A Flowering Lotus in Honor of Mothers Everywhere

This week’s pose is dedicated to mothers everywhere. Vikasitakamalasana, or Flowering Lotus, is a wonderful balancing pose that opens your hips, strengthens your core and improves your sense of balance.  The Lotus is a pure and beautiful flower that grows and thrives in murky waters like ponds. Weathering droughts and time, the seed of the lotus can survive for hundreds of years and still sprout anew. Like the flower it's named for, this pose cultivates resilience and inner harmony - two things every mother needs.

To practice Flowering Lotus, first find Boat Pose. From a seated position, bend your knees and hold the backs of your thighs. Sit up super tall and lift your feet but don’t rock the boat backwards. Inhale and with control bring the soles of your feet together. Exhale and gently thread your arms under your knees. Open your palms to the sky like a flower opening to the sun. Sit up as tall as you can. Your body resembles a beautiful lotus flower floating on the water. Breathe deeply and see how long you can balance.

Close your eyes and feel gratitude for mothers everywhere. Include our Mother Earth. Consider also the mother that lives inside you, feeling compassion and offering intuitive protection toward the child within you and within others. Mothers give us life, nourish us and help us grow. Thank you to all our mothers!

A special thanks to Harry Hayes for sending the coloring page to inspire this week's blog, as well as to Robert Oakley for taking my picture in Central Park in October 2016. Coloring page from Yoga Teddy Bear's Big Little Coloring Book of 108 Poses.