Tag: asana

I learned this great exercise from Susi Hately Aldous.  Explore what your external rotation is like when you do pure movement at the hip joint – rather than compensate by shifting the pelvis or flattening the lower back.

 

 

 

In yoga asana, we often experience imbalance in our body, where certain muscles love to be powerful and to dominate – like our hip flexors – while others (our adductors and abductors) begin to soften, weaken, and become quiet.  By bringing our bodies into balance and allowing each muscle to truly step back fully into its functional role, the whole of our system becomes more expansive, powerful, and expressive.

Five minutes to Hip Functionality

I learned this marvelous and simple exercise from Susi Hately Aldous.  You’ll need a block and a strap.

• Lay in semi-supine (lay down, knees bent)
• Place your hands on your hip flexors (place your hands at the crease of your thighs and hips)
• Lift one leg at a time
• Feel your hip flexors fire under your hands
• Now, place a block between your upper thighs (as high as it will go)
• Squeeze the block and hold.  Release.  Repeat several times.
• Notice what you feel beneath your hands.
• Now, release the block and place a strap around your mid-thighs snugly
• Press your thighs out into the strap firmly and hold.  Release.  Repeat several times.
• Notice what you feel beneath your hands.

Did you notice your hip flexors firing when you squeezed the block or pressed out into the strap?  Most of us will.  However, we don’t need our hip flexors to fire when we’re doing either of these actions.  If your hip flexors fire, that is a sign of these big and overworked muscles are trying to take over for the adductors (inner thighs/ squeezing the block) or abductors (outer thighs/ pressing into the strap).   Your muscular relationships have become co-dependent.

• Try the exercise again; this time keeping your hip flexors as settled and quiet as possible
• Are you able to let them quiet down?  Even a little?
• Once you’ve let them become silent, increase the force that you use against the block or strap.

• In other words, once you’ve empowered your boundaries, you can increase your power  – functionally.  Sounds a lot like a relationship to me.

Application to Asana

Here are some ways to bring this functionality into your asana.  Empowering your boundaries will make your practice lighter, more functional, and more free.  Now, having great boundaries isn’t necessarily “easy” – in fact, at first it might be harder – but it creates the groundwork for more power and personal expression.

In Surya Namaskar:

• Hug a block between your thighs through the whole cycle: how does this change your core connection?  The lightness of your spine?  How does this empower your plank?
• Strap yourself snugly at your mid-thigh: how does this change your strength?  Your plank and chaturanga?  The freedom of your lower back?

In your externally rotated poses (Warrior II, Side Angle, Triangle, Half Moon):

• From Warrior II, use your hands to actively externally rotate your front thigh in the socket and press your knee towards your pinkie toe
• Feel the outer hip engage to support you
• Keep this support so that your knee tracks over the center of your ankle as you transition to Side Angle, Trikonasana
• In the transition to Half Moon, can you keep this integrity through the outer line of your hip as you move?  You can even place a hand to the outer thigh and actively press into your hand as you move.  This action will begin to imprint the support of your outer leg into the movement.
• Once in Half Moon, use the stability of your outer hip to deepen your hip crease. As you stabilize the lower leg, then you will have the freedom and stability to open the pelvis and spine safely towards the side wall.

In Bakasana:

Crow pose is not only a balancing pose.  And trying to balance your knees in your armpits will disconnect your midline and your core – the very support that you need to realize this pose effectively.

• Toes together, knees apart, come into a low squat
• Bring your elbows underneath your knees so that your knees are hugging the outside of your arms, as high up as possible
• From this low and tight position, squeeze your knees and connect to the inner lines of your legs
• Now, stay low as you shift forward and lift the toes off the floor
• If you’re feeling your inner thighs – you’re doing it!
• Once your feet lift, squeeze your knees in to lift your upper back to the sky and straighten your arms
• Use the connection of your inner thighs to squeeze in to send you up

In Handstand

To do this, we’ll play with lifting both legs at the same time.  If you have a regular handstand practice, add this into the mix to explore the connection of the inner and outer thighs.

