Naked Fish

Here's Fiona showing off a naked yoga fish pose, or matseyasana. This pose is harder than it looks.

I wish you could see her feet, it would make this pose easier to explain.

You enter matseyasana, a nice deep backbend, after doing several spinal warm-ups like cat and cow then bridge pose.

Here's how you do it. Lying on your back, lift your hips up enough to slide your hands under your tailbone. Bring the thumbs together and also join the index fingers so the thumbs and index fingers form a diamond shape, palms down, underneath the tailbone. Press through the heels of the feet, flexing the toes back.

As you inhale, press down into the floor with the elbows while pulling your tailbone back and pushing your pubic bone forward. This will cause your back to arch. Continue the arch by lifting through the heart and sternum. Your head should come off the ground. Release the neck.

Slowly lower down onto the top (or back) of your head. Keep lifting through the sternum, pressing through the heels, and support yourself in the elbows. If you feel any neck compression at all, press into the elbows enough to release your head from the floor before coming down completely.

Some people feel comfortable removing their hands from underneath them, bringing them to heart center in prayer position, like our nude model Fiona is demonstrating. A variation of this is to rotate the heels of the hands 45 degrees towards the face, so the fingers are pointing into the body and the heels of the hands are up towards the ceiling.

To come out of the pose, press into the elbows and release the head and neck before allowing your back to release to the floor.

This is not an easy pose. Work up to it.

On her web site you'll see that Fiona has a nude yoga video clip as well as some other clips that show her doing yoga, gymnastics, karate and so on while in the buff.

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