Moving and Flowing

In last week’s post I commented on the difference between holding poses for a long time and moving and flowing from one pose to the next.  Both are challenging in different ways.  As I observe students move through these flowing sequences this month, I can see where they can hold the poses together and where they can’t and the poses fall apart.   Moving and flowing requires more than strength and coordination, you also need a clear path and a plan to get there.  The path and the plan come from knowledge and repetition; of both the poses and of the sequences.

A clear path comes from knowing the poses: Where are your feet?  Your hands? Which way is the torso facing?  Are the legs bent or straight?  And from knowing what is important in each pose.  Students often mistake what is important in a pose.  In Side Angle students often think it is more important that the hand is on the floor.  The hand should only be placed on the floor if the alignment of the rest of the body can be optimized and maintained.

Let’s take a look at Side Angle Pose, for an example:

In this pose, my front foot is pointing straight ahead and is perpendicular to the arch of my back foot, with my back foot turned in slightly.
My front knee is over its ankle and my back foot is far enough away so that my front thigh is parallel to the floor.  If I could not bend my front thigh to 90 degrees then I would have to move my back foot closer.  But then, my front hand would have to be on a block.    My right forearm is practically hidden from view by my right shin.  They should be lined up, with my right knee pressing against my right arm.

My body is a straight line from the outer edge of my left foot up through my left finger tips.  My left arm is very close to my face, in a straight line. (I call this “handstand arm”.  The arm is in the same position it would be if you were in a handstand.)  My neck is in a straight line with my body and just my gaze is turned up.

My torso is facing the camera, not the floor.  If you have your hand on the floor and your torso is facing downwards, then your hand is too low and you need to raise it on a block. It is more important that the body is turned sideways than it is that the hand is on the floor.

Make the transition in as few moves as possible

Do you remember that show, “Name That Tune”?  It was a game where contestants tried to name a song in as few notes as possible to beat their opponent and win prizes.  Think about making the transition from Side Angle to Half Moon with the fewest steps possible.

In order to make the transition form Side Angle to Half Moon Pose, it is important that I not turn my torso to face the floor.  It is already facing sideways in Side Angle and it should still be facing sideways in Half Moon.  Learn to keep the torso sideways as you make the transition.  Learn to stay in alignment.  Take a look at this picture of Mr. Iyengar.  In this photo, he is taking the intermediate step from Side Angle as he prepares to move into Half Moon.  Notice his body position.  He lunges deeper into his front knee, reaches his bottom hand forward as he steps his back leg in.  The top arm rests along the side of his body as he prepares to step up.  Notice how he does not turn his torso to the floor!

Develop the strength in the front leg to drive down through your standing heel and straighten your standing leg as you come into half moon.  This is all about quadriceps strength.  Notice, in the superimposed picture, that my front foot does not move at all.

Once you come onto your standing leg, expand out through all of your extremities equally.

The alignment of the standing leg is not any different from the shin in Side Angle Pose, it is still vertical.  The straight line of the body shifts as the torso moves more horizontal to the floor.  The arms, well, they are supposed to be vertical and the upper arm is over the lower arm.  As you can see, I need to work on that!  But, that is the idea.

To come out of the pose, you reverse the steps and be as mindful as you were when you came into it.  People often get hurt in transitions when they let go.  Stay engaged until you are back in Tadasana.  Think about it this way, rather than engage, let go and then re-engage, stay engaged as you move from one pose to the next.

This is just one of the transitions that I will be working on in class this month, but this is a big one and a fun one to play with.  See how smoothly you can shift from Side Angle to Half Moon and back again.  Have fun with it.  Notice your improvement and celebrate your accomplishments.  I’ll see you in class!

Vinyasa Pose of the Month – Dancing Warrior Series, or going with the flow.

The weather feels as if it is finally changing to fall. What better way to help our bodies through this transition than to focus on transitions from one yoga pose to the next. We can use the flow of yoga poses to help keep us warm as our bodies adapt to the change from the unseasonal warm temperatures we had been experiencing to the more seasonal temperatures of November.

