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This week's yoga tip is a about a challenging arm-balancing posture, eka pada koundinyasana 2 (one-legged sage pose 2), EPK2 for short! This pose often follows Lizard Pose in more challenging vinyasa classes, and for those of you who are comfortable in Lizard and want to challenge yourselves a bit more, the preparatory steps towards EPK2 are a great way to explore your boundaries and push out of your comfort zone a little.

Before you start working on this pose, make sure that you have warmed up the hips, hamstrings and upper body. You'll need a nice strong chaturanga to take the full balance, but if you are still working on that, the preparatory postures are good at building strength, too!

Remember if you are just starting to work on this pose to take it easy! There's no rush. You may play with each step in the process for weeks or even months at a time. Take each challenge as it comes, be patient with yourself, and be consistent, and you will see results in time. As a guideline, you should aim to be able to hold each step comfortably for up to a minute before progressing to the next step.

Start by taking a long, deep Lizard Pose on each side to warm up. Then come back into Lizard pose on the first side.

• If you can get your elbows to the floor in Lizard, begin by walking your elbows back as far as you can. If you can't get your elbows quite there, then walk your hands back. Either way, you should end up with your arms in chaturanga.

• As you bring your arms into chaturanga, one arm will come into contact with the back of your leg (in the photos below, the left arm and left leg) and the weight of the leg will start to transfer to your upper arm. This contact point is really important so play around with it until it feels comfortable. As a general rule, you can't to get the contact point as high on your upper arm as you can. (2nd picture, below)

• Once you feel comfortable, begin to walk your front toes forward and out on a diagonal. You'll feel more of the weight of the leg transferring onto your upper arm. At this point stop and make sure your body is properly supported: squeeze your upper arms towards the midline and press strongly through the pads of the fingers, lift from the core (like in plank pose), and strongly engaging the back leg and heel.

• Now we're going to try and straighten the front leg. To support yourself in this half-balance, you'll need to drop into a strong chaturanga. At this point I find it helpful to turn my head and look towards my toes: this helps me focus my efforts on what I'm doing!

• Next, extend strongly through the front thigh and begin to straightening the front leg. Really think about lengthening, not about lifting: by virtue of extending, your toes will eventually lift off the ground.

• Once you can get the toes off, refine the posture: flex or "floint" the front toes, keep the back leg super-engaged, and see if you can come up onto tiptoes on the back foot. When you can get the back foot high, high on tiptoes, then you're ready to try the next stage.

• Think of the body as a seesaw, with your elbows as the centre. The easiest way to get the back toes up, is for the weight of your front body to move forward and down. So this critical stage is mostly about pivoting your weight forward until your back toes can't help but lift off. Keeping the front leg strongly engaged and extending will help you bring your weight forward without collapsing onto the mat.

• When you're just getting started with this pose, it can help to take tiny 'hops' to lift the toes off the ground. Keep in mind though that these hops should be really tiny and that the main "work" of this stage is shifting your weight forward enough so that the back leg becomes light. I also find that it really helps to turn your head to the side here. This eliminates any risk of nose-squash if something goes wrong and helps keep your focus on your front leg, which needs to stay really strongly extending through this step.

• Once you have a bit of lift-off,  keep the forward leg strongly engaged, keep squeezing in through the upper arms, and keep lifting from the core. It's hard work!!

• Over time, refine the pose by trying to find a more even distribution of weight, lifting the chest away from the floor, extending from the breastbone, and bringing your gaze forward.

• PS: I've included a picture of the other side here, because when I was first starting out with this pose I couldn't figure out what to do with my other arm. In fact when I first played with this pose, I used to cheat by sneaking that free elbow underneath my hip. I don't discourage this little 'cheat' if you are just trying to get a feel for the pose, but in the full pose the elbow is free and hugging strongly into your side. Squeeze as if your life depended on it!! (Note how you can really see that this is my weaker shoulder from the photos!)

I hope this was helpful! Readers, are there any poses that you'd like to see on this blog?

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I love it when people a) comment on my blog, b) find my blog posts useful, and c) ask for particular things on the blog! Please don't hesitate to let me know if these posts are useful (or not!) to you and just leave a comment if there is something you'd like me to post about!!

This post is in response to a reader comment - yay! Anonymous said: "I'd love a tip on how to transition your feet from plank to upward dog then downward dog. I always have difficulty rolling my feet from plank to upward, and when I "fudge" it I worry I'm doing it wrong."

