Effortless Backbending: Catching the wind in your sail

Effortless backbends

Now that I have ventured into the world of movie-making with myself as writer, producer, sound guy, actress, stunt-woman, special effects coordinator, body double etc, etc, I have noticed something I had not quite noticed before.  I have tiny little twig arms that look like they might snap in two!  Yet, even with said twig arms, I am able to come up from the floor into poses like urdhva dhanurasana (let’s just call it urdhva D, which makes the pose sound a bit like a rap song but a whole lot easier to read). 

In class people often talk about not feeling strong enough to come up into urdhva D.  However, strength is probably not the issue as you can see with my twig arm practice.  Now, I know I am going to hear a whole host of comments to the tune of I don’t have much to lift up (although these might just imagined, comments since I can’t be sure anyone is actually reading this), but coming up into a backbend is less about strength than it is about finding the wind in your sail that billows out your chest and carries you high—imagine a kite that gets picked up by a gust of wind.

Recently I have been experimenting with different ways of coming up and down into urdhva D so that I feel relaxed and free.   There are many ways and methods of coming up into urdhva D and this is just one I use at the moment.  Maybe some of the ideas might be helpful for you, which is why I am posting them. 

After you watch the movie clip and read the blog, go away and remember to practice with mindfulness and a sense of playful curiosity.  Don’t get stuck in your yoga practice and stuck in ways of doing things.  The body needs to be challenged or it gets dull.  And (obligatory safety message although as yogis hopefully the desire to be mindful and present in your poses will steer you automatically towards safety) never move into pain.  Have a chat with your yoga teacher if you have any concerns.

Your pelvis as a helium balloon

Our bums and pelvis are getting good coverage in this blog so far and that continues here.  When you come down onto the floor, remember to place the feet mindfully.  Really engage the power in the ball and outside edge of the foot. 

From here send the knees away from you a few times and feel your pelvis float away from you.  It rises effortlessly.  You don’t need to do anything.  You don’t need to squeeze, thrust, or push.  You just need to let it float up like a helium balloon.  It does not need to come up very far at all—just let it get lift-off so it becomes weightless.  And yes, even the biggest of bums is going to feel weightless here.

Once it is up there, let your pelvis and lower back be free.  Move it gently around like a hanging basket and experience this freedom. 

Your chest as a sail

With your pelvis lifted (but not pushed, or thrust etc), bring your awareness to the space between your shoulder blades and the corresponding place on the front of your chest (just about the middle of your sternum).  This part is going to become like a sail on a sailboat.  To come up into a nice urdhva D you are going to have to catch the wind in this sail.

The tricky part about this is trying to catch the wind in your sail and not the wind in your tail.  When you first start practicing this move your pelvis might come up too but you are actually trying to isolate the two movements.  So, if your pelvis comes up, don’t worry about it, just let it float down again and concentrate on getting lift in the sail (not the tail).

Another good thing to remember is that the wind is going to billow out the sail in all directions—your back is going to broaden and your chest is going to rise at the same time.

In the movie clip I add another movement here to really get my sail into full bloom.  The secret is in the arms.  Can you see what I am doing?  It might look like I am just taking my elbows around in a circle and then digging them into the floor.  What I am actually doing is using that movement of the elbows to help encourage my shoulder blades to move further down towards my waist.  This action is really important.  I will say it again just so you get how important it is.  This action is really important. 

What I am trying to do is to feel as though I have connected my outer armpits the top of my pelvis.  This action is going to help create the circle in urdhva D. 

Pause, relax, and breathe

I have never met anyone who cannot find a way to do those two actions (helium bum and wind in the sail). It might take some practice, but it will come.  And when it does, come up, come down, come up, come down, and just enjoy the movement.

Some days I just stay here for a long time, really using the combined actions of sending my pelvis one way and heart the other to create length and freedom in my spine.    In the movie clip I have come up much higher than you really need to and that is just for effect.  You can just stay low, pause, relax, and breathe.

Do not skip this stage.  If you are a person who has trouble coming up into urdhva D, you probably start to get anxious and stressed and start worrying about how you will get up and if you will get up at this point.  Rather than use your energy in worrying, take time to just breathe.  Feel what it is like to just hang out here with no pressure, no idea of what is going to come next. 

