Blog Archives

Natarajasana, the Dancer Pose

1/31/2016

Shiva Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance. Tamil Nadu, ca. 990, bronze. Freer Gallery, Washington DC "Shiva-nataraja" by I, TomR. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons

The Dance is life.

Shiva is the Lord of the Dance, of Destruction, Transformation, and Yoga. He spends his days on Mount Kailash deep in meditation, only drawn into the world by his love for the goddess.

In Tantra and Hatha Yoga, Shiva is pure consciousness. In the microcosm of the human form, he abides in the crown chakra, the sahasrara or thousand petaled lotus. The goddess, in her form as the Kundalini-Shakti, is the creative force of the material world. In the body, she sleeps at the base of the spine.

Our intention in Yoga is to awaken her. When she is free from her dormancy, like lightning she travels up the spine (the world pole or axis mundi on the individual scale) to reunite with Shiva—bringing together earth and heaven, matter and mind, lower and higher, and we realize that we are living incarnations of the Truth that All is One.

Two Dancers
There are two versions of natarajasana. We will start with the one seen less often these days, found in the occasional old-school class and in James Hewitt’s Complete Yoga Book (1977).

It is in imitation of the posture assumed by Shiva at the finale of his Ananda-Tandava, his Dance of Bliss. (For the full story scroll down on this page about my tattoos.) Standing on a demon, who represents our ignorance of our own divinity, Shiva’s right leg is firmly planted and gracefully bent. His left foot is circling precariously in space, moving toward the right which symbolizes the path of the seeker from the material to the Sacred. His right palm is raised in abhaya mudra, meaning do not fear. And his left hand is angled down in a gesture of grace.

The second version is the one we see more often. It was made iconic by gracing the cover of Iyengar’s Light on Yoga (1966). More than drawing from Yoga’s past, this shape rises out of Yoga’s rebirth at the turn of the 20th century. Demanding balance, strength, flexibility, and concentration, it is an elegant example of the blending of asana and gymnastics that informed the creation of modern postural yoga.

This natarajasana has a number of variations.

To begin, a standing quad stretch is all it takes. Balance on one leg and bring the other foot up toward your seat. Take the same-side hand back to the foot. Bringing the hand to the outside fo the foot for a gentler variation or to the arch if you know you'll be taking the posture further.
For those who need help balancing, a hand or finger on a wall or chair will usually suffice. A strap can be used around the ankle of the lifted foot if reach is an issue.
From quad stretch, take the free arm forward, parallel to the ground, and begin to press the lifted foot into the hand. This action will initiate a back bend.
Two options present themselves at this point. One is to keep the upper body as upright as possible, as in Iyengar’s version. The other is to tilt forward, bringing the abdomen parallel to the floor. In Hewitt’s book, he calls this Toppled Tree.
Finally, for those bodies with sufficient strength and flexibility, the index fingers of hands wrap around the big toe of the lifted foot in an overhead grasp and eventually bring the foot to the back of the head.

The benefits of natarajasana are the same as those for all one-legged balance postures.

Increased foot, leg, core, and side muscle strength
Increased proprioception and balance
Encourages bone strength in standing leg
Builds concentration

In addition, the second version of dancer increases flexibility by stretching the shoulders, spine, chest, abdomen, and the quadriceps of the lifted leg.

The benefits of the first version have to be experienced for themselves. A powerful practice in Tantra Yoga is to identify with a deity through meditation. Natarajasana is one of the rare postures where we practice this with our whole selves, body and mind.

In dancer pose, we become the outward manifestation of the Sacred that inwardly we always already are.

Update: Teacher Training, Upcoming New Classes

1/28/2016

Dear friends and yogis,
I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy. I promised many of you an update by the end of January and here we are! As many of you know, I was dealing with some medical issues at the end of 2015, and I am happy to report that I am fully recovered and looking forward to a slew of exciting developments.