Most of us know the importance of the inner thighs in handstand.  After all, we squeeze the legs together like crazy once we’re up.  Reinforce this action on the lift up by placing a block between the upper inner thighs as you hop up.

• Downdog at the wall, block between your thighs
• Bring your shoulders over your wrists and straighten you arms completely
• Keeping your tailbone high, bend both knees and squeeze the block
• Squeeze the block, keep your arms straight as you play with hopping the hips above your shoulders and bringing your legs into a pike position, then eventually straight up
• Do the same with a strap at mid-thigh to bring the outer legs online.

What have you noticed in these explorations?

Do you feel more integrated, lighter? Is there more or less space for your own growth and expression here?

Final thoughts

Creating strength in our adductors and abductors will free your power muscles to do their job with greater functionality and grace.  Although waking them up may take a little effort and time, the greater result will be integration and ease.

I used to think that boundaries would make me hard, impermeable, rigid, un-loveable.  But in fact, cultivating boundaries and unsticking ourselves gives us space to grow.

Having clear boundaries lets us nourish our internal goodness so that we can shine our best self forward.  Then we have the strength to uphold others with compassion.  We can serve as an inspiration to those needing to find love in their own eyes rather than the eyes of others.

In the Upanishads, it is said, “The pleasant is one thing.  The good another.”

May we rise to the good.

You know it.

You love it, you hate it.  You love to hate it.

It’s plank pose.

 

What’s plank pose?

Also known as “Phalakasana,” plank pose is a modification of Chaturanga Dandasana (“four-limbed staff pose”), which is doozy of a core stabilizer found in the traditional Sun Salutations.  Plank looks like a high push up position;  Chaturanga is pretty much the same pose, but with the elbows bent to ninety degrees.  In a traditional Sun Salutation, practitioners jump back from a preparatory pose directly into Chaturanga – a challenging move even for advanced practitioners.  To better control this transition, we usually step back to plank first, and then lower down into Chaturanga.

Uses of Plank

Although it has humble beginnings as a modification, plank has become quite the showstopper in its own right.  Forearm plank is held for a minute in the YHot practice to help practitioners develop their core strength and stability.  Plank is used in power and flow classes to create heat in the body, cultivate scapular stabilization, improve core strength, and act as an intermediary through transitions.

Anatomy of Plank

Plank pose is a lot of work for the upper body.  The shoulder girdle is intrinsically a joint of mobility, not stability (this ball and socket joint actually looks more like a baseball stuck to a plate).   In order for the practitioner to effectively manage his or her body weight, he or she must actively recruit the larger muscles of the back to stabilize the scapulae (the shoulder blades), so that the rotator cuff (the four little muscles that hold the humerus to the shoulder blade) isn’t struggling to bear the burden.

The primary muscles that keep the scapulae happily secure are the rhomboids, the trapezius, and the serratus anterior. They work in opposition to each other to make sure that the shoulder blades don’t “wing out” or slide too far afield.  You can understand their respective actions through the following exercise:

1. Come onto all fours with your hands under your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips, as if you were about to do cat/cow.
2. Keep your arms and your spine straight (unlike cat/cow, where we round and arch)
3. Now, slide your shoulder blades closer to each other on your back (your chest will move closer to the floor, but your arms stay straight).  The drawing closer of the scapulae to the spine reflects the action of the rhomboids and trapezius.
4. Now, slide your shoulder blades apart from each other so that they wrap around your ribcage and your upper back lifts to the ceiling.  This action is created by the contraction of serratus anterior, a wing-like muscle that pulls your scapula around the sides of your ribs.

When these muscles act together effectively, the scapulae stay well-secured on the back for plank – and ultimately for the transition to Chaturanga.

