Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend) – instead of trying to reach the ground with your hands, ask yourself these questions to tap into a more integrated approach:
– Where is the weight in my feet?
– Do I push my knees back, or can I extend my knees by pressing my calves forward into my shins and then lifting the tops of my thighs up?
– What’s the position of my pelvis?
Check how you are connecting and finally enjoy the experience of being in the pose.
The king of the so called hip openers. A pose that shows me clearly the difference of both sides of my body. My right, the yang, the masculine side is very open, while the left, the yin, the feminine tends to be bitchy. Yup, I know. There’s work to do!
A pose made for Yin Yoga, where we stay 3 to 5 minutes (or even longer) in a pose. This way we can reach the deeper layers in the body, the connective tissue and the fascia. Excellent to unclench where they stick together and release tension.
What I love about staying long in this posture is the power of working with the breath. Breathing into certain places can create space there, literally cleaning up, like a broom. And all of a sudden you notice that you became soft. Floating. Accepting. Releasing. Exhale all the stuff out, that has manifested in your body without you noticing. Leaving with the flow of your exhales.
And to come back to the physical part of it, pigeon pose increases external range of motion of the femur in the hip socket and same time it lengthens the hip flexors.
A posture is achieved when effort stops and the mind is merging meditatively into infinity.
In morden yoga practices, we call the postures asanas. However, following Patanjali’s yoga sutras, the term asana only refers to a seated posture, literally asana meaning „seat“. This could be Padmasana (Lotus pose), or any other seated pose, with the aim to sit firm and still for a longer period of time. Obviously this is not Bharadvajasana, as in the picture!
Interestingly in the early times of yoga, any standing and dynamic postures have rather been named tapas. Studying the yoga philosophy we might find the term tapas translated as devotional austerity, but literally it means „heat“.
So, how comes that we are calling the postures asanas? Shouldn’t tapas be the better matching term for what our physical practice is today? Well, our asana practice today has at least a similar ambition – through steadiness and ease, reaching a state of moving meditation.
Good morning practice!
I played with the 2nd, the intermediate series recently – fuuuuun! While some of the super fancy transitions and advanced inversions are still out of reach for me right now, I was quite surprised that many postures are fully accessible for me and I’am quite close to others.
Someone said once, if you always do the same, you can’t expect different results. Well, I don’t agree when it comes to the yoga practice. In the Ashtanga method we do exactly that, we practice the same sequence, the same postures every day. And with this slide more and more into a moving meditation. But not just that, with practice, the body opens, we go deeper and deeper into the poses. Once in a while I try a posture that I couldn’t access before and notice that all of a sudden I can. Without even working on this specific pose. The body changed.
And I’m transitioning more and more into the next series. A new chapter to start, exciting!
Urdhva Padmasana – one of my favorite postures, as it combines inversion, stretch and balance. The pressure at the thyroid brings my attention up and the posture as such allows some fine tuning in the entire body until feeling steady.
Each time you reach this state of steadiness and ease, it feels like arrived. The posture feels stable, easy and makes me wonder why it was such an effort to reach this state. It’s the same for most postures that don’t come naturally. The moment headstand felt like this, I thought, finally, I’m there. Wrong. Totally wrong. An injury threw me out of my practice and inversions moved far away. Once again. Nothing is for granted only because you were there once. Insecurity and mistrust in my body instead. I know this by now and I also know it’s just a matter of slowly getting back. Accepting the weakness through injury, building up step by step. No doubts, but patience. Consistency. Forgiving. Learning. Benevolence. Trust. Ease. And back you are.
Once the body is back, it doesn’t mean the posture can be easily accessed. And no way to push yourself. It’s the mind that need to follow!
Turn your lotus position upside down. No worries if full lotus isn’t available for you yet, whatever your variation is works – full lotus, half lotus or cross-legged. Even if full lotus is preferred as it makes the posture much more compact and stable, we all know that it’s not always accessible.
Once in the posture and your thighs are parallel to the floor, press the knees into the hands (yes, this way!). Start to lengthen your spine (feels sooooo good!) and lift your chin slightly, so there’s no pressure on your neck.
For the next few breaths, allow your world to move this way. Upside down. Notice what‘s different – is there any difference?