Instead of focusing on a single pose for the month of November, we are going to with the flow. Our focus will be on Vinyasa Flow. Expect to see Sun Salutes, Moon Salutes, Dancing Warrior Series and other transitions linking poses together.

In general, yoga practice builds strength and flexibility. But you can shift the focus of your practice by doing static poses for long holds or by constantly moving and flowing from one pose to the next. Long holds of single poses builds patience, stamina, endurance, perseverance and awareness of the body in space. This is a great practice for times when you feel scattered and need to get grounded. Flowing sequences build trust, confidence and coordination. A practice that focuses more on movement can energize you when you are feeling stuck or sluggish, or it can let off steam when you feel ready to burst from excitement or tension.

Just because we will be flowing more this month, please don’t throw your alignment to the wind! The word vinyasa means to place or step carefully, so as we move from one pose to the next, let your movements be thoughtful and considered. Sun Salutations are said to be a body mantra. Think of this type of a practice as a physical prayer and move through your practice as if it is an offering from your heart.

While I never think of yoga as a weight loss program, I did schedule this practice for now when there are many temptations to over-eat, or to eat less healthy. I love the way this type of practice makes me feel afterwards. I often feel clean and detoxified which makes me want to be careful about what I eat after.

I saw a sign outside of a gym the other day that said: “The average person gains 5 pounds between November 1 and January 1.” Yikes! A little scare tactic to get you into their program. However, if we are not mindful about what we eat, we could easily fulfill this statistic. Remember that yoga should be done on an empty stomach. And after your workout, when you are ready to eat, make sure you replenish your muscles with some protein. Avoid the temptation to go for empty calories that only leave you craving more later. Eating mindfully and healthfully is an important part of my yogic lifestyle.

The Great Death Conquering Mantra

Mahamrityunjaya Mantra:

Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvarukamiva Bandhanan
Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat

Literal meaning:

Tryambakam = the three-eyed one (accusative case)
Yajamahe = We worship, adore, honor, revere
Sugandhim = sweet fragrance (accusative case)
Pushti = A well-nourished condition, thriving, prosperous, full, and complete
Vardhanam = One who nourishes, strengthens, causes to increase (in health, wealth, well-being); who gladdens, exhilarates, and restores health; a good gardener
Urvarukam = disease, attachment, obstacles in life, and resulting depression (accusative case)
Iva = like, just as
Bandhanan = stem (of the gourd); but more generally, unhealthy attachment
Mrityor = From death
Mukshiya = Free us, liberate us
Ma = not
Amritat = Immortality, emancipation 

Usable meaning:

Om, We worship The Three-Eyed One (Lord Shiva)
Who Is Fragrant (Spiritual Essence)
And Who Nourishes All Beings
May He Severe Our Bondage Of Samsara (Worldly Life),
Like A Cucumber (severed From The Bondage Of Its Creeper)
And Thus Liberate Us From The Fear Of Death,
By Making Us Realize That We Are Never Separated From Our Immortal Nature 

Listen to a traditional version of the chant here.
Listen to it performed more as a song here.  This is the version I play in class.

One of the Best Shoulder Openers – Setu Bandha Sarvangasana

And all you have to do is lie there! This supported pose is a precursor to Shoulderstand.  Setu Bandha Sarvangasana benefits all of the systems of the body so you can recover your health. It reduces fatigue by draining fluids from the legs after long periods of standing. Athletes find it beneficial after a long run to help reduce soreness in the leg and hip muscles. This pose also helps to relieve headaches or mental agitation which are often symptoms of over work.

Set up: place your mat with the short edge against the wall. You will need a bolster, two blocks and a belt. Place the blocks at the wall for your heels to rest on. Place the bolster lengthwise on your mat. In this pose you want your heels on the wall, the bolster under your torso and your shoulders on the floor.

Technique: Place your belt around the middle of your thighs. It should be snug. Sit on the edge of the bolster closest to the wall. Have your knees bent and your feet on the wall. Lie back over the bolster and let your head hang over the far end. Keeping your back down on the bolster, push into the wall with your feet and allow the bolster to pull down on the skin of your upper back as you slide off the edge of the bolster. You may have to do this a couple of times to get the exact measurement. You want to have your entire foot pressing into the wall. The bolster should reach up to the bottom tips of your shoulder blades and it lifts your chest, but your head and shoulders should be resting on the floor. Having your thighs belted will keep the legs resting in a parallel position without exerting any effort. Take a good look at the picture to get all of the alignment points correct.

