Groins Away: A Way To Firm The Tummy, Lengthen Spine, and Try Bakasana

This shape of spine is key throughout the sequence

Here I give you some key instructions that can support a beautiful transition from kneeling plank to down dog to bakasana.

Watch the video first.  You can see the a side view and the front view in the same video.  I have sped this video up so this whole sequence actually took 2 minutes in real life.  I am really trying to emphasis some good slow mindful movement. 

The instructions below should help firm the tummy and armpits while giving a sense of length in the spine (neither stretching nor tightening).  

The key instructions here are to push front of groins to armpits and armpits to front of groins.  Then, if you can add something else, press your hands forward and your knees back.  You should start with feeling relaxed in your tummy.  You should be able to breathe naturally into your belly throughout although it will become firm through the instructions (but not by sucking it in). 

Kneeling plank

 In this kneeling plank make sure knees are behind hips, shoulders over wrists.

Sitting bones move down towards backs of knees, front of pelvis lifts to the lower back to lengthen the lower back.

Lift lower ribs towards the back of chest to lengthen around the middle and upper back.

Press front of groins towards the armpits and armpits towards the front of groins without moving the body forward.  This should bring a postural firmness to your tummy.

If you can manage, press hands forward and knees back while you maintain groins and armpits moving towards one another.

Half child pose
Quite honestly I did not know what to call this position.  It is halfway between kneeling plank and balasna (child's pose).

I move very slowly back into this position.  I am not trying to get my bottom onto my heels.  I am thinking about maintaining the key actions I established in the previous position.  As I move back my challenge is to keep feeling as though I am moving my groins forwards.

See the spine stays the same shape.




Partial lift
Here I focus on keeping the groin-armpit connection then go back again to pressing hands forward but toes and heels backwards.  This combined effort causes my knees to become light.  They start to lift of their own accord.

Downward dog

I keep with those four actions:

• armpits to groins
• groins to armpits
• hands pressing forward
• feet pressing backward

Walk forward

Maintaining those actions (you might need to let up on pushing feet back because they start to be less on the ground), bend your knees and walk your feet forward.  I tip-toe forwards trying to stay as light on my feet as possible. 

Bakasana

If I keep pressing armpits to groins and vice versa, press hands forwards, lift knees up to chest, rest them lightly on the back of my arms, press elbows back and towards one another and just keep breathing and leaning forward then you might find yourself floating.  Maybe you stay on tip toes.  Wherever you are be happy wherever that is.  Keep working on being where you are and staying for a little bit longer until you feel comfortable moving to the next stage.  

Remember, nothing should hurt.  If you have not developed the correct strength and actions around the wrists then you need to work on clawing with your fingertips and pressing the wrists into one another and just have less weight on the wrists until you are ready to shift more weight there.

Have fun.

Remember, these videos are primarily intended for my own students so I can give adjustments and comments and personal feedback.  It is always best to go to an actual teacher rather than learn off the internet.


Oh, and don't forget about my retreat in Sri Lanka this April 2016.  Come along if you can!

Much metta,
Samantha

www.yogacafecanberra.blogspot.com
www.yogacafelk.blogspot.com

Bakasana Without Fear

In this post I share a video of coming into bakasana on a small block I found by the lake.  Below are some important instructions.

Above, I came up onto my tip toes and bent my knees slightly.  This helped make the backs of my knees firm.

I suppose you might not do this if you did not have confidence that you could move up onto your toes!  We practice this type of action a lot in my classes to develop stability around the ankles and knees.

I had my sitting bones down, top of pelvis back to lengthen lower back.

I was pushing my hips forward as though to move them over my toes and initiated spinal forward flexion to help make my tummy firm.

I was beginning to push my armpits down and forward to bring my shoulder blades around my upper back.

Next, as I lower my hands I try not to send my bottom back.  I keep my knees bent to encourage more spinal forward flexion and maintain my firm tummy.

Then, you can see my spine has essentially not changed shape.  I am still firm in my tummy doing spinal forward flexion.

I am pushing my hands down into the floor, shoulder blades wrapping around my upper back.  You can see that I was doing this from the beginning so really that has not changed either.  I do feel as though I am sending my elbows backwards but my fingers/hands down and forwards.  This helps me be firm and strong around the shoulder joint.

Actually not much has really changed.  I am trying to maintain the actions I initiated in the beginning and bring them towards the ground.

The main thing I have done here is to actively lift my knees up onto my arms.  I am not resting them there.  I am trying to keep them light and lifting.  I do press my upper arms back towards my knees.

Look at my toes.  I am trying to lift up onto the tops of my toes here rather than be on the balls of my feet.  The less weight I have on my toes the better--for the full posture that it!

If you do this well you will know how hard this is.