Finding your awesome plank pose

To find your plank, first find and excellent foundation:

• Come onto all fours with your knees slightly behind your hips.  Place your hands outer shoulder distance apart, line up the center of your wrist with the space between your index and middle finger, and press firmly through the four corners of your hands.

Now, engage your scapular stabilization:

• Lift your back ribs up to the sky so that your shoulder blades slide apart (this is serratus working).
• Keep the upper back inflated as you draw your shoulder blades closer to each other on your back until they are nestled securely against your ribcage.

Now find your core:

• With your shoulder girdle well-supported, draw the sides of your waist skywards in order to activate your core.  This action will help you to support the back body with the strength of your front body.

Add the pelvis:

• To recruit the integration of the pelvis, roll your upper inner thighs back as you draw your sitting bones down to your knees.
• If this feels like good work for you, then you can stay here on your knees in modified plank.

Add the legs:

• To come into full plank, keep the stability you’ve created through your shoulders and your pelvis and step one foot back at a time.
• Engage your quads and fully straighten your legs.
• To prevent collapse in the lower back, lift your pelvis in line with your shoulders and lengthen your tailbone to your feet.
• Finally, reach your sternum forward as you reach your heels back to expand the length of your plank fully.
• Eventually, you may lower your hips to make one straight line from your heels to your shoulders (rather than keeping the hips and shoulders in line).

Plank to Chaturanga

Once you are able to hold your plank solidly for 5 breaths, you are ready to explore lowering to Chaturanga.  Through this transition, it is vitally important to keep your scapulae securely on your back.  We often allow the shoulder heads drop forward and down as we lower, which is a compensation can be injurious for the rotator cuff over time.

To come into Chaturanga:

• Keep your legs engaged and your scapulae securely on your back.
• Shift onto your toes so that your chest moves forward in space a few inches.
• Keeping your shoulder heads lifted, bend your elbows and smoothly lower until your shoulders and elbows are in one line and your elbows are over your wrists.
• Nothing about the pose should change save the angle of the arms.
• Work up to holding Chaturanga for 5-8 breaths.

Modifications and Variations

Here’s a couple common modifications to make plank more accessible:

• For wrist issues, come onto your forearms or fists.  You can also place the heel of your hand on a rolled up blanket or mat to decrease the angle of flexion in the wrist.
• For a developing core, keep your back knees down
• To cultivate great adductor strength, put a block between your thighs

To increase the intensity of the pose:

• Lift one arm
• Lift one leg
• Lift opposite arms and legs
• Draw a knee into your chest
• For abductor work, tap a foot out to the side, then back

Happy Planking!

 

 

 

 

To master an arm balance, you must master your booty.

Seriously.

Your pelvis is heavy, and knowing where to put it during an arm balance will make a big difference in your ability to distribute your weight effectively and ultimately find lightness and ease in your pose.

Balancing in an arm balance is about:

• hands
• shoulder stability
• core strength
• pelvic placement/ weight placement

Okay, okay, naturally you need core strength.  But not as much as you think.  Place your weight smartly, and you will use less tension, find more ease, and gain levity and freedom in your arm balances.

Tip #1: Maintain excellent hand positioning

To protect your weight in arm balances, weight all four corners of the hand evenly.  For most of us, this means pressing more firmly into the index finger mound.  Without adult supervision, weight will naturally roll to the outer heel of the hand.  But we have a lovely little nerve in there called the ulnar nerve (if you’ve ever had numbness in the outer hand after practicing, the compression of this little guy may be the reason why).  There is also a nerve in our carpal tunnel called the median nerve.  Keeping weight into our fingertips and medial palm edge will take the weight off of the heel of the hand and help you to protect both these nerves from over-compression.  Weighting into the fingertips will also give you more control of your weight – just like your toes help you to balance when you’re standing.

