our-yoga

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have scaled back my practice to primary only for the next few weeks, in order to energetically adjust myself for my move to Idaho.

Some people may see going back to primary only as taking a step back in the practice, but this is incorrect. If nothing else, going back to doing primary only can be an invaluable "reset" button that enables one to clear up whatever sloppy technique/faffiness/spiritual-physical gunk that may have accumulated from not paying enough attention to the basics. In any case, any sort of significant progress can only occur through a period of "stepping back" and consolidation.

I have discovered in my case that nowhere is this more true than with backbends. As you know, if you are doing primary only, the only backbends you get to do are the finishing backbends, plus dropbacks and standups. Now there has been a lot of debate recently in the Ashtanga blogosphere about whether it is a good thing for teachers to insist that students be able to drop back and stand up before going on to second. Many people have made the argument that this no-second-before-standing-up-from-backbending rule (let's call this "NSBSU" from now on) is not a sound rule, because some of the first few backbends of second series may actually help the student to find the muscles that she needs in order to stand up from a backbend.

I personally think there is some merit to this argument. I myself was moved on to second by my teacher before I could stand up from dropping back: If I remember correctly, I was actually able to grab my heels in Kapo by myself before I could find the necessary muscles to stand up from dropping back.

But over the last few days, as I restricted my backbends to Urdhva Dhanurasanas and dropbacks and standups, I began to see that there is a certain beauty to NSBSU. Here's why: If you have to go into UDs and dropbacks immediately from primary, your body (and mind) doesn't have the luxury of relying on the first few second series backbends to open up your body for you. In other words, you don't have the luxury of thinking: Okay, I have all these nice gentle second series backbends (except Kapo, of course) to open up my body for me, so I can, you know, relax a little, and let these backbends do the work for me.

I suspect that too many of us have a tendency to think this way, and, in this way, to use these second series backbends as a sort of psychological crutch. And as you know, in yoga practice, whatever happens on the psychological level inevitably translates into something on a physical level. Which also leads me to suspect that more often than not, this kind of "relax a little" mindset leads one to execute the second series backbends in a sloppy fashion (a possibility made all the more tempting by the fact that you are lying prone on the mat...). Which leads to one getting less out of these backbends, and possibly even to injury.

I'm not making any sort of categorical claim that it is impossible to do the second series backbends without sloppiness. Rather, I'm just speaking from my recent experience here. As I was saying, over the last few days of doing primary only, I've realized that if you have to go into UD straight from primary, you pretty much have to do a lot of work right away to bring as much of the backbend into the upper-back (by bringing your shoulders over your elbows) and into your quads and psoas, because you only have three UDs before you have to drop back and stand up. No time or space to mess around. I discovered that because I had to do so much work in so short a time, my backbends felt more open, and there was this delicious burning sensation in my thighs from all this work (for more details on this sweet delicious burning sensation, see this post). Which makes for a very satisfactory and fulfilling backbend practice, all in all.

In other news: Happy Boxing Day! Speaking of Boxing Day, this quirky post that I wrote on Boxing Day last year has unexpectedly been getting a lot of views in the last few days; people probably stumbled upon this post as the result of randomly googling "Boxing Day" or "Boxing Day Images". In fact, as you can see, it is actually the second most read post of all time on this blog as of right now.

As a result of this unexpected occurrence, this blog has been getting a crazy number of hits yesterday and today. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the number of hits I've had so far today (I won't tell you how many) is the highest this blog has ever gotten in one day! Crazy, right?

So yeah, now you know: I actually do look at my blog stats... Did I ever say I did not, anyway? But all this leaves me with mixed feelings. My ego, of course, feels good from having so many blog hits, but there's also a more ambivalent part of me that finds it rather strange that a supposedly Ashtanga blog should be getting so many hits on account of something that is totally not yoga related. Ah, c'est la vie...          

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Over the last week or so, I made a very interesting discovery while practicing dropbacks and standups. Quite simply, it's this: How evenly you distribute your weight in your feet during dropbacks directly impacts the quality of your backbend.

