Posture Clinic: Extended Side Angle (Uttita Parsakonasana)

Posture Clinic: Extended Side Angle

 

A posture that very naturally flows from Warrior II, a posture that you learned a few weeks ago, is Extended Side Angle. Your legs are actually in the exact same position as in Warrior II- the only thing that changes is your upper body. This is another highly dynamic, very fundamental posture that you will continue coming to again and again as you progress through your practice. 

I heard something once that changed the way I think about this posture. In humans and in animals alike, one of the most natural things to do first thing in the morning is to reach your arms high overhead and yawn. While yawning does help to bring oxygen into your body, it serves the double function of expanding your ribcage while lengthening the sides of your body. Think about the sensation you feel when you reach your arms high overhead and yawn, and try to duplicate the expansion of your ribcage in Extended Side Angle.

How to find your way there:
1) Come to Warrior II. Find your wide stance. Stack your knee on top of your ankle, your ribcage on top of your hips, and reach your arms in opposition.
2) Gaze over your front fingertips. Reach your front arm forward as much as you are able until you tick-tock your front arm to the inside of your front leg. Traction your arm against your leg so that you can open your knee to the pinkie-toe side of your foot and spiral your heart open to the ceiling.
3) You may lightly traction your elbow against your knee. However, work against dumping weight into your bottom arm. Work to lift weight out of your arm and broaden your chest. If you feel strong enough to stay lifted in your upper body, traction your forearm against your leg while you extend your fingers toward your toes.
4) Find a slight rotation in your chest. Lengthen the sides of your body, reach your heart toward the ceiling, and work to roll your top shoulder back so that it can stack directly on top of your bottom shoulder.
5) If you feel an openness in your neck and shoulders, turn your gaze upward to your top hand. Your body will follow your gaze. When you gaze upward, you encourage your heart to roll open toward the ceiling.

Benefits:
1) Practicing Extended Side helps to stabilize and strengthen your legs while opening and expanding the sides of your rib cage. Just like having a good yawn, this stretch trains the muscles that support good breathing.
2) When you strengthen your upper body in this posture, you help yourself develop the structural support you need to lift and lengthen your spine.

Customizations:
1) If your legs are getting tired, shorten your stance slightly or feel free to take a break.
2) Rest your elbow against your leg.

Introduction to the Eight-Limbed Path

The longer I do yoga, the more I realize that most of the things I learn on my mat can be applied to life off my mat. The lessons of discipline and patience that I discover during my yoga practice teach me patience during long lines, pedestrian traffic or late trains. Also, a lot of the things I experience and explore in my daily life, whether good or bad, eventually find themselves into the way I express myself on my mat. For example, mental and emotional tension manifest themselves in the physical body. Certain areas of the body are containers for tension, such as hips and groin. These tight tissues become the junk drawer of the body. There is an undeniable and symbiotic relationship between life on and off the mat. As I explore how my yoga and my "real life" cross pollinate their way into each others' paths, I continue to refer back to a framework that addresses the way I think, act, and learn on and off the mat.

The Eight-Limbed Path and the Yamas and Niyamas

Last month I mentioned the Eight Limbed Path of Yoga. The core of Pantanjali's Yoga Sutra is the Eight Limbed Path. The Eight Limbed Path forms the structural moral and spiritual framework for a yoga practice. Upon studying the Path, it becomes evident that there is no hierarchy between its various pieces. Each need and support the other.

The Eight Limbed Path (in a very, very tiny nutshell):

1. Yama :  Willpower for constraint, or the five absentions
2. Niyama :  Willpower for the application of truth, or five observances
3. Asanas :  Discipline of the body. In widely spread applications this applies to diet and pastime, but also in this case refers to the physical asanas that we now know as yoga postures.
4. Pranayama :  Breath control
5. Pratyahara :  Withdrawal of the senses from external influence. This can be seen as a process of non-dependence on sensory stimulation. 
6. Dharana :  Concentration and cultivation of inner perceptual awareness.
7. Dhyana :  Devotion to or meditation regarding higher power. It is perfect contemplation. 
8. Samadhi :  Union with the divine. The true meaning of the word yoga is yoke, or union. This is the place of the liberated soul.

If that doesn't sound like a complicated and pretty all encompassing framework for meditation and the good life, I don't know what does. Understandably, it is easy to get overwhelmed by lofty ideals and good intentions, especially as you continue to discover how deep these little bullet points really are. For example, each of the yamas and niyamas include five more things to work on!

