This video will take you through trikonasana (triangle pose), parsvokonasana (side angle pose) and ardha chandrasana (half moon). A challenging sequence with binding is demonstrated. Enjoy!
Showing posts with label asana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label asana. Show all posts
10/11/08
Pelvic Awareness Exercise II: Rolling like a ball
Purpose and Caveats: Rolling like a ball requires us to hold the pelvis in a stable position through an ‘unstable’ motion. It requires keen attention to the details of the movement. You're likely to have an asymmetric roll in the beginning. This will shift as you practice and learn to hold the form with stability. Do not roll if you have osteoporosis or a neck injury, just come into the initial pose and practice holding it for 30 seconds to a minute. (For long time yogis: avoid the tendency to come up to a straight back when you arrive in the balancing position. The focus is different than in navasana: maintain a rounded spine throughout. You'll want to disengage the power centers in the hamstrings and and hip flexors and work from the abs and back instead.)
Focus: Keep your awareness in the sensations of the back of your body as you do this exercise. As the front of the body is curled into itself, let the back of the body be vibrant and awake.
Rolling like a Ball: Come to a seated posture, with your feet on the floor, legs parallel, knees bent, feet on the floor. Catch your hands behind your knees, rock back, lift the feet from the floor and balance on the fleshy area right behind your sitting bones. Tilt your head forward such that your chin is a few inches from your sternum and your gaze is down the front of your body. Engage our abdominal muscles strongly so that your pelvis tilts toward the back of your body, your lower back is rounded and your shoulder blades rotate out to the sides of your body. Tilting your pelvis toward the back of your body will create “the ball” shape you are looking for. Keeping this shape intact throughout the exercise is your goal.
Once you have found your balanced ball-shape it will only take a slight shift in your center of gravity to cause you to roll backwards. Initiate this movement with an exhalation and a deeper tightening of your abs. Roll backward along your spine to your shoulders and then forwards again to come to balance. You should be rocking backing and forth from pelvis to upper back while maintaining the ball shape continuously. Keeping your gaze down the front of your body will help you maintain a healthy and safe neck position throughout the exercise.
Continue to roll 4 to 5 times with your eyes open, then close your eyes and continue for another 4 to 5 rolls with eyes closed. Turn your attention to the back of your body, again and again and again. As you begin to feel confident in your ability to hold the form and stay aligned throughout the exercise try shifting the breathing pattern: inhaling back, exhaling up.
Focus: Keep your awareness in the sensations of the back of your body as you do this exercise. As the front of the body is curled into itself, let the back of the body be vibrant and awake.
Rolling like a Ball: Come to a seated posture, with your feet on the floor, legs parallel, knees bent, feet on the floor. Catch your hands behind your knees, rock back, lift the feet from the floor and balance on the fleshy area right behind your sitting bones. Tilt your head forward such that your chin is a few inches from your sternum and your gaze is down the front of your body. Engage our abdominal muscles strongly so that your pelvis tilts toward the back of your body, your lower back is rounded and your shoulder blades rotate out to the sides of your body. Tilting your pelvis toward the back of your body will create “the ball” shape you are looking for. Keeping this shape intact throughout the exercise is your goal.
Once you have found your balanced ball-shape it will only take a slight shift in your center of gravity to cause you to roll backwards. Initiate this movement with an exhalation and a deeper tightening of your abs. Roll backward along your spine to your shoulders and then forwards again to come to balance. You should be rocking backing and forth from pelvis to upper back while maintaining the ball shape continuously. Keeping your gaze down the front of your body will help you maintain a healthy and safe neck position throughout the exercise.
Continue to roll 4 to 5 times with your eyes open, then close your eyes and continue for another 4 to 5 rolls with eyes closed. Turn your attention to the back of your body, again and again and again. As you begin to feel confident in your ability to hold the form and stay aligned throughout the exercise try shifting the breathing pattern: inhaling back, exhaling up.
10/10/08
Pelvic Awareness Exercise I: Cat/Cow with a Sandbag
The last post was about the mechanics of the pelvis. This is the first in a series of exercises to bring you into deeper awareness of your pelvis and its mechanics.