Modern Mystic Yoga Teacher Training in the Spring

I am honored to be co-leading another 200 hour teacher training with Tamara Lee Standard starting on the weekend of the Spring equinox, 18-20 March 2016.
Our trainings are Yoga Alliance certified and provide both a sound foundation in the anatomy, alignment, and therapeutic benefits of asana, as well as an experiential exploration of the yogic lifestyle and deeper spiritual development systems of Yoga.
Tamara and I offer small classes and individualized attention so we can help you develop and deepen your own practice and prepare to teach your chosen population.
If you are interested in this kind of work, please let me know soon and I’ll send you more information. Needless to say, space is limited.

New classes
Beginning in March I will have three new weekly classes, all at Modern Mystic Yoga Academy (around back of Straight to the Point on the NE corner of Grant and Campbell, 1927 E Grant Rd).

Gentle Yoga for Every Body: Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9:30 – 10:45. $5
Yoga to Ease Anxiety: Wednesday evenings from 5:30 – 6:45. $7 (pricing is subject to change)
Pranayama and Meditation: Wednesday evenings from 7:00 – 7:30. By donation.

Other cool stuff

I am busy writing away on my next book, tentatively titled From the Vedas to Vinyasa: an Informal Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Yoga. The rough draft is almost done, and then the real work begins!
Soul Expansion in Bisbee with Lance Israel continues to be a monthly treat for me.
I also continue to work with Spiritual Gansta Yoga (SGY). We will be celebrating SGY’s two year anniversary this Saturday, 30 January, at 3:00 p.m. at the Hop Shop (3230 N. Dodge Blvd. Tucson) with a free yoga class led by Kelsey Erickson. Come help us celebrate!
My free classes at Bookmans Sports, Mondays at 10:00 a.m. and Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. are thriving. It might not be the best atmosphere for deep meditation, but it’s light hearted and fun with a comfortable sense of community.
And finally, I look forward to guest teaching at the Mystic Warrior teacher training this summer in Sacramento and the Yoga Therapy College teacher training at Pima College here in Tucson in the fall.

Gosh, that seems like enough! If you have any questions, you can reach me at this email address (yogatoeaseanxiety@gmail.com) or, better yet, just show up to a class!

OM, shanti, shanti, shanti.
May we find peace in our hearts,
peace in our minds,
and peace surrounding us.

Amy

Dhanurasana - Bow Pose

1/24/2016

Take, my friend, this bow,
This great weapon of upaniṣad [secret teaching];
Place veneration on it
As the whetted arrow;
Stretch it with the thought fixed on the nature of that;
That very imperishable is the target, my friend.
Strike it!

The bow is OṂ, the arrow’s the self,
The target is brahman, they say.
One must strike that undistracted.
He must be lodged in that.
Like the arrow, in the target.

From the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, 2.2.3-4.
Trans. Patrick Olivelle

History

The bow is an important symbol in Yoga. It represents the effort of the seeker for enlightenment. So it's not surprising that dhanurasana or bow pose was among the first ever Hatha Yoga āsana recorded.

From the Hatha Yoga Pradipika:
"Having caught the toes of the feet with both the hands and carried them to the ears by drawing the body like a bow, it becomes Dhanura âsana."

And the Gheranda Samhita:
"Spreading the legs on the ground, straight like a stick, and catching hold of (the toes of) the feet with the hands, and making the body bent like a bow, is called by the Yogis the Dhanurâsana or Bow-posture."

Variations

Now days, there are a whole bunch of variations of dhanurasana. James Hewitt lists them in his Complete Yoga Book (1978):

Bow I – the traditional posture, pictured above, catching the ankles.
Bow II – bring your arms overhead and grab the toes of each foot, bringing the feet close to or onto the top of the head.
Bow III – from Bow II, bring your feet to rest on your shoulder blades.
Bow IV – beginning with your palms against the tops of your toes, first bring your feet toward your seat, then move them to the outside of your hips. This is much more of a leg stretch than a back bend. Iyengar calls this bhekāsana or mandūkāsana (both of which mean frog posture).
Bow V – bring one foot to the side of the hip and the other to the top of the head or shoulder blade.
Bow VI – grab one foot with an overhead reach and keep the other arm and leg extended. This is often called half bow pose.
Bow VII – grab one foot reaching back for the ankle, extend the opposite arm and leg, and then lift the extended limbs.