Put the hands in place

If you feel relaxed and your spine feels free, then very casually put your hands in place.  As you do so, try as much as you can to keep those outer armpits moving down to the waist. 

If you cannot get your hands on the floor without losing too much of the connection between your armpits and your waist then you might just need to stay at the previous stage until I write my blog on using a prop to help you.  For effortless backbending you really do need to keep those upper arms bones moving into the body.  You can still come up but it will feel much more like you are levering yourself up and using brute strength. 

If you can get your hands mindfully into the floor then all you need to do is press through the hands, press through the feet, catch the wind in the sail….and fly!

And finally

Nothing happens overnight.  If you can’t get your hands into the floor then stick with the initial stages.  In the mean-time, your yoga teacher should be able to give you some tips, props, and pointers, and may even help you find the lift you need by assisting you. 

In your own practice, remember to be mindful and patient, and to work on catching the wind in your sail combined with freedom in the lower back.  Other parts of your body will need to open to help you come into an effortless urdhva D, especially around the shoulders and front of the hips, but this pose is always going to be about relaxing rather than brute strength. 

Enjoy your practice!

PS: If you want to see a real genuis backbender to inspire you, check out this youtube link of Paddy doing 'extreme backbends'

Mettha,

Pelvis Vs Knee: Trikonasana

Pelvis Vs Knee: Trikonasana

I am often asked whether the pelvis should be opened fully to the side in trikonasana (triangle pose). 

Now, if you asked five different yoga teachers they would probably give you five different answers about how to do trikonasana, but they would all no doubt tell you that to answer the question you need to look at the relationship between the pelvis and the knee.   

In trikonasana there is a little tug of war going on between the movement on your front thigh and the opposite side of the pelvis.   The front thigh is trying to roll out while the opposite side of your pelvis is trying to move back and roll up towards the sky. 

A key action at the front hip joint is external rotation (it is also flexing and abducting—check out last week’s blog about defining movements of the hip joint).   As your front thigh rolls out, your front knee comes into alignment over the centre of your front foot. 

You can then try to roll that (front) side of your bottom underneath and press it forward at the same time so that it is not sticking out to the yogi behind you.  To do all of this you will find you need to maintain strong actions in the front leg of lifting the thigh up, rolling it out and under while pressing the big toe down so as not to roll on to the outside edge of your foot.    As you move into the posture more deeply by tipping the pelvis, you will feel the stretch on the inner front thigh and back of the front thigh as a result of these actions. 

But trikonasana is not all about the front leg.  You need to balance the work in the front leg with the work in the back leg.  And this means while you are doing all of that work in front, you are also trying to broaden the front of your pelvis and prevent the top of the pelvis (back leg side) from rolling forward and toppling over towards the floor.  To do this you need to strongly engage your back leg, pressing down through the outer edge of the foot, trying to roll the thigh out and trying to draw the whole inner thigh from the knee up and in towards your pelvis. 

But there is a reason the top of the pelvis wants to roll forward towards the floor.  And,  for many of us, it will be because allowing this action of the pelvis releases some of the stretch on the front leg and also lets us get closer to the floor with our arm if that is where we think our arm should be.

However, one of the (muscular) functions of trikonasana is to help open up the inner thighs and hamstrings so practicing in this way might not help you too much towards that end. 

What this all means is that you need to keep trying to roll the top (back leg side) of your pelvis up and back but, and here’s the point, there is no need to take it so that it is right on top of the bottom (front leg side) of your pelvis.  You do not need to square your pelvis to the side.  For most of us this is probably not even possible, and, if you persist in doing so you may find that your front leg starts to roll in and your front knee will lose its careful alignment (see my video link).  Over time this will transfer strain onto your inner knee joint, which is not something you want. 

So, should you be trying to get your pelvis open to the side?  The short answer is, start with the correct alignment of your front knee and then open the pelvis to the extent that is possible.   In the tug-of-war between knee and pelvis, the integrity of your knee needs to win. 

Trikonasana is a great pose and nearly every yoga class will include it whether or not it is for beginners or advanced students.  Thereis a whole lot more to it than I have mentioned here (did not even mention the upper body!), but more on that later.  For now, happy and safe practicing!

