Unit 9: Anatomy in Asana and...

Unit 9: Anatomy in Asana and Vinyasa

Topic Timestamp Page #

Uttanasana / Utkatasana: Workshop 00:00:38 1

Vinyasa: Workshop 00:18:40 5

Cat / Cow: Workshop 00:26:24 7

Ardha Matsyendrasana: Starting with the Breath 00:33:02 8

Ardha Matsyendrasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 00:38:16 10

Ardha Matsyendrasana: Discussion on “Detoxifying” 00:43:45 12

Sukhasana: Starting with the Breath 00:50:07 14

Sukhasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 00:55:02 15

Sukhasana: Workshop 01:00:21 16

Bhujangasana: Starting with the Breath 01:06:10 18

Bhujangasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 01:12:24 19

Bhujangasana: Workshop 01:16:47 20

Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Starting with the Breath 01:41:45 26

Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 01:48:17 28

Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Workshop 01:51:38 29

Setu Bandhasana: Starting with the Breath 01:54:56 30

Setu Bandhasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 02:00:38 31

Setu Bandhasana: Worskshop 02:05:19 32

Balasana: Starting with the Breath 02:20:07 36

Balasana: Joint & Muscle Actions 02:24:00 37

Balasana: Workshop 02:27:27 38

Topic Timestamp Page #


[Timestamp 00:00:00] Narrator: Welcome back to YogaAnatomy.net Fundamentals. This is Unit 9, Anatomy in Asana and Vinyasa. In this unit, we'll continue to move through our asana library with postures that are part of a floor practice, whether seated, kneeling, prone, or supine.

But before we dive in, we'll join Amy & Leslie for a special look at vinyasa, where breath and movement intersect.

[Timestamp 00:00:38] Uttanasana / Utkatasana: Workshop

Leslie: We're going to look at uttanasana, utkatasana, in a way that will emphasize different ways to focus on the act of lowering our body weight down over our standing legs and lifting our body weight up over our standing legs. You often see little tutorials or even charts in the workplace about proper lifting technique, right? You've probably all seen one of these at some point. It involves, don’t lift with your back with straight legs. Got to get the weight close to your center of gravity, bend your knees, use your leg strength to lift up the weight and keep it close to your centerline of gravity. That's basically what all of that advice about proper lifting technique boils down to. You don't see much in the way of workplace charts about proper lowering technique. The idea that gravity, for the most part, takes care of lowering things on its own. But in yoga we're doing just as much lowering as we are doing lifting. What I found is that the movements that we repeat the most are the ones that it's most beneficial to look at. If you can make even a tiny change in a movement that you do a thousand times in the course of a yoga practice, that adds up to a lot of change. Since these kinds of things are always happening in most forms of yoga repetitively, over and over, over the long course of time in a yoga practice, I think it would be a good idea to look at how they happen in a little more detail.

So let's start with the lowering down into uttanasana from a standing position. I'm going to demonstrate a few things and I'll ask you to join in. What's the most common strategy that we hear for protecting the lower back in these movements to keep strain out of the lower back?

Student: Bend the knees.

Leslie: Bend the knees?

Student: Use the abdominals.

Leslie: Arms out to the sides? In other words, shorten the length of this lever at the end of this fulcrum. Less weight being supported by the musculature, right?

Student: Use your abdominal muscles.

Leslie: Use your abdominal muscles. Is that also the front side of that piece of advice that also equals tuck your tail?

Student: Sometimes.

Student: It can be.

Leslie: It can be? Okay. So there's a bunch of ways in which, either implicitly or explicitly, we acknowledge that doing a lot of this could potentially by troublesome for the lower back. What about

YogaAnatomy.net Fundamentals—Unit 9: Anatomy in Asana and Vinyasa Page ! of !1 40


breathing? What about ujjayi? Is that often mentioned as a protective mechanism? See, I think that, actually, is one of the key things that kicks in almost instinctively, whether we're taught it or not.

So let me give you an exploration to do here. I'm going to ask you to stand up, and just do this simple movement. You can use whatever arm position you'd like, but I would like you to do it as slowly as you possibly can, while still keeping it in synch with your breath.

So it will be inhale, exhale, inhale and exhale. So the slowness of the movement will be the same length as your breath is able to be. So if you have a short breath, it will be a relatively quick movement. If you have a long breath, it will be a longer movement. Okay? So why don't you step to the front of your mat here, Diane. Okay. There you go. Let's see you just do it once. We'll see how that goes. Good. Then back up with the inhale. Good. Then arms down with the exhale. Beautiful.

So Valerie, you are showing us that variation. See, keep the weight center close to your center line of gravity. So your position was reflecting that concern for your lower back with where you sent your arms. Right? Okay.

So same exact exercise with one little change. When you get to about here, okay, whether your knees are straight or bent, I don't care, when you get to about here, stop doing ujjayi. It's the same exact exploration of the slowness and the length of the breath and all of that, with that one little change. Okay? Let's give that a try. Any arm position. Well, do the same one as you did before so you have a basis for comparison. Okay? Go ahead. Okay. (laughter) So what happened?

Student: Bleh.

Leslie: Bleh? Can you be more anatomically specific than bleh?

Student: I just lost all connection to support and the earth and my spine.

Leslie: Something went haywire.

Student: Yeah.

Leslie: You kept going at a slow speed, but what happened for you?

Student: The same thing, but you couldn't see it much. It was the same thing going on.

Leslie: Yeah, but you faked it quite beautifully.

Student: Yeah, of course. (laughter)

Leslie: Of course!

Student: I'm strong.

Leslie: But what did you need to do in your body in order to fake it, in order to keep descending at that same rate of speed? Did a bunch of—

Student: You do a lot of work on the muscles, so that the muscles…

Leslie: Where did the work shift to, though? Where did you feel the work shift to is the question, right? It's an interesting thing to ask yourself. I mean, you can feel it.



Student: I would have to do it again, yeah.

Leslie: Yeah. It's a lot of work. In general, what I found is that the ujjayi is like a valve. It creates a pressurized situation through your cavities. It stiffens the body. It creates more sthira in the body. More support along the front of the spine to have your breath under that control. So you don't need to teach someone ujjayi specifically if you ask them to do that exercise. You just say, "Breathe slow, long, even breaths with a slow, long, even movement.” Implicitly in that instruction is the suggestion that you find some way to narrow the air passageway to make the breath last that long, right? Sometimes when I teach this and I say, "Okay. Stop doing ujjayi.” They say, "Well, you never told us to do ujjayi in the first place.” I didn't have to. If you were moving that slowly you were doing something like ujjayi. But when it disappears, right, three things tend to happen. Okay. There's a freeze. It's, like, "Wait a minute. How do I undo this?” Right? Then there's the rag doll thing. That's actually wise. I advise you the next time, let that happen. Don't fight it. You've lost your support. Just go with it. The speed is going to change, right? But then you can kind of fake it. You lose the support, but you—the muscles that are going to have to kick in are back here. That's why we almost instinctively do that in the first place. We know our back muscles don't like all of that work. So we use our breath. It's the same instinct that makes us want to hold our breath when we're lifting a heavy weight. There's that (strained sound), right?

Weightlifters are trained to do this. It's called a Valsalva maneuver. It's a way of protecting their spine. They are actually trained to hold their breath, pressurize their torso and then lift, right?

Student: I thought it grabbed here too.

Leslie: Yeah. Grabbing happens when you do that, and it's usually in the posterior musculature, of course. As Amy would describe in terms of muscle action, all you've got is the eccentric action now on the back of your body that's resisting the pull of gravity as it's pulling it towards the floor. If you're going to go slower than gravity would pull it, something has got to modulate that movement, and it's going to be the muscles back here.

All right. So along with all those other things we may choose to do to protect ourselves, okay, the breath is a really important component.

[Timestamp 00:10:01]

Another thing is this idea that we should be holding our spine straight like a rigid beam in this movement, okay? Now, I know that's the way it's instructed in a lot of places. That instruction is made safer with the bandha, ujjayi breath thing that is often accompanying it. But another possibility would be, rather than holding the spine rigidly and having that hinging action mostly concentrated in the hip joints, would be to unfold articulating through the spine on the way down. Can you try it both ways and see if you can find the difference? So the first way is going to be, keep your spine elongated. Long, long, long, long, long, long, all the way down, or at least as far as you can. The other would be to maybe initiative that movement from the tail, through the lower spine, through the upper spine and have it end up through the neck and in the head. So try it both ways.

Student: Like a wave?

Leslie: Like a wave. Exactly. So there's the straight spine version. Good. Eventually the spine will have to come into flexion at a certain point, regardless of how flexible you are in your hamstrings. Right? Then the second way. Can you feel a wave where you're gradually letting the spine come into flexion from the



bottom towards the top as you fold down? So you're sort of redistributing the movement through a much greater number of joints on the way down. See when you wanted to send your arms backwards in order to do that, that was interesting, right? Your arms sort of naturally went back to facilitate that movement. So that's an alternative way to think of it. The breath can help with that too. Try that wave-like thing one more time, only start your exhale first and then do the movement. See if the exhale rising up from the lower belly lets you initiate that idea of flowing down through the spine. So this is another strategy that we use sometimes to facilitate that. That's it. Let the exhale start and then the movement flows down through the spine. There.

Okay. So that's a lot of attention on what happens on the way down. What about on the way back up? Well, I find that it's easier to find the lifting action from utkatasana at first with the knees bent. Because what that does is it puts a little bit more slack in the posterior musculature, okay? A little it more length in these muscles as opposed to when the leg is straight, and it gives us a little more ability to find the stable, solid, sthira base in the lower body that will translate into a freer, more articulating movement through the spine and breathing structures. Right?

So I'll demonstrate what I'm after here in utkatasana. In fact, I'm going to take the arms back here, which will help to clarify even more for me. At least, I feel it clarifies more the movement in the spine. What if I could feel almost like I'm doing a little baby cobra in my upper spine first. See how I"m getting this action to happen in my upper spine and neck and my arms are kind of reaching out and spiraling to help find it? Right? Notice how my lower spine hasn't done anything in the way of lifting. I'm thinking of keeping my belly pinned down to my upper thighs. By keeping this removing, I'm facilitating this being able to move. That's halfway. How do I get the rest of the way? What's the other part of proper lifting technique, other than keeping the weight close to your body? Use your legs. Not your lower back. How would that look? It would look like this. I stand up with my legs. It's really not that much more complicated.

How you feel your breath has a lot to do with this. Remember on the way down I asked you to sort of exhale with the belly in an upwards direction? Well, on the way up, think of inhaling from the top in a downward direction. That will usually help. So let's give that a try. Come on down. Do your tuck, okay. It's like a downhill skier position. Let the head drop. Tuck those arms behind you. You can drop your body even more. Get those legs working. There you go. Good. Feel those legs working. Let your head drop. Good. That's it.