Another variation is parsva dhanurasana or side bow pose, where from bow I, you roll onto one side, pause there, and then roll back to center and to the other side.

Considerations

When just beginning

A strap around the ankles can make this pose accessible for those with less flexible spines or shoulders.
One great piece of advice that comes from many sources is to begin with the knees wide, lift, and then work to bring the legs closer together.
Work to lift the pelvis and the ribs. When this is accomplished, experiment with the addition of rocking forward and back. Let the movement of your breath facilitate the rocking.

Who shouldn’t Bow?

Pregnant women. (Lovers of the obvious, you’re welcome!)
People with high blood pressure should not strain in this (or any) pose.
Those experiencing low back, neck, or shoulder pain ought to stick with half bow or find an alternate back bend.

Benefits

Increases shoulder, spine, and hip joint flexibility
Strengthens back muscles
Increases circulation
Is a heart opener and a stretch to the whole front side of the body
Is energizing. Just as folding forward helps us slow down, opening up the front side of the body increases our alertness. This has both evolutionary and physiological explanations.
- First, we are ridiculously weak skinned creatures. Any time the whole front side of the body is stretched open, we might as well be wearing our organs on the outside. There is no skeletal protection. Maintenance of the species requires what we call “heart openers” to trigger alertness.
- Deep back bends squeeze the adrenal glands that sit on top of our kidneys, basically juicing them and releasing adrenaline into our blood stream.

Taking Aim

The bow is above all things a weapon. Arjuna, the great archer of the Pandava brother, was taught by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita that the real aim of all effort is internal, the struggle to release our attachment to the petty pulls of the ego and realize our shared divinity in the Sacred. Whether bow comes easily to you or not, whether you have to use two straps and a hoist or you delight in contorting through all the variations listed above and more, the real work is in recognizing that what your body is doing is not the key to growth. What your mind is doing, that's the key.

"Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do. When consciousness is unified, however, all vain anxiety is left behind. There is no cause for worry, whether things go well or ill. Therefore, devote yourself to the discipline of yoga, for yoga is skill in action."

From the Bhagavad Gita, 2:49-50
Trans. Eknath Easwaran

Setu Bandhasana, a.k.a. Bridge Pose

1/16/2016

"Shoulder pose" by Satheesan.vn - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

You know bridge pose. You start on your back. Bend your knees, and bring your feet to the floor. Tuck your tail to lift your hips and roll the spine up off the mat, from your sacrum to your thoracic (upper back). From here, maybe you wriggle your shoulders underneath you, bring your hands together and interlace your fingers under your seat.

If your hips are really high, you might bend your arms at the elbows and bring your hands to your low back. If you do this, make sure you have your hands just like in shoulder stand, with the thumbs out. Having the thumbs in puts them in a vulnerable position.

From here you keep your chin tucked just slightly into jalandhara bandha (chin lock) to extend the back of your neck. Then, keep pressing down through your feet, arms, and shoulders while you continue to lift your hips and press gently forward through your knees.

Eventually, and you may not believe me now but I promise it is true, this pose can be restful. It’s strengthening to the back, abdominals, and legs. It increases flexibility in the neck and chest. And it’s an inversion, raising the heart above the head, so it has all the benefits I talked about last week that go along with that.

Coming out of Setu Bandhasana needs to be as slow and mindful as getting in to it. Take each piece in reverse. Release your hands; wriggle your shoulders out; role the spine down from the upper back to the sacrum taking the time to feel the articulation of your spine; extend your legs. Stretch lengthwise and maybe twist if that feels right, and then come into knee-to-chest (Apanasana) and rock around.