Tip #2: Maintain shoulder stability

Our shoulder girdle is only attached skeletally in one little place: the meeting point of the collarbone and sternum.  That’s it.  That’s all the skeletal support you’ve got when you’re balancing on your hands.  Therefore, you need excellent muscular stabilization through your back and your shoulders to support your arm balance effectively.  In the YYoga TT, we employ the actions, “lift your back ribs while you draw your shoulder blades together on your back” in order to recruit both sets of muscles that will stabilize the scapulae effectively.  In a nutshell, this means that the shoulders and the back body must become a place of support.  While it becomes tempting in arm balances to drop our shoulders down to the floor, we must earnestly continue to stabilize the shoulder blades on the back rather than collapse into gravity.

Think of lowering into chaturanga.  Effectively lowering from plank to chaturanga means that our shoulder blades stay on our back and that the heads of the arm bones stay lifted towards the sky.  When the shoulder heads drop, we place far too much pressure on the front of the rotator cuff and joint.  Similarly in arm balances, we must lift the heads of the arm bones skyward to maintain adequate stabilization of this shallow joint.

Tip #3: Core strength

You knew it would be in here. Yes, you need core strength.  However, core strength isn’t just about your six-pack.  Core strength means finding the connection from your big toes through the inner seams of your legs, through the pelvis floor and into the deepest layer of your abdominals, the transverse abdominus.  In a nutshell, find your “leg magnets” (as Chris Clancy might say) that link the inner seams of your legs together.   This engagement through the legs will naturally lift the pelvis floor and help you to deeply engage your core.

When doing an arm balance, we usually have our upper leg against our upper arms: use this connection to assist you in finding the muscular engagement of the inner leg.  Also, remember that your toes are part of your body, too.  By maintaining awareness from toes to pelvis, you will be able to recruit the legs to work for you so that they are not dead weight.

Tip #4: Control your booty

When doing a pose like bakasana (crow), the booty actually needs to be down.  Lifting the bum high will disconnect you from your core connection and make the pose more precarious.  By keeping the tailbone down and lifting vigorously through the sides of your waist, you will recruit more muscular stability in the pose, rather than teetering in a balance.

However, in other poses such as Eka Pada Galavasana, Parsva Bakasana (side crow),  and Eka Pada Koudinyasana, we must keep our bum high.  Letting the pelvis drop in these poses will deflate the integrity of the pose and make it much harder to shift your weight forward to take the weight off of the feet and find your balance.  While core integrity is necessary, lift off  in these poses depends on your ability to control your weight in space  – much like we move weight in a teeter totter.  When the pelvis stays high, you have the ability to shift the chest forward in space, which will allow the legs and back body to become light and eventually float.  If the pelvis drops, everything will move earthward and the levity of the pose will dissipate.

Playing in the poses

Bakasana (Crow): Booty low

• In bakasana,  place your feet together on a block and take your knees wide.  Then place your hands outer shoulders’ distance apart, spread your fingers side, and evenly weight into all four corners of your palms – particularly the index finger mound
• Get low, and bring your knees as high up onto your outer arms as you can.
• Clamp your knees onto your outer, upper arms.
• Gaze forward.
• Keeping your booty low and your side waists high (think of an angry cat), begin to shift your weight forward into your hands as if you were a hovercraft.
• Play with moving back and forth, and you will find that your feet become lighter and eventually leave the block.
• Once your feet leave the block, clamp in with your thighs, lift through the sides of your waist, then begin to press down through the hands until the arms become straight.

Eka Pada Koundinyasana: Booty High

• Come into a low lunge with both hands to the inside of your front foot.
• Lift your back leg and lift your booty high.
• Clamp your front knee onto your upper arm
• Press into your hands, lift your back ribs skywards, and keep that as you anchor your shoulder blades on your back
• Lift onto your front toes
• Lift onto your back toes and begin to shift your weight forward
• Keeping your shoulders lifted skywards and your booty high, lift your front foot off the ground. Either keep it bending in, or reach it diagonally away from your body (like you’re reaching it to 2 pm on a clock dial)
• Keep your booty lifted and shoulders lifting as your reach your sternum forward and bring more weight onto your hands
• Find the teeter-totter balance here as you reach the chest forward.  When the weight moves far enough ahead, the back toes will lift off the floor.