The Yamas and the Niyamas:

 

These observances and restraints have been a central point to the way I organize my yoga practice, both on and off the mat. Throughout the last year and a half, after being introduced to the Yamas and Niyamas during my 200-hour teacher training certification, I have tried to integrate this framework into my life. I have written about them. I have meditated on them. I even made a craft project about them for my best-yogi-friend. There are always times were explorations of these frameworks will be more successful than others. However, much like a successful yoga practice, the best thing you can do is keep coming back to them. In the near future, I will address separately the yamas and the niyamas as a moral framework for your treatment of your practice, your world and yourself.

Here is the artwork that I made for my friend. It is intended to be a meditative center piece for contemplating and reminding oneself of the moral observances and restraints that can be discovered in a yoga practice, both on and off the mat. Artwork 2013, sharpie on colored paper.



 In the meantime, begin your own process of meditation on the eight limbed path. What thoughts or feelings does it inspire? Just like in your on-the-mat yoga practice, there are no right ways to move, only the ways that feel best for you.

Posture Clinic: Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II pronounced veer-ah-bah-DRAHS-anna )

Posture Clinic: Warrior II

One of the first postures that gave me an "ah-HA" moment was Warrior II. I was in a yoga class as a very fresh novice, eager to continue reaping the yogic benefits I had begun to notice in my body and mind.  The teacher cued Warrior II and, wanting to show that I was willing and able, I lunged hard into my front knee. I have always been a person who would rather over work herself than appear lazy, so in my mind I would look like I was working harder if I lunged deeper.

Turns out, I was very wrong. After class, the teacher saw me leaving and called me over. She asked me how I liked class, and asked me if I could stay for a moment. She demonstrated Warrior II for me with correct alignment. In Warrior II, your front knee should be stacked directly above your front ankle. She then showed me how I had been doing it so earnestly in class, by pushing my knee past my ankle and stacking it over my toes. With only five minutes of her time, this teacher had shared something with me that continues to impact the way I think about postures.

I learned that when you push your knee further than your ankles, you stress your knee. When the ligament tissues around your joint become too loose from misuse, your joint can move in ways that set you up for damage or long term injury. But, when you stack your joints one on top of the other, you are actually strengthening the muscles around your joints.

Most of the time, your joints in yoga should be stacked. Warrior II is no exception. In addition to creating healthier alignment, you are also creating joint efficiency in the body (why work hard where you could instead work smart?). Warrior II is a powerful asana. It is, after all, named for the strength and discipline of a warrior. In addition to strengthening your legs and opening your pelvis, you cultivate discipline and an open heart. Jump-start the benefits to be found by starting with a strong foundation and some muscle efficiency.

How to find your way there:

1. There are several ways to get there. You can begin in Mountain Pose and step one of your feet back with a long stance. Your front toes will stay pointing forward, and your back foot will land at a 45 degree angle or parallel to the edge of your mat. You can also get into this posture from Downward Facing Dog. To do this, inhale as you lift one of your legs high and then exhale as you sweep your foot between your hands for a low lunge. If you are unable to sweep your foot between your hands in one motion, fear not! Hook your elbow behind your ankle and scoop it between your hands, or scootch your foot toward your hands in small motions. However, allow the time and the patience for this set up. Ensure that your foot is framed by your hands. This extra moment for set up will help you to find your ever important joint alignment.
2. If arriving from Downward Dog, spiral open to standing. Your front toes point forward. Your back foot should be either parallel to the back of your mat or open at a 45 degree angle, whichever feels better or more accessible in your body. Your front heel should be more or less in line with the arch of your back foot. Come to stand tall with your rib cage stacked on top of your pelvis.
3. Bend into your front knee. Stack your knee directly on top of your ankle. Draw your knee over to the pinkie toe side of your foot to prevent collapsing in your knee and to encourage openness in your hips.The distance between your feet is relatively large. Your front shin should be perpendicular to your mat. Work to parallel your front thigh to your mat. Ground down through the pinkie toe side of your back foot, and engage the arch of your front foot. This is your foundation.
4. Once your foundation is set, extend your arms out to either side. Reach your arms in opposition like there were two people pulling your arms in two different directions. Draw your shoulder blades together behind your back like you were working to trap a pencil between your two blades. If you have the range of motion in your neck, turn your gaze forward past your front middle finger.
5. Begin your journey here with a static hold of a few breaths. Eventually, increase to 30-60 seconds. You will continue to feel your strength increase in this posture throughout all levels of your practice. It is really, really common that this posture feels difficult. If your muscles are shaking, that means they are changing. Persevere. Allow your breath to flow freely here.
6. Repeat the same setup and hold for the same amout of time on the other side, opposite foot in front.