So do just the first part of the movement a few times with your breath. Spiral the arms out to the side. Feel them helping you lift in your mid-back. Good. Then exhale down, just like a little baby cobra. Arms behind your back on your sacrum. Good. Do that movement a few times. Focus on the pathway of the breath entering your nostrils and flowing downward into your lungs on the inhale. That's it. Then the next time, do that and then just stand up on your legs to get you up the rest of the way. Tah-dah! That's it. Upper spine, and then,Valerie, legs. Legs. There you go. Right? Did your lower back have anything to do in that lifting movement? That's pretty cool.

So let's try that whole thing now. We'll do the same thing coming down, except we will come down into utkatasana from standing and then come back up from it. Then you can try and see if you can find that same action with the legs progressively straighter and straighter and straighter until you can do it in uttanasana as well.



So, nice deep breath. Start your exhale first. Fold down into utkatasana, arms behind you just for fun. Good. Inhale. Swing the arms out. Spiral the upper spine open. Let the legs lift you the rest of the way, and arms to your side with the exhale. Okay. Next time with the legs a little less bent. Inhale. Lift up. Start your exhale first. Fold down. Legs a little less bent. Swing the arms around behind you. Let the upper spine and neck release. Good. Inhale. Reach the arms out. Upper spine. Then the legs. Exhale. Arms to your side. Now this time with the legs just slightly bent, okay? Inhale. Exhale from the lower belly and then fold down, legs just a little bit bent. That's it. Good. Reach the arms out. Upper spine, legs, the rest of the way up. Okay. Exhale now. Good.

Now try a full on uttanasana with whatever arm position you want, and then see if you can come up with uttanasana with the same progression of movement from the upper spine and then to the legs. You can have the arms back, forward, whichever position you favor. But still see if you can find that upper spine. Then, before your lower back can do anything, the legs get—it’s a little harder there, isn't it? Yeah. That's why we start with the legs bent. Try that one more time. Remember, your lower back shouldn't have anything too much to do on the way up if you really get your legs, if you can find your legs. Good. Give it a try. There you go. Good. Relax.

So this is about solid, stable sthira in the base, legs, pelvis, free breathing, articulating spine, breathing structures. It's also about the directionality of breath, which can help us. Because that will help us to recognize the forces that are traveling down through our skeletal system through our feet into the earth and to find the spaces that can gather the support that comes up the other direction through our arches, through all of our horizontal diaphragm structures.

So that's uttanasana, utkatasana, in the context of proper lifting and lowering technique. I would hesitate to say proper. I would say exploring lifting and lowering technique. Thank you.

[00:18:40] Vinyasa: Workshop

Amy: We're going to take a look at some movements that often happen in a Vinyasa class as part of the Sun Salutation or the transitions between poses. So come to standing and into a forward bend. Bring your fingers in line with your toes and then bring your hands down. Now, for different people, bringing the hands down will involve bending the knees or folding through the spine. But see here where your hands end up. So this is really an uttanasana question, but it's a building up piece of this stepping back, stepping forward.

So then, from there, step one leg back and see what happens when you take one leg out and set it down. Then step forward from there. As you do that stepping forward and stepping back, see if your weight is falling out of your front leg in the sense that you are rocking through your front knee. There can be a little falling out and back into the knee. See if you are rocking forward and back through your body weight to get the momentum up,


to get the momentum to step forward. See if you're rocking your body weight forward and back to get the momentum to step forward. Hold onto, for a few minutes, this question of, can your hands stay on the floor as you're doing this?



Now if, as you do it, your hands can't stay on the floor, you could put something under your hands. If, as you do this, you lift the heel of one hand up, notice what happens in your spine.

Maybe put something under your hands or consider trying to lift the heels of both hands up. The reason to pay attention to lifting the heel of one hand up is that it changes the distribution of weight in your upper body and it might change the curvature of your spine.

So, again, as you step back, can you finish in that lunge in a place where the weight is balanced in both legs? Or, if you've fallen out of the front leg and then come back into it. And that what happens when you come back will have an effect on the coming forward. Now, the next time you come back into the lunge, stay there for a moment and you can set your back knee down. Your hands might be on the floor here. They might not. If you've put your hands on a block, this would be a moment when you could take the block away and see if your hands come all the way down to the floor. So what's required of the upper back for the hands to get all the way down to the floor is a fair amount of ability to move in the upper back with the breath. If your spine is held in extension here you may not be able to get your hands down into the floor.

So if you can get your hands down into the floor and breathe, then tuck your back toes under and extend your back leg into a lunge. See if you can be here and breathe. Then, can you keep the heels of your hand on the floor and step back into downward dog? Feel how high you have to be to do that. How much support through the front of your body, you could think of it as, you have to do that. If you could have your hands on the floor and step back, in theory, in your joints, you have the range of motion to step forward from there. So see now what happens if you step that back foot forward. Notice, if you use momentum to help, notice if you pick the heel of your hand up. You can take that leg back and try it with the other leg. Notice if, as you come forward, your hips comedown towards the floor. That will take some of the space for stepping forward away. You can always bring the leg forward and be there for a moment and see if you can be there in that lunge and have your hands on the floor.

So if you can be in a lunge and have your hands on the floor, then the challenge of stepping forward is not a range of motion in the joints one. It's something about the muscle pattern that you're using to do the action, which is useful information. So if you can't step forward without lifting up the heel of one hand, you could bring blocks under your hands so that you can have the experience of stepping forward. You can see how much height you keep through your pelvis to do that. How much height you keep through your upper back or your collar bones, or whatever you want to think about to be able to do that. You can see what you do in your neck and head, which will have an effect on that stepping forward.

You can also, and I think this is really interesting learning thing to do, you can not have blocks under your hands and step forward only as far as you can without picking the heels of your hands up. If your foot doesn't come all the way forward to your hands, then what do you do to walk or inch or squiggle your feet in? Because what you have to do to get that last little bit in, or that last big bit in, might be very informative about what goes on in your hip joints, your pelvis, your spine, and as you keep playing with it, also what you do in your head and neck will have an affect on this process of getting your feet back to your hands. If jumping forward is part of your practice, this bit of playing with walking your feet in will also help you learn something about what you need to do to jump forward. So if you choose to pick up the heels of your hands, it's fine. Sometimes the point of the practice is to keep the hands on the floor no matter what. Sometimes the blocks under the hands makes it more doable. Whatever you choose to do, the question is, do you know what you're doing and are you doing what you want to be doing? Or are you



doing something inadvertently other than what your teacher says, or what you think you want to be doing?

So the last piece is to come back to that forward bend one more time and be there. Line your fingers up with your toes, and then look and see if your fingers and toes are actually lined up. As a starting place or a beginning place, this is often some place where we think we're doing something and we haven't actually lined them up with each other. Then once you found that with your eyes, can you let go of it through looking and see how it feels from the inside. Thanks.

[00:26:24] Cat / Cow: Workshop

Amy: We’re going to talk about cat cow. One of the first things, I think, to considering talking about cat cow is what the kinesiological language for the spinal action that's happening is. The movement in the spine, when the head and tail come towards each other and the front of the body gets shorter, is flexion. The movement in the spine when we move the head and tail towards each other in the back and the back gets shorter is extension. I've heard in classes flexion and extension used to describe a surface of the body getting longer. So sometimes I hear, "Extend the back of your spine," or, "Extend the front of your body.” Those words aren't exactly the kinesiology language. So you can say whatever works for you. But if someone things you're speaking from an anatomical and kinesiological perspective, they might be confused if you say extend but you mean round over in this way. Okay.

Come onto your hands and knees. Here are some other things to think about. We will do them as I say them. One of the things is that we can initiate from anywhere in the spine to do this. So what happens if you start at your tail and you curl your tail to bring your spine into flexion? Then you start at your tail to bring your spine into extension. So, going as quickly or as slowly as you like, can you find the movement from your tail traveling up to your head? How is that different than starting at your head in flexion or into extension, starting at your head and traveling into your tail? One of the interesting things about playing with different initiation points is seeing what wants to join in sooner. The assumption in me sayings tart with your head or your tail is also that you are traveling sequentially through your spine vertebra by vertebra by vertebra, or vertebra to disc to vertebra. If you are trying to travel sequentially, this can be really informative about where there's easy movement, where there's less easy movement, and you can look for a little bit of movement in each spot. Not every spot has the same amount of movement, but there's a little bit of movement between each vertebra of the spine. Now, you could also start in the middle. You could start in the thoracic curve. You could start in the lumbar curve. You could start at your sacrum or at your neck and see how it radiates out from either of those spots.

Depending on the style of yoga that you do, there may be a specific teaching about how to do this cat cow movement. But if there isn't, it can be a great way to explore articulation in the spine. Another possibility is to do it simultaneously. What happens if you don't go sequentially,


but you change the curve of your spine all at once? Head and tail, all of the vertebra participate. You could do it quickly. You could do it slowly. A different experience arises doing it simultaneously compared to sequentially. Which one is most interesting will depend on the person. So everything I have described so far has been spinally oriented.



You also might find that you are noticing the movement in your hip joints and shoulder joints, or in your shoulder blades sliding on your ribcage. You might notice what's happening in your knees or in your hands. So lots of other things are happening in this movement. When we talk about flexing and extending head and tail, we're talking about spinal movement.

One other thing I really enjoy looking at in, this is comparing, initiating this movement from the tail and from the sit bones. So if you initiate from the sit bones and if we accept the idea, or at least entertain the ideas that the pelvic halves are apart of the legs, initiating from the sit bones might bring your attention more into your hip joints and initiating fro your tail bone, can that be a different experience? Can that maybe be more about your spine? Whereas you might not feel a difference between sit bones and tail bone. But see what happens if you try them. So, for me, I'm going to do sit bones and then feel how that travels into my spine. Sit bones up to the ceiling. Then tail bone into my spine. Then my tail bone leading up. The difference between them might not be very significant from the outside, but they start to feel more and more different from the inside. You can, of course, also entertain doing the breath many different ways.

All of the different choices you have about what part of your body to initiate with, you can also play with all those different choices about inhale and exhale flowing through the change in direction, going the length of the movement or not. When you feel finished, slide back over your heels and rest. Thanks.

[00:33:02] Ardha Matsyendrasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: Another seated pose we can explore from the standpoint of the breath is half spinal twist, ardha matsyendrasana. Liz, how would you like to be our half spinal twister? All righty.

Liz: Which side?

Leslie: I don't care which side. Just pick one.

Liz: Are we doing this way or extended?

Leslie: Well, good question. So demonstrate both. Okay, that's with the leg extended. We can do it like this, okay? Or with the leg folded. So which one to select would be pretty much based on whether or not you can feel balanced in your sitting bones and pelvis. For some people, the bottom leg folded doesn't allow that to happen, and they need to extend the leg.

Liz: This is definitely more balanced.

Leslie: More balanced? Well, then we'll use the extended leg. So that's a good gauge. If by folding the bottom leg, you unbalance your pelvis, and you feel like you can't get both done. And you guys can join in and try this with us.