Mettha

Hips Fly High

Moments of pure joy should be savoured so I wanted to share the joy I felt at seeing students in the hips don't die class last night amaze themselves with their acts of flight! 

Tittibhasana B
(Ok, so we may not look quite like this!)

For 6 weeks now we have been working on some deep hip openers.  We have been doing a lot of forward bending type postures that involve nuzzling the shoulders inside the knee, including a wide-legged standing forward bend where we really burrow our shoulders between our knees known as Tittibhasana B.  We have continued to come back to that pose without a concept of where else it might lead.  And, to tell the truth, I had no intentions of making the pose go anywhere else.  But last night was different!




Tittibhasana A
(And we might not look
quite like this either!)

As I looked around the room, bottoms were not quite so high as the picture shown above, but spines were long and shoulders were nuzzled deeply.  And I thought to myself, "By gosh, I think they can do more!" 

And more you did.  With a few basic instructions I was astounded to see nearly everyone in class come into the first stage of the very challenging arm balance posture Tittibhasana A!  The best part was seeing the looks of awe and amazement on everyone's faces as they realised what they were doing--flying!  I know it came as a surpise to some people and I hope you realised that these sorts of postures are more about finding your centre of gravity as opposed to raw strength.

Whether or not you made it up last night does not really matter though because the potential is there in every single one of you.  No, we may not look like the pictures on this page but as long as we feel light and free and enjoy what we are doing then it does not matter at all. 

I can't wait to see what happens next week!

Mettha



What Lies Beneath (Our Bums): Observing the Hip Joint to Protect the Knees

“The Day My Bum Went Psycho” is a book written by Australian children’s author Andy Griffiths.  It’s a story about detachable bums that jump off their owners.  Zach, the main character, wakes up one night bumless and has to get help from some bum-hunters to recover his rogue bum, which has become the leader of a group of bum scoundrels that have set out to rule the world. 

If you actually removed your bum, or what most of us thought of as our bums, you would probably be removing the fat that is stored there along with large muscle that almost everyone knows the name of—the gluteus maximus.  Removing this muscle would make some things very difficult or awkward, such as walking and running or getting up from a chair. 

Now, we know the gluteus maximus is big and important because if someone had named you Samantha Maximus or Tilak Maximus it was probably not without reason.  But if you removed your gluteus maximus (for example if your bum went psycho) you would find some other very important muscles called external rotators.  You can see the people who named our body parts are in fact very clever because, as you could probably guess, it is their job to perform a movement called external rotation at your hip joint.

Understanding the basic movements at your hip joint is important for deep hip opening postures and, understanding external rotation in particular, can help prevent injury to the knee joint in some of these poses where you also need to bend your knee (think lotus, pigeon etc).

In this blog I want to talk about the six basic movements of the hip joint and then focus on the idea of external rotation in the context of protecting the knee joint.  Hip opening postures are sure to give even the most open-hipped yogi a little pain in the butt.  Practicing with awareness and alignment will also help you protect your knee joints.

We Don't Like Cricket...We Love It

We don't like cricket, we love it!
For those of you who have come to yoga on my roof top you could not help but notice the giant billboard of the Sri Lankan Cricket Team peeking through the trees and buildings from Havelock Road.  It seems their gigantic illuminated faces are watching over us the whole time. 

Anyway, the World Cup Cricket is about to start.  I remember the last World Cup final mainly because the Tigers took the opportunity to conduct an air raid over Colombo, which turned the city into darkness and meant most of us without generators missed it!  Hopefully this final won't be as eventful.

There are lots of ways to keep up with the World Cup, but why not check out a new website that combines cricket fever with a social conscience? 

"What's the Score?" is a fun way of looking at how the countries playing in the Cricket World Cup score in terms of serious development issues. Have they been able to bowl out poverty yet? 

You can keep updated with the latest in World Cup action while also learning some interesting facts like the annual revenue of one of the sponsor's is more than the combined GDP of 12 of the countries that compete to play for the cup!!

Thanks to the people at Centre for Poverty Analysis for keeping us informed! 

http://www.whatsthescore.org/

Mettha