Benefits:
1. This posture is a gentle hip opener at any point in your practice. It strengthens and stretches your inner thighs, groin, quadriceps and ankles.
2. It opens your chest while simultaneously stretching and strengthening your shoulders.
3. The set up of the posture and your time spent exploring alignment can help cultivate feelings of being centered, balanced and at ease in all levels- physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Customizations:
1. Feel free to shorten your stance as you work to create openness in your hips and strengthen your quadriceps. You can still find alignment within different expressions.
2. If your front quadricep is burning with a long hold, straighten your front leg for a breath before returning to your lunge. It is okay to take breaks.

Posture Clinic: Corpse Pose (Savasana)

Savasana

IMAGE FROM YOGA ANATOMY
BY LESLIE KAMINOFF AND AMY MATTHEWS

As yoga begins to gain more popularity and establishes for itself a foothold in popular culture, there are certain stereotypes and postures that make themselves well known to even those who do not practice yoga. One of these involves the posture that is typically the final posture in any yoga practice: Savasana (pronounced sha-VAHS-anna). After a sometimes gymnastically exhaustive yoga practice, it may seem strange or comical that the final posture, often purported as the most difficult posture to master, is lying on one's back.

I have heard people joke that their favorite part of a yoga class "is the nap-time at the end."

Savasana is far from nap-time! In fact, any teacher or friend who has told you that Savasana is perhaps the easiest posture to perform but the hardest to master is correct. Savasana is the ultimate posture for reintegrating back into the world after your asana practice. Rather than completely losing yourself to sleep or physical recovery, the challenge of this final posture is to maintain your mental awareness without physically exerting yourself. In the busy world today, stillness is often the hardest place to be.

Savasana: 

Savasana is by definition a symmetrical supine pose. This means that limbs are carefully placed to be viewed as symmetrical to the observer. However, what looks symmetrical may not always feel symmetrical in the body. There is value to each experience. If you organize your limbs symmetrically and receive feedback from your body that things do not feel right, see if you can accept the feedback and not respond. Experience the posture as it is at that time, with the idea that wherever you are is wherever you need to be. However, sometimes there is value in organizing your posture from the inside, in a way that feels symmetrical, and seek inner quiet regardless of how the posture looks. In your practice, try both. 

How to find your way there:
1). Lay onto your back. Spread out as comfortably as possible with your arms draped onto the floor, palms faced up. Take up as much space as you would like.

2). If you experience any discomfort in your lower back, customize the posture by rolling a towel underneath your knees to help release your sacrum. 

3). Lift your chest slightly. Slide your shoulder blades together underneath your chest so that you can breath with more spaciousness across your heart's center. 

4). Take one last inhale. With the exhale, let everything go. Allow your breath to flow naturally. There is no need for your muscles to do anything at all. Allow your muscles to release from the bone and soften into your mat. Likewise, let your thoughts flow. Your thoughts will come and go freely. Cultivate within your self a sense of being interested without being attached.

5). Stay in Savasana for at least five minutes.Some schools of thought, including our old friend Pantanjali, suggests that the best Savasana is ten minutes. However long you decide to stay here, make sure it is at least a few minutes. This is the juicy posture where your body soaks up the benefits of its practice. 

6). To find your way out, introduce small movements into your body. Deepen your breath. Wiggle your fingers and your toes. Take a full body stretch. Roll over onto your right or left side for fetal position, and then press yourself up to a seat. Now is an ideal time for meditation or for taking your yoga off your mat and back out into your world. 

Benefits:

1). Savasana is the completion of your yoga practice. During this time, your body replenishes and allows your nervous system to move into a parasympathetic state. This is also known as relaxation response, a time in which your breath slows, blood pressure lowers, and energy in your extremities (toes, fingers) finds its way to your vital organs. This time is irreplaceable as a way to nourish and regenerate your body. 

2). This regenerative posture calms the brain, reduces stress and mild depression. Your heart rate and rate of respiration will deepen and slow, which, as you remember from our note on breath, has many benefits inherent already.