So as we've been doing for a bunch of the other poses, finding a neutral starting point for your spine and for your breath is important, because that will, all on it's own, get you to find little adjustments, little places where you can settle, little place where you need to engage or lift, okay? Because if, for example, your back muscles and your spine are complaining here, we kind of need to deal with that before we start getting you all twisted up, right?



Liz: They're complaining a little bit.

Leslie: What's that?

Liz: They're complaining a little bit.

Leslie: They're complaining a little bit?

Liz: Yeah.

Leslie: Oh! Here, bend your knee, there. Is that a little better?

Liz: No.

Leslie: [laughing]

Liz: Sorry.

Leslie: Okay.

Liz: I think it's more on this side than that side.

Leslie: Right. Okay, so just move this foot forward slightly. Good.

Liz: There we go.

Leslie: There. And you probably don't need this then. There, good. Yeah, because sometimes you just pull that leg in automatically, thinking that the more bent it is, the better. But if this is neutral for you, this is great.

Liz: This feels better.

Leslie: Yeah. This is an adapted base already.

Now, just as we explored in some of the standing things, where this twist originates from is very important. So we're going to be in this pose twisting toward the bent leg, right? So leave this hand here and take the hand on the side of the bent leg and just let it rest. Good.

And without leaning on it or making it become part of your base of support, just begin to feel how your sternum can start to travel in that direction, all right? And as you do that, feel how you're changing your breathing. You're changing your rib cage structures, all right? Good. Does it feel like it makes sense to move on your breath a little bit?

Liz: Yeah, I definitely feel like I want to move more as I exhale.

Leslie: Yeah, I've been noticing that. So that's great. Now, for some people . . .

Liz: […] different?

Leslie: Hmm?

Liz: Should I try not to? Or should I . . . ?



Leslie: No, no, no, it's whatever's natural for you. Now, for some people it may feel like moving on the inhale makes more sense, because that gives them as sense of lengthening, lifting, and opening, right?

Liz: Although, I just felt like as I moved on the inhale I was able to . . .

Leslie: To open up in the back . . .

Liz: . . . move a little bit more in the top of my spine because the inhale is pushing right there.

Leslie: Yeah, exactly. So my suggestion is see what feels natural for you and just know what that is, but then feel free to try the other way, because it may move something that you're not used to moving.

That's basically it. Going for a big bind or whatever, those are nice to be able to do. But when we back off and start from a more neutral place and are sensitive to the effects of the breath on the spine or the effect of the spine on the breath, it just gives us a different experience. It gives us more choices.

For example, you noticed, "Well, I like to twist on the exhale, but what if I twist on the inhale?" All of the sudden, something here opens more, because, if nothing else, what a twist does is it restricts certain movements of the breath that usually happen because your ribs are twisting in your spine, right? And they can't articulate quite as freely. The breath is going to be moving through more resistance in your rib cage than usual in a twist. Also, it compresses your belly a little bit, right?

So by definition, a twist doesn't allow you as much movement and breathing as possible. But it does drive the movement of the breath a little bit more into the core of the body. There you go. Good, lovely.

Liz: It's a lot of work.

Leslie: It's a lot of work?

Liz: Mm-hmm. To not just . . . you know?

Leslie: Yeah, exactly. It's more core work, if you want to use that strange word, because when you use your arms to prop and lock, then you're just binding yourself in the position. But using the breath is a whole different experience. Great. Well, I hope you can go back and try that on the other side to be more balanced.

Liz: Will do.

Leslie: All right, thank you.

[00:38:16] Ardha Matsyendrasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at the joint actions in matsyendrasana, the starting position is a very complex set of movements, or set of joints actions, to do. So the first leg that folds in, if it does fold in, because the pose can be done with one leg extended, but if the leg folds in, can you fold in your left leg to this starting position? It is knee flexion and then some amount of hip flexion, because she's already sitting.



Then, to actually set up, you're going to cross. You're going to pull your knee further across your body. So that moment of bringing the knee across is with the flexion of the knee and the flexion of the hip, it’s going to be adduction at the hip joint and some external rotation now as that leg comes across.

So the main difference from having the leg extended is going to be the external rotation and moving across, along with the knee flexion.

Then the leg that steps over is going to flex at the knee, flex at the hip, but internally rotate to some degree and then also adduct and cross the midline.

So one of the big actions in this just getting into the starting position is the profound adduction of the legs, because they're actually crossing the midline, or at least coming to midline to get the knees in line with each other as much as possible. The bottom leg is externally rotating because the foot is ending up further that way,


while the top leg, as it moves further and further into it, will be less and less external rotation. If this knee falls away, then there's not as much internal rotation as when it is here.

When we come into, then, the rotation of this and the twist happens, assuming the foundation is there, then there's this rotation through the spine, which involved some amount of shortening and lengthening. Shortening and lengthening. Shortening and lengthening. Shortening and lengthening in all, in the whole circumference of the muscles of the torso.

So sometimes this is described in terms of one set of muscles or one part of the body, or the ribcage or the abdomen moving or engaging. But, in fact, it's possible for something in one area, in fact, it's possible in one area for something to be shortening and something to be lengthening. It's possible for muscles in all of the circumference of the torso to be involved in doing this rotation.

So there's no one spot that is the only place to rotate from, and each person might involve different things to do this action of rotating.

When we look at what happens in the spine in addition to rotating, sometimes there's some amount of flexion that comes into the spine, which, in this case, has come in a little bit. The lumbar curve, no, it's not. Never mind.

Sometimes flexion comes into the spine, which Sarah has not brought in here. But, if she were to, it would look like this. Some flexion coming into the lumbar and into the thoracic. There also might be extension in the spine. Can you..? Yeah. Where she's brought more extension into the spine.

Changing the amount of flexion and extension in the different parts of the spine will affect how the rotation is distributed through the whole spine.

One of the other things that is sometimes offered as an instruction, like in janu sirsasana, but for different reasons, is to allow the pelvis to shift.

So, from right there, can you move your right hip back? Yeah.

Can you take your left knee forward and exaggerate that so we can see it from the back even more? So can you let your..? Yeah. There you go.



So, sometimes the instruction is given to let the pelvis move, in this twist to diminish the amount of rotation that has to happen in the spine, or to diminish the amount of effort in the SI joint. I'd like to point out that changing the base of support in that way does not necessarily diminish what we ask of the spine if we're looking at the movements internally in the spine.

If we're looking at getting around to a certain point, then changing the base of support will mean that less rotation is asked of other places. But if there's not a defined end point to the rotation, then changing the base of support won't necessarily have an affect on how much is asked of other joints in the spine.

Thanks.

[00:43:45] Ardha Matsyendrasana: Discussion on “Detoxifying”

Leslie: When we talk about postures that involve twisting of the body, quite often some of the benefits that are listed include this idea that—and they are related, I think—that you can wring out your organs and basically squeeze the toxins out of them.

So twists are often referred to as being detoxifying. A variant on that idea is often cited as the reason for twisting first to the right and then to the left because of the anatomical reality that the ass ending colon comes up on the right side of your abdomen. Then it crosses over with the transverse colon and then descends on the left side on its way to your rectum.

So this, then, is reasoned as the direction of flow of the waste out of your body. Therefore, if we want to use these detoxifying twists as a way to accelerate, or facilitate, I would say, that waste removal, first the right and then the left is the reason given.

Now, I want to say right up front that I don't doubt that this does happen for people and their digestion and elimination is helped by yoga and by twisting in particular. I'm sure that it does happen.

What I want to question, though, is the anatomical story we tell to explain why these things happen. As compelling and seemingly anatomically and scientifically-based this bit of advice is, I can come up with an equally compelling, equally anatomically-based bit of advice that would actually ask you to do it the other way. To twist first to the left and then to the right.

The reason for that, and here's my story, okay—anatomy is a story. Now we're telling stories about stories, all right?

So my story would be, well, on its way out of the system is where most of the blockage tends to occur. It's usually right here at the flexure, or the junction, between the transverse and the descending colon. Anyone that has either received or perhaps performed a colonic will know that that's where you're getting most of the stuff to move out from.

So if that is the case, and it seems to be, then going to the right, wouldn't that just be pushing whatever is here into a blockage? What good is that going to do? Right?



Why not deal with the area that tends to get most blocked up first by twisting to the left? Doing some breathing there? Make some space, in other words, and then flush it out by putting pressure behind it by twisting to the right. You buying it?

Student: Sure.

Leslie: Yeah? I'm selling it. Are you buying it?

No? Well, okay. You don't have to buy it. But the point is, I don't see how either story has any more inherent, intrinsic anatomical validity than the other.

The reality is that I think people do their elimination improved by the practice of yoga. It may or may not be for any of the reasons that are being offered, or any of the anatomical explanations that go along with them.

So I think the real reason that a lot of things start on the right when we practice yoga is that the right is auspicious, okay? In India, the right hand is what's used to offer things to people, to write, to eat. I'm a left handed person. When I travel in India I learn to be a rightie really quickly. People would not look at me or give me food or anything if I started touching things with my left hand. That does have to do with toilet habits.

Okay. The other thing about ringing of the organs is the idea that, when we're doing twisting of the body, this sort of thing is happening inside to our organs. This wringing, right? It's sort of squeezing toxins out of the organs.

That may be true. But I don't know that twisting is any more significant a movement for that purpose than doing this or doing this, or doing this, or doing this. In other words, all of the directions that we take our spine, and thus our organs, in the practice of yoga, not to mention that we are focusing on the fullest expression of the movement of the diaphragm as we practice. That, to me, is a much more significant story about the health of our organs.

All of our organs, in one way or another, are linked, physically, structurally, to the diaphragm and its movements.

So I don't think that the wringing by way of twisting is any more a significant action or motion on these organs and their health than any of the other movements that we end up doing. So I just wanted to put that out there and to not say don't tell these stories, but just know that they're stories. Know that they are not the only stories.

What are some stories you can come up with out of your experience and your explorations, knowing that the benefits are there because of the increased general range of motion of our spines, our bodies, our organs and our diaphragm?


That, to me, is the best way to help our digestion and our elimination.



[00:50:07] Sukhasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: Examining asana from a breath-centered perspective would make seated poses a core exploration, particularly because the literal translation of the word asana is seat.

Now, just a word about sitting in general, one of the core principles that I feel very strongly about in yoga, is that it's a process that really doesn't allow you to skip steps. As much as we would like to. And by that I mean, if we're interested in something deeper about ourselves, about our breathing, about our minds our emotions, about our spirit even, you can't leave the body behind. You have to take it with you all along the way, because we are an integrated entity consisting of mind, spirit, and body, matter and consciousness.

And the reason that's important from the standpoint of seated posture is that, unless and until we can establish a reasonable, efficient, comfortable relationship with gravity, we simply can't go any further with these other pursuits. For example, if we are using a lot of muscular energy to maintain our body's position in relation to gravity, the energy that's required to fuel that muscle activity is going to affect our breathing, and it's going to affect our entire experience when we're seated.