History of Setu Bandhasana

If you were to look up Setu Bandhasana in Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, you would see something that looks like an extreme fish pose. The yogi is in a strong backbend, facing upwards with the top of his head on the mat and the rest of his body making a single, long curve up through the neck and upper back and back down again through his lower back and straight legs, to touch the mat only with his heels. His arms are crossed in front of his chest. This variation of bridge pose is still used today in Ashtanga Yoga. In an easier version the back of the yogi’s head, neck, and shoulders are on the floor beginning the curve up at the upper back and coming back down from the waist with the legs still extended. His elbows are on the floor and hands on his back like in shoulder stand.

That might not be what we're used to, but you have to admit, it makes a lot more sense for it to be called "bridge."

In Sivananda Yoga, when you look up Setu Bandhasana, you find instead Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, a pose that comes after Sarvangasana (shoulder stand) and Halasana (plow) and leads into Matsyasana (fish). From shoulder stand, you bring your feet down one at a time, into what most Hatha Yoga teachers now call bridge pose, then walk the feet out into what looks just like the easier version of Iyengar's Setu Bandhasana above. This is one of my favorite sequences in Sivananda.

Setu Bandhasana is not an old pose. It comes from the merging of Hatha Yoga with various fields of physical culture in the early 20th century. The fact that it has been modified over time to accommodate less flexible and strong bodies only shows that Yoga is not a static discipline.

Even within the last ten years there’s been a change in the way we teach bridge pose. It used to be taught that we should start with the heels as close to the seat as possible with the goal of grasping the heels or ankles once the hips were raised. That is what she’s doing in the photo at the top of this post. Look at her knees. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on the tendons and ligaments of the knees in this position, with the knees in front of the ankles.

For safety, it’s now recommended that the heels be directly under the knees, just like in warrior poses, to avoid that strain.

With Props

There are a couple of nice ways to use props with bridge pose. To help establish the right distance between the legs, since a lot of people tend to splay their feet and end up with their knees moving away from each other rather than their inner thighs spiraling inward, you can place a block between the thighs. Watch it with this, though. If the student has big thighs, the standard four inch block might be too wide and actually cause misalignment. It does for me.

Another variation, one which turns bridge into a restorative pose, is to use a block under the sacrum. Then experiment with extending one leg at a time or both. This brings the body into a supported version of the Sivananda style bridge. Bridge is said to help with digestion, and in this position you can see why.

Maybe our bridges don’t look so much like bridges anymore. But they truly are bridges to a better life, strengthening and lengthening the spine to help us into more comfortable, longer, and deeper meditation sessions. The first Hatha yogis developed the asana so the physical body would be strong enough to endure the spiritual awakening of the Kundalini. Bridge might not be an ancient posture, but it’s certainly a useful one, whatever your goal.

Ardha Pīnchā Mayūrāsana, a.k.a. Dolphin

1/9/2016

Ardha pīnchā mayūrāsana, half peacock pose, or as it is more often called, dolphin, can be used for many purposes. In any case, you begin by kneeling. Then, bending forward, bring your forearms to the mat with your elbows no wider than your shoulders. Traditionally palms are flat but you’ll often see hands in anjali mudra or fingers interlaced these days.

From this position, on forearms and knees, curl your toes under so that the balls of your feet are on the mat and then lift your hips, as if you were going into downward facing dog (adho mukha svanasana). In fact, dolphin can be a useful variation of downward facing dog, if you have sore or injured wrists.

From this position, many use dolphin as a core strengthener by pivoting between the high hip position to forearm plank and back. The distance between your feet and your elbows will depend on the length of your body’s extension in the plank position. You want to be able to come into a straight line from your head, through your shoulders, hips, and legs. This movement is probably how dolphin got its English name, since this replicates how dolphins move in the water. Using dolphin this way strengthens not just the core but shoulders and legs as well.