Bonus Tip #5: Patience

Arm balances are not natural for human kind.  After all, we don’t often find ourselves suddenly falling into an arm balance as we walk down the street!  Naturally, it takes time for our body to become confident balancing weight onto our hands.  Be patient, work slowly, and the support and ease that you cultivate will put in you in an excellent position for coming into flight.

In the meantime, the conscientious practice of the following poses are excellent warm ups to include in your preparations:

• Cat/ Cow – particularly cat so you can keep your booty low!  Also, work your excellent hand position here
• Plank – Chaturanga: practice keeping the shoulder heads lifting and keeping the hips and shoulders in line
• Lizard – good for hip opening and practicing keeping that booty high!
• Malasana – good for hip opening and finding the engagement of the inner thighs
• Crescent- hug your “leg magnets” to find your core from your toes to your pelvis

Happy practicing!

 

 

What exactly is the shoulder?   And why do they get so freakin’ stuck when we try to lift our arms overhead?

Two Joints of the Shoulder

The shoulder is actually two joints in one: the gleno-humeral joint (the ball and socket joint where the upper arm connects to your shoulder blade) and the scapulo-thoracic joint (a functional joint where the shoulder blade slides around on the back ribs).  In order to lift your arm up more than about 30 degrees to the side, you have to actually have to move your shoulderblade on your back.  (Go ahead: try to lift your arm overhead without moving your shoulder blade – not going to happen).

When we do this motion, the shoulder blades have to protract – that is, they move away from each other and wrap forward on your ribcage (check out the pic).  They also they upwardly rotate, which means that the inner border of your shoulder blade actually moves down as the outer edges move up.

“Draw your shoulders down.”

When we’re in yoga class and lifting our arms, we often hear the phrase, “Draw your shoulder blades together” or “draw your shoulder blades down.”  These actions are counter-intuitive to the actual bio-mechanics of the shoulder blade on the back.  While a small degree of these actions can create stability, too much will restrict your freedom of movement.

When teachers say, “bring your shoulders down,” they are actually trying to get you to relax your upper trapezius.  The traps are the muscles at the base of your neck that love to overact and make your shoulders look all crunchy like.  While relaxing your traps is a good idea here, we need to remember that part of the shoulder blade must actually be going UP in order to get your arms overhead.  Trying to drag the whole shoulder blade down can create constriction and lessen our freedom of movement.

To get freedom in the shoulders as you lift your arms:

• allow your scapulae to move freely on your back body
• externally rotate your upper arms as you bring them overhead to create more space between the bones of your shoulder
• visualize the inner borders of your shoulder blades moving down as the outer borders move up
• relax the muscles at the base of your neck (they’re not needed here) – rather than trying to drag the shoulder blades down your back – to create space around your neck

Still tight?

Some of the muscle that can restrict us when we lift our arms up:

• Latissimus Dorsi
• Triceps
• Posterior Deltoid

Try some dedicated, long stretches for these muscles to open them up.  Then explore again and see if one of these has been the culprit.

Happy exploring!

 

Bakasana is one of those asani that looks impossible until you actually do it.

“You want me to put my knees where and balance on my what?” we think with dismay.

But with just a few steps, you two can begin to find the effortless flight that characterizes this arm balance. And the key lies in finding your core. The gateway to the core? Your inner thighs. Very simply, by using your adductors (the muscles that allow you to squeeze your legs together), you begin to activate your core – namely your transverse abdominis. Once this engagement starts, you are on your way to flight.