So the fundamental thing about seated posture is that from a standpoint of the spine, and supporting the spine, the knees really do need to be a little bit below the hip joints. So if we can just go around the room here, without anything under you, okay, let's, whatever you're sitting on, remove it. And just see what the relationship is between your knees and your hip joints. Now, some people have more open hips than others. Some people have tighter hips. I'm on the tighter side of that equation.

You actually have fairly open hips. Patty, your knees are popping up. Liz, you have one up and one down, right? But nobody I see and hardly anyone we'll see in class is able to sit unsupported under the pelvis and have the knees below the hip joints.

So bringing something under you is really the first step towards finding comfortable breathing. Because if my knees are up here, what do I have to do to keep my spine erect? I have to engage all of these muscles. That's a lot of muscular activity to be going on. And it's a lot of oxygen that the muscles are taking up to do that work. And then my breathing is going to have to labor that much more to provide that oxygen, which means that my breath energy isn't available for something else, like pranayama or meditation.

So find a support under you that allows for a neutral spine, that allows for a gentle curve in the lumbar, thoracic, cervical region, which is going to support the weight of the head and the shoulder girdle. However you decide to arrange your legs, whether it's in sukhasana or siddhasana or swastikasana or any of the fancy arrangements of the legs, really is a function of how you're going to neutralize whatever torque you have in your pelvis with the asymmetry of your legs. You'll find that whatever way you like to cross your ankles or your legs or your shins, there's an opposite way to do it, which amplifies your asymmetry rather than neutralizes it.

You see that? All of a sudden, things are spinning off in some other direction, right? So for comfort and ease, we usually tend to find an asymmetry here that neutralizes whatever asymmetry we have here.

So finding the neutral spine, finding a sense of release and support that doesn't require a lot of muscle engagement to maintain our relationship with gravity is the fundamental objective of seated posture from a breath-centered perspective. Thank you.



[00:55:02] Sukhasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at sitting positions, the question arises about what's happening in the hip joints. So Sarah is in a starting position here with the knees somewhat flexed. We're going to assume the knees stay in some degree of flexion and talk about what happens in the hip joints.

At the moment, her hip joints are flexed and the legs are relatively neutral. If she stays in this position and externally rotates the legs, the knees will open out to the side, and without moving the feet, will be in some kind of position that might be something like baddha konasana.

We can play, then, with moving the feet further apart, which would be abduction. Or we could play with moving the feet closer to each other, which would then be adduction.

As the legs move further apart and closer together as we change the amount of abduction and adduction in this pose, it also has an affect on how much rotation is available, which will show up in how high the knees are. The knees are revealing how much rotation might be happening in the hip joint.

What the knees are also showing relative to the hip joint is how much flexion or extension is available in relationship to rotation, in relationship to that abduction and adduction. So all of these joint actions affect each other.

You might have noticed as she brought her feet apart, I think that her knees came up a little bit. Yeah. As she brought her feet together, the knees released down.

That might be as a result of what's available in the hip joint as a bony structure. It might also be different muscles being asked to lengthen, and as they lengthen, in abduction, for example, not having so much range in external rotation. The muscles around the hip joint, as we saw in some of the standing poses, have an effect on how much flexion, extension, abduction, adduction and rotation is available in the hip joints.

If, then, you bring your legs a little closer to you and cross the midline so they cross over, so you come to sukhasana, and bring your feet forward so they're under your knees. Do you know that version? Cross them further. Can you cross them? Yeah. That one.

So here's a version do sukhasana where the crossing of the legs is further away from her pelvis and where the feet are organized underneath the knees. This can be done to varying degrees. The further out the feet are under the knees, the greater the adduction of the legs. The legs are coming further and further across the midline.

So the ability to do this with ease, whatever ease manifests as in each person, has something to do certainly with how the legs cross, something to do with how the edges of the feet are on the floor, but also something to do with the capacity for rotation and abduction of the legs.

In this position, of the legs being angled slightly out from the pelvis and slightly flexed, that opening and flexing may, in the hip joint, generally allows for more external rotation. When we switch to something like siddhasana, where you separate your knees a little bit more and bring your knees in closer, and the knees lower down to the floor, there's actually here less external rotation.



Will you cross your arms on your chest again? Thank you.

There's actually less external rotation in her legs. But the knees have lowered down, so there might be a little more hip extension. One of the things this does in some people, this little bit of external rotation and extension, if it's not very comfortable, thank you for showing that.

If the opening of the front of the hip that it takes to lower the knees down isn't available, it might tip the whole pelvis forward and bring some spinal extension in. That might be done on purpose. But it might be done as an artifact of what's available in either the joint of the hip or the muscles around the hip joint.

Depending on how far forward her spine is, different muscles will be active in maintaining this pose. So once she is in the position, it's generally an isometric action in some combination of muscles in the back of the body and in the front. The further forward her body is tipped, the more it will rely on the back of her body to maintain the stance.

As she comes back, can you bring your spine back? Yeah. As she comes back and releases her arms down,


she may find a different balance of activity in the front and the back of her body. If she were to come further back, can you roll? Yeah. If she were to come further back, where more of her weight is coming behind herself, she will have to use more of the front of her body. Thank you.

[01:00:21] Sukhasana: Workshop

Amy: We’re going to take a look now at some seated poses and the action in the hip joints, how it's the same through several of them, and then also what changes.

If we start with gomukhasana and you cross one leg over the other so your knees come on top, or have one leg extended and cross one leg as far across as you can, the hip joints in this case are laterally rotated and flexed, and in gomukhasana, adducted towards the midline as much as possible.

If you then begin to abduct your legs and bring them away from each other until your ankle comes over your knee, then we still have lateral rotation and flexion in the hip joints. But we have less adduction. We're moving towards abduction, and this is ankle to knee, or fire log, it's sometimes called.

As we continue to bring the legs apart, we might come to something called sukhasana, where the legs are crossed. The legs are crossed at mid shin. One foot is under the knee. Each foot is under the knee.

This is also external rotation and flexion, bringing the foot underneath as compared to ankle to knee actually increases the flexion in the leg that was on the underneath side.

This is also, like ankle to knee, an asymmetrical pose, and gomukhasana, in that the action in the hip joints is not exactly the same because one leg is forward or one leg is on top.



As we continue on out, we come to what's sometimes called siddhasana. You might abduct the legs at the hip joint even further and bring your heels in line with each other. This position is still hip flexion. It's still lateral rotation. But now it's more abduction.

This is also still an asymmetrical position. So whichever leg is in front is going to change the pelvic half in relationship to the other pelvic half. Maybe pull it forward. Maybe create a little twist in the pelvis. We don't know exactly what effect it will have, but the pelvis won't be symmetrical in this position.

If you continue to abduct the legs and bring them apart from each other at the hip joint, you might come to baddha konasana. To do that, to find baddha konasana, you might also need to move your feet a little further away from you.

The further you move your feet away from you, the less abduction needs to happen at the hip joints. This is still laterally rotated. This is still flexed in the hip. But, as you move your feet away from you, you might even come out to tarasana, which is another pose where the feet are, as I learned it, the distance of the torso away from the pelvis.

So that if you were to fold flat, your face would land in your feet. Where, as a body measurement, the one that I learned is that, in baddha konasana, if you were to fold flat your navel would land in your feet.

Now, the thing about moving the feet away from you from baddha konasana to tarasana is that, as the knees extend, then it means we're doing less abduction in the legs.

So each of these positions, each change in the amount of abduction or adduction, changes what the action is in the hip joints doing this. Then, if we add to it folding forward, flexing the spine or keeping the spine neutral and focusing on the hip joints, we're deepening the flexion in the hip joint. That sense of deepening the flexion might also create a feeling of more external rotation.

But whatever we do in whatever aspect of this, whether it's staying vertically and moving the legs apart and together, or folding forward, these are often categorized as hip openers. But it's important, I think, to understand that whatever part of it is opening, there's also something that's closing.

So if we say the front of the hip is opening in some way, then the back of the hip is closing. If we fold forward, then there's also a part of the hip, the front of the hip, that is closing, and a part of the back of the hip that is opening.

So different people may feel, with very minor adjustments of moving the feet in or out or away from each other, or together, really different experiences in their hip joints. But also in their SI joints, in their spine, in their knees and ankles and feet.

One of the other things that I think is unfortunate about these being categorized as only hip openers is that it can make us lose track of how the other joints are all participating in this.

Well, for some people, most of the sensations might come from the hip joints. For some people, these poses are not about sensation around the hip joint, but organizing the knee or the spine or the neck or the SI joint, or the feet. If you have most of the sensation in one area, like the knee or the hip or the spine, it might be that changing something somewhere else will help balance out that experience as well.

So every asana is a whole-body event. We can change one little part of the asana to change the experience we're having in it. Thanks.



[01:06:10] Bhujangasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: So exploring a breath-centered approach to asana becomes interesting when we change our base of support from standing or sitting to something like prone. And by prone, of course, we mean lying face down like this.

So bhujangasana is a good way to explore this. Now, cobra pose can mean a lot of things. It can mean lifting up here with your hands in this position. It can also mean the action of lifting up in more of a Vinyasa, whether you're using the arms or not using the arms. Okay.

So Angel, why don't you come up here? Because if I do it, I'm going to be crushing my microphone, right? You don't have a mic.

So let's take a neutral relaxed starting position. If you could just bring your arms forward, turn your head to the side, put one cheek on the floor, yeah, and just bring your hands a little more to that height. Okay, good.

So, as in many of the other explorations, you want to have a comfortable, neutral starting position. And in prone, in face down, this is what seems to work for most people. So just notice the interaction of the front surface of your body with the floor. And this is one of those positions where the way you're breathing has usually a pretty noticeable effect on what's going on on your spine.

For example, if you direct your breath down into your belly so that as you inhale, you feel the belly pressing into the floor, can you feel how it pushes your spine in the opposite direction?

Angel: I did, yeah.

Leslie: Yeah? It kind of raises your lumbar spine, and even your pelvis moves when you do that, right? Can you all feel that?

And you can exaggerate it if you want by really making that belly breath happen, all right?

So the idea that we're always asked to inhale into a back bend can be looked at in a couple of different ways, because it begs the question of, how were we inhaling, right? If you're inhaling that way into your belly and trying to go into a back bend, see if it works. So come into a little baby cobra as you inhale into your belly. And then exhale, come down, turn your head the other way out of the cobra. So you're doing a little Vinyasa, just a little inhale-up-exhale-down thing but, again, driving the breath into the belly.

Now, some people actually like this because it gives a sense of lift. It gives a sense of pushing the belly down, which pushes the spine in the opposite direction. But for some people, it actually is counterproductive. I don't know if anyone's feeling that, I think, Patty, you're not feeling it. Okay. So come on down. Good. So take a moment, just pause there, and rest.

