Five more yoga poses for tango

Yoga is great for tango. In Part One of this two-part series, I listed several reasons why I believe this so strongly. Here are some more:

Yoga’s emphasis on stretching allows for greater range of motion in our tango walk and other more complex movements, while reducing the risk of injury. Balancing poses help us to maintain stability through all the different and unexpected dance moves and sequences. Yoga in general cultivates awareness of proper posture and alignment, which will make us look more elegant as well as feeling easier to dance with. It builds strength, for stamina and endurance, as well as body awareness, giving dancers the ability to self-correct on the fly. Yoga really offers a full and unique combination of physical and mental benefits that align super well with the needs of tango dancers.

If those reasons sound good to you, watch and follow along to the 25-minute video and read on for five (actually six) more great yoga poses to improve your tango dancing.

1. Reclining big toe pose (Supta Padangustāsana): If you have tight hamstrings, this is the pose for you. It’s a safe, effective way to lengthen the muscles at the back of the thigh. Doing it with a strap makes it accessible to everyone, regardless of how flexible your legs are. Do we really need leg flexibility if we’re just dancing tango socially, with no intention of learning tango escenario and performing stage-worthy acrobatics? Yes we do, because the length of our hamstrings has a direct effect on the position of our pelvis and thus our posture, alignment and ability to free our legs properly.

2. Lizard pose (Utthan Pristhāsana): We do two variations of this pose, the half pose, with back knee down, to stretch the deep hip-flexor muscle called the psoas, and the twisted half pose, which adds a twist and a stretch for the quads (front thigh muscles). This pose is good for lengthening the whole front body, particularly the front of the hips and thighs, which will benefit everything from your tango walk, increasing your ability to lengthen out the back leg, to your back boleos. Keeping the chest lifted while you perform these stretches teaches you to stay upright regardless of what your legs are doing, and in the quad stretch you also have a twist, which will help you loosen up the muscles needed for all that dissociation.

3. a) Five-pointed star pose (Utthita Hasta Padasana): Similar to Mountain pose (tadāsana), but with a wide stance, in this basic standing posture you step the feet wide apart while extending the arms out to the sides. The pose strengthens the legs, opens the chest, and helps develop good posture and alignment for other standing poses as well as for tango.
   b) Warrior 2 (Virabhadrāsana 2): All yoga standing poses are beneficial for tango dancers. They strengthen our legs, backs and core while teaching us to root our feet as we stand tall, for improved groundedness and balance. Warrior 2 is a particularly good one because the wide stance makes us anchor both feet and spread them apart, good actions for the “split-weight” tango walking technique. We also have to properly dissociate the actions of the legs from those of the torso, which is very helpful in teaching us to activate our legs while quieting the upper body when we dance.

4. Tree pose (Vrksāsana): This one-legged balancing pose improves balance and stability by having you stand on one leg while placing the other foot on the inner thigh or shin of the standing leg. You start by standing in Mountain pose with your feet together, then shifting your weight onto one leg and lifting the other foot, placing it on your inner leg, avoiding the knee joint. Bring your palms together in front of your chest and then lift them overhead as you visually focus on a steady point to help maintain balance. This will teach you how to root your standing foot and stabilize the ankle as you stand tall – like a tree! Also, the actions of levelling the hips and dropping the knee of the lifted leg are great cues for some of your tango moves, such as boleos and ganchos.

5. Eagle pose (Garudāsana): This is a great one for tango, because it is another one-legged pose that will help you practise your balance, but also because the spiralling and squeezing action of the free leg is similar to the actions of our legs in everything from collecting our legs and feet between every step to squeezing our legs together with soft knees in our pivots to wrapping the legs in front boleos. Plus the actions of the arms can help open the back, preparing us for offering nice, enveloping abrazos to our partners.

Watch the video, try the poses along with me, continue to practise and perhaps you’ll see improvements in your dancing. If you enjoy this lesson, don’t miss Part One, as well as a full six-part online course I’m working on getting finished for the end of this year. For those who live in Montreal, I teach in-person Yoga for tango classes at my studio, MonTango, as well as yoga classes at Yoga Essentiel (both in NDG). Some of my live classes can also be followed virtually on Zoom.

For more info on my yoga teaching, see:
The MonTango website
My personal website
The Yoga Essentiel website

Buy my book, 25 Tango Lessons