Wow, what a title. I must try and make it live up to its name.
Here I share with you a short sequence we are practicing at the moment in class. It involves two basic postures although you transition through other positions to get there.
Most people will experience some sensation around their outer hip (outer or side butt area), which will be working and lengthening at the same time. That can help you get stronger and more agile.
The standing leg is working strongly very deeply on the inside and outside of the thigh to help keep the pelvis stable as well. This type of stability is essential for standing postures and especially one legged standing postures.
Remember, there is lots of goodness to be had here. Just don't overdo it.
I will sequence the postures, layering additional movements. Try not to 'lose' what you cultivated in a previous action by striving too hard to get to the next. Do not be attached to a particular outcome. Be content wherever you happen to be. Enjoy, sense, and experience.
Video
I have sped up the video below but you can play it at half speed to get the sense of the very slow movement I am doing. It took 2 minutes for me to cycle through these two postures in real time while this video takes about 54 seconds.
Instructions
Below are step by step instructions. Two key things I am focusing on throughout (they are not the only things you could focus on) are: 1) rolling front thigh out and back thigh in; 2) lengthening the back of the spine (doing a little back bend in my middle upper back) while keeping lower ribs hugged in. This is not about a straight front leg. If that straightens then so be it. It is not about getting the back leg raised as high as you can either. If it comes up then so be it. Pay more attention to the two key things I just listed.
Standing to folding forward
Basics throughout include trying to unsquash front of groin and lengthen lower back. Also, to roll the front thigh out (back thigh in). To support these two ideas start in standing. Sitting bones to heels, top of pelvis back (opens groins and lengthens lower back). Roll both thighs out (you can start with big toes touching, heels apart and try to squash heels together if you like).
As you fold forward try to keep those actions. It is not important that the legs straighten. Push your front of groins forward as you lower.
Stepping back, lengthening, rotating Step a foot back. As you step back be sure you do not drop or sink into the standing leg. Try to feel you are pressing your outer hips towards one another. The standing leg tends to swing out to the side so try your best to avoid that. The standing leg also tends to roll in. That means your knee tends to drop towards the big toe side of your foot. Roll the thigh out so it is pointing more to the baby toe side of your foot. Firm your inner thigh.
Straighten the back leg and roll the thigh in. Lengthen in the middle back (try to do a backbend there) while keeping the lower ribs in.
Press your front of groins forward and lean forward.
If your back foot is feeling light, if your front hip feels strong and stable, then perhaps raise the straight back leg. It is not important how high it comes. It is not even important that it comes off the ground. Just keep it straight and rolled in wherever it is.
From there, maybe you turn your navel, ribs, and chest. Possibly take the arm up. You could put that top arm on your hip. The top arm is in a flat plane level with your upper back.
Two feet on the ground, lengthen, rotate
You basically repeat those same steps but this time with both legs on the ground, back heel grounded. Some people will be able to reach the ground with their hands and front leg straight. However, in this variation the front leg does not need to straighten, nor do you need to touch the ground. For many people this will not be possible unless they compromise some other part of the posture.
Here I step back, raising my body and bringing hands to thighs. You might raise higher. See my front knee is bent. I have my back leg a little bent here too until I sort my hips out.
Front thigh is rolling out, back thigh is rolling in.
I keep my ribs into my spine but try a little back arch in my middle back to lengthen the spine. It is not an arched spine but a lengthened one. In fact, I am sort of doing a forward bending manoeuvre in my lower torso (a sit up in my tummy) while I try to do a little lengthening in the middle part. The net effect is a softening lengthened feeling of the back body. I stretch the mat with my feet and straighten the back leg (I have somehow kept my own a little bent here).
I stay or turn. In the video you see I turn first and then put the arms in place. That is important. I turn with my spine NOT by yanking myself into position with my hands.
I possibly take my hands lower, without losing any preceding actions.
From there I maybe straighten the leg.
And finally, I possibly take that hand over to the inside of my foot.
I am calm and happy. My neck is in a comfortable position throughout.
The end
This is not the only way to come into these postures. It is one way. You should feel challenged while doing this without strain. If there is strain then do something else. Remember, it is best to work with an experienced teacher rather than learn from the internet. We all have out little niggles and differences. Also, learning about movement is something best done with a living person in front of you.
Hey! If you are free in April 2016 and able to join me then come to my Sri Lanka yoga retreat! I would love to see you there.
In particular review the first video on supine activation (shown again below) that gives you an idea about what your tummy is doing in these postures.
Ok, so now you have reviewed (and practiced and understood) the importance of tummy activation we can have a think about some other thoughts on helping hamstrings, hips, and spine.