This is a great question! And don't worry, Anonymous, you aren't alone: this is a really difficult move and it took me (and many other yogis I know!) years of practice to make this a smooth transition.  Also, don't stress if you don't get it right away. As long as you aren't injuring yourself the way you are doing it, just view it as a step in the process, and keep working at it. As with everything, eventually, with practice, it will come!

First: Warm up your feet! Feet are delicate and deserve our respect, so it's a good idea to first establish that your feet have the flexibility to make this transition without injury. For some foot-stretching ideas, check out this old post on Yoga for Feet.

Next, do a practice-run.  Once your feet are warmed up, you can work on transitioning your toes from a flexed to an extended (pointed) position to make sure your feet are strong and flexible enough to do this comfortably. To isolate the feet from the rest of the transition, do this from plank pose.

1. Start in plank pose, with your toes tucked under and your heels strongly pressing back.

2. In plank pose, shift your weight a tiny bit forward, lift from the core, and come up onto your tip-toes. Don't try to roll your feet over yet - just see how high you can come onto tip-toes, hold for a breath, and then come down. Do this a few times.

3. Finally, come up onto the very tips of your toes and then gently shift your pelvis forward until you roll over onto the tops of your feet. You may want to practice this with your hands forward of your usual alignment to maintain your stability. Practice this until it feels smooth and comfortable.

If your toes don't feel comfortable rolling over, don't force it. Feet are delicate, so be careful!




Next it gets a little more challenging, because in between plank and upward-facing dog, we have four-legged staff pose, chaturanga dandasana, a pose that requires a great deal of strength.  For this exercise, we're going to use a yoga block (or something equivalent - a small ball or box) that you can squeeze between your thighs.  This isn't strictly necessary but it helps by keeping the legs engaged and therefore encouraging you to move from the core and the pelvis.

Before you start, read this post on the pelvic alignment in the transition from plank to upward-facing dog. Got that? We don't want to be injuring our SI joint while we're doing this, and finding that 'lift' from the core and the pelvis is a key part to making this transition.  The key thing to remember here is that the origin of the movement is from the pelvis.  Think of your pelvis as the engine that is driving the movement - try to move just the pelvis, and the rest of your body will follow.  

1. Place your yoga block between your thighs and come into plank pose. Set your mental mantra to moving from the pelvis, and as you inhale, lift (from the core!) up onto your tiptoes.




2. Begin to exhale and lower yourself as far down into chaturanga as you can hold for a few seconds - it doesn't have to be all the way! Keep lifting as high as you can onto the tips of your toes and look forward. Keep squeezing your block! This puts you in the perfect preparatory position to move yourself forward into upward-facing dog.




3. As your exhalation reaches empty, look forward, lift strongly from the core and move your pelvis forward while pressing into your hands to straighten your arms. Open up your chest and keep your spine long. With luck - and practice! - your toes will slide over at the last second as you go forward.




And back to downward-facing dog...   The final step is to take this from upward-facing dog back to downward facing dog.  Again, focus on the pelvis as the origin of the movement.

1. From upward-facing dog, begin to exhale. Press into your arms and as you near the end of your exhalation, strongly suck your belly button up and lift your pelvis UP and back.  As you come up to a plank-like position, you will come towards a full extension of your feet, which is pretty uncomfortable, so try to make this a smooth, continuous movement.

2. Before you think about going all the way back, try to get as high as you can onto the tops of your feet as you lift your hips up.  When you can go no higher, send your hips back and your toes will have nowhere to go but up and over!  If they won't quite go together, roll them over one at a time but practice alternating which foot goes first.




Here is a short video showing how it all comes together. I've tried to really emphasise the role the pelvis plays in driving the movement - I hope it helps!



A few extra tips:

- Keep your core strongly engaged by lifting the belly button towards the spine.

- Synchronise your hardest movements with the end of your exhalation, and move when your breath is empty. This automatically engages your abdominal and pelvic lift, which will compliment these movements.

- Try tiny variations in the position of your hands. While the general guideline is to line your hands up directly under your shoulders, a centimetre forward or back can really make the difference in finding the 'sweet spot' that will serve you in both Chaturanga and Upward-facing dog.

- Also, check out this video where Kino talks about using the bandhas (that pelvic and abdominal lift) to move through this transition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Hji2I4ZQM

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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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