Ten Minute Yoga Practice: Basic Suriya Namaskar

If you've only got ten minutes to do yoga...

Reaction to last week’s blog came mainly in the form of “can you make a video?”  Actually, I was really tired last week and didn’t have the energy to make a video but I must agree, videos are often more helpful when you are trying to learn about yoga.  Watching someone else do yoga often makes your own body itch to get out there on the mat.  I know that after I have spent an afternoon doing some yoga research on the web my right hand is virtually grabbing me by the scruff of my own neck to drag me away from the computer and onto my mat.

Anyway, I made another movie and even decided to bite the bullet and narrate this week’s clip rather than try and dodge having to record my voice by using nice music instead!  I was a bit nervous as you might be able to tell. 

This week’s video is a basic suriya namaskar sequence and I plan to do a whole suriya namaskar series.  There are millions of suriya namaskars that you can do.  I often make one up to suit the type of practice I am going to do on a particular day.  That is, if I want to work deeply in my hips I will do a suriya namaskar that gently warms them up and so forth. 

Doing a few rounds of suriya namaskar (sun salutations) is a traditional way to warm up for your yoga practice and you can use them to set the tone for the rest of your practice on a particular day.  This is not to say you have to start with any suriya namaskar at all—sometimes I get sick of them myself and do something else instead.  This is likely because I am basically from the yoga school that says I need to craft my own practice (of course, being mindful of the wisdom of my teachers) rather than stick to any particular dogma. 

However, if you are newer to yoga and just trying to establish a bit of self practice then a few rounds of suriya namaskar is a great way to get yourself onto you mat. 

The video I have made this week is ‘Basic Suriya Namaskar’.  It is a ten minute sequence of three different suriya namaskars.  Most of us can probably sneak in ten minutes a day, can’t we?

Over the next few weeks and months I am going to post some more ten minute snippets, including a few more suriya namaskar variations.  Coming soon will be the hip opening suriya namaskar and the hamstring lengthening version.  I know a lot of my students have moved overseas to a variety of other postings and, in case you have not found a yoga class yet (could be difficult to find in Tchad perhaps?), I hope you find them useful. 

Happy practicing!

If she can do the can can...

I am still trying to make myself laugh, although I got my funny spots burned off with liquid nitrogen this morning.  In any case, I came across this picture and was reminded of our Thursday night can-can crew because our legs are starting to look a bit like this. 

For those who have not made it to Thursday's class yet, don't worry.  We will still be lengthening those legs for the next 6 weeks!  Is this picture real or fake? I don't know.  The point is we are never too old and stiff to have long legs.  You can do it and I can see improvements already!  It might not happen overnight....

Happy practicing until I see you next!!
Mettha,

Just Do It: Five Ways To Start a Home Practice

We were all born yogis, sometimes we just forget.   If you are struggling to get a home practice into your life here are a few tips to help get you started.  

Nike is not paying me for this blog.  Just to make that clear from the very beginning.  But they do have a point; “Just Do It” is a pretty good way to think about a lot of things in life, including yoga. 

It goes without saying that there is a lot of theory about yoga and while sometimes it is good to languish like a cow chewing the grass as you think and read about yoga, nothing really captures the yoga like doing it.  This is true whether we talk about the more physical or active aspects of yoga like asanas, pranayama, and meditation, or whether we talk about the more philosophical aspects, including the yamas and niyamas (ethical teachings).

But how do you get on your mat every day with such a busy schedule?  It can be hard, even for yoga teachers.  Here are my top five tips to help you start. 

1.       View your whole life as a yoga practice.  When your whole life is viewed this way it means you can practice yoga virtually anywhere.  This works for asanas as well as other aspects of yoga as well.  I have listed some ideas here.  You will notice the bathroom seems to be a favourite place to do yoga!