In these sequences I highlight the idea of bringing chest to knees. This is an active movement that we do by initially using tummy activation first and then using hip flexion.
With these postures I am using an active tummy movement then trying to lengthen my spine along the front of the thigh. A more apt description would be that I am not so much trying to bring chest to thigh but trying to bring belly button to thigh and then take my belly button to the knee along the front of the thigh.
If you are thinking of bringing chest to thigh this can create a tendency to droop or drop the chest when I actually want spinal length. In this practice if your spine will not lengthen then you are too deep in the posture.
This might require a radical rethink of your postures and movement.
While it may not immediately seem apparent, these are all fairly intense forward bends. There is a danger of over stretching. Do not attempt intense forward bends without supervision or a good understanding of your own lower spine. Best to practice with a teacher. As with all postures, you must be careful and go slowly.
Video
The video shows how I have lengthened my spine along the front of my thigh in the various incarnations of this posture. You should only straighten your leg if you can keep your spine long and do not feel strain. This will be beyond the capacity of most people.
STANDING UPRIGHT VARIATIONS Step 1: Toe and hips forward
Lengthen lower back (sitting bones to heels, top of pelvis back.
Toe forward, hips forward. This should help create postural firmness in your tummy.
Step 2: Knee raise
Lift knee forward and up. Make sure you keep hips forward.
Step 3: Spinal forward flexion
I bend forward from my spine to activate tummy muscles more (like I am doing a sit up in my tummy). I am trying to bring my chest towards the thigh without drooping the chest (keep it long).
Step 4: Push and press
Hold shin. With bent elbows pull with your hands but press with your shin.
There will be a tendency for the tummy to switch off here as the arms take over. But keep it on!
I try to wriggle my belly button up along the thigh. This is lengthening the spine and you will see that my back body is long throughout.
Step 5: Lean back
I lean back to come towards an upright position. Some people will not be able to keep their chest and thigh together and come fully upright. So, stay forward and that is where you remain for the rest of the postures (do not go on).
Step 6: Open knee angle
Keeping all previous activations, take an arm behind the thigh to keep chest and thigh connected.
Slowly start to open the knee angle. Do this actively. I am not pulling it open with my hands here. I use my hand on my heel so I can push my heel into my hand and pull back with my hand.
You might not be able to open the knee angle and keep chest and thigh together so only open so far that they stay together. This is where you stay.
Step 7: Open
If the leg will continue to open comfortably then you can take both hands and continue to straighten the leg.
In this position my hand is helping to open my leg. I am not strong enough to take my leg up this straight against gravity.
But I make active efforts to straighten the leg with my front thigh muscles, and also keep a pushing action of heel into hand and hand into heel.
Tummy stays firm. Spine stays long.
LUNGING VARIATIONS Step 1: Lunge
I transitioned to this from the previous posture, keeping chest to thighs and belly button working towards knee. I kept an active tummy. Most people will not keep active tummy as this is an easy posture to just collapse into. This means collapsing tummy and collapsing into the hip joints.
It is important to remember how I came into this posture, which is first through active spinal flexion with tummy activation and then hip flexion keeping tummy firm. Finally, I do some spinal extension but trying to wriggle my belly button up towards my knee. You can see tieback of my body is long. In fact, it is pretty straight.
In this position I keep my back leg active.
Step 2: Lengthen
I go to a split here. It is a matter of slowly straightening my legs and keeping everything else the same. that makes it sound easy. But it is not!
UPSIDE DOWN SPLIT Step 1: Short lunge
Tummy firm, I come to a short lunge. Keep standing leg active so I don't collapse into my hip. I keep sitting bones down and top of pelvis back to lengthen lower back and keep front of groin unsquashed.
Step 2: Both knees to chest
Bring the back knee to chest. Both knees are working to chest. Keep front of groins unsquashed.
Step 3: Straight standing leg
Take the raised leg out behind you. I am rolling that thigh in. Pelvis level. Got to be mindful you do not sink into the standing hip and squash the front of groin.
Step 4: Take it up
The raised leg stays rolling in, straight, and I see if I can just take the leg up. Watch that you are not rolling the pelvis out.
SUMMARY
There you go. A few more variations
These are tricky ones because they are very easy to collapse into. It is easy to sink and be passive if you are not mindful.
You might see if you can bring knee close to chest while you are lying on your back and without the hands. That would be a good indicator of whether or not these variations are going to be possible for you.
If the knee will not come to close to the chest while lying on your back you are going to find these postures impossible or difficult or else you will probably be doing the by compensating with some other movement. It might be worth thinking about trying the supine variations for a while longer first.
have fun. Happy and safe practicing!