Cat/Cow with a sand bag: Come onto a hands and knees position on your mat. Then sit back on your knees, hold a sand bag (or other soft lightly weighted object) on your low back with one hand and then tilt forward onto hands and knees again. You should be positioned with the weight of the sand bag primarily on your pelvis and lower back.
Look for neutral spine: neither flexing upward toward the ceiling nor drooping downward toward the floor. Without moving the pelvis, clearly engage your abdominals muscles to help support the weight of the sandbag.
Once you’ve found the support of your abdominal muscles you can begin to work through spinal flexion (cat) and extension (cow) in time with your breath. With your exhalation lift the sand bag up toward the ceiling by tilting your pelvis backward and arching the lower back upward. On the inhale, keeping your abdominal muscles engaged the whole time, come through neutral spine and gentle tilt the top of your pelvis toward the floor while lifting your head to look forward. Cycle through these two positions in time with your breath for a total of 10 to 20 cycles.
When you’ve finished this exploration come into child’s pose with the sand bag still resting on your low back. To come into child’s pose: bring your big toes to touching and your knees a little wider than hips distance apart. Sit back on your heals and rest your forehead on the floor. You arms may extend out over your head or rest alongside you.
As you continue moving into other yoga poses or even just walking around the house you'll have the ghost of the sandbag on your low back. Use this information to keep awareness there alive. You want to look for standing, sitting, working and living postures that support a graceful neutral spine position: a gentle tilt forward of the top of the pelvis such that the forward lumbar curve is alive, neither drooping toward your belly nor flattened toward your back.
Cat/Cow with a sand bag: Come onto a hands and knees position on your mat. Then sit back on your knees, hold a sand bag (or other soft lightly weighted object) on your low back with one hand and then tilt forward onto hands and knees again. You should be positioned with the weight of the sand bag primarily on your pelvis and lower back.
Look for neutral spine: neither flexing upward toward the ceiling nor drooping downward toward the floor. Without moving the pelvis, clearly engage your abdominals muscles to help support the weight of the sandbag.
Once you’ve found the support of your abdominal muscles you can begin to work through spinal flexion (cat) and extension (cow) in time with your breath. With your exhalation lift the sand bag up toward the ceiling by tilting your pelvis backward and arching the lower back upward. On the inhale, keeping your abdominal muscles engaged the whole time, come through neutral spine and gentle tilt the top of your pelvis toward the floor while lifting your head to look forward. Cycle through these two positions in time with your breath for a total of 10 to 20 cycles.
When you’ve finished this exploration come into child’s pose with the sand bag still resting on your low back. To come into child’s pose: bring your big toes to touching and your knees a little wider than hips distance apart. Sit back on your heals and rest your forehead on the floor. You arms may extend out over your head or rest alongside you.
As you continue moving into other yoga poses or even just walking around the house you'll have the ghost of the sandbag on your low back. Use this information to keep awareness there alive. You want to look for standing, sitting, working and living postures that support a graceful neutral spine position: a gentle tilt forward of the top of the pelvis such that the forward lumbar curve is alive, neither drooping toward your belly nor flattened toward your back.
5/13/08
Yoga for Gardening
It’s spring in the Northwest. Time to plant, till, weed, and dig. Time to haul barrows full of compost to the garden. Time to wake up with back pain and shoulders aches and neck cricks of unknown origin.
Gardening is hard work. Even this body that gets daily yoga and Pilates gets sore from digging and hauling compost. Monday’s classes relieved most of the back pain that landscaping the front yard induced, so now I’m ready to do it again… Here’s some yoga tips for gardeners to help avert the aches and pains:
1) Don’t work too long uninterrupted. Ideally, spread your gardening tasks through the week. Work for an hour a day or so. Weed in small increments. I know, most of our lives don’t allow this pace. So when you do your long weekend gardening binges, make sure you get up and walk around every 30 minutes or so. Those extended periods of time spent bent over weeding are nearly guaranteed to give you a backache. Stretch often. Change your position frequently. Move about.