·         going to the toilet becomes an opportunity to practice uktatsana (chair/fierce pose);

·         interacting with difficult people becomes an opportunity to practice mindful breathing so as not to over-involve your emotions and become distressed;

·         brush your teeth in vrksasana (tree pose);

·         put on your shoes/socks balancing on one leg and bringing the foot to the chest instead of bending down;

·         sit on your chair in padmasana (lotus) or sukhasana (cross-legged) or even virasana (kneeling/hero);

·         practice ahimsa the next time you start to feel yourself starting to get angry at someone or something;

·         standing back bend while you rinse your hair in the shower (don’t fall!);

·         do uttanasana (forward bend) to pick up the pen you have dropped (mind your back).

This list could go on and on and is limited only by your imagination and your capacity to be mindful—remembering to remember that there is always a way to practice yoga.     

2.       Create a time and space to get on your mat.  While you can turn your whole life into a yoga practice, you do need to get on your mat.  Now, I know I am a yoga teacher and I am supposed to love doing yoga every day, but the truth is that sometimes I struggle.  I work full time—at a desk no less—and teach classes most evenings so finding the energy to do my own practice can be hard. 

Over the years I have learned, however, that no matter how tired I am I will always feel better after being on my mat.  I cannot recall a single time where I got off my mat and thought, “gee, I feel really crap”, which is a good thing really as I am not sure why I would keep doing something (teaching it no less) that makes me feel crap.   This is something to bear in mind on those days when you feel it would just be easier to lie on the couch. 

The first thing I have done is created a time and space to lie on my mat.  Obviously, this time and space will transform over time with changes in work and lifestyles.  For me it currently means practicing in my lunch hour at work.  I try to (mindfully) eat lunch at my desk and then use my actual lunch break for my practice.  This works well for me as it works out the desk-jockey kinks but also helps with the stress of my actual work.  You might be able to find a space at home to do your yoga (I also have such space but do my weekday practice at work).  If you are really lucky you could just leave your yoga mat unrolled on the floor so that it is always inviting you to practice!

You might not have an hour but who says you need it?  You might have ten minutes in the morning or ten minutes in the afternoon, you might find you even have ten in the morning and ten in the afternoon. It does not really matter how much time you have but give yourself some time.  It is probably more important to do something every day rather than gorge yourself in one go once a week or once a fortnight.  You really need to cultivate discipline to do this, especially if you are the type of person who easily talks themselves out of things. 

3.       Make a general plan. When you are first starting a home practice it can be hard to think of what to do.  You might barely be able to remember any poses at all.  Most of us can probably remember some version of suriya namaskar and maybe you just plan to do five or ten of those.  After you do that you might find that has triggered your memory of other poses and you could do those as well.  Sometimes you can just start by lying down and breathing, quieting your mind, and you will find that a practice emerges. 

If that doesn’t happen, you could also bring some pictures of some poses and put them beside your mat to trigger your memory.  Sometimes it can be a bit distracting to keep looking at pictures but after a while you won’t need them anymore. 

The next time you go to a yoga class that you really enjoy, you could also try to jot down a few poses that you liked straight afterwards—being mindful that it is always good to do a mixture of poses that you really like and poses that you would rather avoid!

Another thing you could do is pick a theme—maybe you could choose one forward bend, one hip-opener, one twist, one backbend, one inversion and practice one of each of those, choosing a different one each day or practicing the same ones for a week and doing new ones the next week.  Maybe you could say Mondays is for hips, Tuesdays for forward bends, Wednesdays for backbends, etc. 

Whatever plan you might make, please also consider point 4, below.

4.       Relax.  I mean this in three ways. First, in the sense that you can just lie on your mat and do savasana for however long you have.  I do this for an hour sometimes.  Not very often but on those days where my body just tells me it simply cannot be expected to do any more than I have been asking of it.  This is usually if I have worked intensely in the previous week or am feeling a bit sick.  Some days I might not do savasana but I might just feel like I don’t want to do a single standing pose so I think of everything I can do that involves lying on my back.  You’d be surprised how you can spend an hour just doing lying poses and I think I will have to create a blog post dedicated to this!  Anyway, the important thing is that I take some time to listen to my body so I can hear what it is telling me and develop an appropriate course of action. 

