-Curve position to find a deep engagement of the core as we round our spine into this “C” position rather than the “v” position.

Next, we have a lunge.  In barre, lunges are one of our favorite thigh exercises. The beauty of lunges is that it works the seat, stretches the psoas (the front of the hip) relieves any sciatica pain, works on core strength and even opens the chest. A long hold or perhaps tiny hip lowers and raises will help you build the strength in the thigh and seat.  Here I have a bent back leg but in yoga you will see the back leg lengthen for a deeper position.  In both classes, keep the front knee over the ankle. At anytime, you can lower the back knee to ground and work on stretching the front of the hip.

 

Lastly, here is a picture of Downward Dog or known in our barre class as Inverted-V.  This pose has its obvious benefits with stretching the back of the legs, from the hamstrings to the calves and achilles. But in yoga, the opening of the chest and rotation of the shoulders along with the opening in the sits bones as the pelvis lifts higher into the air, is just as important as the hamstring stretch. We see this stretch in both Barre and our Stretch class but this is a foundation of the Sun Salutation Series.

 

On Saturday, at the Barre-Yoga Fusion Workshop, wen will work these poses into our barre class. Take all the barre moves that you love and add the centering flow of yoga to help find a different way to prepare your body to center yourself for barre exercises. I personally love this class that I taught when I first moved here to NWI, and I am excited to bring it to you this weekend. Saturday, 9:45 for one hour and the workshop cost is $22 per person or FREE for VIPs. Sign up online or call 219-929-1550. As always, we are here to bring you Barre + Beyond and help you BE your better self every day!

All M.O.M.S Love,

Orlee @ The Barre