Some key actions of handstand without putting weight on your hands

Even though handstands and arm balances feature in most of my sequences, not all of us can do a handstand.  Sometimes, for whatever reason, we might not be able to put our hands on the ground either.

But all of us can learn some of the key actions of a handstand without putting our hands on the ground.  

In this post I share a video and some instructions about some of the key actions that you can cultivate so you are still working towards similar 'anatomic' actions.  

You could take this option when it gets to an arm balance section of the class and still be doing amazing energy moving work.  

Have a look at the video to see the movement in action, then take a look at how I have tried to deconstruct the steps. 

Soft Tummy

One of the keys here is to be able to have a soft tummy.  If you cannot relax your tummy then you very likely may not create the correct firmness in the tummy when the time comes to do so.

Digging fingers into soft tummy to show it is soft

This is trickier than you might think.  Most people find it really difficult to relax tummy muscles.  It can be for many reasons.  One of the key ones I have come across is the perception that we should be sucking our tummy in and walking around with sucked in tummies as much as we can.  

Be aware that if you cannot relax your tummy muscles, you are putting fairly constant pressure on the contents of your abdomen, including your bowels and reproductive organs.  This can impact on the functioning of the digestive and reproductive systems.  

Anyway, just a thought.  

So, step one is to relax your tummy completely.  In the photo and video I try to show this by digging my fingers deep into my tummy so you can see it is not hard. 

Lengthen lower back

In general I start many postures by moving my sitting bones down, top of pelvis back in order to lengthen my lower back.  

I took my arms overhead in the photo/video so you could see what I am doing.  It is also a nice thing to do to enhance the length of the back of spine.  

I am not doing this action by tensing my tummy.  There is a little lower abdominal internal activation but generally the tummy is very soft still.  In the video I dig my fingers back in my tummy to show this.  

Push hips/sitting bones forward without moving legs forward

This is tricky.  You try to push your hips/sitting bones forward without moving the legs forward. 

If the legs go forward you don't get the firmness in your tummy.

If the legs remain as much as possible where they are then the tummy goes firm.  

In the video you can see that I push my fingers into my tummy after this and they cannot go in.  It is firm.  I try to show this below as well.  

My tummy is firm in a way that I can still breathe freely and feel as though the movement of the breath could go there.  

If you watch my arm balance videos where my abdomen is exposed you can sort of see that my breath is still going into my abdomen area (looks like I have gills!).

This is not sucking in tummy.  If you slow the video down where I push hips forward you can see that  I am not sucking up.  

Push armpits down and forward

Push the armpits down and forward.  

In the video I show how this firms the front and back of the armpits.  

My tummy is still firm.  

The movements I do in the video are really exaggerated and jerky.  I was trying to emphasise what I was doing.  If I did my own practice these actions would be much more subtle.

Alternate firming of armpits and tummy

Because I have been practicing these activations for a while, I can do them as shown.  I showed this way more for the video so you could see what I am doing.  

If you are learning this, most people will find getting armpits and tummy firm easier if they try putting the arms on the thighs as shown in the picture below.

If I was in a class, I would be encouraging people to use this method as pushing the hands against the thighs helps prevent them from coming forward when you push the hips forward.  Also, it is easier to get some armpit activation for many people if the hands have something to press down against.  

In class I usually do the demonstration as shown in this photo and get people to feel what is going on.  

Stay or take these activations to the ground

These two activations are key components (but not the only ones) of many postures (?most) where you are weight bearing through the arms.  

If you don't want to or cannot put weight through your arms for some reason then you could be doing this and really feel like you are doing something.  You could do it from kneeling if you want as well.

If you can, you could try to take these activations to the ground for plank, kneeling plank, bakasana, or even a handstand.  

But remember, your life will not be any better just because you can do a handstand!

It will probably be better if you can learn to relax your tummy completely then learn to activate it when you need however!