And now, what if you direct the inhale into your chest, more into the sternum, collarbones, and try lifting as you do that? So it's an inhale again, but it's more of a chest inhale. See if that works. That's something to explore. Is that making you happier, Patty?

Patty: Yes, it is.

Leslie: Okay. How about you, Angel?

Angel: A little more challenging.

Leslie: A little more challenging?

Angel: Yeah.



Leslie: See, not everyone's going to react to these things at the same way.


Everyone has a different starting point.

I would say come down and rest. Okay.

The thing I want to point out is that we should be free to explore this. But what about if we break the rule completely and come up on an exhale? So take a breath, and exhale as you come up. And then, oh, and then inhale as you come down. Is that making you even happier, Patty?

Patty: Very happy.

Leslie: Very happy? We have a very happy Patty instead of a crabby Patty.

If I can slip in a SpongeBob reference, I'm so much happier. Yeah, there you go. Good. That's it. Come on down.

See, the fact of the breath in the spine is that a deep inhale into the thoracic region actually involves a little bit of flexion in the thoracic spine, which means that an exhale allows the thoracic spine to release into extension for many people. That's what they're going to feel, all right?

But what if just to be consistent with our experiment, one final thing I'll ask you to try is to take a breath and feel the exhale in your belly. Pull your belly away from the floor and come up into the cobra on the belly exhale, hmmm, and then inhale, come down.

Notice how that's a different, the opposite of the belly inhale? Your lumbar spine sinks a little bit. I saw that happening. So take a breath, exhale in the belly. It sinks. And then you lift up with that same action, there. And then come on down.

So again, I'm not saying there's a right or a wrong way. I'm just saying that from the standpoint of the breath, we should feel free to experiment a little bit with whether we inhale or exhale from the belly or chest or whether we enter into this thing on an inhale or an exhale. Some people find that a particular combination of those things works really, really well for them or doesn't work at all. But everyone's going to be a little bit different. Thank you.

[01:12:24] Bhujangasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at the joint actions in a backbend like cobra, it's an interesting question to see what is actually articulating and what is moving through space. It depends on the approach we take to cobra, or what we decide that the asana is about.

So if you bring your hands to the floor in a way that feels like it will be supportive, no. Bring your hands to the floor so your forearms are on the floor. Yes. Thank you. You don't get any choice about it.

I'm going to ask you to come up into cobra with the idea of articulating through each of the vertebra of your spine, from top to bottom. So can you find a movement in all of these places, all the way down to the tail. And then reversing that action, lower back down from the bottom to the top. You can turn your head to the side when you get to the bottom. I like that as well.



So in that case, that was more of a version of cobra where there was articulation in each or many of the joints of the spine, all the way down to the tail. The end of the movement also might have asked for some extension through the hips, or might not have.

If we do another version, another way it's often taught, there's a lifting up into cobra that is not about articulating in many places. But if you keep the neck in a relatively neutral position and come up—thank you. Then more of the action happens in the lumbar spine. It's one of those cases where, if we don't move somewhere, we can focus the action more in one place.

Go ahead and lower down.

There are advantages and disadvantages to either way of doing it. If you come further up, bring your hands in to be more of a support. I'm going to ask you to come up to that higher one, just before, like what you did for the upward dog with Leslie.

So begin and articulate through your spine. Come up from your head and through your spine and look for movement in all of those places.

What I want to point out is, as you come up higher, there's also a moment here of hip extension. With that is elbow extension coming in as she comes up. Then lower back down.

So, the muscles that are involved in doing this are the muscles along the back of the body in concentric contraction to come up, if those are the joints that are articulating.

So, if she's doing a little bit of movement in each of these joints, all of these muscles might activate concentrically.

If the upper back does not articulate, but moves through space, those muscles might be doing more of an isometric action, and the concentric action will be located in the area where there is articulation, like the lower back.

When the arms come in to help, they may be active enough in their action concentrically across the back of the elbow, that the spine can do less action. Or they may join in and help the spine, and the spinal muscles may be as active as they were before.

When we come to the back of the leg, it's an interesting question to look in coming into that full version, to see if the back of the hip also participates in that movement, or if we're activating in the front of the hip. If the front of the leg is shortening, it may get in the way of finding that full extension, or it may be part of balancing out all of the movements that are happening in cobra.

That's all.

[01:16:47] Bhujangasana: Workshop

Amy: We’re going to take a look now at cobra, and camel and salabhasana as they might relate to cobra.

So one of the first things I would like to inquire about in looking at cobra is what we do with the neck and whether or not we articulate in the neck. So if you want to try this out, you can do it with me.

But come into a position on the front of your body. We're going to talk in a minute about what to do with the arms. So you do whatever you want to with the arms for right now.



But I would like you to play with the difference between coming up, I’m going to say these two choices, and then I will say them and do them, between coming up and looking for movement through the vertebra of the neck and coming up without extending the neck and feeling where else that movement can travel. Okay? So I'll say the same thing again and do it with you.

Starting with your face down to the floor, if you start from your head and initiate with your head, and you could initiate with your eyes, even, and look up, and can you feel that extension travel through the vertebra of your neck and then into your upper back, and then through your upper back to your middle back and lower back and maybe all the way down to your tail, if you keep looking up, like you're trying to look behind yourself to your tail, and then lower back down.

Compare that experience now to doing it this other way.

As a preparation for this, try starting with the focus of looking down at the tip of your nose, which is a drishti that's used in some approaches. So look down towards the tip of your nose and imagine that you're going to lift from your soft palette at the roof of your mouth instead of lifting from your eyes looking up.

So from the same starting position, from your soft palette, try lifting up and not extending your neck, but feeling how the movement travels and where that movement of it goes in your spine if you lift up while looking down at the tip of your nose. Then lower back down.

I'm going to say some things. While I'm saying them, consider for yourself what in that felt familiar. So one of those ways of doing it might have been what you're more accustomed to, and also what the difference in the sensations were.

So one of the things that I hear sometimes in doing cobra is that extending the neck is not safe.


I see a lot of people who don't extend the neck, and by extension, I mean specifically this movement of taking it back, of taking the head back, and that they have been told not to do that to protect the neck.

What's interesting is that that movement of extension is actually part of the range of motion available in the neck. When we don't do it, we sometimes run more risk of injuring something else.

I think that sometimes, and each person’s situation is different, but that sometimes in the neck it's valuable to find a little bit of movement in all of those little vertebra so that we don't protect it by not moving it, but that we protect it by finding movement in the places that might not be moving if there's a place that got asked to move too much already.

Now, that can be a really detailed little exploration. Right? It can be very hard to conceive of feeling the difference between the third cervical vertebra and the fifth cervical vertebra. But asking the question can also be a really interesting way to explore it.

So if you're not taking your head back because you've been told it's the only safe way to do it, I will offer that, anatomically, it is also possible to safely extend the neck.

But there is another thing that arises. So for me, when I do that lifting up and I keep my head forward, I actually feel more like a cobra. I feel like I have that snake sense to it. From lifting in that way, I'm getting this experience of one end of my spine coiling in, while at the other end of my spine I'm doing more of an extension. It's an interesting combination of feelings.

It is also, interestingly enough, closer to what babies do when they're trying to lift up and see further. So in the developmental process of coming up higher and higher, what they are doing is lifting up so that they can see further this way.



But the question about coming up also in coming into that full extension, then, of trying to look back and see your tail, that might not be what a baby does. I mean, babies do all kinds of things. They end up doing everything eventually, right? Maybe.

But that question of finding a full extension through the spine and seeing how the head can go back in that relationship to gravity, I think, can be a really interesting movement to do, also because, and I don't know if you noticed this, and if you didn't, you can go back and try it again. But when I don't take my head back, when I keep my head forward like this, it also makes it a different experience to articulate through the thoracic vertebra. Not better or worse. But it makes it different.

So if I let my head go back, I also feel a different kind of movement in my ribs and upper chest. For me, I feel more. When I take my head back I get more movement in my upper ribs. Some of you may get more movement in your upper ribs if you keep your head forward. So it's not to say one is better than the other, but that they will give different experiences.

When we bring in the upper ribs, then, we bring in the arms too, which is another whole question in doing this cobra exploration, is where the arms come in. How much do we push with the arms? When do we push with the arms?

In part of my study of Body-Mind Centering I have looked a lot at developmental movements. So, how babies learn to move. There's a whole progression of starting with the spine and moving into limbs. So I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to articulate and activate my spine before I bring my arms in.

So that's one way that I have explored cobra, which is to look for how much can I do through my spine, and then bring my arms in. How much can I do through my spine, and then bring the arms in to support, but not override that, as compared to starting from my arms and letting my spine really express what my arms are doing. Right?

So I think that cobra could be either one.

So let's try those two versions.

So the first one, and now you can do whatever you want with your head going back or forward. We could layer all these questions together, but you have choice about your head. But we're going to start from the spine and then bring the arms in. But if you find you are pushing so hard with your arms you lose track of your spine, stop. Don't even go that far.

So find a starting position that works for you.

Begin from your head and begin to lift up. When you've done what you can go through your spine, begin to feed your arms in from your hands to your scapula to your collar bones to your ribs to your spine, and find the spot where the amount of engagement in the arms, where you can still feel like the arms are responding to the spine, as you come up, and then also as you come down.

So the spine is the organizing idea, or the starting place.

Then try it a second time, or again. This time start from your hands. Feel the push of your hands into your spine, and that your hands are pushing your spine up so the spine is supported the whole time by your arms.

See if there can be more of a push from underneath and maybe a little less activity in your spine. Then lower down.

I find that when I do it those two ways, that when I start from my spine, it brings my attention more out into the world and a little more outward, aware, attentive to the space around me. When I start from my



arms I stay a little more internally organized, partly because it's more, I'm pushing into myself, or starting with my head as more of a reaching feeling.

But, again, you might have a different experience between the two. You don't have to have that experience, but they might really have very different feelings to do them.

The other question, then, that comes up as we go through this is what to do with the legs. Right?

Any asana is a whole body experience. We can play with any part of this, right, and change the experience inside of it. We can emphasize any part of it. So we get told to squeeze the legs together. We get told to press the toes down. Get get told which muscles to use.

If you notice, I'm not even talking about which muscles to use. So I don't actually care. You might care. I don't care about telling you what muscles to use or not to use. I'm going to care more about what you engage to feed into these patterns, right?

So as you're lying there right now, just as an exploration of the starting position, squeeze your legs together as much as you can, as hard as you can, and see, does that help you feel the connection of your toes to your spine?

It might be that squeezing your legs towards each other engages so much that you can't actually feel feet to head.

So then, see if, instead of doing as much as you possibly can, that you find the connection of each leg into your spine, and can you keep your legs feeding into your spine and then press your toes into the floor? See what happens if you press your toes and the fronts of your legs into the floor and you lift up into cobra.

So have your toes pressed down. What kind of support do you get for lifting up? You can bring your arms in or not as you like, and you can do what you want to with your head. Then lower down. Bend your knees if you want to. Release that for a moment.