You can rest here for anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes. When you are finished, roll over off of the bolster and rest on your side for a few breaths before coming up. You can practice this pose everyday if you’d like. If you want it to work on helping to open your shoulders, you’d have to practice it at least 3 or 4 times a week.

If you back hurts during or after, the bolster was too thick. Either use a thinner bolster or a folded blanket, or support your head and shoulders with a blanket.

Regarding Shoulders – continued: Developing Yoga Teacher Sight.

Last week I talked about and showed pictures of what it looks like when you are lying on the floor with your shoulders rounded. I used the floor as a reference point so you could see this more clearly.

I want to make sure that you can see and understand this from a teacher's perspective.  These differences can appear to be subtle, but they have a profound effect on the body and mind.

This week let’s look at what this looks like in Bridge Pose. One of the main concepts in many poses from Tadasana and especially into the Backbends is to open the chest.   Daily living seems to make us round our shoulders.  Yoga can help reverse these effects.

Take a look at the following series of photos and pay close attention to the effect that rounded shoulders have on the pose.

Lying on the floor, shoulders rounded, sunken chest

Bridge prep, shoulders rounded, sunken chest

Bridge pose, shoulders rounded, sunken chest

Compare and contrast the differences in the following three photos:

Lying down, shoulders back, chest lifted

Bridge prep, shoulders back, chest lifted

Bridge pose, shoulders back, chest lifted

Can you clearly see the difference an open chest has on these simple postures?  But, what happens if you try and your chest doesn't open like that?  Next week I will show some restorative poses to work on to open the chest.

Let me know if this was helpful.  I'll see you in class!

P.S.  I wish someone had told me to put my toes down!  Although lifting the toes is a good remedial action that forms the arches in the feet and helps to keep the knees from splaying out; they shouldn't be lifted that way in the final pose.

Regarding Shoulders

The word yoga means “to come together, to unite.” This refers to tying the mind, body and breath together.  When we do our yoga poses we strive to do them intelligently; to put our mind in our bodies.  For example; to know how rolling the heads of the arm bones back lifts the chest.  The practice of yoga helps our bodies learn to feel these things.  We endeavor to make our whole selves shiny (with an inner radiance), bright and alert.  When our mind is not in our bodies, that part of our body becomes dull and lifeless.  This intelligence is what differentiates yoga from merely stretching.  And it is this inner inquiry that helps us to make progress on the path of yoga.  If we are not aware of what we are or are not doing, we can stay stuck.  Awareness always proceeds change.

There are a lot of things we could be focusing on in any yoga pose, but today I want to shine a light on the shoulders.  I noticed things shifted in my yoga practice when I began to look at my shoulders and realize that I was slumping.  My teachers would say things like "Take the heads of your arm bones back. What does that mean? In my Anusara training the concept used was called “Shoulder Loop”.  The cueing went like this:  “Side body long and the heads of the arm bones back.”

What does that mean to make the side body long?  And why should we do this?

When we do yoga we not only exercise the muscles, which pull on and affect the bones, but the poses also affect our nervous systems and our internal organs.  In everyday life we tend to slump.  Some of that is because we work at keyboards (as I am doing right now) Or, it can be a form of protection of the heart because life is hard and we don’t want to be vulnerable.  Slumping compresses our lungs and heart making it harder to take a full breath and making it harder for the heart to pump blood.  When the chest is caved in, it indirectly puts pressure on the abdominal organs, making it harder for them to function as well.  The decrease in oxygen intake and compression of the organs makes our brain dull and we feel sluggish.