3). Savasana can reduce fatigue, insomnia and headache, increasing your focus, memory and concentration. This posture is an opportunity to turn inward, stilling the body and calming the mind. 

4). Finally, an intelligent yoga practice will offer your body a great deal of new neuromuscular information. Savasana is an opportunity for your mind and body to integrate all that it has learned in a brief pause before it must confront all the stimulus that life off the mat can offer. 

It is normal to have some difficulties staying committed to the stillness of Savasana. Like all other postures, this pose is a practice. It is something that you will continually learn from. There are some customizations and modifications you can offer yourself to help deepen your experience with this posture. 

Customizations:

1). Place a bolster (small pillow or rolled towel) underneath your knees if you experience any tension in your lower back.

2). Place a bolster underneath your neck to relieve any pain in your head, neck or shoulders.

3). If your biggest trouble is with staying still and at rest, consider bringing an eye mask to class or placing part of a towel over your eyes. Although many studios will dim the lights and encourage you to close your eyes, a small mask or eye cover can help cultivate even further a sense of turning inward. 

A Note on Feedback

When I was a cleaner at the yoga studio, mopping floors in exchange for yoga, I would often overhear mysterious conversations about "feedback."

Two teachers would sit across from one another on the couch after class and ask each other for feedback. 

Teachers at the desk would ask for and receive feedback from students.
Students would ask for feedback from teachers about ways to improve and deepen their practice. 

I saw many such conversations. I wondered what they were talking to each other about, as I had never had such a conversation with someone. As an aspiring yogi or yoga instructor, one important thing to consider is your ability and willingness to thrive in a feedback based community. Especially at the studio in which I teach and practice, feedback is constantly encouraged and asked for. The culture of self and community improvement is certainly present, and its for the best. However, as a newer teacher every time I heard the words, "Do you have any feedback about my class?" slip out of my mouth I wanted to roll up and die before I heard their response. 

Feedback is a word that immediately triggers fear and ego. Even as you read that word here, you may have cringed. Honestly, sometimes I still do. For a lot of people, the word feedback is bound up with the word "criticism." It doesn't always have to be the case.

It's a scary thing to put yourself out there. If you are a writer or an artist or an analyst, you recognize the strife of having poured your heart and soul into a project, only to discover that when you shared it with the world you received disapproval. It happens to everyone at some time or another. As nice as it would be if everyone liked all of your output all the time, that's not how the world works or how we become better. 

Yoga is a lot about that sense of putting yourself out there. If you find yourself successful at either teaching a class or improving on a challenge posture, your ego swells and you congratulate yourself. If you feel that you have failed or you receive feedback with suggestions for improvement, your ego is hurt. You may become hard or unkind with yourself. Ego flares up because ego wants to distinguish itself (you) from everyone else in the world. When you have succeeded in doing something well, it becomes congratulatory. When it feels as though you have failed, it becomes harsh. Ego is an interesting partner to the human psyche. Fortunately for us, both practicing yoga and practicing feedback are ways to manage ego. 

How to Receive Feedback:

• Start by asking for it! "Hey, thanks for taking my class. What were your favorite parts? Anything that felt awkward?" Or even just, "Hey, thanks for coming. How do you feel?" When you let people know that you are open to receiving feedback, you are more likely to receive. This means that you get to engage with students on a deeper level, learn things about their body and their practice, and plan better for next time. Also, every time you openly ask for feedback, you slow down the panic response in your body that is triggered by the word feedback. Receiving enough helpful feedback will help you to separate "feedback" from "criticism."
• If you receive negative feedback, it is in good form to say, "Thank you, I appreciate hearing that. It's great to have something to work on" or something to that effect. But here, pause, and think about it! If this feedback is something that makes you better (such as: "I think you could have had a smoother transition between A and B with the addition of C), then incorporate that into your classes. Sometimes, people have really great ideas or a lot of experience. Getting feedback is sometimes a great shortcut to knowledge. Instead of having to teach for ten years to discover something, sometimes a great teacher who has been teaching for ten years will offer it up. BUT, if this feedback is something that doesn't necessarily make you better (such as, "I really hate the National, and I hate that you had them on your playlist. It totally ruined my whole experience), then take it with a grain of salt. You can't win over everyone. Not everyone will like your music or your voice or your flow all the time. If you receive feedback that makes you want to try again, listen to it. If you receive feedback that makes you want to stop doing something you love, discard that feedback. 
• If you start accumulating a lot of similar feedback, either good or bad, consider shaking it up. As always, stay true to your voice and your experiences when you formulate classes. But remember that people who care enough to stay after class and talk about ways to improve probably care enough about you or yoga to come back again. Feedback is an important part of staying dynamic as a teacher, a student and a yogi.