Then connect your legs into your spine and reach your legs away from you and hover them off the floor a half of an inch, or a little bit, so that they're not pressing down. What I want you to do is not press them down, but lengthen them out, and try the same thing then and lift up into cobra. See what your cobra is like if you don't press your feet down. (student laughs) Are you laughing because it's harder? It’s harder?


Uh-huh. Yeah. Very interesting, right?

This question about, some of the instructions that we're given are aimed maybe at getting us as high as we can get. Some of them are, and that might be what the pose is about. The pose might be about getting as high as you can get in cobra. Something like pressing the toes down to help you get up in that particular position will be really useful.

What that action of pressing the toes down does, though, is it changes how we use the muscles of our back.

Now, if the goal of doing something like cobra is to engage the muscles of the back body and to learn about extending the whole back of the body, by which I mean from the head to the tail and down to the legs, pushing the toes into the floor and extending the spine into cobra is going to do a combination. Pushing the toes and the legs into the floor is going to engage more the front of the legs and the front of the hips, which makes it a different experience of the foundation. It pushes the pelvis into the floor in a way that makes it easier, maybe, to lever the spine up and to pull the spine up against that.



If you don't push your feet into the floor, but you hover your legs off the floor a little bit, then you have to use a different combination of muscles in the whole back of your body to come up.

Then, again, there's the question of when you bring the arms in.

So depending on what you're setting out to do, you will engage different muscles. But if the point of this is to engage the whole back of your body in some way, then pressing your legs into the floor is not accomplishing that.

If the point is to have this experience of coming up and feeling some ease and expressiveness in being up and finding your cobra-ness, then cobras, because snakes do, they go down to go up. They are pressing down through their tails as they come up through their spines, right?

So it depends on what you're going for. But if we're going for muscle actions, some of these instructions we give are not actually about the muscle. Pressing the feet down doesn't help strengthen the back of the body. It helps you get higher up.

Did you feel it when you did it? Yeah.

So then there's that question. In your approach or in your teacher's approach or in your school's approach, what is it you're going for? How can we figure out what will help do that?

When we talk about the muscles in the back of the body, then, or what muscles we're using to do this, there's another thing to consider, which is that the higher up we come, the lower down the muscles are being activated. Right?

So if someone lifts just their head and shoulders up, they may or may not be using the muscles of the lower back. They may or may not be. But if they lift just their head up, they may or may not be using the muscles of the middle back.

But exactly which part of the back is being used when you lift up partly depends on where we're articulating, and it partly depends on how much the spine is articulating, and then how much we're just moving a whole unit through space.

So when I do a movement like this, where I'm articulating in great detail, I'm not actually using my lower back so much here right now as I am using this middle area. Then, as I come up higher, I'm engaging more and more until I'm to here, at which point I'm all the way down here, and then past that is going to be my arms supporting and other things coming to help.

If instead I don't extend my spine and I lift like this, then right here I'm already using this part of my back. I'm lifting this all through space as a unit. So the rest of these muscles are engaged in an isometric contraction just to keep my head from falling forward.

So really, when I'm lifting up, all of my back muscles are engaged. But whether they are sliding short or just maintaining their length is a different question as well. So it's really hard to say, with any accuracy, I’m going to say it's impossible to say with any accuracy that, in a room full of people, what muscles they are using in any part of doing cobra, in anything different than the broadest way, because everybody's spine articulates a little bit differently, so to say, "Everybody is using their lower back right now," is really hard to say accurately.

Because someone might be using their lower back, and lower back is a general term anyhow. Someone might be using middle back. Someone might be using upper back. On top of that then, is that what you are using might not be what you are feeling.



Because to even lift our head up we engage the muscles that we might not even notice, because maybe you lift your head up all the time. You don't notice the muscles engaging until you get to some that are unfamiliar so they talk to you and they go, "We're not used to doing this. What's going on? Why are you asking us to do anything?”

But the muscles that we use all the time, muscles that are really familiar, that are really habituated to doing a certain action, they send signals that we don't even pick up in terms of that perception. We don't even hear them because we're so used to listening to it.

It doesn't mean they're not working. It means that we don't notice them. So what you're using also might not be what you notice. Which you might have noticed. When you do a movement the first time you go, "Oh, this is really tiring. This is really hard. I feel that muscle working."

As you do the same movement more and more, you stop noticing it. What we say is, "The movement gets easier." The movement doesn't actually change, generally. What changes is that we get used to doing it. We get more habituated, and we might call that getting stronger. We could call it that. But really what we're doing is we're getting more accustomed to it. So we've stopped noticing it. Yeah.

One other point I want to make. Infinite number of points to make about any asana, right?

But the one other point I want to make is that this is a great place to look at, when we change a pose in relationship to gravity, we change what muscles we're using to do something. So in that position of cobra, when I'm parallel to the floor, coming into cobra, coming into that spinal extension, is a movement that we could call anti-gravity extension.

Right? Because I'm going away from gravity into extension. Kind of a technical term for what happens, but, if I take the same movement, but I stand it up on its side, like camel, then the movement of extension is going to be going into gravity instead of away from gravity.

Then I'll do it in a minute. So if you can't quite picture it, which means I'm going to use a whole different set of muscles to do this.

So where the anti-gravity extension of something like cobra or up dog, or salabhasana, that those are going to ask for some kind of concentric contraction on the back of the body, doing this movement of camel. We could spend a lot of time just being in this starting position, right? Establishing what this is with hip extension, because we do all this kind of stuff.

But assuming that I can get to here, which might be a big huge assumption, but assuming I can get to here, which is close, from knees to head, to what I'm doing in cobra as a starting position, or if I were like this in cobra, right? If I were to do that version of cobra and roll it up here, then the same movement of extension is now no longer controlled by a concentric contraction in the back of the body as a main controller.

Because I don't have to pull in the back of my body. Gravity pulls me there. What I'm doing now to control this movement, and why I think it's challenging for a lot of people is that the agonist is considered the eccentric contraction in the front of the body. If I didn't have these in the front, my head would fall off. Not really, but...

So it's the controlled lengthening through here,


that lets me control, that lets me do that extension that moves into gravity. So it's a different set of muscles. Now, we could go a step further in that analysis and say it's also the front of the body to go here. So really what's happening when I do camel is that I'm doing some communication between the control



here and some kind of refinement, some kind of detailed little contraction that's fine-tuning where I'm extending in the back.

But if I didn't have muscles in the back of my body, I wouldn't be alive, probably. But if I didn't have muscles in the back of my body and I were alive, I could do cobra. But I could not do, nope!

If I didn't have muscles in the back of my body and I were alive, I could do camel. But I could not do cobra.

Does that make sense?

Student: Yes.

Amy: I don't know how that would ever arise.

If I didn't have muscles in the front of my body and I were alive, I could do cobra, but I could not do camel. So the same muscles are not involved as major movers in doing spinal extension when I change my relationship to gravity.

All of these things are ways we can explore cobra or we can get inside how we're told to do cobra.

Thanks.

[01:41:45] Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: Let's look at pigeon pose from the standpoint of the breath, otherwise known as ekka pada rajakapotasana. It's the cover pose for Yoga Anatomy. Therefore, one of my favorites.

So, Liz, why don't you come on back up here?

So let's take you into a starting position here. And just for the camera, yeah, we'll do the left leg.

So as in some of the other poses that we've been talking about, an important aspect of this is finding a comfortable, neutral starting point. Now, you have fairly open hips, so this isn't too big of a problem for you. In fact, you can have the knee way out here and, without damaging your knee, actually have that angle of your shin.

Liz: Yeah, that pulls my right leg tight, though.

Leslie: Right. But this doesn't excessively torque your knee because you're open enough in the hip to let this happen, right, this external rotation. And that has a lot to do with just you having been a dancer and having turnout and all of that.

But for most people who don't have that much, one of the variations is to actually bring the knee a little more to the center. And that way, this heel then becomes a place where you can balance your pelvis. See? Just because you're open enough to do it doesn't mean that that's the only way you can do it, right? So notice how having that heel under the opposite hip actually gives a little bit of a—it’s like using your heel as a prop to, here you go. Right, to find kind of a neutral place for your pelvis. So . . .

Liz: I definitely don’t feel like my spine is neutral.



Leslie: Your spine isn't neutral. You're arched here. But bring your elbows down, and then find a neutral place for your spine, not all the way down. But see now, from here, because of the angle of your pelvis, is a place you can find a bit of a neutral spine, right?

So just take a few breaths there. Notice how, this is one instance, for example, when you're doing things that have more of an opening effect on the musculature around the hip joints, well, you can effectively use a belly breath to help release any tension you're holding there. So if you direct your breath into your lower belly even, into your pelvis, the shape change that's happening in the lower part of your abdomen and pelvis can illuminate certain areas that may be gripping or holding on a little bit. So that's one of the good uses of belly breathing in that it releases the tone in your abdominal wall and let's you settle and drop through there, which is sometimes what you want to do.

But then if you think of the breath a little more there, and then think of activating the lower belly as you exhale, that has a different effect, all right? So can you feel how that's engaging a little bit more of a length along the spine? So notice how you can walk your arms forward just a little bit, make a little bit more room for that lengthening that's happening along the spine, and then maybe fold your hands inward, there, so that you have a place for your head to go. There. Good. Right. Whatever it takes to keep your spine in neutral. So you're resting the right side of your pelvis on your heel. You're resting the forehead on your hands there.

So for many people, this is really the best expression of this pigeon pose as a way of settling in the pelvis and finding some release in the spine. Now, from this place, if you can get to that balanced neutral released place, coming up into more of the shape of the pose makes a little bit more sense.

Yeah, so you put your hands there. Good. Notice how a lot of that moving came from the lumbar spine, okay, which is fine. Lumbar spine does do that motion, okay?

So, that's it. Good. There.

So just lifting up, this may feel like neutral, but it's not. It's a pretty deep back bend for the lumbar spine. What if we extended that back bend into the thoracic spine? Where did that get you?

Liz: It didn't get me anywhere. It just felt like, it just was, I didn't realize how much I was holding in.

Leslie: Ah, okay. So yeah, you're letting this curve come into, this is extension, okay? Feel the sternum rising. Take a breath there. There you go. This is named after the pigeon because of the way pigeons puff out their chest, right? So if you just think of that in terms of the name of the posture and if you've seen what pigeons do, okay, that's a kind of a breath shape. There you go. Good.

And then just for the experience of it, so you don't have to twist yourself around to get at the back leg, if I just help you with this, there. This is just a little assist. Good. Give me one hand and then the other, yeah. Elbows. There. And there. See, this isn't disturbing your core all that much. It's just bringing you towards the shape, right? And you're pretty close to your foot, which is nice.

Liz: Am I?

Leslie: You are.

Liz: Can I reach it?



Leslie: You can reach it.

Liz: Oh my Gosh, I've never done that before.

