Rox Does Yoga

Pose Name: Head-to-Knee Pose (also known as Pyramid Pose or Intense Side Stretch Pose)

Sanskrit Name: Parshvottanasana

Steps:

1. Begin in a wide-legged stance. Turn your right toes forward to face the top of your mat; place your left foot at a 45 to 60 degree angle, and turn your hips to face front. (This is the same basic stance as Warrior I Pose.)
2. Reach your arms up overhead and stretch. Fold forward, bringing your fingertips to rest on the floor on either side of your front leg. (Less flexible students can place their hands on a pair of blocks if they can’t quite touch the floor; more advanced students can bring their hands into reverse prayer behind their backs before bending forward, or can simply cross the arms behind the back and grasp opposite elbows if reverse prayer is too much.)
3. Keep the back leg straight and firm. Work on straightening the front leg. If you can’t quite get the front leg straight, it’s okay to bend it slightly.
4. At first, keep the torso parallel to the floor. Then, if you have the flexibility, you can bend further while keeping the hips aligned and the spine straight.
5. Although this is called “Head to Knee” pose, don’t focus on trying to bring your head to your knee. Instead, work on bringing your chin toward your shin – this will help to keep you aligned properly.
6. Check in with your torso alignment: the midline of the torso should be above the line of the inner thigh. More flexible students can rotate to bring the midline of the torso over the midline of the thigh.
7. Keep breathing. Work on lengthening the spine as you inhale and folding deeper on your exhales.
8. Press strongly through the back leg to return to standing. Rise up slowly to avoid getting dizzy. Repeat the pose on the other side.

Benefits:

Head-to-knee pose really stretches out the front leg, which is great when the backs of the knees or calves are tight. The pose also stretches the spine, improves posture and balance, and stimulates the abdominal organs.

Contraindications:

Those with knee injuries may want to avoid this pose. Those with a back injury or high blood pressure can try a modified form of the pose: practice facing a wall, and instead of bending all the way forward, bend just enough so that the torso is parallel to the floor and then press your palms into the wall for support.

My Experience with Head-to-Knee Pose:

I never practiced this pose before coming to my current yoga studio, and I’ve struggled for a long time to figure out exactly what should be going on in this pose – which way are the hips facing? Should I feel so uncomfortable in this pose; am I doing it right? It seems like such a simple pose, but I continue to struggle with it. After working on asanas during October’s teacher training weekend, I understood this pose better, but I still feel some confusion when I try to teach it, so I wanted to spend a little more time learning about this pose.

Pose Name: Downward-Facing Dog

Sanskrit Name: Adho Mukha Svanasana

Steps:

Downward dog is usually done as part of a sun salutation sequence – the instructions here tell how to get into the pose on its own.

1. Begin on hands and knees, with a neutral spine and knees directly below the hips.
2. Curl the toes under. Exhaling, pressing into the hands and balls of the feet, lift the knees off the floor and press the hips into the air.
3. Lengthen your tailbone away from the back of your pelvis, and lift the sitting bones toward the ceiling. Lengthen the spine; lengthen the waist.
4. Check in with your body. The back and legs should be straight, as if you’re forming a big triangle with your body: straight lines from hip to heel and from head to tailbone. Knees are straight, but don’t lock them; let them be soft.
5. The feet should be hip-width apart, with the weight on the balls of the feet. Press your heels down towards the floor, stretching the backs of the calves.
6. Your hands should be shoulder-width apart, with fingers spread wide. Press your weight down through your whole hand, not just your palm, so the whole hand is active. However, rather than pressing the whole hand completely flat, give yourself a little bend through your finger knuckles – this will give you a little more leverage. Make sure your weight is balanced between hands and feet so your feet aren’t taking the whole load.
7. Extend strongly through the arms so that your elbows are straight. Stretch and press through your inner arms, gently revolving your elbow creases forward. You don’t want a deep bend at the wrist, so take a look and see if you have a crease on the top of the wrist, and if you do, press back more strongly.
8. Stretch and open the shoulder blades, drawing them toward the tailbone.
9. Hold here for five long, deep, even breaths, or longer if you feel comfortable.
10. To come out, drop your knees to the floor to return to a neutral tabletop pose. Or you can walk your feet up to your hands to come into a standing forward fold.

Benefits:

Downward dog is an important core posture in yoga. It stretches and strengthens the entire body. Down dog warms and energizes the body, calms the brain, and relieves stress.

Contraindications:

Those with carpal tunnel syndrome or other wrist problems may have difficulty and pain in downward dog and should consider dolphin pose instead. Downward dog should not be practiced in the late stages of pregnancy.

My Experience with Downward Dog:

I’ve practiced yoga for almost nine years, so I do downward dog all the time. Recently one of my students asked for some guidance on down dog, and it was difficult for me to respond helpfully because this pose is so automatic for me now. As we talked together about the pose, I realized I didn’t have all the answers to her questions (tilt of the pelvis? orientation of the elbows?), so I wanted to look into the pose more closely to better understand the alignment and what’s going on. As my student pointed out, we do downward dog all the time, but we rarely look at exactly what we’re doing in this pose, and yoga teachers don’t usually give detailed instructions on doing the pose, assuming that any non-beginners understand it already. It was good to look more closely at this pose so that I can guide students with different body types into practicing the pose correctly.

Yoga Journal has some nice videos about performing downward-facing dog, which you can view here and here.