2) Backbend and side bend to counter stretch your spine. We do almost all our garden tasks in flexion: forward bending the spine. When you come up from your work, stand up very tall. Take you hands behind your back and lace your fingers together. Extend the arms and lift them away from your back while letting your heart rise and stretching the front of your spine. Then sweep your arms overhead, again interlace your fingers and turn your palms to face the sky while extending your arms. Arch side-to-side stretching from your hips through your shoulders.
3) Keep engaging your core muscles: transverse abdominus and pelvic floor. To engage transverse abdominus narrow your middle by taking your belly button toward your spine. Lift your pelvic floor muscles by first narrowing the diamond shaped region between the sitting bones, tailbone, and pubic bone and then lifting this diamond up to support the abdominal organs. Engage these two sets of muscles as often as you remember.
4) Half Dog Pose: Come to stand in front of a bench or garden chair. Sweep your arms up along side your ears, engage your core muscles and then fold forward to place your hands on the chair seat. Step back to find a position where your both arms and legs are extended, your back is easy, your spine near horizontal and your head is in line with your arms. Slightly bend your knees and rotate your pelvis forward and back to find ‘neutral.’ Engage your deep abdominal muscles to support the low back. Keep pressing your hands into the bench and shift your weight back into your feet to stretch your armpits and shoulders. Breath deeply. You can gently bend one knee at a time ‘walking’ the legs in place to enhance the stretch in the hamstrings. You can also rotate the pelvis left and right to stretch the sides of the low back. To come out of this pose bend your knees, take your hands to your knees, extend your spine lead with your heart to rise.
5) Last but not least: Roll down. Stand up very tall. Engage your core muscles. Drop your head to look at your feet. SLOWLY allow one vertebrae at a time to roll forward off the spine, strongly work your core muscles to keep the rest of the body aligned as the spine slowly releases forward. Roll forward into your full forward bend and rest in a long stretch, with passive arms and head, breathing all the while. To come up, first reengage the pelvic floor muscles and feel your tail bone curl underneath the pelvis. Then on an exhale engage transverse abdominus and begin to unfurl the spine, one vertebrae at a time, all the way back up to standing. Repeat roll down a few times.
Gardening is hard work. Even this body that gets daily yoga and Pilates gets sore from digging and hauling compost. Monday’s classes relieved most of the back pain that landscaping the front yard induced, so now I’m ready to do it again… Here’s some yoga tips for gardeners to help avert the aches and pains:
1) Don’t work too long uninterrupted. Ideally, spread your gardening tasks through the week. Work for an hour a day or so. Weed in small increments. I know, most of our lives don’t allow this pace. So when you do your long weekend gardening binges, make sure you get up and walk around every 30 minutes or so. Those extended periods of time spent bent over weeding are nearly guaranteed to give you a backache. Stretch often. Change your position frequently. Move about.
2) Backbend and side bend to counter stretch your spine. We do almost all our garden tasks in flexion: forward bending the spine. When you come up from your work, stand up very tall. Take you hands behind your back and lace your fingers together. Extend the arms and lift them away from your back while letting your heart rise and stretching the front of your spine. Then sweep your arms overhead, again interlace your fingers and turn your palms to face the sky while extending your arms. Arch side-to-side stretching from your hips through your shoulders.
3) Keep engaging your core muscles: transverse abdominus and pelvic floor. To engage transverse abdominus narrow your middle by taking your belly button toward your spine. Lift your pelvic floor muscles by first narrowing the diamond shaped region between the sitting bones, tailbone, and pubic bone and then lifting this diamond up to support the abdominal organs. Engage these two sets of muscles as often as you remember.