Physically this posture does a lot – it opens the hips, strengthens the shoulder frame, the muscles along the spine, the erector spinae is activated, just to name a few. In addition, your inner organs benefit, particularly as this pose utilizes specific pressure points at the thyroid and the kidneys.
As in all inversions, the blood flow increases and the brain is offered a surge of oxygen.
Don’t you wonder if you would suddenly feel your thoughts streaming with better clarity. If holding this posture a bit longer, maybe even a few minutes, you will notice that all your doubts, blank mental notes, and confusing stimulus will clear up.
Really? Well, you tell me, try it 🙂
Utthita Trikonasana – extended three angle pose.
Think rotation, think strengthening.
Think stretching, think opening.
Deeply grounded, while reaching up towards the ceiling.
🔱 🔱
Think outside the box. What’s right, what’s wrong? Many of us think that they know exactly. We were educated to establish certain values; we learned the rules and we were told on how to behave. All teachers we had and still have are telling us the right way. Be aware, it’s only what they have been taught and/or what they believe in!
I’d like to encourage you to question everything. What a teacher tells you, what’s written in the books, what your parents, your partner or friends believe in. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but asking you to think about it. What does it mean to YOU, how does it fit into your world? Also ask yourself what do you believe in and is this really what you think or are you just repeating without any reflection? Not judging, but a healthy reflection, which is required to make up your own believes.
Think about it….. it’s worth it! And it’s well needed to find your own truth.
Am I talking about yoga? Of course! As a teacher, I tell my students how to access the postures, how to breathe, how to connect with their bodies and themselves. Am I telling the truth? Yes, from my point of view I do. It’s what I’ve learned and what I believe in. I don’t teach anything just following the books, it went through my reflection and is finally exactly what I believe in. Is it right for my students? If they don’t reflect and question, the answer is no. Everybody has to find ones’ own truth. All teachings are just a large bouquet of options, other people’s findings and their truth.
What about things that have been proved as right? Such as a certain medicine, that removes your pain? You might have experienced, that a medicine can help, but it doesn’t do each time. So is it true then? You decide.
Back to yoga. A simple physical example is the right posture. My opinion: there is no such thing as a perfect posture. What? Of course, we have pictures of super bendy yogis and descriptions from the great teachers and gurus – extremely useful guides! While trying to master a posture, we have to take our body and its capability into consideration. When practicing regularly the body changes, it gets more flexible and stronger, poses become easier and closer to that image of perfect. Finally, it will always be YOUR variation of the posture, even if it looks pretty much like in the books. It might not, that’s absolutely fine. Each body is different.
There’s only one truth: YOURS.
Some teachers teach poses; some teachers teach people. Some students want to work on their fitness, some students want to improve, grow, work on their body and mind. For some it’s work out, for some it’s magic.
What’s wrong, what’s right? Nothing. Just different approaches. We can practice yoga as a cardio workout. We can practice yoga to increase our flexibility. We can practice yoga as a moving meditation. We can practice yoga as a reflection on our body’s reaction to the work. We can practice yoga as a spiritual experience. And everything in between. There are teachers out there for each approach, nothing wrong, nothing right. No matter what you do, as long as you feel good, you’re doing it all right.
But what does it mean to teach people, rather than poses? Well, we are still talking about asana practice, meaning we go through postures in class. First priority – yes this is about poses and part of the game – is to do them correct or find a suitable modification. Not to master them, but to protect ourselves from injury. Now it’s up to you, leave it here or go to the next level, which means for me, teaching how to connect with ourselves. Go internal to feel what you are doing. Listen to your body. Respect your limitations of the day. Learn to breathe and let the breath initiates the movement to finally fly through the asanas. When holding the postures, find stability as well as ease. Enjoy what you are doing. Learn from what you can and can’t do so far. What is your body telling you? Why is there a stiffness, why does it hurt here, why isn’t there any progress? Is there really no progress? Why in a hurry?
Yoga can be so much more than bending your body into a pretzel or standing on your hands. If you just want this, absolutely fine. Go for it, it’s a great fitness tool. If you are open to receive more, get the journey started and allow yoga to change your life. To change yourself. Learn to differentiate between yourself and your ego.
TUNEin:YOGA 