Much metta,
Samantha
www.yogacafecanberra.blogspot.com
www.yogacafelk.blogspot.com
I had several questions about hamstring lengthening this week and this post has three videos to demonstrate some of the ways to help! You won't see any of the usual suspects.
Hamstring stretching or lengthening?
The truth be told, most people ask me how to stretch their hamstrings. It is I who always jumps in and reminds them that I will give them tips on how to relax and lengthen their hamstrings but I won't give tips on stretching them.
The thing is, these people know how to stretch their hamstrings. They have invariably been doing stretches for a long time. The problem is the stretches generally don't help them to feel better movement.
The postures and advice I give are mainly around helping them feel better movement without feeling like they are stretching, such as I am doing in the photo below.
Standing balance with leg raised and straight
In positions like the one shown I am actively trying to keep my leg straight while drawing it towards my chest. It does not feel like stretching at all. It feels like the back of my leg and bottom is lengthened.
When I do postures like this I am cultivating a relaxation response in my hamstrings (known as reciprocal inhibition. Basically, I work the opposite muscle groups to help relax the ones that I am trying to lengthen. Have a look at this post for some cool graphics: http://www.bandhayoga.com/keys_recip.html.
It feels like a lot of work in the standing leg, front of raised leg, and tummy. Most people miss the tummy activation in this posture, which tends to cramp you in the front of groin. Which leads to the point below.
Active positioning for spinal lengthening
In postures like the one shown below I am doing very important spinal lengthening and hamstring lengthening work. It is basically the same position as the standing balance shown above, but just lying down.
Active positioning to improve hamstring lengthening
The key difference (in terms of effort) is that I am obliged to use tummy muscles in a way I am not obliged to in the standing variation.
I am using my active core to send a message to my spinal muslces to relax as well.
Importantly, I am actively bending forward in my spine using tummy museles in a way I can still breathe into the tummy. If I tighten my tummy by tightening everything and shifting to chest moving breathing then I won't get the same relaxation effect.
Many people are limited in their forward bending because their lower backs are really tight as well as their hamstrings (and their hips).
The active movement in the core that you cultivate in this position is important and will help lengthen the spine and it is why I put the lying down sequence first in the videos below.
Try to remember the feeling in your tummy that you generate in this position (of it being firm but in a way you feel you can still breathe there) when you do the postures in the other videos.
Remember, better spinal movement is more important than being able to touch your toes.
As an aside, many observers wonder why I am not holding my foot when I do postures like the one above. And it is, I suspect, because of the focus on the sensation of stretching as opposed to the sensation of lengthening.
Holding the foot, the way most people tend to (which is to just grab the foot and pull the leg) generally means the muscles do not need to work and you lose the potential benefit of a relaxation response. Pulling tends to switch you to a sort of suffering and grimacing associated with tearing yourself apart!
It would also feel like I was not doing much work if I held the foot in that way because the big muscles that were working (including the core core muscles) have switched off.
The truth is most people cannot even grab their foot with their leg straight because their hamstrings (and lower back and hips) are too stiff. And so most people would probably be using a belt or towel or rope.
And then you have to ask yourself if you cannot bring your straight leg close enough to your chest to be able to hold it without a belt then should you really try to straighten your legs in positions like paschimottanasana and all the other seated forward bends? In my classes I encourage people to come into all seated bends with bent knees to lengthen the front and back of spine first and only then to slowly lengthen the legs on the condition the spine does not distort.
Lying video and key actions
The first postures to try are in lying because they oblige tummy activation (in a way you can feel the movement of the breath).
In general:
front thigh (coming close to chest) is rolling out (your knee looks like it is turning away from midline);
press down through the grounded thigh and keep it straight. Reach through the inner thigh;
keep the front knee straight. That is one of the main points--to keep is straight. It does not matter how close to the chest it comes. That will be a good indicator of your available active movement and something for you to contemplate when trying this posture in other relations to gravity;
as you move through the variations keep the whole back of the pelvis and sacrum touching the floor.
you will be doing sit-ups here so this is a good core strengthening sequence. If you feel strain at all in your neck you are doing the sit up incorrectly and you need to learn how to do sit ups without your neck feeling strained.
First position (lying parsvottanasana)
Lying down, draw straight leg towards face. Do a sit up and reach as though you are trying to touch the toes (but don't actually get them).
You need to actively lengthen the side hip area of the raised leg down towards the heel of the leg on the ground. The pelvis and hip tends to hike up on that side and squash the side waist. If you need to, put the web of your thumb in your groin to help actively lengthen that side waist. You should feel this as an action of rolling that thigh out.
Second position (lying trikonasana variation)
To get into position I bend the knee, take the thigh out to the side, ensure my whole back pelvis is still on the floor, and then straighten the leg from there. The pelvis of opposite side will tend to raise up if you try to get to the ground so be mindful of this.
