our-yoga

Practice this morning was good. I decided to work more on backbends. In many ways, this wasn't a very deliberate decision on my part. Ever since my left knee fell out of favor with the Ashtanga gods, I have more or less unconsciously been looking for other things to work on in my practice; things that don't involve going into padmasana or doing fancy stuff with the knees. Here's another way to think about this: If you think of the effort and energy that you put into your practice as a laser beam, when you take the beam off one area of the practice, you more or less naturally end up refocusing the beam on some other area of your practice. Somehow, without quite being aware of it, my "laser beam" has refocused on back-bending in the last two or three weeks.

For one, over the last two or three weeks, I have been putting in more effort and intention in working on the second series backbends. In my view, backbends are not so much about working harder as they are about working with more intention, trying to see if I can breathe deeper and more evenly in them. This morning, for instance, I felt that my breathing in Laghu Vajrasana was deeper and more even than it usually is. I also had an interesting breakthrough in Kapotasana. As usual, I started by getting on my knees and hanging back to open my chest before diving for my feet. When I dove this morning, my right hand found my heel immediately! Which was a nice surprise; up till now, I always had to land either on my toes or my mid-sole, then walk the couple of inches to the heels.

In the dropbacks, I worked on doing two or three hangbacks before actually dropping back. I succeeded in extending my arms towards the ground during the hangbacks, so that my fingertips were suspended just a few inches off the ground. When I finally dropped to the ground, I touched my heels with my fingers, but still couldn't get into Chakrabandhasana. Will keep working on this.

You have to admit that it is not easy making a living as a yoga teacher these days. With all these teacher training programs churning out armies of RYTs everyday, a yoga teacher who aspires to the heights of yoga rock-star-dom definitely has the odds stacked against him or her. Fortunately, recent developments in the yoga world offer us a couple of good ideas to beat these odds:

(1) Get in touch with an up-and-coming reality TV show participant, and offer to produce and star in a naked yoga production with him or her. You can't ask Kim Kardashian, though; she's already been there, done that. (I'm not linking to that infamous video here, but it's probably on, like, a million blogs and websites by now, so you should have no trouble finding it if you need, uh, inspiration.)

The nice thing about this project is you don't need much start-up capital. All you need is a video-camera, a couple of yoga mats, and your (and your reality TV show participant's) naked body. It doesn't matter if all you have is a hand-held camera; the hand-held effect will give an authentic, on-the-spot feel to your production.

The drawback to this project is that you have to be able to bear seeing yourself naked onscreen... Well, actually, it's probably more correct to say that you have to have a body that you think others will be able to bear seeing naked onscreen. Do you have such a body? Well, there's only one way to find out...

(2) If you are not into exposing yourself, you can try selling merchandise. In his recent post, Kevin writes about this back-bending tool that his friend's landlord has made over in Mysore. It's supposed to be really helpful for deepening your backbend, especially Kapotasana. Here's how it looks like:

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we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

Actually, this is a rather misleading blog title; if you take it literally, you might think that I am writing about thoughts that are bending themselves backwards! But of course, as you have probably figured, I am giving expression here to a few thoughts about bending my body backwards. But speaking of which, can thoughts actually bend backwards? Just wondering...

Anyway, about backbending: since I returned from Kino's LA workshop, I have been doing my best to incorporate certain things I learned about backbending into my backbending practice. There are a few things I learned at that workshop that are really relevant to me:

(1) Tilting the ASIS slightly forward and upward helps to achieve sacral nutation, which is very helpful for deep backbending. It is very difficult (maybe even impossible) to backbend deeply when your ASIS is tilted back: Try it if you don't believe this.

(2) Together with tilting the ASIS forward, gently rotating the thighs inward helps to secure a firm base/foundation from which the backbend can flower. Inward rotation of the thigh is not to be confused with squeezing the thighs together: They are two distinct and separate actions, and it is possible to squeeze the thighs till forever without ever getting the thighs to rotate inwards.

Based on this realization of the difference between thigh rotation and thigh squeezing, I have stopped using the block in backbends since I returned from Kino's workshop. As useful as the block may be for certain purposes, there is a tendency when using the block to focus more on keeping the block in place (and on squeezing the block to keep it in place) rather than on the inner-rotating action the block is supposed to help cultivate in the first place. This, I think, is one pitfall of using props in practice: There is always the tendency to focus on the prop itself than on the action the prop was supposed to help cultivate in the first place.    

(3) It is also important to lift up into the backbend and allow the spine space to expand at the same time as you are trying to walk your hands deeper into the backbend. This applies mainly to Urdhva Dhanurasana, but it also applies to other deep backbends such as Kapotasana. Actually, Savannah over at Musings from the Yoga Mat explains this lifting and expanding action very well when she writes:

"For Urdhva Dhanurasana (backbend), Kino asked us to tilt the pelvis forward, lift the stomach and ribcage, roll the shoulder blades down and onto the back while allowing the entire body to assist in the arch."