How to offer feedback:

• Be nice! The more you receive feedback the more you will know the importance of this point. I prefer to offer Sandwich Feedback. The first thing you say is positive, the second thing you say offers a point of improvement, and the third thing reinforces something they did well.
  Example: "Hey, thank you so much for class! I really appreciate the assist you offered me and how often you adjusted students in the class. Your pace during the flow was very fast, don't forget to breathe with your students! But really, I loved your energy. I can't wait to see you grow."
  See? That's not so bad. Interestingly, most people will only hear the negative section of that feedback. For whatever reason, it is much easier for people to hear negative feedback than positive feedback.
• Go out of your way to offer positive feedback to stand out teachers. If someone blew your mind with their class, their attentiveness or their energy, see if the studio has an online feedback section where you can call out an individual teacher for excellence. These usually find their way to managers and eventually down to the student. When someone goes out of their way to pay a compliment, it highlights and reinforces the positive.
• When you are paying attention to a teacher so that you can offer feedback, it makes you a better student. When you are a better student, your teachers will become better as well. If your feedback for a teacher is that you didn't understand their demonstration or verbal cueing of how to get into a particular posture, let them know. Chances are, you weren't the only student in the room confused. If feedback comes from a constructive place, it makes everyone involved better.

With feedback, the best attitude is to be open to anything and attached to nothing. 

If you receive feedback that makes you want to try again, listen to it. If you receive feedback that makes you want to stop doing something you love, discard that feedback. 

Yoga: A Brief History

History was never one of my favorite subjects. In fact, when we began to cover yogic history during my Teacher Training program, I was initially one of the antsiest kids in the room. I am, by nature, a very physical and high energy person and was anxious to begin moving through the physical postures of yoga. However, in spite of myself, I found myself growing increasingly full of awe toward the history of yoga. So few things in which I daily participate are thousand + year old traditions. Yoga is the happy exception.

Yoga has been around for thousands of years. In fact, some of the first references to yoga happened in a time now referred to as the Vedic Period, which dates between 2000-1000 BCE (that is a LONG time ago, folks). Articles from this time period are scant, but those that still exist refer to breath control, basic philosophy and spirituality. This period is far before any of the physical postures that we know today as yoga even began to exist. In fact the word asana, which today refers to any physical yoga posture, simply means to take the seat. The first yoga posture was sitting. If you practiced Mountain Pose at all yesterday afternoon with my posture clinic, you probably know that sitting (like standing) is much harder than it sounds.

At around 1000 BCE (a period now defined as the Pre-Classical Period), the word yoga is first encountered by name. The earliest Upanishads, which are orally philosophical texts comprising the basis of the Hindu religion are composed during this time. Still, no evidence of physical postures exists.

At around 500 BCE (The Epic Period), the distinct physical and spiritual practice which we know as yoga begins to take form. This period is so named for the many adventure and battle-laden tales (epics) which are composed during this period, including but not limited to the Mahabhrata, the Bhagavad Gita and the later Upanishads.
The Bhagavad Gita is a LONG text. If you are interested in checking it out, click here to be redirected to a site that will offer an English translation of many chapters and verses. Trying to dive headfirst into any huge spiritual text can be really, really overwhelming. Feel free to look around and explore more on your own over time. Do not be discouraged if what you find does not inspire anything in you-- like all major spiritual texts, the Gita is best returned to many times over the course of a life. The Bhagavad Gita outlines in detail attitudes and actions which are thought to be righteous and conducive toward divinity. 

In 200 BCE (defined as the Classical Period), a sage and yogic scholar named Pantanjali writes the Yoga Sutra, which is now considered to be the backbone of most modern forms of yoga. This text includes something called the Eight-Limbed Path. The Eight-Limbed Path is basically a set of guidelines for how to live a meaningful and purposeful life. It directs attention toward health, moral conduct and self discipline. Learning about the Eight-Limbed Path was one of the most meaningful parts of my teacher training and has since shaped many areas of my life, and for that reason I will devote specialized time to the subject soon.

500 CE- 1900 CE Many styles of yoga emerge during this time based upon the writings of the Yoga Sutras and the Eight-Limbed path. Several schools of yoga begin to form, and some basic physical poses become established.