If you can practice this without sinking into your shoulders and without sinking into your feet or being heavy on your knees then you will be doing excellent work for the full posture.   Maintain the push through the arms and the firmness in your tummy.

What changes here is that my shoulders come far in front of my wrists.

One of the reasons I did this posture on a block was to show how far my shoulders are coming forward.  If you compare the previous picture to this one you can see my head is now in front of the block and my shoulders are just over the edge.

At this point I start to feel lift.

The video below shows lift off!  Instead of leaping into the posture, I balance.  I actively lift my heels to my bottom.

I have written previously about using the wrists but you can see here I have wrapped my finger tips around the block.  I am pressing into them.

This is how we deconstruct posture to help you be strong, safe, and active in postures.  Hope to see you in classes and workshops in Canberra and Colombo, or at our Bali retreat!

Much metta,
Samantha

www.artofliferetreats.com
www.yogacafecanberra.blogspot.com
www.yogacafelk.blogspot.com

Bakasana Silent FIlm

Here I demonstrate basics of moving into bakasana from standing.  In upcoming workshops I will be going through the key actions.  Keep the actions from preceding movements as you move to the next.  I recommend you can comfortably lean onto your straight arms and dance on your tip toes before trying to take the legs off.  Practice safely and mindfully, and remember it is always better to find a teacher of your own.  Do not do anything that causes strain or stress.



Much metta,

Samantha

Using Your Core Wisely For Ease in Arm Balances

In this video I am trying to transmit teachings I have learned from Simon Borg Olivier (www.yogasynergy.com) and apply them in arm balance poses that we practice regularly in class, the simplest of which is bakasana.  I advise you to attend Simon's classes where you can.

The basic idea is to generate some thrust or power through the abdomen in a way that you can feel relaxed and calm but which will generate the lift you need for arm balances.  Please re-read earlier posts on how to use your hands and armpits as this is assumed knowledge here.

There are many ways to come into bakasana and my intention here is to find a way that allows you to breathe into your belly while it is firm.  I do not mean to infer that other ways are incorrect.  I like practicing this way because, as you will see in the video, I can smile and talk and have a good time in a strong pose because I am at ease.

The great thing about this way of coming into bakasana is that there is only one basic instruction, albeit with a few caveats.

That basic instruction is to start with a relaxed belly and attempt to push the hips forward.  This is not a pelvic tuck.

If you watch the video you will see I start in standing.  I soften the knees.  I let the sitting bones feel as though they are melting down the back of the legs (give length to the lower back, this is not a pelvic tuck).  I relax my belly and breathe into it.

I poke my fingers deep into my squishy belly so you can see it is relaxed.  As a little sidebar, I don't normally walk around with my t-shirt tied up in an 80s Flashdance knot, I just wanted to show you I am  not sucking all of my belly in and that I am starting with a soft belly.

Then I simply move both hips forward.

If you perform this action yourself you should feel that your lower belly automatically becomes firm.  You didn't have to tell it to do so, it just did.  Isn't your body amazing?  This is what I have learned as creating firmness through posture.

Note, you will be unlikely to feel this if you started with a tense belly.  So, let it relax.  Let it hang out.

When done correctly you should still be able to breathe into your belly, although it will not feel as though it is moving out so much anymore.  This is because it has become firm through the posture.

Once you understand this in standing you can try to maintain this feeling as you fold forward.  Only do this if it feels safe and comfortable for you to do.

You can see that I bend my knees to do a forward bend.  This helps me keep the forward momentum of the hips and the postural firmness.

The thing is, as you fold forward the firmness is going to want to escape.  It will almost definitely escape if you try to stick your bottom back and up.  If you look at me, I am trying to move more forward and down so the hips can keep trying to move forward.

To come all the way to the floor my bottom will actually move back a little.  But I keep trying to move it forward.

If, when you put your hands flat on the floor you feel you have lost the firmness then come back up again and try again.

When you can maintain this firmness, lean further into the hands--as much as is safe and comfortable for you.

Perhaps your feet will start to become light and you can dance your toes in so your knees come to rest on your upper arms.  I am not gripping or squeezing them.  I am resting them lightly.  As lightly as possible.  The power if coming from the firmness I have created in my torso and this helps me generate lift so I do not sink.

I apply these principles in other arm balances too.  However, I use postural firmness like this in all of my postures. My whole yoga practice is using my core.  Using it in a very special way; to quote Simon, to create stability with mobility and ease.