Note, to make it real trikonasana type posture I need to add spinal movement and turn from bottom of spine to top away from the leg out to the side then do a little lengthening movement (not clearly shown in this video).
Again, keep that raised thigh actively rolling out. I am still trying to straighten leg and draw it towards my face but out to the side.
Third position (lying parivrtta trikonasana)
A tricky one and tough to capture on the video.
I bring the raised leg back to midline. I really need to make sure that the hip does not hike up here. Put a thumb in your groin if that is the sort of thing that might happen to you.
Keeping your pelvis on the floor, take that raised leg across your body. It will not go very far.
From there, you are still in a sit up, you can try to do a twist from the bottom to the top of spine, turning towards that leg.
It is not shown here but you could try a little spinal extension (lengthening from the front surface of your spine.
I could have positioned my arms better in this posture but was focusing mainly on spinal movement.
By the end of these postures you should sense your tummy very active! That will have helped lengthen the lower back and help you for the next series of postures in standing! Standing balance video and key actions
In the standing balance video you see I do take my foot (after I have done the active postures first).
However, when I take my foot I straighten the leg out slowly without distorting my spine. I also press the foot and hand into one another so that the leg is active and not being passively pulled (this triggers another relaxation response).
In general:
raised sitting bone feels like it is scooping underneath you and lengthening in the lower back;
raised thigh is rolling out;
keep standing leg foot pointing straight ahead;
remember your core activation from previous postures and find it here.
Posture one
Watch the leg stays straight. Watch the raised leg hip does not hike up. Keep trying to feel as though you are smoothing your side hip down to the ground.
If comfortable you can try the assisted posture, shown below, by bending the knee, drawing thigh to chest, holding foot and pushing foot out as you draw in with the hand, keeping thigh and chest together slowly start to straighten the leg. If you have trouble in the lying sequence with getting your leg straight and past 90 degrees then you will not be able to do this and best to work with just holding the knee to chest and pressing shin to hands and hands to shin until you can start to slowly straighten the leg without thigh coming out from the chest. Be patient.
Position two
As you did with lying, bend the knee then turn the knee out to the side but still in front of you. As you did with the lying version do not let the pelvis move with you. Keep scooping the bottom under. Then try to straighten the leg. If it will not straighten then put the toe tip on the ground. From there try to straighten the leg and raise it.
You want to keep rolling the thigh out and scooping the bottom under.
This is really much harder than it looks as you will see if you try.
If you feel ok with the active version you can try and draw knee to side-front chest. Keep scooping hip under. From there you could try to keep knee and shoulder close and then slowly start to straighten. If knee comes out from shoulder then you have gone too far. Be patient and wait with knee in shoulder until the leg is almost straight when you can let it move away from shoulder a little.
Position three
The leg comes back to the front here. I need to be particularly careful the hip does not hike up. Then I rotate the spine from bottom to top, maintaining length through both side waists.
Standing postures
You can then try these positions in their more traditional forms; parsvottanasana, trikonasana, parivrtta trikonasana.
I have linked these postures without chaining my foot position at all. The thigh positions remain the same. The pelvis position does change when you move to trikonasana, but the lower back position does not (it remains lengthened). The pelvis position is a subtle change and it is just the top side pelvis that opens lightly to the sky. This opening does not cause a shift in the leg positions.
It is really tricky to do these postures all linked together without changing the foot positions and without falling over. You will need to keep your legs and feet very active.
Watch for your bottom sitting bone trying to stick out. I keep a light feeling of it scooping under to keep the length of the lower back.
The end
Phew, this has been a long post!
We have been working on some variations of this in class. Remember these videos are intended for my students so I can position and correct and answer questions. It is better to learn from a teacher you are physically present with than the internet.
Have fun. Stay safe.
Much metta,
Samantha
www.yogacafecanberra.blogspot.com
www.yogacafelk.blogspot.com
Having a free spine is always something I think of when practicing. If you walk away from yoga class with a sore back then there is something about your practice that is not right. It should not hurt to do yoga.
One of the most common actions I perform in my practice is to lengthen the lower back. I do this by imagining that my sitting bones are melting down the back of my legs. I like the idea and feeling of melting as it reminds me this is something done without force. I once told a class to imagine their butt cheeks were like two scoops of ice cream atop a cone (their legs) and that the ice cream was dripping down the one (i.e., their legs). A child, who happened to be in the class with her mother, whispered loudly, "My bottom is not an ice cream.' Some visualisations are not for everyone I guess!