"Yoga Scopion 2" by lululemon athletica - Flickr: Yoga Journal Conference. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The other purpose dolphin can serve is as a preparation pose for forearm balance, also called peacock pose (pīnchā mayūrāsana). In peacock pose, the torso and legs are extended vertically while the body is balanced on the forearms. Peacock pose is old. It’s in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (14th century) and Gheranda Samhita (17th century).

Scorpion pose (vṛscikasana) is closely related. From peacock pose, the yogi moves into a backbend, eventually placing the soles of their feet on the back of their head. Scorpion is described in the Hatharatnavali (also 17th century).

To use dolphin as a forearm balance preparation pose, walk your feet in toward your elbows as far as you can, lifting your hips and bringing your torso as vertical as possible. From this position, experiment with raising one leg at a time, eventually bringing both legs up. You’ll want to do this at the wall to start, to avoid over-rotating which could lead to neck or back injuries.

Dolphin is a strong pose. Make sure you’ve warmed up adequately before moving into it. And not just your shoulders and back, which are obvious, but your hamstrings and calves which get a mighty stretch here, too.

The benefits of dolphin, besides the strength and the stretch, include all the benefits of inversions. It’s good for your vascular system because it challenges the normal flow of blood against gravity; it helps your immune system by moving the lymphatic fluid along; it benefits your bones by giving your arms some weight-bearing exercise; and it's a mood lifter, because it’s really hard to go upside down and stay depressed or really even serious.

The ancient yogis named poses after animals because they shared their environment. Now days, we can use the animal names and characteristics of poses to remember our connection with Nature and the interconnectedness of all life. And maybe we can use dolphin to emulate the playful, friendly disposition of these beautiful, intelligent, endangered creatures.

Dolphin playing in the wake of a boat. "Tursiops truncatus 01-cropped" by NASA - http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=21807. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

Padmasana

1/3/2016

“Now, here [in the heart] in this fort of brahman there is a small lotus, a dwelling-place, and within it, a small space. In that space there is something—and that’s what you should try to discover, that’s what you should seek to perceive.”
Chandogya Upanishad 8:1, trans. Patrick Olivelle

"Sacred lotus Nelumbo nucifera" by T.Voekler - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The lotus represents enlightenment in both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. It grows in swampy, mucky places, where its roots burrow down through the mud and its strong leaves keep the petals dry.

Lotus pose, padmasana, is one of the earliest asana. It’s one of only four poses that are mentioned in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Siva Samhita, and the Gheranda Samhita. It’s cherished for its stability; because the pelvis is neutral, the spine can maintain maximum axial extension. In other words, we can sit up nice and tall, clearing the path for prana to flow through the central nadis.

Lahiri Mahasaya, guru of Paramahansa Yogananda's guru, in padmasana

The ability to sit for long stretches of time in study, concentration, and meditation is a vital part of Yoga. In American Yoga (for lack of a better term), padmasana has sometimes been seen as an achievement that must be accomplished to make real spiritual progress.

But many American bodies are unable to enter padmasana without strain or even injury. And of those who can, the duration before the tingles start (from compressed nerves or restricted blood vessels) may be short.

Luckily, there are other sitting postures that permit the spine to extend axially and prana to flow freely. Easy pose (sukhasana), adept’s pose (siddhasana), or even sitting upright in a chair will work just as well for long periods of inner practice.

Working up to padmasana is itself a practice in patience. Take it easy; never force knees or hips, only invite them to comply. Use blankets or other props if they increase your comfort. And remember that padmasana is an asymmetrical pose, so you have to do both sides. In other words, make sure to spend equal time with the right leg on top as with the left.

And keep in mind that being able to sit in lotus pose is not the goal. Being able to accept your body as it is, to quiet your mind, and to rest in stillness—those are the real goals.