Please watch and re-watch is incredible video on the matter of whether it is correct to pull navel to spine here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMe1lRpNYi8

Challenge Pose: Bakasana

Challenge Pose: Bakasana

For those of you in Colombo you will no doubt know that it is pretty hard to go anywhere without a bunch (murder) of crows somewhere nearby.  Many people think of crows as just scavengers and look at them a bit like rats.  But here are a few crow stories that have changed my impression about crows:

·         Once (upon a time) a crow came onto our rooftop terrace with a large piece of bread in its mouth.  It sat on the edge of the wall at first, a bit hesitant since we were sitting having our own breakfast nearby.  The previous night it had rained and there were a few puddles of water drying on the deck. Well, the bread must have been a bit hard and the crow must have been very hungry as it eventually jumped down onto the terrace and hopped over to a puddle within a few steps of us (they usually keep their distance) and dipped his bread into the puddle to soften it up then flew away!  How smart is that!

·         There is a guy who lives in an apartment a few doors down who feeds the crows bread about once or twice a week.  We know when this event is happening as crows flock from all directions to sit on his balcony.  I am not sure how word gets out and how a crow several hundred metres away can tell there is a man on a balcony feeding other crows bread, but there is obviously a special language shared amongst them when a free feed crops up.  Anyway, it actually looks very scary as he is surrounded by crows vying for position.  They perch on his balcony, his neighbour’s balcony, the nearby tree, the TV line running up the building—anywhere they can hook their feet.  The thing is, rather than descend upon him like a swarm of killer bees, they all wait in a rather orderly fashion (well, as orderly as crows can be, which is much more orderly than many of the people I encounter at the train station or supermarket queues) for their share of bread. 

·         Did you know that Australian crows are about twice as big as the Colombo crows?  They also sound different too.  Australian crows seem to be more melodic (I would not go so far as to call them melodic), while as their Colombo cousins seem to have a smoker’s cough. 

·         One afternoon Tilak (aka doorman in the sarong, aka my husband) was standing outside of Perera & Sons with a malu paan in his hands.  He looked down the road for the oncoming bus and in that split second a crow dive-bombed him and snatched the malu paan from his hands.  As I am frequently telling Tilak to be a bit more mindful about his eating, he seems to have taken this as a sign that the crow was sent by me to prevent him from eating between meals.  

So, there you go; a few interesting crow stories.  Now, to the challenge pose of the week: Bakasana (crow pose).  Here, I am going to help you practice bakasana in a few easy steps.

1.       Come into a low squat with your knees together.  Have the heels off the ground and put your hands on the floor in front of you and lean into them—as though you are readying yourself for a very short downward dog.  Really lean your body forward over your thighs.  Stay here for a while.

2.       From there, take the knees apart and lean your body through your knees.  Keep leaning forward into your hands.  Your knees should be around your shoulders—hug them in close.

3.       Take the hands off the floor but keep leaning forward.  You are now about to do the karate chop manoeuvre.  Take your arms in front of your shins and ‘karate chop’ them out to the side as though you were trying to karate chop your shins with your upper arms.  The point is to bring the upper arms in contact with the shins and keep the upper arms moving back into the shins.  As you take your upper arms back and into your shins, squeeze your knees into your shoulders (or upper arms).

4.       Make bird’s claw hands and place them on the floor in front of you shoulder width apart.  It is important to ‘bird’s claw’ the hands to distribute the weight throughout the hand and this will also help you balance.  The elbows stay wide at the moment and the upper arms are still pressing back into the shins.

5.       Keeping everything else the same, lift your tail a bit and lean forward into your hands as you do so.  Come up onto your tip-toes.

6.       Squeeze the elbows in towards eachother while maintaining the feeling that you are pressing your arm bones back into your shins.  Squeeze the knees into the arms/shoulders.  Look forward, lean forward and…find your balance.  There is no ‘launching’ yourself into the pose.  This is a balance and you need to find your tipping point.  Maybe just take one foot off the floor at first, find your balance there, and then shift the weight a bit further forward until the other foot floats off.  Basically, head tips forward and bottom floats up--just like in the picture below!

Hints and Cautions

·         Be in the middle of your mat in case you fall forward.  You could put a cushion a bit in front of you as well if you are worried about falling on your face.

·         Bird’s claw hands are key.  If you do not get some pressure under the finger tips and knuckles, all of the weight will be on your wrists and you will not be able to find your tipping point as well or as easily.

·         Keep squeezing the elbows in towards each other.  If they splay out to the side you will drop lower to the floor and you need to create lift so this won't be good!  Too much elbow splaying will lead to a face plant for sure! 

·         You need to keep moving your centre of gravity forward—this means you need to practice leaning forward into and over your hands.  You will not find your tipping point if you stay too far back. 

·         You can try just taking one foot off the ground and then trying to lean forward a little bit more.

Bakasana is challenging at first and helps you understand about how slight changes in your centre of gravity can completely change a posture.  When you find just the right tipping point it will feel like you are flying. 

Happy practicing!