What moves the weight forward?
Group: Author: Nathalie Dore | Posted: 2026-04-22
From reclining position and legs crossed when you say bring weight forward, is it push a bit from the hands or is it through the legs inching? Merci!
Replies
Section titled “Replies”Reply by Patrick — 2026-04-22
Section titled “Reply by Patrick — 2026-04-22”Neither, really. What brings the weight forward is the gradual lowering of the crossed legs toward the floor, and the way that redistributes the weight around the center of gravity. The hands aren’t pushing, but they can offer a slight guided lift forward to help initiate the movement.
The quality to aim for is closer to the suspension in reverse than to a lift and drop. You’re working with how the weight and forces play out in a different directional dynamic, and there should be a sense of suspension through the transition rather than a release. If you watch the video, you can see that Satoko suspends marginally before the legs lower. That’s the moment to study.
One thing that can help: as you start to come forward, try lifting one arm off the floor and reaching it forward. That shifts the distribution of weight ahead of you and supports the suspension quality without needing to push. When you reach the balancing point, you can actually activate the hip flexors a bit to draw the knees gently toward the chest, which supports the quality of suspension onto the sit bones/buttocks. Then, as you continue to transfer forward, you release that hip flexor activation, which lets the knees lower gently to the ground rather than dropping. Over time, with just a gentle guide from the hands at the start, you’ll likely find that the weight of the legs leaning forward, even crossed and not extended, is enough on its own to rebalance the weight over the center of gravity.
Once the legs have actually reached the floor, you would have already established the reclining position that comes before the flexion forward: leaning back, upper spine flexed, shoulders drawing down. From there, the transfer forward happens as you move the upper body weight forward while the legs resist by pushing away from that movement. That counter-dynamic between upper body traveling forward and legs pressing back is what gives the roll into flexion its quality, rather than simply collapsing into it.
One note for everyone reading: when you post a question, it helps to add a few tags related to the dynamics or content of the lesson you’re asking about, beyond the automatic lesson tag. We’ve gone ahead and added some tags to this topic as a reference for the kinds of things worth tagging (principles, forms, transitions, patterns). Our Forum Tag Shortlist: (https://practice.baseworks.com/groups/primer-community/forum/discussion/forum-tag-shortlist-how-to-tag-your-forum-posts/) has the full list to draw from, and you can always add new tags that don’t appear there if they fit. Over time, this turns the forum into a much more searchable resource.