1900 CE to present Various yogic masters came to the Western World during this time and began teaching yoga to a new audience. In fact, for those of you who are local, the first known incidence of yoga being brought to the Western world is in our very own Chicago at the 1893 World's Fair. Swami Vivekananda came to the World's Fair, made a short speech against violence, and brought the house down. This site of this brief but monumental speech is now some art museum on Michigan Avenue. Seriously. Although he never really mentioned yoga specifically, he is the guy credited with bringing yoga to the Western world. Crazy, eh? The very appearance of this same young monk at the interfaith conference in the days that followed the World's Fair in Chicago is credited with opening the minds of the Western World to yoga and an interfaith dialogue.

And the best part about all this is, folks, is that the future of yoga unfolds every day. Simply by reading and practicing and experiencing the undeniable benefits of the mind-body connection inspired by yoga means that you are part of the future of this ancient practice.

What better reason to do Downward Dog when you wake up?

Posture Clinic: Mountain Pose (Tadasana)

In either the beginning or in the midst of any yoga class or Sun Salutation, yogis will find themselves being asked to stand at the top of their mat for a posture called Tadasana, or Mountain Pose. Many beginning practitioners asked to perform this posture for any amount of time will begin to wonder why. After all, most people find themselves standing all day. You stand while you make your coffee. You stand while you wait for the train or the bus. Maybe you have a job that requires you to stand all day. When you come to yoga, you may expect something different than simply standing and allow your mind to wander as you wait for the next posture.

However, the type of engagement found in a standing yogic posture is incredibly different, stronger, and more powerful than any other type of standing you may do during your day.

Recently, I went through an additional teacher training at my studio. During one of our posture clinics, we called up a teacher to demonstrate Mountain Pose. Although she was a dedicated and strong yogi and only held this posture for a few minutes, she was so physically engaged during it that afterwards, she said she was exhausted. Although Mountain Pose is simple, it is not easy.

Mountain Pose (Tadasana):


Mountain Pose is a symmetrical standing posture. This means that both sides of the body are more or less equal to the other side. The foundation of this posture is in the feet. The arches of your feet connect with the support of your pelvic floor, lower abdomen, rib cage and crown of the head. Because of this, many yogis consider Tadasana to be the starting point for any physical asana practice.

Find your way there:

1). Come to standing at the top of your mat, or wherever you are. Bring your big toes together to touch, and find a slightly sliver of space between the heels. If you are pregnant or feel tension in your hips, slightly separate your feet to about hips width distance. Ground down through your feet, distributing your weight evenly through the three weight bearing parts of your feet (see photograph at right). Gently rock your weight forward and back until you find the sweet spot right in the center where you feel completely grounded. In order to fully activate your feet, fan your toes up and off the mat and then slowly settle them back down. This simple movement will help to active your inner arches. Just like the foundation of a house must be strong if the house will stand through all weather, all postures are built from the ground up. Create a strong foundation. Start with your feet. Feel the full support of the ground underneath you.

2). Firm your lower limbs. Engage your quadriceps so much that they lift off of your knees, and then soften your knees. Point your tailbone straight down to the ground to engage your core. Lift your chest and heart up toward the ceiling. Feel the motion of your belly button drawing into your spine as your core firms and holds you strong.

3). Lift your arms high overhead. Soften your shoulders away from your ears. Gently rotate your pinkies inward so that your palms turn to face one another. Activate every part of your arm, from your biceps all the way to the tips of each finger. 

4). Allow breath to move through your body. It is common in exploring postures to become engrossed and to hold your breath. But remember, more than any other posture, your breath is your yoga. 

Benefits:

The practice of standing postures in general and Tadasana in particular is one of the best ways to restore vitality, strength and adaptability to the feet. 

This posture helps to firm and strengthen the thighs, knees and ankles as well as your core and your glutes.

Because this posture encourage a lengthened spine and an upright stance, it can help to improve posture in all areas of your life. One of the biggest reasons to practice yoga is to increase your sense of body awareness. If you train yourself to consciously relax your shoulders away from your ears in Tadasana, you will be amazed how many other times of the day you remind yourself to do the same thing, whether it is standing at the bus or hunched over a computer at work. 

Additionally, Mountain Pose creates space in your vertebral column, calms your mind, and balances your nervous system. 