Anyway, the idea is to create some space in the lower back. It is a small action done without strain or force. If you overdo it, or misunderstand the movement as something more akin to what I call a pelvic tuck, then you might irritate nerves if you have an irritable nerve condition so be mindful and move slowly.
I try to demonstrate the difference between the lengthening movement (melting) and the tuck in the video. What you will notice is that no length is created in the lower back with just the tuck (the way I perform it in the video). Whereas, when I melt the sitting bones down you will see that the space between my vertebrae is lengthened.
I use this melting of the sitting bones to prepare for standing poses, in my forward bends, and in my back bends. It helps to prevent me from overarching the back or squashing it. If you combine it with lifting the shoulders and arms overhead it will traction the whole spine.
These videos are intended mainly for students who attend my classes as an aid to their practice and as a point of discussion. Please be mindful if you are practicing any videos from any source without the guidance of an experienced teacher.
Last week I posted a photo of a lady in uttanasana. She seemed a bit too hunched and rounded for my liking. That prompted me to write the yoga quiz, to see whether it was to your liking or not as well, and to see if you could think of some ways to improve your own forward bending. And that then prompted me to make a little movie about keeping your spine long in uttanasana--standing forward bend.
Before I start, I just want to put it out there that my tips for uttanasana (or for any poses for that matter) are not the only ways to practice the pose (I also have more tips as well but limited myself for the sake of making a short movie clip that does not gobble up all of the memory in my computer!). What I encourage you to do is try and, in practicing, ask yourself whether your spine feels relaxed, happy, and free. If the answer is no then we need to try something else!
Watch the movie and then read some more of my tips below. In the interests of transparency I have to also add that I was partially motivated to make this film clip this week so that I could show my sister in Australia my new haircut and glasses since my skype camera is broken (Hi Shell!). This is why I turn to the camera at least twice and wave.
The Hunch
Below is last week's photo. I like the peaceful look this lady has on her face. She does look like she is enjoying her pose and that's great. It's my feeling that she is trying to reach her toes when perhaps she is not quite ready though. Why do I say this? Because you can see that her entire spine has become rounded. In particular, see how her spine rounds up from her pelvis to form a peak at her lower back and then rounds down again as it arcs towards the floor? This type of forward bending puts your lower back at great risk, especially if you have any lower back problems.
Hmmm, I have a hunch that something is not quite right here...
What you want to try and avoid in uttanasana is this upward peak that forms around your lower back, or what I call "the hunch". The hunch is very sneaky and likes to creep up on people in forward bends. Hunch awareness is an important thing to cultivate in your yoga practice.
So why is this hunch appearing on this lady's back? Why might it appear on your own back?
The hunch does not appear by magic, landing on your unsuspecting spine. In forward bends such as uttanasana it generally appears when our hamstrings (the muscles on the back of your thighs) are not long enough (they are too tight), which means our pelvis cannot tilt forward properly. When your pelvis does not tilt sufficiently any forward bending movement then comes from rounding the spine. This is usually accompanied by some hunching of the shoulders as the arms stretch out to reach the feet or the floor, which you can also see in the photo above.
The hamstrings are really important in forward bending poses such as uttanasana. Let's take a closer look at how they can limit forward bending.
Hamstrings and Pelvis
Your hamstrings are muscles that start on your sitting bones (part of the pelvis). They go down the back of your legs and across the back of your knees where they attach to the bones of your lower leg. The fact that the hamstring muscles are attached to your pelvis and cross your knee joints is an important thing to consider in cultivating hunch awareness and minimising its impact. A picture might help here. Below are some images of your hamstring muscles. You can see how they start at your pelvis and go across the back of your knees.
The picture on the left shows the 'normal' tilt of the pelvis, which is just slightly forward. The picture on the right shows what happens as the top of the pelvis starts to tip forward. This lifts the sitting bones higher into the air. As the sitting bones lift, the hamstring muscles start to get stretched as one end of the muscle (attached to the sitting bones) is getting pulled away from the other end (attached below the knee).
Some people have hamstrings so tight that they cannot tilt their pelvis forward in any forward bends. Some people even have hamstrings to tight that the their sitting bones are actually pulled down in normal day to day life so that their pelvis tilts backwards (as though you are a dog with its tail tucked between its legs). When your pelvis starts to tilt backwards you lose the natural curve in your lower back (lumbar curve) and the hunch starts to form.
