Prana Pages

When a dog gets up, whether he was sleeping, lounging, or just hanging out, he always takes a big stretch before taking his first steps.  One of yoga’s most common poses is taken from the insight of dogs:  adho mukha svanasana, downward facing dog.  On a pooch, it looks so luxurious, the long curved back, the full open chest, the expanded shoulders, and the wagging tail in the sky.  To us, it is often awkward to expose our bums to the sky, stiff on our shoulders, and tight in our hamstrings.  But, imagine if we did this pose everytime we got up from sitting, those feelings would subside over time, and we’d learn to love the pose as our doggies do.

We all snicker when dogs smell each other’s butts, but they are not ashamed of their bodies.  Us humans, on the other hand, tend to be a little shy about putting our bums in the sky, and thus hold back from a full stretch. It can take years of practice before one becomes fully comfortable in the full expression of down dog, and we may never get the naturalness of it that dogs have, but we can try.

In holding down-dog pose, we pull in at the belly (third chakra) to open and extend through the heart (fourth chakra).  Thus, we are working from our personal power (third chakra) to express through our love center (fourth chakra).  At the same time, we are developing a solidarity to our identity, that we are unashamed of even our most vulnerable of spots.  To add a bit of humor to the situation, all dogs know that everyone’s shit stinks, but they are more curious about how that smell is unique rather than “bad”.  We can learn a thing or two from these pups.  And so, I invite you to put your bum in the air, pull in your belly to be secure in your personal power, and open your heart the world.  Besides, it just feels good!

And if you really struggle, ask a teacher or assistant to give you a little push.  Borrowing a little support from someone else isn’t a no-no unless it becomes a crutch and develops into co-dependency.  A good clean assist in down dog can give us a taste of why dogs love this pose so much as to perform it several times a day. One day, if you haven’t already, you’ll find yourself craving that first (and last) down dog of your practice.  It’s the big sigh, the deep AHHH, the remembering who we are.

(photo by Sheryl Braun - http://www.soulshinephoto.net/)

Alignment

• Always establish your foundation first (are you getting the theme of this newsletter yet???).  Plant the hands in big #5s on the mat with the pointer or middle finger straight ahead and dial them inward by pushing down and in (like you’re opening a child proof pill bottle).  Put the weight on the “triads” the space under the first finger and thumb knuckle pads to release the tension in the wrists.
• Roll the forearms inwards while at the same time rolling the upper arms outward.  This “dual action” opens the space at the neck and shoulders and pulls the energy up the arm bones into the stronger muscles of the trunk, supporting the pose from your core instead of your limbs while at the same time sucking the muscles into the bones to protect your weight from falling into the more tender spots of your joints.
• Draw your shoulder blades away from your ears, pulling more of the energy of the pose to the core of your body.  It all lies in the core baby…the CORE!!  By pulling out of the shoulder blades, the pectoral muscles can stretch and open, thus releasing the compassion and joy inside your heart (remember that playful puppy?)
• Anchor your feet on the balls of your feet with gentle pressure into the heels to extend the achilles.  Your heels may never touch the ground.  There’s no prize for heels on the floor, so don’t fret about it.
• Be careful not to get too caught up in the details of the pose, this can be done energetically by lifting your toes slightly.
• Keep a soft bend in the knees at first.  This allows room to rotate the pelvis and play with your tail.  Explore the point where the hamstrings insert to the glutes by rotating at the pelvis to find a place where you feel properly supported - solid - yet open through the back of the legs.  From there, gradually work to straighten the knees.  Again, there’s no prize for straight legs.
• At the same time as you feel supported by your legs, play with the rotation of the pelvis to find a solid connection between the root, sacral, and core chakra energies.  Pulling the pubic bone ever so slightly towards the lower rib cage, and pulling the rib cage slightly down and in will not only lengthen the spine, but activate the power center of your being and bring the center of gravity of the pose to be the focus of the pose.
• Core baby…it’s all in the Core….remember that.  Establish the foundation first, then pull everything into the core, and the rest will fall into place.
• One of the biggest mistakes in down dog is to overanalyze the alignment of the pose and get too caught up in the dual action opposite energies, and then you lose the whole essence of getting out of your head (which is below your heart by the way) and leading with your heart.  Canines feel their way into down dog naturally, so can you.
• Let your body be your guide, not these convoluted heady alignment cues!