A Note on Breath

There is research indicating that animals who breathe slowly tend to live longer, while animals that breathe rapidly tend to live shorter lives. Elephants, whales and tortoises tend to have long lives- the breath of these animals is also slow and sustained. Contrarily, the lives of animals with rabid breath (dogs, rabbits) tend to be short. Studies from the National Institute on Aging suggests that in humans, slow breath (defined as 6 breaths per minute) can help to lower blood pressure, relieve mental stress and anxiety, increase circulation and break down salt in the body. This recent study is backed by hundreds of years of breath work and meditation. For centuries, human beings have been working with the natural rhythms of their breath to explore the mind-body connection.

Tantra and yoga and many other ancient Indian systems measure life in breath rather than in years. Perhaps you have heard old mythology suggesting that your life contains a certain number or measure of breaths, and when you run out of breaths, you reach death. Although there is no way to know how many breaths have been allotted to your life, the quality of your life can greatly be improved by dedicating attention to the quality of each of your breaths.

As you read this right now, you are breathing. It is necessarily so that if you live, you are breathing. Breath is more than a habit. It is completely embedded in your body. From the moment you exited your mother's womb, you have been breathing. So although breath is more or less involuntary, there are habits about your breath that can be changed. For example, when people are asked to turn their attention to their breath, it is the ordinary habit of most human beings to emphasize the incoming breath rather than the outgoing breath. Perhaps psychologically, human beings have an inclination to live. The incoming breath indicates life, oxygen and consumption, while the outgoing breath indicates emptiness, loss and death.

Yoga and many other philosophies emphasize a cycle of life. In order for birth and newness, there must be death and the end of the old. In your body, the clearing way for the new is represented in your exhale.

Try it. On your next exhale, fully empty your lungs. Press the air out of your body. Slightly constrict the back of your throat and exhale through your nose to slow the process of the exhale. Only once you have fully reached the bottom of your exhale, allow a new inhale to create itself from the emptiness of the old.

More than any physical shape or posture you can discover with your body, your breath is your yoga. Although there will be much more time devoted to studying breath here, I wanted to briefly share with you the meaning of my website's title. It is out of the old that the new is born. Only when you clear away what no longer serves you can you create your new potential. First, exhale. Out of the exhale, find your new breath.

Exhale. Inhale. Yoga.

Posture Clinic: Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)

Several weeks ago, I found myself at a friend's house catching up after an absence of several months from each other's company. Inevitably, as he asked me what I had been up to, I mentioned yoga. He listened while I talked about my experiences in training, as a yogi, and as a yoga teacher. At the end of my piece, he mentioned that he had very much been wanting to try yoga but didn't know where to begin. He even went into his room and brought back his still-in-plastic-wrap yoga mat that his mom had gotten him to show me the extent of his potential dedication. 

Yoga is huge, guys. The yogic meditations and philosophies have been around for thousands of years (even longer than the physical postures we now associate with yoga). It is extremely, extremely easy to feel overwhelmed walking into an advanced or even foundational yoga class. 

What I did for my friend was to introduce him to just a few blueprint postures. In essence, I taught him how to "stand up" as he moved from Child's Pose into tabletop, and then from tabletop into a posture called Downward Facing Dog. From Downward Facing Dog, he traveled to the top of his mat and found his way to standing. It is this posture, Downward Facing Dog, that is the topic of this discussion.

(By the way, you guys! My friend texted me a week later and told me he had been practicing the postures I taught him in his room every morning and was already falling in love. You can too.)

Downward Facing Dog

In advance, this posture is in effect a posture supported by your arms. If you know in advance that you carry tension in your wrists or if you would like to warm up your wrists and arms to prevent tension, gently rotate your wrists full their full range of circular motion, repeatedly changing direction, and then gently shake out your wrists for 15-30 seconds. 

Anatomical drawing from YOGA ANATOMY by LESLIE KAMINOFF and AMY MATTHEWS

Find your way there:

1). Come to a table top position on your mat (or on comfortable ground, if you are still waiting to unwrap your very own mat). Place your hands underneath your shoulders, about shoulder width distance, and your knees underneath your hips, about hips width distance. Spread your fingers comfortably so that the webbing in-between your fingers is slightly stretched. Turn your toes under (P.S. This is tabletop position!).

