Yoga Tip Tuesdays: Sage Balance II (Eka Pada Koundinyasana 2)

This week's yoga tip is a about a challenging arm-balancing posture, eka pada koundinyasana 2 (one-legged sage pose 2), EPK2 for short! This pose often follows Lizard Pose in more challenging vinyasa classes, and for those of you who are comfortable in Lizard and want to challenge yourselves a bit more, the preparatory steps towards EPK2 are a great way to explore your boundaries and push out of your comfort zone a little.

Before you start working on this pose, make sure that you have warmed up the hips, hamstrings and upper body. You'll need a nice strong chaturanga to take the full balance, but if you are still working on that, the preparatory postures are good at building strength, too!

Remember if you are just starting to work on this pose to take it easy! There's no rush. You may play with each step in the process for weeks or even months at a time. Take each challenge as it comes, be patient with yourself, and be consistent, and you will see results in time. As a guideline, you should aim to be able to hold each step comfortably for up to a minute before progressing to the next step.

Start by taking a long, deep Lizard Pose on each side to warm up. Then come back into Lizard pose on the first side.

• If you can get your elbows to the floor in Lizard, begin by walking your elbows back as far as you can. If you can't get your elbows quite there, then walk your hands back. Either way, you should end up with your arms in chaturanga.

• As you bring your arms into chaturanga, one arm will come into contact with the back of your leg (in the photos below, the left arm and left leg) and the weight of the leg will start to transfer to your upper arm. This contact point is really important so play around with it until it feels comfortable. As a general rule, you can't to get the contact point as high on your upper arm as you can. (2nd picture, below)

• Once you feel comfortable, begin to walk your front toes forward and out on a diagonal. You'll feel more of the weight of the leg transferring onto your upper arm. At this point stop and make sure your body is properly supported: squeeze your upper arms towards the midline and press strongly through the pads of the fingers, lift from the core (like in plank pose), and strongly engaging the back leg and heel.

• Now we're going to try and straighten the front leg. To support yourself in this half-balance, you'll need to drop into a strong chaturanga. At this point I find it helpful to turn my head and look towards my toes: this helps me focus my efforts on what I'm doing!

• Next, extend strongly through the front thigh and begin to straightening the front leg. Really think about lengthening, not about lifting: by virtue of extending, your toes will eventually lift off the ground.

• Once you can get the toes off, refine the posture: flex or "floint" the front toes, keep the back leg super-engaged, and see if you can come up onto tiptoes on the back foot. When you can get the back foot high, high on tiptoes, then you're ready to try the next stage.

• Think of the body as a seesaw, with your elbows as the centre. The easiest way to get the back toes up, is for the weight of your front body to move forward and down. So this critical stage is mostly about pivoting your weight forward until your back toes can't help but lift off. Keeping the front leg strongly engaged and extending will help you bring your weight forward without collapsing onto the mat.

• When you're just getting started with this pose, it can help to take tiny 'hops' to lift the toes off the ground. Keep in mind though that these hops should be really tiny and that the main "work" of this stage is shifting your weight forward enough so that the back leg becomes light. I also find that it really helps to turn your head to the side here. This eliminates any risk of nose-squash if something goes wrong and helps keep your focus on your front leg, which needs to stay really strongly extending through this step.

• Once you have a bit of lift-off,  keep the forward leg strongly engaged, keep squeezing in through the upper arms, and keep lifting from the core. It's hard work!!

• Over time, refine the pose by trying to find a more even distribution of weight, lifting the chest away from the floor, extending from the breastbone, and bringing your gaze forward.

• PS: I've included a picture of the other side here, because when I was first starting out with this pose I couldn't figure out what to do with my other arm. In fact when I first played with this pose, I used to cheat by sneaking that free elbow underneath my hip. I don't discourage this little 'cheat' if you are just trying to get a feel for the pose, but in the full pose the elbow is free and hugging strongly into your side. Squeeze as if your life depended on it!! (Note how you can really see that this is my weaker shoulder from the photos!)

I hope this was helpful! Readers, are there any poses that you'd like to see on this blog?

In search of a balanced practice, and why the Ashtanga Primary series isn't one (for me)

There's a discussion going on over at the Confluence Countdown about "holding students back" in the Ashtanga system. The blogger, Bobbie, makes some very interesting points about the system from a philosophical / psychological perspective, the discussion of which I'll leave to her blog. I'm outta that relationship, remember? ;)

What is interesting to me is the question of whether it's good for students to practice exclusively the primary series for too long. Bobbie and many of the commenters come to the same conclusion that I did, that practicing exclusively the primary series for years on end does not give your body a healthy or balanced practice. And since the system seems to have developed rules over the years about when/how students are "given" (I agree with Bobbie, I also dislike that word!) the next pose or series, e.g. being able to bind in Marichyasana D or being able to stand up from and drop back to Urdvha Dhanurasana, many students find themselves practicing primary for years.  Many, like myself, don't have regular access to a teacher who can "give" them the next pose or teach them 2nd series. Nonetheless, we are told not to do other yoga, to "pick a system and stick with it," that doing other yoga will somehow dilute the transformational power of the practice.