Leslie: There it is. There's your foot. Yeah, puffed out pigeon chest.

Liz: That was a little too much.

Leslie: There you go.

Liz: But that satisfied my […]

Leslie: It satisfied your inner pigeon? And then come on down (laughing). You didn't realize how close you were to that, did you?

Liz: No.

Leslie: Yeah. Cool. All right, and then come on up, and now you can go home and do the other side.

[01:48:17] Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at the joint actions in pigeon, in the back leg we have hip extension. Hopefully a kind of neutral rotation. Though there might be an impulse to externally rotate the back leg, thank you. The pose is usually done with it in parallel though that intensifies the sensation, maybe, of extension.

In the front leg, then the knee is flexed and the hip is flexed. The leg is externally rotated to bring the foot across the body and then the knee can be varying degrees of adduction to bring the knee across. Like, towards the midline. Or the knee can be abducted and moved out away from the midline.

With that change in adduction and abduction, the flexion of the knee can also change. The more that the knee is extended towards a right angle, the more external rotation will be asked of the front hip.

So as the foot comes out form the hip towards the foreleg being parallel, the front leg hip will need to externally rotate more. As the foot comes back in towards the back hip, the amount of external rotation in the front leg will be less.

In terms of musculature, this can make a big difference, again, because the muscles around the hip are involved in combinations of flexion and extension, abduction and adduction,


and internal and external rotation. So each person might have a different place where they feel a sensation of effort or of lengthening, depending on how far across the knee is and how far extended towards right angles or unextended, being flexed in, the foot is.

So each different position might give rise to a different sensation, and certainly will ask different amounts of length in the muscles of the front hip.



In terms of effort, both the underneath muscles of the front hip and the back hip are asked, in this position, to be very long and supportive. So they are in an eccentric contraction, unless someone is all the way on the floor with their pelvis and the weight is completely in the sit bones, which would be a greater range of motion that our model has at the moment.

If we look at the joint actions in the sacrum, then, because the back leg is extended, if the spine is in neutral in this position, the pelvis is also going to be tilted on the sacrum in a way that creates counter nutation.

In the front leg, the pelvic half, if it follows the front leg, will be rotated on the sacrum in such a way that it creates nutation. So in an asymmetrical pose like this, in any pose where the legs are asymmetrical, there's possibility for nutation in one SI joint and counter nutation in the other SI joint.

[01:51:38] Eka Pada Rajakpotasana: Workshop

Amy: We’re going to take a look at pigeon now. The first thing I want to point out is that in pigeon the two pelvic halves are doing two different things.

So in the back leg, the leg at the hip joint is parallel, but it might feel turned in and extended. The pelvic half is following that so that there is some counter nutation in the back legs' SI joint.

In the front leg, the leg is externally rotated. There's flexion at the hip joint, and hopefully the front pelvic half is part of that action. So there might be some nutation in the front legs' SI joint.

So the two pelvic halves are doing two different things, and in between them we can look for the tail and the spine to be in extension or to be in flexion, or to be in any combination of things in between.

Now, when we look at what the front leg is doing we can get a lot of different experiences happening the front hip joint, front knee, front pelvic half.

When the leg is further out to the side, more abducted, there will be a different experience than when the leg is brought more across the body. More adducted, A-D-ducted.

So if you bring your foot way across your mat, and if you have your knee at 90 degrees, the leg will be more adducted, and because of where the heel is in the amount of knee extension, there will be more external rotation, more lateral rotation in the front leg. If you flex the knee more and bring it towards you, that generally diminishes the amount of external rotation in the front leg. It might allow for more ease in the flexion.

Then the knee can also be moved from side to side, which will affect the experience as well, changing the adduction and abduction of the knee.

So, again, your style might dictate, or your teacher's choice, might determine what you want to focus on in this. Or you might know that you want to use this as a pose where you get as close to the floor as you can. Or you might set out to be as supported as you can in this.



In which case, you could take it as an opportunity to see how you experience your breath. If you are releasing all the way down to the floor, if that's part of your choices, it might be an opportunity to see how little you can do, but keep a little organization in your body.

This can also be a really dynamic pose where nothing is on the floor but the legs, or your pelvis might be off the floor and you're looking to find, say, a vertical sense through your spine. In which case, it can take a lot of energy to come up, or maybe even to come into extension.

But even there I might want to see how little I can do to stay organized in the pose.

So there are a lot of opportunities to explore different things in this pose, like in any other. You might have all kinds of different experiences there.

[01:54:56] Setu Bandhasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: From the standpoint of the breath, we can look at one of the more useful positions and movements that occurs in class and that would be alternatively known as dwi pada pitham, or the two legged desk, if you will. Which is very similar to setu bandhasana, or bridge pose. One is usually done more as a static asana and one is more as a dynamic Vinyasa. So maybe Angel can come and help us with this. For this I'd ask you to have your head here, lying on your back with your knees bent.

So the dynamics of breathing are kind of interesting in the movement aspect of this, which is usually referred to as dwi pada pitham. So the way it's usually taught would be to inhale and to raise your pelvis off the floor. And then exhale and lower it down. This is one of the more useful things to do. Why don't you just keep in that rhythm as I talk. This is one of the more useful things to do for folks if you want to get them a sense of releasing down through the spine. So come on down.

Now notice when you came down, your your lumbar spine stayed pretty much in its shape. So inhale, come up again. Now how would you come down if you wanted each vertebra to hit individually? In other words, flattening the lumber. There you go. That's a very different thing to do, right? So I want you to try both ways.

So come up, inhale. And come down with your lumbar curve intact. It's just going to come down sort of all in one piece. Good, so you can feel the space under your lower spine, right? And now inhale. Come up. And now come down so the space in your lower spine disappears. You're kind of rolling down. There you go. Yeah, you guys can try that too. That's good.

So go back-and-forth between the two ways of doing it and, good.

So, you've done it a few times each way now, right? Did you notice that something had to change in your breathing when you're coming down one vertebra at a time, as opposed to lowering the lower spine as a single unit? Because the muscle action that flattens your lower spine is a breathing action. It's an abdominal action. You might even say it's a bandha action. All right? Did you notice that? You had to release.

Student: Yeah, there was some interruption in here.

Leslie: You had to really scoop with your lower abdominals, right? So that's just one little illustration of how an intention in the spine, by definition, creates a breathing pattern. You can do it the other way around. I can ask you to inhale, come up. And now I want you to come down as slowly as you can.



Exhale for as long as you can on the way down. That's it. So, you're taking the longest, deepest, most complete exhale possible on the way down. There you go. And then take a breath.

Notice how that almost automatically forced you to articulate with your spine. You all can try that now. Just think of the exhale. Think of just making that, coming down as long as possible with the exhale. How do you have to use your abdominal wall? How do you have to release your spine to have access to your abdominal wall to make the breath as long as possible?

Changing the breath changes the spine. Changing the spine changes the breath. They go together. It's all shape change. The spine is the back of the abdominal cavity. The abdominal cavity changes shape and breathing. There you go.

I think the breathing thing actually made the spine thing a little easier. I saw more articulation with the breathing emphasis than with the spine emphasis. Which, you said it actually interfered with my breathing the first time, right?

So now when you come up and hold, so come on up and hold, this becomes setu bandhasana, right? So that means that you kinda gather your arms under you, and then you can first sort of interlace your fingers, and that kinda rolls your shoulder blades together. Good. And then if you reach your hands up and hold under you, this is kind of a bridge pose, right?

Now this is actually creating, from the standpoint of breathing, quite a strong chin lock. Can you feel how you are you driving your chin towards the sternum and the sternum towards the chin. So notice the breathing. What happens in the tops of the lungs?


What happens in the collarbones? What happens in the upper rib cage when you're literally holding your body in a chin lock? Good.

A lot of the effect that we are getting a pose like shoulder stand is actually happening here in a little bit safer way for the upper spine and neck. So come on down. Release and relax. Good.

Thanks for helping. All right.

[02:00:38] Setu Bandhasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at bridge pose there are events happening in both the lower limbs and the upper limbs. So we're going to look at what happens in terms of joint actions and muscles in the lower limbs first.

When we look at the lower limbs in bridge pose, the actions in the joints are hip extension, knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion. Could you lift up please?

Hip extension, knee extension and ankle dorsiflexion. To do that action, she's concentrically contracting in the front of the knee, or across the top of the knee, and concentrically contracting in the back of the hip joint. Go ahead and lower down.

One of the interesting things about the muscles then in this action though, are that the muscles that cross the knee joint, some of them also cross the hip joint both in the front and in the back. So while the front of the hip is getting longer, across the top of the knee needs to get shorter. While the back of the hip is



getting shorter, across the back of the knee it's getting longer. So it's a very sophisticated action within what we call one muscle on the front and on the back.

So could you lift up one more time? This is getting longer, but some of these muscles are getting longer here and shorter here. Some of the muscles in the back are getting shorter here, but actually a little bit longer here.

Go ahead and lower down. Thank you.

If we look at what happens then, building on that in the spine and then the upper limbs, when we lift up, if you add into the hip extension part of this, spinal extension, then we also have this movement of extension in the spine, which will call for a concentric shortening contraction in the back of the body. How much of this happens in the back of the spine and how much of it happens in the back of the legs can vary from person to person, and what we intend to do in the spine.

The other question then in this is what's happening in the arms. Go ahead and lower down.

The action of taking the arms down towards the floor in this position will be, for the head of the humerus, retraction of the head of the humerus. Then, in terms of the whole scapula moving, retraction or adduction of the scapula moving them towards the spine. Sometimes with those movements come puling the scapula down, depression, or pulling the scapula up, elevation. Neither of those movements of depression or elevation are necessary for doing this action, though they may certainly come in, and they often do, as habit, or as a pattern we learn along with the retraction.

So can you lift up now, and then draw your shoulder blades towards each other on your back. So in this case the scapula retract towards the spine. If she pulls the scapula down towards her hips, can you do that? Yeah. It actually asks for more length to be present in the back of the neck and might make the ability of retraction, it makes the muscles that do the retraction less able to shorten here, as opposed to, if you pull your shoulders up towards your head a little bit, and then, can you retract them towards each other a little more?

So if we're looking for the most retraction of the scapula, the muscles that do that will be more able to do it if the scapula are not also pulled down towards the spine. Go ahead and lower down.

Those muscles on the back of the body, then, that create retraction are going to be between the scapula and connecting into the back of the head, as well as down into the ribs and into the spine. The front of the body then will need to open up, but will not—if the muscles on the front of the body are actively shortening, they'll resist that action that we need to get the support gathered together on the back.

[02:05:19] Setu Bandhasana: Worskshop

Amy: We are going to talk now about setu bandha or bridge. And what I'd like to start with is looking out what happens in the shoulders in it. So I think one of the questions is what happens in the legs, one end of the bridge, and then what happens in the shoulders as the foundation at the other end.