2). Exhale as you lift your knees off the floor and press your hips back and up, to where the wall and the ceiling meet behind you. Lengthen your spine, draw your tailbone up toward the ceiling, and maintain a gentle bend in your knees as you feel this out. Eventually, start to press your thighs to the back of the room as you straighten your legs. Lengthen your heels down toward the mat. It's not important whether your heels actually touch the ground or not; rather, this movement creates the intention of length in the back line of your legs. Feel free to peddle out your legs, bending into one knee and then the other, to get the feel of this posture and encourage some juicy warmth into your calves and hamstrings. Eventually, find your way to stillness. 

3). Press the "L" and "J" shape of your hands firmly into the ground. Line your index finger with your wrist. Distribute weight evenly through all ten finger pads. Kiss your shoulder blades together behind your back, and then soften your shoulder blades down to your tailbone as you draw your shoulders away from your ears. 

4) Take the weight out of your hands by engaging your core. Draw your belly button to your spine. Press the ground away from you. Allow your neck to be neutral as you gaze softly behind you, at the space between your ankles. 

5). Finally, breath. Your breath is the most important yoga posture of all. 

Benefits:

This posture decompresses the spinal column, helping you to find length in your spine.

Even if only held for a few breaths, this posture will help to strengthen the arms, shoulders and legs.

Downward Dog opens the shoulder girdle and the trapezius.

This posture brings fresh oxygen to your central nervous system.

Finally, because I know how hard it is to read something and try to practice yoga at the same time, I am including a link to the wonderful Esther Ekhart's Youtube channel. She has a wonderful video that is extremely accessible to all levels of practice, in which she addresses many of the points of anatomy listed above. As she mentions at the end of this video, even if all the yoga you do today is to do Downward Facing Dog for two minutes when you wake up, you will offer yourself a world of difference. 

Exhale Inhale Yoga: An Introduction

Although I had practiced yoga on and off for years (in the basement of my parent's house while watching my mom's yoga and Pilates videos, or in the morning sometimes in the gym at college), it wasn't until the summer of 2011 that my practice became serious. I had just graduated from college and, in the midst of deciding what I should do with my life, signed up for a triathlon. It turned out to be a good random decision, cultivating strength and discipline in my body and structure for my very unstructured post college life.

During this time, I saw an advertisement in the window of a yoga studio down the street offering a free week of yoga. I, with my roommate at the time, decided to take advantage of it. She was training for the Chicago Marathon at the time, and we both desperately needed a low impact physical activity for our off-days. We went together to a class that was far above our level of knowledge and bumbled our way through an hour of class. I was sweaty, shaking with the acknowledgement of my non-existent upper body strength, and strangely intrigued by what had just happened.

So of course, I went back.

Months later, I ended up grabbing a yoga-for-trade gig at a studio of the same brand in a different location. For a mere three hours a week of mopping studio floors, washing windows and folding towels, I had unadulterated access to as many yoga classes as I could manage to attend.

Boom. World changed.It was at this time that my yoga practice became a Practice. Rather than "doing" yoga sometimes, I became a Yoga Practitioner. A practice indicates a habit. A habit implies repetition. Yoga, ladies and gentlemen, became something like an addiction. I was hooked.

Months later, with my new friend from the studio, I signed up for Yoga Teacher Training. Teacher Training programs in yoga are usually 200 hour commitments. The contents of mine ranged from lectures on Sanskrit and yoga history, posture clinics and practice teaching, anatomy lessons and cadaver labs (seriously) and a dedicated, daily practice. Months later, I was certified. A year later, I was teaching at the same studio that had changed my life 16 short months earlier.

One thing I have learned through my yoga practice is the importance of intention. With that in mind, here are my intentions for this blog:

1) This blog is intended as a point of continuing education. Research for yoga classes is an endless activity. Here, I hope to formulate my research into something more closely resembling accessible information. This benefits me, as I untangle my research notes and strive to become an ever more knowledgeable and learned yoga instructor, and it also benefts...

2) ... You. The student. The fellow teacher. The budding yogi. The dedicated practitioner. The reader. It was not long ago that I know very little about yoga. This blog intends to share what I know, and demystify the experience for those of you hungering for more information. Blogs will include posture breakdowns, tutorials, sequencing tips and sequences, meditations, snippets and thoughts, photographs and drawings. All designed to draw the practitioner closer to their practice, the curious yogi to their yoga.

3) Community. There is a saying at the studio that if you have learned, you have a responsibility to teach. I have learned from so many great sources and studios and teachers and fellow yogis over the last many months, that it is part of my karma and my responsibility to put some good stuff back out there into the world. This is that attempt.

Thanks for joining me on the journey,

H.