Don't do anything that hurts.  Be alert to over practicing and how you feel the next few days whenever you introduce new practices.  Have fun.  Laugh.  Smile.

Happy and safe practicing.

Breathe Less, Eat Less (Raw Food)

Raw food does not mean salads. 

It includes salads but it also includes much more!

At our retreat in Bali we will be exploring some delicious raw food, and be learning to make some of our own.

We will be working in a way so that the way we practice our yoga compliments what and how we eat. 

Through the Yoga Synergy system of applied anatomy and physiology, we learn that, in general, breathing less will lead you to feel less hungry but also to feel that you would prefer more raw foods.

Breathing more will typically make you feel more hungry and you will generally gravitate towards heavier foods. 

Anyone who has ever been swimming without knowing proper breathing technique, which leads to gulping in air almost every stroke, will undoubtedly experienced how hungry you feel after a session of over-breathing up and down the pool or at the beach. 

By contrast, once you learn to breathe better, you are less likely to feel as hungry after the same session.

This is just one of the things we will explore and discuss on the retreat. 

We don't want you to take what we say as 'gospel'. 

Instead, we intend to guide you to experience it for yourself so you can figure out the best approach for you.

Places are filling up so book soon!  April 5-11 2015, Ubud Bali.  Go to www.artofliferetreats.com for more details. 

Read more about breathing and eating with one of our teachers, Simon Borg Olivier, here:
http://blog.yogasynergy.com/2014/01/how-your-yoga-practice-can-make-you-fat-and-weak/

Much metta.


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

Do I Need To Tell You How To Breathe?

Simon Borg Olivier performing Nauli

Students always have great questions and I love to hang around after class and talk.  Sometimes the questions come in the few minutes before class and I always try and discuss them as best I can.  Time and my own deficiencies in clearly articulating some concepts can get in the way. 

Lucky I have a blog.  And lucky my extraordinary teachers do as well so I can link you to them!

This morning a student who came to a class the previous day said she loved the class but was confused about the breathing because I wasn't telling her how to breathe and all of the other teachers were.  

This made me smile.  I joked with her whether she needed me to tell her how to breathe when she went for a walk and she smiled back and said no, she was ok doing that on her own.

The thing is, at the beginning of the class I do tell people how to breathe.  I tell them to breathe naturally and that natural breathing is breathing into their belly.  This is what I learned from senior teachers like Paddy McGrath and Simon Borg Olivier.  There are other ways of breathing but I can only teach how I learned. 

What I wasn't doing was telling her when to breathe and she noted other classes she was always being told when to breathe. 

So I did a little experiment with her that my teachers have shown me.  By this time other students had arrived and we all joined in.  I said, 'take your arms overhead'.  No-one moved and I guess they thought I was being rhetorical or something so I said, 'no, really, take them up.'

They took them up.  

Then I said take them down.  They took them down.

I said, 'take them up'.  They did.

I said, 'did you just breathe in?'

They thought about it and said, 'yes.'

'Did I have to tell you to breathe in?' I asked.

They smiled no.

'Now take them down,' I directed.

They did.

'Did you just breathe out?' I asked.

They smiled yes.  

Simon Borg Olivier does this sort of thing in his workshops and it was a  big realisation for me that I had been over-instructing breathing to students and, in so doing, getting them to breathe more than they needed in their practice. 

Yoga is not too difficult.  You shouldn't need to breathe like you are jogging or take in a lot of air while you practice.  Taking your arms overhead is not too taxing for most people yet we often get told to breathe in deeply and take the arms up or are encouraged throughout class to breathe deeply.  Often, when you are told to breathe you will start to breathe more than you were before being told to breathe.  Essentially, being told to breathe can often cause us to over-breathe.

Now it is true that some people hold their breath and grip when they are practicing, causing some tension.  To them I just remind them to breathe naturally and relax the jaw, lips, and tongue.  

If people are in challenging poses I often as them to talk to me as a sign that they can breathe naturally and manage.  

