Travel Light
Every year at the start of the school holidays I go down to the South of England to visit my family. My husband is heroic; he is not only willing to visit my family, he also packs the car and does all the driving. He says everyone is happier that way.
My husband is a light traveller, the rest of us not so much. I looked at the car filled to the gunwales and I looked at the usual exercise gear I like to pack (see photo below) and imagined hubbie’s response to yet another bag for the game of car tetris he had already lost. I also thought about the reality of a trip to see my family.
Every year I envisage a calm 90 minutes of yoga practice every morning as it is my holiday too - but - with a bunch of kids ranging in age from 15 months to 14 years my holiday will not involve 1.5 hrs of calm anything. So I opted for a “travel mini” version of my prop collection: a single yoga strap.
This was not a random choice. A strap for me is the most versatile piece of equipment; I can teach a whole class with just this one piece of equipment and of course it can squeeze into any bag or pocket. But also it is the only essential prop required for my personal travel-recovery sequence.
Like most, I find car travel hard on my body. Even though we break up our journeys with a midway hike and several smaller stops, I still finish any journey desperate to move but also exhausted. My first post-journey exercise is the strap stretch (a version of the yoga pose supta padangusthasana); it allows me to stretch my hips, ease my back and REST all at the same time. Allow me to introduce you to it:
First take some time to lie on your back and check in - how heavy are the legs on the ground? How much of the spine is on the ground? Is one leg or hip heavier to the ground than the other one?
After a car journey, hips may be tight and simply extending the legs along the ground may feel like a stretch or start to pull on the spine. Placing a blanket or pillow under your head can help the legs and spine to relax on the ground.
Place a strap around the ball of your left foot and double the strap around your hands so that you can support the leg with the strength of your arms.
Keeping the back of the right leg on the ground, lift the left leg until you feel a comfortable stretch on the back of your left leg . You can do a long hold but after travelling I prefer to lift and lower my legs a few times to ease into my tense muscles.
To add some variation and stretch the hip in a different way try these next variations:
5. Keeping both bum cheeks on the ground take the left leg across the body, stretching the outer hip (top two images) and then out wide stretching the inner thighs (bottom two images). Again you can do long holds or shift slowly side-to-side. I like to take my time here - if you go slow enough you will feel the stretch in different areas of your hip and lower legs as you sweep the leg side-to-side.
6. Lower the left leg and check in again. Scan your body and see if you can sense if there has been any change. Does the leg you have just stretched feel longer or heavier?
7. Repeat on the right side.
I found that I needed this move throughout my time down south not only after travelling. My parents live in a city and we walked a lot on roads and pavements. This is quite different from what I am used to living in the temperate rainforest region of Scotland, where the ground is rarely hard and never dry! I found I needed this non-weight bearing move to balance out all the pavement pounding. My travel mini served me well!
If you are travelling any time this summer, I highly recommend this move and if you don’t own a yoga strap, a regular belt or dressing gown belt works almost as well. Happy Travels