Finding the Adductors

To find the adductors, try “scissoring” your legs together in poses such as lunge, virabhadrasana I, parsvottanasana, and other neutral-legged postures. This scissoring action will help “square” your hips, create a sense of buoyancy through the pelvic floor, and add stability to your posture. Another great way to find the adductors is to bring a block between your feet or your inner thighs and squeeze – presto! Instant adductor action.

Here’s a good sequence to help you find your core:

-Place a block on medium width between your thighs and stand in tadasana (it’s okay, your feet will be under your hips)

-Inhale arms up into urdhva hastasana (squeeze the block)

-Exhale uttanasana (squeeze the block)

-Inhale halfway (squeeze the block)

-Exhale uttanasana (squeeze the block)

-Inhale urdhva hastasana/ arms up (squeeze the block)

-Exhale tadasasna (squeeze the block)

You get the idea? You can do a whole sun salutation with the block by jumping (with your knees bent) into down dog and moving through the vinyasa from there. Holding plank or forearm plank with the block between the upper thighs can change the dynamic of the posture by encouraging the activation of the legs and the core. When the legs start working for you, the pose becomes easier on the arms and the wrists.

It’s All in the Shape

The shape of the back in bakasana is similar to that in an arching cat. When many of us start to come into bakasana, we flatten out the spine, which actually makes is more difficult to engage the abdominals. Also, instead of trying to balance the knees in the armpit, instead, clamp the knees onto the outer upper arms. This clamping action allows you to find the inner thighs, which has a trickle up effect to the pelvic floor and abdominals, giving you lift.

Poses to find the rounding of the back aren’t common in yoga, as we tend to work toward a straight spine. However, here are a few that can help:

-The cat part of cat/cow

-Garudasana (Eagle), if you hinge from hips and round the back

-Arching cat in downward dog. To do this, come into downward dog. Extend one leg back. Shift your shoulders over your wrists (a la plank). Draw your knee to your nose, press into your hands, and round your spine toward the ceiling. Stretch the leg back into three-legged dog and repeat a few times.

Doing the Pose

My favorite way of doing bakasana is to start with the feet together on a block.

-Place your feet on the block and widen your knees.

-Place your hands on the floor shoulder distance apart and spread your fingers wide. Claw the fingers into the floor so that you are distributing your weight through the whole hand and not just bearing down through the wrist

-Hunker down and clamp your knees onto your arms as high up as you can. Squeeze. Feel your adductors fire up.

-Look forward

-Begin to shift your weight forward off the block and into your hands

-As you shift, keep your tailbone reaching down so that you your spine is round and not flat, scooping your abdominals up

-Bring one foot off the block, maybe both. If you have both, then squeeze the sides of your feet together, lift your addominals up, and straighten your arms

-Come down by bringing one foot to the block and then the other.

If you felt your adductors firing and your back rounding, then you are on the right path!

Possible Sequence

Bakasana is a great pose for the wintery months, when we feel as if our inner furnace is a bit dimmed.

Cat/Cow (focus on rounding of spine)

Cat/Cow – add leg extension and knee to nose

Extended child’s pose

Downward Dog

Cat/Cow in Downward Dog (students have option to return to easier version on their knees if necessary)

Low lunge (scissor legs and fire adductors)

Forearm plank (do forearm plank rather than plank to preserve the wrists for later)

Repeat on other side

Sun Salutation with block between inner thighs or feet 3-5 times

Utkatasana

Eagle with forward fold to round spine

Surya B (focus on adductors) 1-3 times

Surya B to downward dog, step into lunge, parivrtta parsvakonasana (revolved side angle) – Both sides

Parsvottanasna (Pyramid pose)

Malasana (squat) – squeeze inner thighs in

Navasana (Boat)

Bakasana (as described above)

Table or purvottanasana to release front of body

Upavista Konasana (wide-legged forward fold) to release inner thighs

Baddha Konasana (cobbler’s pose)

Maricyasana C (seated twist)

Pascimottanasna (seated forward fold)

onto back: Reclined Ankle to Knee

Savasana