You can probably tell by now that being able to move your pelvis freely is key to safe forward bending. In fact, safe forward bending movements should be initiated from the forward tilt of the pelvis. Being able to tilt the pelvis forward will enable your spine to feel free and agile. You can see this clearly see in the film clip I made. At the end of the clip I demonstrate exactly what happens to your spine and lower back when you tilt your pelvis the wrong way in a forward bend and I encourage you to watch this part a few times and feel it in your own body. A good tip would be to imagine the Bat Signal (you know, that light that shone into the night skies of Gotham City to alert Batman that some dastardly plot was unfolding) was shining from your backside as you practice uttanasana. Now, if you really wanted to alert Batman to the perilous ground situation you would need to shine that light as high into the sky as possible. If you sense your light is shining only slightly above the horizon or even down into the ground then you are most likely to be in danger of hunching your spine in your forward bends.
Now this is all well and good if your hamstrings are long. You will indeed be able to shine the Bat Signal high,your pelvis will move freely and your spine will be long. But many people find themselves in the situation that their hamstrings are stretched to maximum capacity, their pelvis is stuck, and their Bat Signal is still nowhere in the night sky to be seen. Fortunately there are some strategies you can adopt to ensure your uttanasana is safe.
Bend Your Knees
First, you could bend your knees. This is a smart option, especially for anyone with lower back issues, and works because once you bend your knees, the distance between the two points where your hamstrings attach (your sitting bones and below your knees) is shortened again and tension is relieved. You will be able to keep bending forward but your knees will be bent and you will be in more of a squatting position. See the image below.
Forward Bend With Bent Knees
Practicing the pose in this way will allow your spine to relax downward, allowing gravity to lengthen it, without the hunch appearing. You might have to bend your knees more, or less, depending on whether the hunch starts to appear or not. Because you cannot see yourself you have to use body awareness to detect if the hunch is creeping up and one way to do this is to feel if your lower ribs start to move away from your thigh bones. If that happens, you can be pretty certain that your lower back is rounding.
To practice uttanasana in this way start in a low squat, connecting your lower ribs to your thighs (as though somebody has tied your body to your legs). Hug the back of your calves or thighs and from there start to slowly press the heels down and tilt the sitting bones higher into the sky, allowing the legs to slowly straighten. Keep straightening your legs until your lower ribs start to move away from your thighs and then hold in place. You can try to deepen your hamstring stretch by actively trying to tilt your sitting bones higher and higher into the sky from this position.
One problem in doing the pose in this way is that if your hamstrings are really tight you will find you have to bend your knees so much that you are practically squatting on the ground. This is really tough on your thigh muscles and they will get tired so you cannot hold the position for very long. Another option, then, would be to use a prop such as a table or chair or block.
Use A Prop
Your next option might be to keep straight legs (or slightly bent knees) and use a prop to rest your arms on, which supports your spine. See the image below where I have used a block.
Doing the pose in this way will probably be a more satisfying hamstring stretch since your legs are straight. Remember that you want to try and tilt your sitting bones into the sky to shine that Bat Signal as high as you can. If you don't have a block you could use a chair or even a table. The main point is that my spine does not start to dome up around my lower back area and that my pelvis is the highest point.
In Summary
Safer forward bending in uttanasana means cultivating hunch awareness and making sure you do not dome up around your lower back.
Be mindful of the position of your pelvis. If it starts to tilt backwards (as though you are a dog tucking its tail between its legs) you are entering into hunchville.
In uttanasana you need to shine the Bat Signal high into the sky--tilt your sitting bones up!
Don't be afraid to bend your knees. This will ensure your pelvis is the highest point and your spine can dangle down freely from there.
Don't be afraid to use a prop like a block or a chair or a table. This will enable you to keep your legs straight but also to keep your spine long without it starting to hunch.
Although I did not mention this above (so it should not really be a summary point) the ego or our desire to touch the floor is at the heart of a lot of unsafe forward bending in uttanasana. You do not need to reach the floor in forward bends. You need to lenghten your hamstrings and free up your spine. If your hands reach the floor then fine, so be it. If your hands do not reach the floor it does not matter. Don't leave them just dangling in mid-air though. Instead, place them on the back of your thighs or the back of your calves and start to gently draw your shoulder blades down the back of your torso so that your neck remains free (remembering it is also part of your spine).
Finally, I really encourage anyone with back issues to seek advice from an experienced therapist or teacher as they start to practice uttasnasana. If practiced incorrectly it can create pain, however, when practiced mindfully and with proper alignment, you will be able to find a variation to suit you (also watch for my upcoming post on Super Stretches for People with Low Back Pain!).
I have a good friend who has arms like an orangutan, by which I mean his arm span is greater than his height not that he has hairy shoulders. Orangutans have amazing arms and shoulders, which comes in handy when you live mostly in the trees.
But for those of us yogis who (for the most part) don't live in trees, having arms like an orangutan, or at least imagining that you do, is a great asset to your yoga practice.