Modifications

• In some cases, such as shoulder or wrist injury, full down dog is CONTRAINDICATED!  Please exercise caution, and consult your physician.
• For extremely tight hamstrings, a slight bend of the knees is amazing.  You have to drop your ego (which tends to reside in the knees) to access the anxiety relieving quality of a good stretch in the hamstrings.  The insistence of locking the knees for people with tight hamstrings in this pose only stretches the backs of the knees (there’s that ego again) and doesn’t access the tenderness of the hamstrings, especially at the insertion point of the glutes.
• For tender wrists (see alignment cue #1 above), place a folded towel under the heel of the hand to give a little lift at the wrist and put more of the weight into the knuckles of the hands.  Then, ask yourself, are you trying to control the pose too much?  Wrists are where we hold control issues.
• A wonderfully tasty modification I call “Puppy Dog” gets all the energetic benefits without the extra strength and physical strain on the shoulders, wrists, or hamstrings.  “Puppy Dog” is like if Down Dog and Child’s Pose had a baby.  From Child’s Pose, lift your hips to ninety degrees (keeping your knees on the ground), then walk your hands forward to a full extension.  This way the weight of the pose is kept on the more stable knees and out of the shoulders and wrists entirely. You still get the length of the spine, have the capacity to work the strength of the core (third chakra) and the opening of the heart (fourth chakra).

The first yoga pose I ever performed with any consistency was shoulder stand, only I didn’t know I was practicing yoga at the time.  I was a competitive synchronized swimmer in high school.  I used to hold my breath and swim upside down with my legs in the air, virtually performing variations of yoga poses in a swimming pool.  I remember spending hours with my duet partner choreographing routines in her living room with a boom box and a spiral notebook.  When we couldn’t determine if our legs could actually perform the stunts we imagined in our minds, we’d prop ourselves up into a form of shoulder stand and try to manipulate our legs into the positions of our imaginations. These sessions were always filled with lots of laughter, and were sometimes more fun than the competitions themselves.

Shoulder stand is often called, the mother, or queen of all poses.  An entire book  can be written on the benefits and purposes of this pose, so for the sake of conciseness, the descriptions here are limited to the benefits to expression, the throat chakra energy.

In shoulderstand, the feet are raised above the head, the hips above the heart, thus reversing the blood flow of the body.  As the weight of the body is held by the shoulders, a compression occurs at the throat.  This compression energetically folds the throat chakra on top of the heart chakra.  By connecting the power centers of the heart to the throat in this pose, the essence of communication is reminded that the best expression is that which comes from the heart, not the head.  Thus, the heart chakra, receiving the reverse flow of energy from the groundedness of the feet and all the lower chakras, feeds the throat chakra.  Energetically, in this pose you are “squeezing” out any excess energy from the throat chakra at the same time as feeding positive heart energy into the throat chakra.  Upon release of the pose, the fullness of the heart from the reverse blood and energetic flow will flush the throat physically and energetically, clearing away any stirred up toxin and replacing it with the loving power of the heart.

For more information, an awesome article on the benefits of inversions can be found here.

Alignment

• Basic Alignment Shoulderstand RULE #1 - ONCE IN THE POSITION, DO NOT TURN YOUR HEAD.  Doing so may strain the neck and cause severe injury.  Be sure to center your gaze straight up, and square your head evenly between your shoulders.  Turning your head is like averting our attention from the point you are trying to make.  It only takes you off-topic, off-track, and off-center.
• Remember, the three weak links of the body are the knees, low back, and neck.  This pose can compromise both the low back and the neck if not performed properly.  It is best to have a trained instructor guide you through this pose at first.
• Support your lower back with your hands, gradually walking your hands “up” your back towards the shoulderblades.  Where you bring your hands (the hands represent “action”) is where you bring the focus. Thus, the closer your hands are to your heart center, the more focus on the purpose of the pose that happens.
• Pull the shoulder blades towards each other at the same time as pulling them away from the ears.  This extends the cervical spine, or the neck, which is where we tend to store excess burdens and responsibilities that distract us from the true purpose or point.  By lengthening the neck, we are releasing excess burdens to get to the marrow or bottom line truth of the expression without all the excess “junk”.
• Try to lift the neck and the cervical vertebrae off the floor, thus causing the weight of the pose to be held by the shoulders rather than the bones of the spine.
• Contract the abdominal core muscles to elongate the spine.  This takes the weight of the pose out of the low back and pulls the hips off the rib cage.  It also supports the strength of the low spine.  Furthermore, this activates the core chakra of identity and “gut”.  Thus your expressions are guided more by your “gut” than by your thought process.  And it allows you to stand by your statements with integrity.