When I say relax, I also mean relax your ideas of what you should be doing and not getting too worried or stressed out about your practice.  You don’t come to yoga to get stressed and worried.   If you get on your mat and start thinking you absolutely have to do something you are cultivating rigidity and not flexibility.  I am not a big fan of the word should and all of the right/wrongness that it implies, but I will use it with caution here to say that the only thing you really should do (although you can choose not to) is get on your mat!

In practice this means learning to let go, modify, and adapt.  It means that even though you had grand plans for your practice that day but you feel really sluggish when mat-time comes around then maybe you need to do modified backbends rather than the whole shebang.  It means that if people start doing construction work next door while I am practicing at lunch that I might have to move elsewhere or, instead of doing the nice quiet practice I had planned, maybe I’ll have to get up and ‘go with the flow’ and do a more active practice instead. 

The third thing I mean when I say relax is, bearing in mind point 2 (get on your mat), you do need to give yourself permission to take a day off now and then.  Your body needs time to recover and sometimes it becomes really hard to practice (such as when travelling, although as you get more experienced at yoga you realize you can even do yoga in airports, on planes etc, and, moreover, that you probably need it even more in these situations.  The next time I go home I will definitely be writing a blog about airport/airplane yoga—look for it around June).   

5.       Put on some music.  There are lots of people who practice in silence.  Personally, I sometimes practice in silence (well, as silent as Colombo gets) and sometimes practice with music (see point 4 about not getting too rigid!).  I tend to have my favourite yoga music but every now and then I mix it up so I’ll be yoga-ing to Tracy Chapman, Norah Jones, Santana, David Gray, and Marc Antony.  It is amazing how different music can inspire your body to move in different ways.  I find that I might get on my mat feeling like a sloth bear but as soon as I hear a particular piece of music I am all dropbacks and handstands.  The other thing about music for people who are having difficulty getting on the mat in the first place is that it can be a cue.  You can prepare yourself a 10, 20, or 30 minute musical sequence, for instance, so you aren’t looking at your watch all of the time wondering when to finish. 

There you go, a few tips to get you on your mat and remind you that we were all born yogis even if we can’t touch our toes anymore.  A regular home practice will really teach you a lot about yoga as no matter how good a yoga class is or how good your yoga teacher is, I am generally of the opinion that some of the best insights will come from within. 

So, even though my blog is really interesting, time to exit the browser and get on your mat!  Happy practicing.

Namaste 

Yoga Gems #2: Winged-Feet

Find the wings in your feet to generate lift and lightness in your poses…

In high school a girlfriend once called me a macropod.  This is a very large word to come from the mouth of a 13 year old.  I am sure I had to go and look it up in the dictionary later that day, but her father was a journalist and she was pretty good with words so I would not be surprised if was just part of her vernacular.

I cannot recall precisely what it said under the definition of macropod but there was an example.   That example was something to do with kangaroos.  Now, she was not trying to tell me I had a pouch or a tendency to hop around.  Not even that I had long pointy ears.  No, she was referring to my enormous feet; macropods are basically any of the marsupials belonging to the kangaroo family and the word itself comes from the latin “big foot”. [As an interesting aside I just found out some cool things about kangaroos here]

How could I be angry at her?  She was just telling the truth and, besides, she was a good friend. 

The thing about my big feet is that I am probably not tall enough for them.  Most people are surprised when they find out my shoe size.  It is incredible (but true) that my feet have been this size since I was about 12 and I think what must have happened is my body spent so much energy on growing my feet that when it came time to start growing other things it had simply run out of energy so I ended up a short big-footed person.  This was highlighted to me again this week when I found two other kindred macropods in my yoga class with the same foot size as me (hard to find) but who are a good few inches taller.  I’d like to just stop for a moment to make the point that we don’t normally go around comparing body parts in our yoga classes but we somehow got to talking about our feet after class in a spate of wind-down girl-y chatter. 