How do you make the side body long?  Lengthen your side waist from your hips to your armpits by lifting the heads of your arm bones up towards your ears.  Then roll the heads of the arm bones backward allowing your scapula, or shoulder blades, to settle on your back close to the spine.  Release the scapula down towards your waist without letting them slide apart again.  This releases your shoulders away from your ears and allows them to settle into a more natural position.  Make sure you don't let the shoulders roll forward again.  The next time you find yourself slumped over your computer keyboard and you are starting to feel sluggish and sleepy, take one minute to sit up straight and try this.  Remain in this upright position and breathe; notice how it feels.  This is how long it takes for your blood to circulate through your body. In just one minute, with full, deep breathing you can 100% oxygenate your blood. Notice the effect this has on your body and your mind.

I wanted to clearly illustrate what it looks like with my shoulder blades rounding forward and with them rolled back so I took the pictures while lying on the floor so you could see the difference more clearly.  Can you see the difference?  What do your shoulders look like?  Now can you do this while standing up?

Shoulders rounding forward

Shoulders back and down

This is the beginning of being able to open the upper chest and move the upper thoracic spine into the body.  This starts in Tadasana, but is especially important in back bends.  Next week I will continue this exploration into Bridge Pose.

Yoga Anatomy – How to deepen your Forward Fold

Today in class we were talking about how muscles work.  In the language of anatomy there are different names for what the muscles do.   When you have a muscle that contracts and moves a body part it is called the agonist or prime mover, the antagonist works against the prime mover and the synergists are muscles that work with the prime mover and help it.

Straighten Your Leg

We were talking about Pascimottanasana, or Seated Forward Fold.  In this pose, the quadriceps are the prime mover.  They straighten the leg and this causes the hamstrings, the antagonist to the quads, to stretch.  This is a concept called reciprocal inhibition which means that when one muscles contracts, it signals the brain to tell the antagonistic muscle to relax in order to be stretched.

But a lot of students miss out on this stretch because they cheat and bend their knees as they fold forward.*   This makes them feel as if they are stretching further because their face is in their shins, but they are not getting the full benefit of the pose.  As best as you can, press the back of the knees into the floor while keeping the heels down.  It is the pressing down of the back of the knees that engages the quads and signals the hamstrings to stretch.  Keeping the heels down prevents hyper-extending the knees.

Use Your Arms

The other aspect of this forward fold are the synergistic muscles, these are the muscles that help you fold deeper.  In the case of Pascimottanasana, contracting the psoas, a deep hip flexor, helps to tip the pelvis forward.  And finally holding the outside of your feet and bending your elbow to engage the biceps helps to pull you forward and deeper into the pose. This is not an aggressive pull, but a gentle pull which helps bring the torso out over the thighs.

Give this a try over a few weeks ad see if it doesn’t help improve your hamstring flexibility.

*(Of course if you have really tight hamstrings you may need to bend your knees as you fold forward to make sure that you are hingeing at the hips and not rounding in the lumbar spine.  This is the sort of thing that is best assessed by your teacher.)

Mantra of the Month - The Peace Chant

This mantra opens the Katha Upanishad. These are the teachings about death as taught to the most unlikely of students, a teenage boy named Nachiketa.

Om saha naa va-vatu
saha-nau bhun-ak-tu
saha veer-yum kerava-va-hay
tejas vi nava-dahee tamas-tu
ma vid-visha-va-hay.
Om shanti, shanti, shantihi.

Om.
May we be protected
May we enjoy each other
May we work together vigorously
May our study be illuminating
May we not quarrel.
Om, peace, peace, peace.

Pose of the Month for October– Eka Pada Koundinyasana I

Eka = One
Pada = Leg or foot
Koundinya = the name of a sage

Eka Pada Koundinyasana is a twisting arm balance. It is traditionally entered into from tripod headstand but you can also get into it from Side Crow or Revolved Side Angle. And, if you know me, there are ways to prop yourself into the pose so that you can get a feel for the posture. This pose, like all of the poses named after sages are challenging, but they can be broken down step by step and made approachable.

Since Tripod Headstand and Side Crow are entry points to this pose, you will definitely see these poses in class this month. But it is possible to break the pose down into even simpler parts.