Bobbie and many commenters on the post feel what I felt, deep inside my body, and what led me to "break up" with Ashtanga and start practising other poses - that the primary series is not, IN ITSELF, a balanced practice. And quite possibley it wasn't intended to be that way, but that is another conversation. In any case it's good to hear that many of the senior teachers seem to agree.

Essentially the points made in the post and the comments, which may not be experienced by everyone, but which me and my body agree with wholeheartedly after practicing Primary for 3 years:

[NB: In response to a comment left on the blog, I realised that my original post used language that was a bit too absolute, so I've edited the original wording a bit to emphasise that what I'm talking about is relativity within the sequence. I've also added some more anatomical precision.]

• Primary has a relatively greater emphasis on forward bending, stretching the muscles of the  back (in particular the erectors spinae and the quadratus lumborum) more often than it strengthens them (one of the best poses for that is shalabasana). In some people, an overemphasis on forward bending can be destabilising for the SI joint. Sciatica or SI pain, anyone?
• It develops relatively more upper front-body strength (pec minors) without developing the corresponding upper back-body strength (rhomboids and rotator cuffs). My yoga therapy teacher believes that this is why many Ashtangis (and others who practice vinyasa-based yoga) develop shoulder injuries, because those crucial muscles that stabilise the shoulder blades can become relatively weaker on the back than the front. Another effect of this is that the front body, especially the front of the shoulders, while getting very strong, may become tight and "closed", as there are relatively fewer poses to open it up (the best stretches for here are back-bends with the arms extended behind the body, e.g. purvottanasana, ustrasana, shalabasana, dhanurasana).
• While Primary certainly stretches the hamstrings, it doesn't provide space for deep hip-opening in certain directions. There is a lot of external rotation and flexion of the hip joint, but relatively little extension or internal rotation. The sequence also strengthens the psoas, the quads and the external rotators of the hip (the glutes, the piriformis) relatively more than it stretches them. These muscles are key muscles for postural stability and the health of your spine, and balanced hip-opening (internal and external) is important for maintaining the safety of the knees and the lower back.

Since I stopped practicing Primary about 6 months ago and moved to a more balanced practice, I am feeling my body in a whole new way. Most noticeable is that my back body is much stronger as a result of the targeted postures I have been doing, and this has significantly reduced the shoulder pain I used to often experience (which was also related to my scoliosis). This has also made my posture better and I've made some progress towards reversing the forward-hunch that my shoulders had developed through a combination of too much computer time and too much emphasis on forward-body strengthening (in particular the pec minors). No thanks, kyphosis, not for me!

The moral of the story, for me at least?

• Listen to your body and think about finding balance in your long-term yoga practice. 
• If you stretch a muscle, strengthen it. It doesn't have to be the same day, but overall!
• If you stretch/strengthen somewhere, be sure to also stretch/strengthen its opposite (antagonist).
• If you feel like your body is imbalanced from a practice you are doing (chronic pain or recurring injuries are a good sign), listen to those feelings and find a teacher or yoga therapist who will help you identify what's going on.

And above all, remember, it's only asana!

The cracks in everything

Source

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen

This quote has been making the rounds lately, and it hasn't gone unnoticed by me.  The ever-inspiring Marianne Elliott blogged about it here, and it has been sticking in my brain since then.


Here's the thing.  The only thing that never changes is that everything changes.  (My 10th grade English teacher would be so proud!)  But as with all transformation, life doesn't happen in clean, straight lines.  Things change rapidly for a while, and then plateau.  (Nothing on top but a bucket and a mop...)


On the plateau, the ground is firm beneath you.  The world solidifies, and everything goes along as normal.  Days, weeks, months, years.  And then suddenly, something changes, and the cracks start to appear.  Everything we thought we could hold on to subtly shifts, and we have to adapt, or fall through the cracks.


The practice of yoga can help us to learn, by observation, how we personally react to change or challenge.  As you strain to keep your breath steady in a Warrior sequence, or as you struggle to stay sane in Reclining Pigeon pose, you are learning about how your body and your mind react to tough situations.  Whether you lash out, or curl inwards.  Whether you view transformation as doors closing or doors opening.  Whether you steam forth without looking or creep cautiously into unknown waters.


Experience gives us hope, for in the end, when the Earth has settled down and you find yourself on a new plateau, the Universe re-balances itself.  You find equilibrium in new circumstances.  Where only cracks stood before, light shines through.


Readers, what have you learned about how you react to change or challenge?