In any case, apart from being large, my feet are naturally fairly flat.  Now there are a lot of us flat-footers out there in the world and I have heaps of them in my yoga classes.  But I have found that even the flattest of feet has the capacity to cultivate an arch.  And this is important because the arch gives us lift through the entire body.  If you let your weight collapse onto the inside of the foot you will feel a sinking rather than lifting sensation and there is no yoga pose that I can think of where you want to feel like you are sinking. 

Cultivating the arch in your foot is hard if you are not used to it, but it is worth the effort because you will ultimately have a much better foundation for all of your yoga poses.  In the movie I have posted below you can see very clearly what happens to my ankles and knees when my arches collapse.  There is no doubt that there would be effects in my hips, spine and even shoulders and my body collapses in on itself. 

Apart from seeing what happens if you don't have an arch, I show a few tips for cultivating good yoga feet.  Once you start to understand the feeling of lift in your feet you then need to practice mindful walking and mindful standing off the yoga mat to bring this little yoga practice into your daily life.  This is why I have called it a yoga gem—because it should be practiced every day and become a natural part of your life.

My feet are still flat, but these days I never stand or walk with them that way as it feels just awful.  I truly believe that learning to cultivate my arches through practice and mindfulness has helped solve some of the knee problems that I used to have.   From a young age I was prescribed orthotics to help correct some of my foot problems.  They helped a little but my feet were still ‘lazy’.  About the time I started practicing yoga I also threw out my orthotics and my feet feel better than ever.  Use the tips below to see if you can find the lift in your own two feet.  I can’t promise that you will fly, but maybe one day…

Generate Lift By Creating Spirals

The two key actions shown in the movie to help you cultivate your arches are:

1)      Create an outward spiral from the inner ankle, across the front of the shin and up towards the outer calf muscle;

2)      Create an inward spiral from the outer ankle across the top of the foot to the mound of the big toe.

The outward spiral creates the lift, the inward spiral connects you back to the ground. 

This can be a very tricky thing to get at first, especially if the feet are a bit lazy.  There are all sorts of instructions you can try to help.  I show one of these in the movie. 

First, start on the outside edges of your feet and really lift up the insides of your feet so they do not touch the ground (outward spiral). 

Second, spread wide across the ball of your feet and then try to pull your toes back to your shins.  This will help cultivate an arch. 

Third, place the mound of the big toe down while still staying on the outer edge of the foot and drawing the toes back (inward spiral).  You can then place the toes down carefully without dropping the inner arch of the foot.

Most people can do steps 1 and 2, but have trouble putting the mound of the big toe down without collapsing the arch.  At first many people try to keep the arch and will just put the tip of their toe down and won’t really connect through the mound, but this is not enough.  You will not be stable.  You really have to press that big toe mound down firmly.  Push it down with your fingers if you like. 

Once you are practiced in this you can do it in reverse, starting by grounding down through the mound of the big toe (inward spiral) and then creating the outward spiral.  The only problem with this is that if your feet are a bit lazy you won’t know how to create that outward spiral at first so you might have to go back the steps described above until your feet “get” what you are trying to do.  Quite often you can just go through those steps on one foot and then the other foot will understand by itself and automatically lift the arch. 

Finally, it is important to remember that whether or not you have flat feet, you need to always be mindful of cultivating the feeling of lift in your arches in all of your poses, especially, but not limited to, standing postures where the full weight of your body is on your feet.    

Wishing you wings on your feet!

Hips might cry but sure won’t die: 20 minute practice sequence

Here's a little sequence to get your hips to shed tears of joy...

If you didn’t get the chance to make it to the hips don’t die class, don’t worry.   Here I share with you the crux of the sequence.  We started with some interesting hip-opening vinyasas to warm up before slowing down the pace and it is these ‘slow-down’ postures that I have reproduced here. 