Modifications

• For people with weak shoulders, bulging discs at the cervical spine, pregnant women (who have not developed a yoga practice), and women on their moon cycles, shoulderstand can be contraindicated.
• Half shoulderstand, keeping a bend at the hips - the legs halfway between plough and shoulderstand, is an awesome modification for students who have not yet built up the strength to support full shoulderstand.
• Viparta Karani - legs up the wall - is a great alternative when shoulderstand is contraindicated.
• Placing a blanket under the shoulders can promote both comfort and widen the base of the pose.  Ask an instructor to guide you for proper placement of the blanket.

Years ago, when I first started teaching yoga, I taught a class to a high school football team.  When I started to teach sun salutations, they called the series “slow burpees.”  I had to stop the class and teach them the difference between “football push ups” and “yoga push ups” and they all groaned at the change in alignment. When I told them that yoga push ups use more core muscles than the arm muscles they have developed in football push-ups and weight training, one brave soul challenged me to a yoga push up competition.  Imagine his embarrassment when his friends called him on his alignment with his “chicken wing” elbows and named me the winner after just five push ups!  Their coach started assigning “yoga push ups” as punishment, and the boys were less likely to act-out during practice.

I recently saw a television commercial for rotating push-up handles that promise the “perfect push-up.”  Of course, the ad showed several well toned men (and one woman) performing the push ups with ease and grace.  It talked about how a US Navy Seal designed the tools using the latest in biomechanics and engineering with ultimate results. What I noticed though, was that as the handles rotated with each push-up, the elbows pulled into the side body setting the upper torso into “chatarunga dandasana pose”.  These “patent-pending” rotating handles were a way of teaching the body how to perform an ages old yoga pose!

In Sansrit, chaturanga translates to “having four limbs” and in epic poetry it often holds the meaning “army” from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata, referring to four divisions of an army:  elephants, chariots, cavalry, and infantry.  Dandasana means “staff pose”, thus chaturanga dandasana comes to mean “four legged staff pose”.  So imagine that this pose carries all the power and energy of the four limbs of an army, as solid as a staff, prepared for battle.  No wonder this pose is so physically challenging!  It requires drawing upon the power of elephants, the grace of movement of chariots, the mobility and offensive power of the cavalry, and the fitness, strength, and character of the infantry.

The first thing newer yoga practitioners say to me when I ask them to try the alignment of this pose is that they lack the arm strength, which makes perfect sense in that the word “army” comes from the same roots as the word “arm.”  However, to draw upon the four limbs of the army, one must access the energy of the entire being, particularly the power that resides in the torso and core.  When done properly, the arms in this pose serve mostly as a foundation, but the strength that holds the pose is found in the core.  As with any warrior, the armor (also from the root word for arm) is the external protection, but the true strength and power of the warrior comes from within, from the soul.

Alignment

• when lowering from high push-up into low push-up, look forward to keep the neck in line with the spine.  The tendency is to want to look down at the hands, and this crunches the neck and shoulders and dumps weight into the low back.
• looking forward also gives a slightly forward motion to the action, setting the elbows and wrists into perpendicular alignment to the floor.
• hands are placed by the low waist, so the elbows align directly above the wrists
• pull the elbows in to touch the ribs, avoiding “chicken wing” arms which puts excess pressure on the shoulder tendons and delicate wrist joints
• push palms of the hands into the floor, especially at the “triad” (thumb and first finger joints)
• draw the shoulder blades down the back to lengthen the cervical spine.  This pulls the strength of the pose into the torso and off the shoulder tendons
• pull the belly (uddiyana) in and up to stablize the low back and lengthen the spine
• tilt the pelvis so the pubic bone comes towards the throat and the tailbone goes towards the heels.  This stabilizes the spine into tadasana
• squeeze the knees to activate the big quadricep muscles of the legs
• tuck the toes under to connect the balls of the feet to the floor
• push the heels back to lengthen through the hamstrings and activate the big muscles of the legs

Benefits

• builds arm, shoulder, & wrist strength
• creates an amazing sense of power and stability from the core
• teaches about stabilizing from the core center, working from the Truth of being
• develops a Warrior and Army power
• sparks a sense of “I can do anything” conquering the impossible
• opens up doors to all kinds of playful actions in pose transitions

Modifications

• For beginners, the full version of low plank is very challenging.  To build strength, drop the knees to the floor and lower slowly.  Take this modification until you start to understand that the pose works from the core more than from arm strength
• For those with wrist issues, using “Griptiz” or other handle-type tool can save excess pain.
• A “cheater’s” method often taught in YogaFit is to stick the butt up a little higher and lower the shoulders a little lower.  This builds core strength and prevents sagging at the low back.
• As beginner’s build strength, try working every other or every third chatarunga off the knees and lowering all the way to the floor slowly.
• For temporary wrist pains, work on fists instead of flat palms.