Pose Name:

Legs Up The Wall

Sanskrit Name:

none

Steps:

1. Move your mat to be perpendicular to a wall. Lie on your back on the mat.
2. Draw your knees in and drop your legs over to one side.
3. Skootch your tush up as close to the wall as you can.
4. Lift and extend your legs, letting the backs of the legs rest against the wall.
5. Rest your arms flat on the floor. Close your eyes. Relax here for a few minutes, letting the breath grow deep and even.
6. To come out, drop the legs off to one side and skootch backwards until you’re able to roll up to a seated position.

Benefits:

This relaxing pose bestows the benefits of any inverted pose – inversions alter the flow of blood in the body, calming the mind, helping with depression, and stimulating the thyroid gland. Placing the body in an inverted pose also works the internal organs and the abdomen, aiding digestion. However, legs-up-the-wall doesn’t require the strength or stamina needed for other inversions like headstand or shoulderstand. Most students can accomplish this pose.

Contraindications:

Inversions are contraindicated for headache and high blood pressure. Some sources say not to practice inversions while menstruating.

My Experience with Legs Up The Wall:

When I was taking vinyasa yoga classes, I had never heard of this pose, so I only began practicing it in the past few years. I love how relaxing the pose feels, how I’m able to let my mind rest. I also love the simplicity of it – I’m able to achieve this pose no matter how I feel that day. As a teacher, my only frustration with legs-up-the-wall is that my front porch doesn’t have enough wall space for all the students in my little class to be able to do this pose at once!

Pose Name:

Shoulderstand

Sanskrit Name:

Salamba Sarvangasana (“salamba” means “supported”; there are other forms of shoulderstand practiced without arm support)

Steps:

1. Begin by lying flat on your back on the mat. Bend your knees and walk your feet close to your sitting bones.
2. Pressing your arms into the mat, lift your legs, curling your thighs in to your chest and your knees toward your face, lifting your pelvis and back off the floor.
3. Shimmy your shoulders together underneath you. Place your palms against your back for support. Press your upper arms into the floor and lift the pelvis to be over the shoulders, so that the torso is perpendicular to the floor.
4. Try to work the elbows closer together so that the upper arms are parallel. As you lift, walk the hands up your back (towards the floor) – this will give you more support as you lift your hips. (It may help to put your palms against the skin of your back; if you find your hands slipping, try lifting your shirt and placing the hands against your skin.)
5. Begin to lift the legs into the air. Bring the thighs and finally the lower legs in line with the torso, so the whole body is a long, straight line perpendicular to the floor.
6. Find your balance here. Your weight should be in your upper arms, your shoulders, and a little on the back of your head – there should be no weight or pressure on the neck.
7. Press the legs together. Press the balls of the feet toward the ceiling. Activate your thighs, buttocks, and abdominal muscles to help hold you up.
8. Keep breathing. Keep the body active throughout the pose; press through the upper arms and keep the shoulders engaged.
9. To come down, gently lower the legs, bringing the knees down to rest on the forehead.
10. If you wish, take plow pose: lower your toes to the floor above and beyond your head, extending the legs and keeping the torso perpendicular to the floor. Clasp the hands behind your back and press the arms into the floor.
11. Coming out, keep your head resting on the floor and press your fingertips into the floor while you gradually roll out on a curved spine. Follow shoulderstand with fish pose as a counterpose.

Benefits:

Shoulderstand is known as the queen of yoga postures (headstand is the king). Inversions alter the flow of blood in the body; this can calm the mind, help with depression, and stimulate the thyroid gland. The muscle control needed to hold the body in an inverted pose works the internal organs and the abdomen, aiding digestion, and builds strength, toning the legs and buttocks. Shoulderstand, when done properly, stretches the neck (when not done properly, it can turn into neckstand, which hurts the neck, so care is needed!).

Contraindications:

Those with serious neck injuries should not practice shoulderstand, or should do so only under the supervision of an experienced instructor. Using a stack of folded blankets to support the shoulders will help those with neck problems to practice the pose.

Shoulderstand is contraindicated for headache and high blood pressure. Some sources say not to practice inversions while menstruating. If the student is experienced, shoulderstand can be practiced until late in pregnancy, but if you don’t already practice the pose, you shouldn’t begin practicing shoulderstand after becoming pregnant.

My Experience of Shoulderstand:

When I was a teenager, I didn’t have a phone in my room, so I always used the one in my parents’ room. The second floor of the house had been converted from an attic into bedrooms, so on one side of my parents’ room the ceiling slanted all the down to about two feet off the floor. As a teenage girl spending long hours on the phone, I sometimes got bored and would lie on the bed and walk my feet up the ceiling. So, when I attended my first yoga class years later, I had no trouble doing shoulderstand – it was just like talking on the phone in my mom’s room! Being a silly teenager had paid off for once; I’d been doing a supported shoulderstand for years and was comfortable with both the mechanics of the pose and with being upside down in general.

As I progressed through my yoga practice, my shoulderstand has improved even more, especially recently as I began paying close attention to the logistics of each pose with an eye to teaching. Now my husband says that my shoulderstand looks kind of freakish, like my head isn’t attached to my body, which I think means that I’m doing it right.

Unfortunately, not everyone grew up in my parents’ house, and for many people shoulderstand is really challenging. I’m discovering this firsthand by teaching a small weekly class at my home. Teaching shoulderstand for the first time was hard for me, and a few of my beginning students just couldn’t do it. One person will need to work on her core strength to make this pose achievable. I want to try teaching the pose with blankets for additional support, and I also want to teach some other inversions so that students who can’t manage shoulderstand yet will have some other options.

Back to my own practice, I really enjoy shoulderstand: how strong I feel in the pose, and the feeling of being upside down. For right now I am taking a break from doing headstand because of neck pain, so coming back to shoulderstand feels good and helpful.