Some of the usual suspects are there (gomukhasana) but have been befriended by some members of the hip opening gang that generally lurk in the background (utthan pristhasana).  And if all of this talk about gangs and suspects and lurking has you worried, there is no need.  These poses are not part of the criminal underworld, they are not part of the cool girls gang or even a gang of super-elite yogis who sit around with their legs behind their head all day.  These poses are part of a gang that we can all belong to—if you just believe in yourself, have patience, and try.

Before you try these poses, it would be a good idea to warm up with a few sun salutations.  Try and hold each of these poses for more than a minute.  Poses like gomukhasana and agnistambhasana or eka pada rajakapotasana could be held for longer (3- 5 minutes).  Remember that your hips will not die although they certainly might cry (tears of joy in their new-found freedom).  Relax the shoulders and your face (it is surprising how they can tense up subconsciously), and connect to your breath. 

Finally, if you weren’t at the hips don’t die class and you have never done these postures before it might be a good idea to talk to your yoga teacher before trying them as they might have some pointers on the each of the postures that can benefit you specifically. I wanted to keep it basic here rather than go into too much detail on ‘how to’ do the pose and there is a lot of fine tuning that can be done.  I tend to do all of the poses on one side first and then the other.  You can see what works best for you.

Utthan pristhasana

You can come into this from kneeling.  Have your knees slightly behind your hips.  Take the left foot around the outside edge of your left hand.  If it does not come in one smooth movement, no worries, just take it as far as it can and then move it with your hands.  It might take three or four little steps to get it there. 

Keep the front foot firmly connected to the earth.  Take your back knee back a bit further if you can.  You are going to feel this on the front of your back thigh a bit (or a lot, depending on how open it is!), but we want to keep the focus in this sequence on the front leg so don’t overdo it. 

Your left shoulder is trying to nuzzle into your left knee, a bit like a dog coming to scratch its ear.  Try and keep the knee moving in towards the shoulder.  From here, see if you can start to lower your body to the ground, imagining that it is your belly button that wants to melt towards the floor rather than your head—it’s relatively easy to just stoop your shoulders and drop your head down but why would you want to turn into a hunchback in the middle of a pose?  There’s no point.  Your elbows may or may not come to the ground, that’s not important at all.  What is important is to try not to stick your butt out to the side, which it might want to do, and, of course, to breathe.   

Eka pada rajakapotasana/Agnistambhasana/Chair variation

I am giving three variations of a similar pose here and you should find one of them works for you.  If your hips are really tight you might need to take the chair variation at first.  Then you could try eka pada rajakapotasana and, finally, agnistambhasana.   Be mindful of the knee in all of these variations, remembering you are stretching your hips and there should be no strain on the knee.

                Chair variation

This is something you can even do at work so it’s a good thing to learn even if you can do the other variations.  You need to sit on the very edge of the chair.  Your ankles should be underneath the knees and feet firmly on the ground.

Take the left leg up, keeping the foot and ankle in a shape as though it is still on the floor.  Bring your left ankle across the right knee.  Press your sitting bones evenly into the chair and shift your weight so you are sitting above them or in front of them but definitely not behind them.  Take a firm hold of your left thigh bone and turn the whole thigh out and away from you.  This might have two consequences: first, you will feel a more intense stretch in the outer left hip; second, your knee might come down a bit.  From there you can sit tall and start to fold forward, imagining you are bringing your belly-button to your shin (not the head, never the head!) to keep your spine long.

                Eka Pada Rajakapotasana

From kneeling, take the left knee towards the left hand so it points roughly straight ahead or a little bit out to the side.  Keep the left ankle firm.  Slowly start to take the right leg back so the thigh bone comes closer to the floor.  As you do this, your whole pelvis might start to lower towards the floor.  It is not important if your pelvis gets to the floor or not, it is important that you keep your pelvis level.  You really have to watch this as one side of the pelvis has a tendency to tip to the side in order to escape the stretch!  You can remain upright here or you can drape your body forwards towards the floor and make a little pillow with your hands as you relax here.

If you do not feel any intensity in your outer left hip then you should take your left foot out a little bit—as your hips open up you will eventually get your shin parallel to the front of the mat.  Don’t be in a rush though, and be mindful of the knee.