4) Half Dog Pose: Come to stand in front of a bench or garden chair. Sweep your arms up along side your ears, engage your core muscles and then fold forward to place your hands on the chair seat. Step back to find a position where your both arms and legs are extended, your back is easy, your spine near horizontal and your head is in line with your arms. Slightly bend your knees and rotate your pelvis forward and back to find ‘neutral.’ Engage your deep abdominal muscles to support the low back. Keep pressing your hands into the bench and shift your weight back into your feet to stretch your armpits and shoulders. Breath deeply. You can gently bend one knee at a time ‘walking’ the legs in place to enhance the stretch in the hamstrings. You can also rotate the pelvis left and right to stretch the sides of the low back. To come out of this pose bend your knees, take your hands to your knees, extend your spine lead with your heart to rise.
5) Last but not least: Roll down. Stand up very tall. Engage your core muscles. Drop your head to look at your feet. SLOWLY allow one vertebrae at a time to roll forward off the spine, strongly work your core muscles to keep the rest of the body aligned as the spine slowly releases forward. Roll forward into your full forward bend and rest in a long stretch, with passive arms and head, breathing all the while. To come up, first reengage the pelvic floor muscles and feel your tail bone curl underneath the pelvis. Then on an exhale engage transverse abdominus and begin to unfurl the spine, one vertebrae at a time, all the way back up to standing. Repeat roll down a few times.
4/23/08
Asana 101: Take a comfortable seat
One of the things I love most about yoga studios is that they are large rooms with no furniture. We have to create our own support, our own seats. How do we get comfortable on the floor? Do you remember how you sat on the floor in preschool? Most of us were more flexible then, both physically and mentally. Now we sit in chairs all day. Chair posture makes our hip flexors short and weak; our low backs concave, our hamstrings short. One result of sitting in chairs all our lives is back pain. Another result is a separation from gravity and the direct support of the earth. In most yoga classes we get down on the floor. Here’s how:
Begin with a simple cross-legged seated posture, Sukhasana: Easy Pose. Or, as Asana is more correctly translated seat, “Easy Seat.” In spite of its name, this is not an easy seat for everybody.To make Sukhasana comfortable, grab a couple firm blankets and a couple foam blocks and come to your yoga mat. Fold the blankets carefully, to form a rectangle large enough to sit on. Set the blankets on the floor so that the clean folded edges are stacked directly on top of each other facing the front of the room. Sit down on the blankets and cross your legs in front of you with your feet on the floor under your thighs. You want the blanket stack high enough that your ankles are comfortable and your knees near the height of your hips. If your knees are much higher than your hips, then add some more blankets to your stack so that you can begin to bring them level. Use the foam blocks (or additional blankets) to provide support under your knees. Your inner thigh muscles will be more willing to release and lengthen if there is something for them to release into. Thin blankets can also be used as additional cushion under your ankles. You can practice without props if you can comfortably maintain a neutral spine without pain in knees, hips or low back.
Let your upper arm bones fall straight down from your shoulders. Bend your elbows and rest your hands on your thighs. Now close your eyes and notice how you feel. Make any small adjustments you need to find comfort and ease. Notice if your weight is balanced equally right and left on your sitting bones. I like to wobble around on my sitting bones and then find center again to bring my pelvis into alignment. Once you feel clearly centered begin to notice your spine. As you inhale, make space in your spine, realign, grow taller. As you exhale reconnect to the earth directly through the sitting bones but don’t slump. You want to allow the natural curves of the spine while creating as much height as possible.
Sukhasana is a great pose for breathing exercises and sitting meditation. You can add a forward bend to Sukhasana and you’ll get a great outer hip stretch and hip rotator stretch. You can take your fingertips to the floor behind you and add an upper back backbend and heart opener. And finally, you can turn this pose into Parvatasana by interlacing the fingers and extending the arms alongside the ears toward the ceiling thereby stretching your shoulders.
As the pose becomes familiar and your inner thigh and hip flexors lengthen and become at ease, you can graduate to Half Lotus, Ardha Padmasana. Begin in Sukhasana. Slip the outer shin forward and lift it up and over the other shin. Rest the foot of the lifted leg onto the opposite thigh and then rest both your knees back toward the floor. Your half way to lotus pose!