This is how I came upon this discovery. Over the last week or so, I found myself paying more attention to my feet during dropbacks. Why did I suddenly start paying attention to this part of my body during dropbacks? Well, no particular reason, really. It's just that, after you have been dropping back and standing up for a while (in my case, it's been more than two years since the first time I dropped back and came back up successfully), you stop treating dropping back and standing up as this thing in the practice to be gotten over with quickly. And once you stop seeing it as something to be gotten over with quickly, you also start to stay in and with the pose more, and pay more attention to the sensations created by the placement of various parts of the body.  And if you are walking your hands towards your feet in backbends (like I am), you can't help looking at the feet :-)

And so it was that sometime last week, I noticed that over the last two years, I have had a tendency to place more weight on the inside rather than on the outside of the feet (I think the technical term for this is "supination", although I'm not 100 percent certain about this, and I'm feeling too lazy to google it right now :-)). I think I do this because I try too hard to rotate the thighs inward, so much so that I supinate the feet in order to bring the thighs closer together.

Anyway, the moment I noticed this tendency last week, I asked myself, "Hmm.... is this right? Shouldn't the weight be evenly distributed on the feet in all postures, including backbends?" The moment I pondered this question, I decided to try shifting more of the weight onto the outside of the feet, in order to balance out the weight placement. The moment I did this, the quality of the backbend changed: Somehow, I could feel more of the backbend in my front body rather than in my back.

This morning, I made another discovery. As I walked my hands towards my feet in dropbacks, I reminded myself again to try to shift more of the weight to the outside of the feet without sacrificing the inner rotation of the thighs. I discovered that once I did that, it also became easier for me to lift my vertebrae out of and away from the pelvis, creating more space in the spine. This gave the entire backbend a lighter, more expansive feeling, not to mention protecting the vertebrae from compression.

One of my teachers, Eddie Modestini, always emphasized that the feet are the foundation of the asanas, and that if you take care of the feet, everything takes care of itself. I always thought that applied mainly to standing asanas. But I guess it applies to backbends too. Then again, if you think about it, dropbacks and standups are also standing asanas. Pretty cool, don't you think? ;-)     

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It seems that backbending has re-emerged as a topic of discussion in the blogosphere, so I'll use this topic as a launching point to get myself out of my recent blogging funk.

Sereneflavor, Grimmly and Boodiba have all recently blogged about backbending. The latter two have also made some cool videos of their backbending exploits. I have not made any such videos, although I do know that a picture of me in Kapotasana has recently been making the rounds on the web. I've also learnt that said picture has apparently been re-blogged on a gay site... I'm not sure what to think about this. I've nothing against gay people. But still, it's a little bit unsettling (not to mention creepy) to consider the possibility that my backbending likeness may be the subject of some guy's fantasy right this moment... I guess this teaches me something: One has no control over whatever content one posts online. Let it go.

So, as I was saying, backbending. With my left knee being... (how should I put this)... out of optimal Ashtanga performance mode, I have recently found myself focusing more on my backbends. In particular, I have been working on reducing the level of splay in my feet when I drop back. In a recent post, Frank suggested that a certain amount of splay is to be expected if one's thighs naturally turn outward. The idea is not to allow the feet to turn outwards more than the degree to which one's thighs naturally turn outwards (does this make sense?); if one's feet turn out more than the angle to which one's thighs are turned out, the knees get compromised. Which gives me an additional reason to work on reducing the amount of feet-splay in the backbends, since I need to do everything I can to protect the knees at this point.

Here's a little discovery I made during this morning's practice. I discovered that rather than just drop back immediately after first coming up from Urdhva Dhanurasana, it is useful to hang back for two or three times before actually dropping back. I discovered that doing these two or three hang-backs brings more of the backbend into the muscles of the front body, which somehow also results in less feet-splaying. There is also an added benefit: When I finally allowed myself to drop back after these two or three hang-backs, I was able to walk my hands to touch my heels more easily, probably as a result of the added front-body opening. I still can't get into Chakrabandhasana unassisted, but maybe if I keep working on this, I will be able to do this one day.

Alright... that's all for now. More later.

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