The fact is, although most of us think of our arms as starting from our shoulders, they actually start from our pelvis. Well, not the arm bones themselves, but the muscles that help our arms to move. We have lots of muscles that connect our arms to our torso (you've probably heard of your deltoids). But there is one pretty big one called the latissimus dorsi that runs from your humerus (that's the arm bone that goes from your elbow to shoulder) all the way down to your pelvis.
I don't want to get too much into anatomy here, but you might be able to imagine now that if the skeleton above raised it's arm overhead and it's latissimus dorsi were tight then the arm would not move very effectively. This is especially if the skeleton wanted to to externally rotate at the shoulder joint, like we do in backbends, because the latissimus dorsi muscle is even more stretched in that position.
Having extra long arms that are rooted in your waist will help you with all backbends, and will help that pesky problem of the elbows splaying out that happens in some inversions (like pincha mayurasana or hornstand). It also helps you experience downward facing dog (adho mukha svanasana) in a different way and with more freedom in your neck and spine. Your handstands will get better and you might even find yourself becoming more attractive, wealthier, and.... wait a minute, strike those last two.
To cultivate orangutan arms (ie, arms that move freely from your waist not hairy ones) there are lots of things you can do. I got on a movie-making spree last weekend and made three short clips to help you bring awareness to the area extending from the middle of your upper arm, down through the armpit, and down to the waist, and to feel the connection between these areas.
In the first clip I try to show how to connect your arms to your waist in downward facing dog. I also show a pretty intense stretch that will hopefully bring your awareness to the entire torso, armpit, arm complex.
In the second clip I show another intense stretch to really open up your armpit area. After you have held this stretch for a minute (or two), I recommend you go back into downward dog again and see what a difference it makes!
In the third clip I show another way to come up into an effortless backbend by really drawing those arms back down into your waist. As you watch this clip I hope you can see that my entire spine rises from the floor as though it is floating just by setting up my arms. Those of you who come regularly to my classes and who struggle with backbends will know that I can help you fly up not by lifting you (I am not that strong) but just by firmly sending your arms back into your waist. If anyone is willing to be filmed with me making this adjustment then I would really appreciate it so we can show people what I mean!!
Before you watch the movies and try some of the poses I am doing, I recommend that you try this little exercise so that you can really feel your arms connecting to your waist.
Come into tadasana (mountain pose or standing upright)
Take your arms over your head
Reach your arms up as high as you can
Now, imagine that you have a shirt pocket sewn into your side ribs, just above your waist
Bring your awareness to your armpits and drop your arms back into those shirt pockets. Your elbows will probably bend a bit. That's fine.
Once you understand how the arms connect to your waist and can manage to keep them connected you will fly up into backbends like a wind billows out a sail.
By the way, if you can hear Kylie Minogue in the background of these movies, it is just because I was having a bit of a yoga dance practice session when I took the shots. Am seriously thinking about doing a yoga dance workshop as it was a lot of fun!
Our doggy friends instinctively know this stretch is good for them but most of us struggle with adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) at first. It's usually the wrists that feel like they are bearing too much weight, and perhaps the shoulders. Once you learn how to use your hands, forearms, and shoulders correctly this will become less of an issue but, until then--to use that wonderful Sri Lankan turn of phrase-- what to do?
Why not try a supported version of the pose? You just need a belt and a column to tie yourself to, and you can get a great stretch for your hamstrings, calves, and spine without putting any weight through your wrists at all. This supported version is fabulous even if you can manage a five minute down dog with ease. I had forgotten about it until recently when I saw a spate of people with bent up legs and crooked spines, then saw a few people with hand injuries who could not put weight through their arms at all.
Check out the video below to see how to support your dog. A word of caution: make sure you are securely tied or you are going to face plant. If you don't have a belt then use a non-elastic sarong or scarf. As always, stay there, relax and breathe. For those of us who have had a long day at the office, a long day of looking after children, a long day of shopping or walking in high heels, or even just a normal, easy-going day, this pose is sure to top it off and leave you feeling longer, calmer, and refreshed. Have fun!
The toughest thing about straightening your legs when you are bending forward is not actually getting your legs straight.It is dealing with the little voice inside of you that says you have to touch your toes or reach the floor while your legs are straight.
That little voice is a bit like the archetypal devil sitting on your shoulder who encourages you to do something that most of us probably know we probably shouldn’t—at least you should know if you have been coming to yoga class for some time.
The thing about forward bending is that sometimes we look too far ahead of ourselves and try to get somewhere our body is not quite ready for.If you have had a back injury you will know this on an intimate level.But even for those of us without back injuries we need to be mindful that we don’t develop awkward habits that could lead to injury down the track.