Now, I am not a breathing expert and you need to go to other sources for more expertise.  Simon has a great blog post on the benefits and effects of both over and under breathing (hyper and hypo ventilation).  You can read it here.

I don't want to convey that breathing is not important.  We need to breathe.  Bianca Machliss from Yoga Synergy instructs breath in posture very well by reminding people to take a small sip in so that when she instructs the breath in posture she tries to ensure you do not breathe in more than you need.  It is important to note it is not a full breath in or out that is being instructed.  This is probably too much for what you are doing at the time.  

Finally, I also note that the senior asthangis I have practiced with have an amazing breath practice but that it also involves strong bandha and that the breath and bandha are intimately involved and it is beyond me to talk about that.  I just wanted to provide some food for thought noting that in the style of yoga I am teaching we just breathe naturally when we start out until we become very proficient in our postures and then we can learn some more tricks about breathing.

Much metta and joyful practicing! 

A Bit About Breathing

Breathing Room

If you don’t breathe, you die.  It is very simple.  “Hasta la vista, baby,” as Arnie might say.  Fortunately we don’t have to think about breathing 24 hours a day or we would not be able to sleep and that would be very annoying and inconvenient indeed. 

Unfortunately, because we don’t have to think about breathing, many of us don’t.  And that’s a shame because aside from being important, the breath is very interesting and, moreover, awareness of the breath can transform your life.  Really.

Awareness of the Breath

It’s a pretty big call to say awareness of the breath can transform your life some of you might say.  But have you ever really stopped to listen to it?  Feel it?  Have you ever noticed how it changes when you are anxious or when you cry those great big heaving sobs we all do from time to time?  Have you ever noticed the effect of taking a few deliberate long, slow, deep breaths can have on you?  If the answer is no, see if you can remember to take a few of them next time you start to feel overwhelmed by any emotion and see what happens.  And, if you can remember to take such breaths when you are doing difficult or ‘scary’ postures in yoga, you will notice a huge difference.

A part of your yoga practice always includes breath awareness.  Sometimes this is just at the beginning of the class, but, as you become more experienced, you will find that you become aware of the breath as you practice.  As the awareness increases, and as your practice develops, you will come to be able to consciously use the breath to assist you in your practice, and your day-to-day life. 

Breath awareness helps connect you to the present moment, which is why it is often used at the beginning of a class.  It also is the first step in learning to control the breath. 

Breathing Basics

There is a lot of anatomy and physiology about breathing that you can read out there, and I am going to grossly over-simplify it.  I am not an expert and if you want to read more then do a Google search using the key words “Leslie Kaminoff”, “Roger Cole”, or “H. David Coulter” and “breathing” and you will find some excellent reading material by highly qualified yogis.  Here, I just want to outline a few different types of breathing.  To do this, I will start with giving a really simplified version of how we breathe.

First, you have ribs.  Your ribcage holds and protects all sorts of important things, for instance your heart and your lungs.  Your lungs are basically ‘stuck’ to your chest wall (held in place by a vacuum that exists between the outer surface of the lungs and the inner surface of the chest wall). This means if your ribcage expands, your lungs also expand and if your ribcage gets smaller then the lungs will too.   

[Obscure but interesting fact #1: if you were to get stabbed in your chest the vacuum that holds your lungs to the chest wall would be penetrated and the lung would then collapse.  Because your lung collapsed you would not be able to breathe.  Because you have two lungs this would probably not be deadly unless both sides of your ribcage were penetrated although you would definitely need to go to a hospital.  In general, it is a good idea not to get stabbed]. 

Your ribcage can expand because of muscles that you have between the ribs (called intercostals).  These muscles can expand and contract and, as they do, the ribs (and the lungs) move with them.  The movement can be enhanced using other muscles as well.  It is helpful to think of your ribcage as a three-dimensional structure that can expand in all directions.  Importantly, the contents of the ribcage can change shape and volume.