3/8/08
Meditation
Dear Yogini: What are the benefits of meditation? What is the traditional link between meditation and yoga? How do these two practices work together? ~ Sitting Still
Dear Sitting Still: Most Americans consider asana, the physical postures, to be yoga. But asana is just one of the limbs of yoga. In fact, of Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, four would fall under the broad category meditation: Pranayama (breathing exercises); Pratyahara (control of the senses) Dharana (concentration), and Dhyana (meditation). These meditation practices are essential steps towards the yogic goal of overcoming suffering and leading a life resonant with meaning and purpose.
Asana is usually taught as a preliminary step toward sitting meditation. While Asana is a physical exercise, it is also a movement meditation and a flowing prayer. Asana increases strength, flexibility, balance and grace and the mind is trained to connect with the flow of the body and breath. This practice develops a mind-body connection that 'stills the fluctuations of the mind' so that the body can literally sit still for meditation.
Meditation practice deepens the focal power of the mind, a very useful skill. The ability to 'still mental fluctuations' allows us to live, work and accomplish our goals with less stress and less effort. We can actively relax when faced with stressful situations and let go of situations beyond our control. Stress hormones are reduced and the multitude of illnesses related to stress are abated. As the practitioner gains control of body and breath, health, vibrancy and physical well being are increased.
Continued practice of asana and meditation helps us to naturally give up unhealthy life style choices. Our natural state of being gives us deep pleasure reducing our dependence on external stimuli and this facilitates the journey of overcoming compulsions and addictions. Both our mental and physical improves and we experience a sense of freedom.
There are many great places to learn asana and meditation in Corvallis: yoga studios, athletic centers, gyms OSU and LBCC. For those ready to go deeper, Cedar and Fir Studio hosts Satsang (pranayama, chanting, and meditation) on the third Sunday of each month from 10:30a to noon (by donation). The next Satsang will happen on March 16th.
Namaste,
Yogini Lisa
Lisa Wells is the owner of Cedar and Fir Studio, a space for yoga, pilates and dance. You can pose your questions to Lisa by e-mailing her at: lisa@cedarandfir.com.
Dear Sitting Still: Most Americans consider asana, the physical postures, to be yoga. But asana is just one of the limbs of yoga. In fact, of Patanjali's eight limbs of yoga, four would fall under the broad category meditation: Pranayama (breathing exercises); Pratyahara (control of the senses) Dharana (concentration), and Dhyana (meditation). These meditation practices are essential steps towards the yogic goal of overcoming suffering and leading a life resonant with meaning and purpose.
Asana is usually taught as a preliminary step toward sitting meditation. While Asana is a physical exercise, it is also a movement meditation and a flowing prayer. Asana increases strength, flexibility, balance and grace and the mind is trained to connect with the flow of the body and breath. This practice develops a mind-body connection that 'stills the fluctuations of the mind' so that the body can literally sit still for meditation.
Meditation practice deepens the focal power of the mind, a very useful skill. The ability to 'still mental fluctuations' allows us to live, work and accomplish our goals with less stress and less effort. We can actively relax when faced with stressful situations and let go of situations beyond our control. Stress hormones are reduced and the multitude of illnesses related to stress are abated. As the practitioner gains control of body and breath, health, vibrancy and physical well being are increased.
Continued practice of asana and meditation helps us to naturally give up unhealthy life style choices. Our natural state of being gives us deep pleasure reducing our dependence on external stimuli and this facilitates the journey of overcoming compulsions and addictions. Both our mental and physical improves and we experience a sense of freedom.
There are many great places to learn asana and meditation in Corvallis: yoga studios, athletic centers, gyms OSU and LBCC. For those ready to go deeper, Cedar and Fir Studio hosts Satsang (pranayama, chanting, and meditation) on the third Sunday of each month from 10:30a to noon (by donation). The next Satsang will happen on March 16th.
Namaste,
Yogini Lisa
Lisa Wells is the owner of Cedar and Fir Studio, a space for yoga, pilates and dance. You can pose your questions to Lisa by e-mailing her at: lisa@cedarandfir.com.
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