The angel, if you listened to her as she whispered from your other shoulder, would be telling you lots of nice things as you practiced forward bends.Here’s a potential though not exhaustive list:
·Relax and breathe
·Let go of ideas about where you ‘should be’ and just be where you are
·Please don’t come to yoga to turn yourself into a hunchback
It is the third of these that I really want to focus on.
If you come into a forward bend, either from standing or sitting, with the idea that you have to straighten your legs and touch the floor or your toes you are potentially setting yourself up for trouble if you don’t have enough length in your hamstrings or lower back.What will likely end up happening is that you round your spine and then shrug your shoulders in order to reach wherever it is you want to be.You will end up looking a bit like a hunchback.
This is not a pretty sight.Imagine if I kept my shoulders and spine in exactly the same configuration and stood up.In case you cannot imagine, I demonstrate in the video.
Ok, can you honestly say to yourself that you have come to yoga so that you can re-enforce a hunch in your spine?!Do you want to go home after class and say to yourself, “Gee, I am so glad I spent so much time cultivating that hunch.Feels so gooooood.”My guess is no.But the devil, you see, will encourage you to do exactly that.
So what can you do?
First of all, bring absolute mindfulness to your spine as you practice any forward bend.
Second, remind yourself you are trying to open the whole back side of your body—from your heels to the crown of your head—rather than just focus on that short distance between your bottom and your knees.It might help to think of yourself as trying to fold your body in half like you might fold a towel—you don’t want the bottom half to be smooth and straight and the top half to look like a camel’s hump.
Third, even though you are doing a forward bend, see if you can think a little bit about a backward bend as you come forward.You will not be able to maintain the natural curve in your lumbar spine as you bend deeply forward but it helps to feel as though you are trying to do so.To do this it can help to imagine pushing your sitting bones behind you or above you—increasing the distance between your sitting bones and your knees.In the midst of a forward bend this is much easier said than done though, since this action creates a lot of tension in your hamstrings.
Fourth, draw your shoulder blades down your back so that the shoulders are free and move away from your ears.This will free up tension around the neck and the upper back.
Fifth, if you are in sitting, make sure you feel your centre of gravity in front of your sitting bones so you do not feel like you are falling backwards. You might need to use a block to sit on if this proves really difficult, or take option six, below.
Sixth, you can also opt to bend your knees as much as you need so the torso lies on the thighs. I like this one a lot, especially if your hamstrings are pretty tight.This action is very effective as it will release a bit of that tension on the back of your legs and allow your spine to relax forward more so you still get a satisfying feeling of being able to fold forward.You can still stretch your hamstrings by pushing your sitting bones further behind you.This calls for a tilting action of the pelvis so the top of the pelvis comes forward and your sitting bones move backwards.Once you have laid your chest on your thighs you can really hug your chest along your thigh bones and then start to straighten your legs from there, but only so much that your spine still feels relaxed and long and you can keep your chest and thighs roughly parallel (like that folded towel).
In practice this means you might not reach your toes or the floor at all.It does not matter.Reach the back of your calves or thighs instead.Just remember to move those shoulders away from your ears (you can try to press your hands into the back of the calves with your elbows in and then ‘pull’ the calves up under your knees to also free up some tension in the neck/upper back in a forward bend).
A word for the more experienced.Your spine is ultimately going to round a little bit when you come into a deep forward bend so you do not need to keep it stiffly upright (unless you are practicing some particular technique that calls for this).If you maintain this stiff upper back for too long what you will find is that the muscles in your back start to get tired.You need to allow for slight rounding so that your spine can relax.The trick is being able to feel the difference between a nice relaxed and long spine and a hunched and constricted one. In the video you can see my spine is not ramrod straight, but it is long and I can still move it and find little wavelets rippling through it no matter how deep I bend.As soon as I cannot ripple anymore, I know I have come too far.
As always, it pays to listen to what is going on inside your body.“Length” and “Freedom” should be a little mantra that you repeat to yourself when you practice forward bending.
If you feel in your body that you are slumping then this is a good sign that you need to do something to lengthen your spine.If your back muscles are getting tired then you are probably ‘too straight’ and you need to relax them a little.If you cannot move your neck in freedom you shoulders are probably shrugged as you try to reach too far.If you feel any pain at all in your lower back, bend your knees a lot to keep the lower back long or come out of the pose.
Step a foot back. As you step back be sure you do not drop or sink into the standing leg. Try to feel you are pressing your outer hips towards one another. The standing leg tends to swing out to the side so try your best to avoid that. The standing leg also tends to roll in. That means your knee tends to drop towards the big toe side of your foot. Roll the thigh out so it is pointing more to the baby toe side of your foot. Firm your inner thigh.
From there I maybe straighten the leg. 
And finally, I possibly take that hand over to the inside of my foot. 