                Agnistambhasana

This variation is basically just the chair variation noted above but sitting on the floor, which places increased demand on your hip flexibility.  To come into this posture sit cross-legged on the floor.  Bring the left ankle on the right knee.  You need to be sure to turn from the hip and not the knee.  Some people will really struggle to get their ankle across the knee.  If this is you then please take one of the other variations until your hips are ready.  Some people will get their ankle across their knee but then be slumping in their back.  Again, be honest with yourself, if this is you then please take one of the other variations.  If you can manage to get your ankle across the knee and be sitting above or in front of your sitting bones you might find that your left knee is up high in the air.  As a general rule of thumb, if that knee is higher than your waist, then please take one of the other variations. 

Now, if you have managed to come this far it is time to take the bottom foot out so that the arch of that foot is directly beneath your left knee.  Looking from above your shins are roughly parallel.  Sit up tall and, as for the chair variation, take a firm hold of your left thigh and roll it out.  You will probably find the knee comes down a bit and the feeling in your hip intensifies.  Stay with even weight on your sitting bones and, if possible, start to fold forward and take your belly button towards your shins. 

Gomukhasana or Supta Gomukhasana

I give two variations here.  This is because if your hips are really tight you are going to find gomukhasana quite difficult to get into.  Most people can get into some form of supta gomukhasana, however. 

Supta Gomukhasana

Lie on your back.  Cross your right thigh over your left thigh as much as you can.  You are trying to get the knees on top of one another.  Take a hold of your ankles, heels or shins with your hands.  If you have trouble reaching, use a strap or a towel or something similar that you could lasso around the shins.  Basically you want it long enough so that you can still lie flat on the floor and your shoulders and head are not lifting.  You might even need a pillow or cushion under your head so that it can stay lowered as well. 

From there push your heels out and away from the midline while at the same time bringing them towards your shoulders.  You are basically trying to make an airplane wing with your legs (and I don’t mean a fighter jet with very angled wings, think more along the lines of a jumbo jet or even one of those planes the Wright brothers had where the wings stuck straight out to the side).  Your bottom might lift of the ground and see if you can send the tailbone back down towards the floor.  It probably won’t go all the way. You will feel something deep in your outer hips.

                Gomukhasana

Not everyone will be able to do this, so if you cannot, don’t worry and just stick to the lying version.  For those who can do this sitting variation, alternate so that some days you do this sitting and some days lying. 

From sitting cross the thighs over one another so the right thigh is on top.  You are trying to get the knees to come on top of one another, touching if possible.  The feet are active and just beside the hips.  You can press the outside edges of the feet into the floor to generate more lift in the spine.  Keep moving the thighs into one another.  Make sure you are sitting on top of or in front of your sitting bones.  If you cannot do this then go back to the lying version until you can.  Relax (no gritting your teeth) and breathe.  For those that can bear it, you can start to make those airplane wings with the shins again, bringing the feet away from you so that the shins come closer to being parallel.  Only do this if your knees are stacked right on top of each other though. 

Ardha Matsyendrasana

Finish with this twist.  With your left foot beside your right hips, bring the right thigh over the left thigh so that the right foot is on the floor—flat if possible.  You need to use your feet here.  The more you can press with your feet, the more lift you will generate through your spine.  Again, be above your sitting bones or in front of them—no sinking behind them.  If you find it impossible to sit like this, them straighten the bottom leg and just take the right foot over the top of the straightened left leg. 

Hug yourself close into that left thigh.  Use your arms to gently pull the torso forward.  Really try to shift your weight so it is more in the front foot.  From there, lift the body and turn towards the left inner thigh.  Your right forearm, upper arm, or armpit may be able to move across the left leg to help hug you into the inner thigh.  Your left arm can help with this hugging or it could be on the floor behind you, pressing down and helping to generate lift in the spine. 

Now, it’s time to do it all again on the other side!

Happy, happy, hips.