The general idea is that when you lift and expand in the way described, you bring the entire front and back bodies to contribute to the work of the backbend, rather than simply letting the lumbar spine do all the work (resulting in lumbar compression, which is frequently painful). To show us how to coordinate this action with the breath, Kino had us tilt the pelvis forward, roll the shoulder blades down and bring the chest over the arms on the inhale in Urdhva Dhanuarasana, while walking the hands closer to the feet on the exhale. This same inhale-lift/expand-exhale-walk-forward action can also be applied to Kapotasana, even if the action is a little harder to replicate here because the fact that one is on one's knees gives one a little less room to expand outwards on the inhale. But it is doable, and it does create a good sensation of expansion in the spine; which, if nothing else, counteracts the I-am-feeling-so-claustrophobic-and-I-am-going-to-die feeling that one often feels in intense backbends.

Are all these things helping with my backbend practice thus far? I guess the answer is... slowly and in microscopic increments. To be honest, when I stood up from Urdhva Dhanurasana this morning, I found, to my horror, that my feet are still splaying out. But as I walked around campus later in the morning, I felt that pleasant aching feeling in my quads. Which I take as a sign that I am at least engaging the right muscles, even if these muscles have yet to become strong or long enough to prevent my feet from splaying out.  I guess I'll keep working on this.          

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This, at least, is my preliminary conclusion after this morning's practice. As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been thinking and talking a lot of politics this past week on this blog. I wonder if this has affected my backbending: Getting into Kapotasana was grueling this morning. Despite hanging for eight to ten breaths, it still took a tremendous amount of effort to get my hands to my heels. Of course, I suppose I could have just not tried to go for the heels and taken it a little easier on myself this morning; but there's just something about Kapo as far as I'm concerned: Once I get my hands anywhere on my foot, there's this powerful drive (is this ego, I wonder?) to walk my hands, inch by grueling inch, until they grab the heels.

What has difficulty in doing Kapotasana got to do with politics, you may ask? Well, here's one theory: People tend to store a lot of tension in their psoas, which results in tight psoas, which results in difficult backbending. And talking and thinking about politics brings up a lot of anger and anxiety, which might lead to more tension and tightness in the psoas.

But this theory doesn't seem to hold water in my case. Bhekasana, which demands a lot from the psoas, came really easily to me this morning. Got both my heels to the ground just like that. So maybe it's not the psoas that is being tightened by all that politics; maybe it's someplace somewhere higher up in the body, like the upper or middle back? I don't know, one way or the other. Just thinking aloud here. Or maybe politics has nothing to do with any of this at all; maybe the body (and mind) is just more stiff on certain days. Oh well. 

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Last week I linked to Nadine's post on pelvic alignment for upward facing dog. This week, more on that pesky SI joint in the tricky transition between plank pose and upward facing dog.

For me, plank pose really sets the tone of your sun salutations, so it's worth spending some time to make sure you are set up properly. If you have SI issues and you naturally tend towards an anterior pelvic tilt (or as Nadine calls it, "sexy back" - LOL), then plank pose is another pose where you want to tuck the pelvis anteriorly. The best way I have found of 'feeling' this is to think about tucking the tailbone while hugging your belly button up towards your spine and holding it there. It's useful to employ the abdominal muscles to stabilise the pelvis in a neutral or anterior tilt, because if you then keep the belly muscles engaged as you start your transition, your pelvis will most likely stay in the right position as well.  (NB: If you have a fairly flat lumbar curve or you naturally tend towards an anterior pelvic tilt, you can just focus on keeping the spine long and the abdominals and legs engaged. Don't try to tuck your tailbone too far in the other direction!)

From plank pose, the next tricky bit is to maintain the pelvic tilt as you come down towards the floor. This is quite challenging because you are fighting against gravity. It takes a fair amount of muscular engagement from the arms, abdominals and legs to get this stability in chaturanga dandasana, and probably years of practice! If you are having SI issues or lower back pain, I recommend working with your knees on the floor until you are able to keep your back stable. Doing it this way still builds a lot of arm and abdominal strength, but makes the transition much easier on the SI joint because it is easier to keep your pelvis tucked and your back "flat" as you come down.


Finally, work on coming up into the backbend. Here again, if you have SI issues or are experiencing lower back pain, I recommend working with cobra pose instead of upward facing dog. A super-safe way of doing cobra pose is to perform the pose with your hands lifted off the floor, like this:


With your hands lifted off the floor, you have to use your abdominal and back muscles at the same time to lift your chest, meaning that the SI joint stays nice and stable. Resist the temptation to lift the chest higher by pushing the hands into the floor and hyper-bending the SI joint!! That is a sure recipe for lower back pain in the long run!

If your back is feeling OK and you are comfortable keeping the abdominals engaged and the pelvis tucked, then work on coming into upward facing dog. Remember, keep the abdominals firm, the pelvis tucked, and the legs strongly engaged in this pose.  This will help to reduce the angle of the bend in the SI joint and help you get a longer, smoother curve in your lumbar spine, as you can see in the pictures below!


How do you practice (or teach) this transition?

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