The two main components of this pose are the twist and the arm balance. We can begin to work on basic twists; everything from simple Seated Twist, Lunge Twist, Revolved Chair Pose, Revolved Triangle, Revolved Side Angle, Standing Hand to Big Toe Pose Twist, Lying Hand to Big Toe Pose Twist and Intense Stomach Churning Pose.

To develop the arm balance we need to work on strength in poses like all of the Plank variations, Caturanga, Crow, Side Crow, Lolasana, Tolasana and Tripod Headstand.

Another aspect of what is required from you to do the pose is a conscious level of engagement. One of the ways I learned this was through the topics of Muscular Energy and Organic Energy. Muscular Energy is the ability to hug the muscles towards the bone, to draw in towards the midline and to draw into a central focal point. This is the ability to consciously engage the muscles. It involves strength. But it needs to be balanced by Organic Energy which is the ability to extend outward from a central focal point, away from the midline and out to the tips of the extremities. Muscular Energy and Organic energy need to balance each other in every pose. Muscular energy provides stability and boundaries, but unless it is balanced with Organic Energy it can cause contraction and hardening. Organic Energy provides lightness and space. If it is not balanced with Muscular Energy it can cause over-extension and instability.

This ability to engage all of your body parts in a pose is challenging and the sign of an advanced practice. It is that proprioceptive sense to know what the leg up in the air in Half Moon Pose is doing while you are trying to maintain your balance. This is exactly what is necessary to the next level in poses. I sometime say, “Imagine you are a statue and I could pick you up and move you from one spot to another and your pose wouldn’t fall apart.”

This is the sort of thing we work on when you lift one leg in Down Dog Split and the rest of your pose doesn’t waiver. To work on this quality we will play with leg variations in Tripod Headstand. When you lower one leg towards the floor in Tripod Headstand, the other leg maintains its position while reaching up. If the leg that is reaching moved with the leg that is lowering, you would fall to the floor. It is the reaching leg that balances the lowering leg much like a seesaw.

The Benefits of Eka Pada Koundinyasana

Like all twists, this pose massages the abdominal organs. The spinal twist rejuvenates the spine. The arm balance actions strengthen the arms and neck.

You can see that whether you do the full pose or not, there are plenty of actions, principles and easier poses to work on along the way. Also, while working on the pose you will reap the benefits of the pose.

I can’t wait to get started. I’ll see you in class!

What happens when your body lets you down?

On my City to Shore MS bike ride this year, I witnessed two events that gave me pause to stop and reflect.

The things you can’t prepare for.
The first was an accident, a lapse of attention. Someone ran into the wheel of the cyclist in front of him and down he went. The guy was scraped up and bruised pretty badly, but nothing broken, on his body anyway. His bike was damaged, but that can be fixed. If we could be mindful and fully present all of the time, these things wouldn’t happen. But, that is easier said than done. I read somewhere that the average person loses their attention an average of six times a minute!

Reflection: Bicycling can be a dangerous sport. It is important to pay attention to your surroundings as you ride. Just like driving, you need to ride defensively.

And the things you can.
The second event, could have been an accident, except that there may have been other contributing factors to a rider who suffered from heat stroke. Was this a condition of this man’s body letting him down? Or was it him not listening to his body? Had he trained for this event, or had he just willed his body to participate in it? Riding 75 to 100 miles is not something you can do on a whim. You need to prepare for it.

Through my work personally training dozens of people over the years, I have heard many times people complain that they can’t do something and they wish that they could. They often feel frustrated and that their body has let them down. Very few people understand how their body works. It seems as if they want their body to perform by imposing their will over it rather than doing what is necessary to have their body function optimally.

Our bodies talk to us all of the time. Unfortunately these messages are non-verbal and you have to know how to interpret them. Often pain, discomfort and unease are the body telling us that something is wrong. The next time your body doesn’t perform the way you want it to, instead of wondering how your body has let you down. Ask how you may have let down your body.

We all know how important the following things are to our health:
Sleep
Food
Hydration
Movement
Relationships
Spirituality
Connection to Community

But there are two questions to ask yourself about these things.  First what is the quantity of each item on the list.  Second is what is the quality?

Reflection: You don’t play the game to stay in shape. You stay in shape to play the game.