One of the things I think that's really interesting about bridge is that we can do it by, or for the shoulders to be a good foundation, we need to elevate them and downwardly rotate them.

So to clarify for a second, elevate your shoulders, which is sliding them up. And then depress your shoulders, which is sliding them down. So elevation and depression. Which is different than upward rotation which is when they swing out. So upward rotation, when you swing your elbows wide up, the



scapula themselves they swing out and up. And then downward rotation would be like what you do to bring your hands together behind your back. So when the scapula do this kind of movement, it's called downward rotation or medial rotation.

The thing is, that we can separate downward rotation from depression and we can separate upward rotation from elevation. They don't necessarily go together. So plenty people bring their arms up overhead and then pull their shoulders down their back. Which is not so functional for the shoulder joint and not what I think setu bandha is about.

But in setu bandha we can downwardly rotate the shoulders so you can bring your hands together behind your back and downwardly rotate them. And then you can adduct them, so you can bring them towards each other but then can you let them slide up? Can you elevate them instead of pulling them down?

So when we're lying on our backs in setu bandha, if we want the shoulder blades to be the foundation of the pose, they need to be able to move into the floor. And so if I pull them down my back, if I depress them while I'm doing that, they're moving away from the floor, not into floor. Does that make sense? Kind of?

So lie down on your backs and try it, to start with.

So I'm going to suggest you start by bringing your arms up to the ceiling once you're down on your back. And then bend your elbows and bring your upper arms right alongside your body. Now right from here, can you draw your shoulder blades towards each other without pulling them down your back? Without depressing them? Can you pull them towards each other, which is adduction, and elevate them a little bit and see what that does to your spine? And feel how that's different than drawing them towards each other and pulling them down towards your waist. Do you feel the difference? Does one feel like it helps lift your neck off the floor a little more? Okay.

Student: The other one really pushes it down.

Amy: The other one pushes it down. And I think what we want to do in this pose, because the neck is in flexion, we want to kinda support the neck from being on the floor.

So now extend your elbows and lift your hips. Keep your upper arms on the floor. Extend your elbows, so just straighten your arms alongside you. Keep your upper arms on the floor. Extend your elbows.

Now lift your hips just enough to bring your hands together behind your back. And feel how the scapula have to kind of roll a little bit on your rib cage. Now, can you do that elevation of your scapula again? Can you take them towards your ears and towards each other in such a way that it lifts your spine away from the floor? And for the moment don't worry to much about what your legs are doing. And see if that can bring your thoracic spine and your neck away from the floor.

And then release your hands and lower down.

And then if you want to compare it to clasping your hands and pulling your shoulders down your back, you can. But it might not feel very good. So if that's the way you learned it, or if that something you've heard and you want to try clasping your hands, we're just gonna downwardly rotate your scapula. And then pulling them down toward your hips. See what happens in terms of what's on the floor there? Not so supportive of the neck, I think usually, right?

Now the thing about clasping your hands,




and I see some of you clasping your hands and some of you not, I don't think it absolutely essential that you clasp your hands here. It does that kind of most extreme range of motion here in your hands can be clasped, heels of your hands together. Sometimes your hands are clasped like this. I think that we can get at that feeling with the palms of the hands on the floor too. Because as soon as your hands come behind you, your shoulder is downwardly rotating.

So now take the same action and think of pressing your whole arm into floor, including your upper arm, to lift your spine up. And find that movement of your scapula that helps lift your spine away from the floor, not push it down.

And it may be a different kind of usage of the muscles at the top of the shoulder blade, base of your neck. Lower down when you want to; when you're ready to. Pause for moment. You don't want to lower down.

Student: It's different.

Amy: It's different. I think that we sometimes get the bias about not using the top of the shoulder muscles and it's all about relaxing here and relaxing here. This is actually, if we're lifting higher and higher up and eventually into shoulder stand, this is the foundation and so we want this area to be responsive and capable of holding us up, I think. So this activation of the shoulders which is something we're told all the time not to do; don't hunch your shoulders, don't pull them up, don't pull them back. We're doing actually exactly that, to be one end of the bridge. Do you buy it?

Student: Yeah, I do. It's a very different sensation.

Amy: It's a very different, yeah. Now, try it once more and see how your breath is while you're doing that. And if you want to compare it to how your breathing is in the other way and how your breathing is this way. See what happens to the movement of your breath, because my feeling is getting the scapula to slide up towards the head is that my ribs are actually more free to move here. And I'm not pressing down on the ribs so I'm not inhibiting the movement of the breath there.

And then you can lower down whenever you're ready to. Good.

Did anybody feel happier breathing with your shoulders pulled down than with your shoulders pulled up? Or not feel a difference?

Student: With the shoulders up, freed the rib cage for me.

Amy: Freed the rib cage up. Yeah, great. So maybe more effortful in some ways? More effortful around the shoulders, for sure. Not for sure, but possibly, but having this other affect on the ribs.

Student: But a more supportive effort. Like, my additional way is more about tuggy-pully where I feel it everywhere.

Amy: Yeah, so maybe more supported effort instead of tuggy-pully. Great. Support instead of tuggy-pully sounds good.

Okay so here's the question then about the other end of the bridge which is the legs, the feet on the floor. So can you have your arms just resting on the floor now and not push with your arms. And actually, if you're tempted to push with your arms, you could hold them up to ceiling. So you take your arms out of the picture and then see what happens when you press your feet into the floor?

And this can be a building block to wheel. So we could apply this in wheel also. Or you might already have. See when you press your feet into the floor, are you pushing the weight into your head? Or are you pulling your knees away from you?



Can you find the action of the legs that doesn't put pressure in your head? Unless you like the feeling of pressure in your head. And can you find the action of the legs now without pushing your spine up?

And if you get tired of holding your arms up, you can certainly release them down. But what do the legs do for you here?

If you don't use your spine, can you maybe even imagine that your spine is pouring down from your legs. That you're not pushing your spine up at all. So that you see how much lift the legs can give you. And then lower down.

Then play with putting them together and see first what happens if you do the legs before the shoulders. So can you reach your knees away from you and then extend your spine, bringing your shoulders into the floor to extend your spine out. And you can clasp your hands or not if you like.

And then lower down. And then take a breath.

But then see what happens if you start from your shoulders into the floor. If you start with your spine and then add your legs in.

Kind of shrug your shoulders to extend your spine and then have the legs join in. And what happens then to your sense of support? What happens then to your sense of your breath? And then lower down.

And did one of them feel more familiar than the other? Probably more habitual? Like do you usually start with your legs or usually start with your spine?

Student: I usually start with my legs.

Amy: You usually start with your legs?

Student: It's a combination.

Amy: It's a combination that you do? So then my question is, whatever you find familiar, can you cultivate the other so that you could do it either way? And then eventually, try it this way now. What happens if you do both? Can you do shoulders and feet at the same time, equally, to come up in a balanced way?

Student: No.

Amy: And if the answer is no, or if your nervous system melts down, the answer is no, then that might be something to practice.

So when you come up, can shoulders and feet both engage with the floor to bring you up? And if one takes over, can you balance it out, whatever that means; balancing it out. Can you breathe wherever you are? And then lower down.

So before we started, Angel asked a question about once you get up when you have that little extra bit that you can go. And I think that one of the interesting things about whether you initiate at your shoulders, whether you initiating at your feet, whether you do both at once, is to see if I can start in such a way that coming up can get me to the fullest expression of the pose without any fidgeting once I'm up there. So that little extra bit shouldn't, hate to say shouldn't, but wouldn't need to happen if you had everything ready from the beginning. Which is one of those things I'm curious about. Which is not to say that adjusting once you're up there is bad. But I'm curious about getting up there and then squiggling into more as opposed to getting things sorted out from the very beginning so that when I get there it's all there already. I think one of the ways explore that is to see where your preference for starting is, and then explore the other to get to balance.



Student: I think sometimes, for me, the clasping of the hands before getting, like you said and then fidgeting into it is, is so fidgety and I see that a lot in the students too. I've never really thought about coming up equally and then seeing what happens. And that last time felt so much more easeful. Very unfamiliar but a lot easier.

Amy: Unfamiliar but easier, yeah. You know, it's interesting because I think that we can use, in general, I had this question about clasping the hands and binds in general. Because then what we start to use in clasping the hands is not the organization of the shoulders but some force we're generating from other muscles. And it's sometimes not helpful. Or we can lead ourselves into something in a passive way. Rather than if you don't clasp your hands right away, can you get there from your shoulders and your spine? And if you can't get, if you have to clasp your hands, that tells you something about kind of where you're doing it from.

So I think they're all really interesting questions and really the question is, can there be ease? Can you be breathing? Can you figure out what's unfamiliar and make the unfamiliar familiar,


and then you'll have more choices. Thanks.

[02:20:07] Balasana: Starting with the Breath

Leslie: Let's look at pose of a child from a breath-centered perspective, shall we? I'll need an assistant for this one to, why don’t we bring Liz up here.

Okay, so pose of a child, is this one of your favorite poses?

Liz: Oh yeah.

Leslie: Oh yeah, okay. Good. So I noticed you have your arms forward. They can be either forward or back. Do you have a preference?

Liz: I actually like this better.

Leslie: You like this better? Now, some people don't, because it puts a lot of pressure into their head and neck, all right. But some people, actually, if they have tight shoulders, if you bring your arms forward, find that this is a little stressful, bring both arms forward, okay, if the shoulders are tight. So finding an arm position that works, that's comfortable is actually important as well.

So the breath basics of this are that the front of your body, the front of your breath, your abdominal region, your chest are, first of all, slightly in flexion and being compressed by the fronts of your thighs. So if you have a strong preference for belly-breathing, that's going to be interfered with, to some extent, in this pose. Now, some people actually accommodate for that by separating the knees, so if you could open your knees a bit. See.

So here, this isn't necessarily always about having tight hips. Sometimes, this is a breath accommodation. This will leave plenty of room for your belly to keep doing its thing if you're a strong belly-breather, right? But as soon as you bring those thighs together, and do that again, now, they're pressing into your belly. And it's actually asking the breath to move somewhere other than the belly when you do that. So



can you feel that there something that happens maybe in the back? This is often a pose that's associated with breathing to the back body, or breathing in to the back body, all right? And the reason for that is quite simple is that the front body is compressed or constricted.

So just knowing that allows us to bring a little bit more attention to the backs of the lungs. It's important to remember that the back of your lungs is bigger than the front of your lungs. See. So the lung tissue actually comes down to way about, here in the back. In the front, it actually is about that high. So there's a lot of breath that can happen—there’s a lot of diaphragm here. You have about this much width of diaphragm here between your floating rib and the base of your lung, which would be about here. So all of that is accessible and available in a pose like this.

What about the tops of your lungs? Here's the fun thing. Bring your arms forward. And now, can you bring your palms together, elbows forward a little bit, good. So work your elbows forward on the mat and the hands here. This is good for what I would refer to as armpit-breathing. You have lung wherever you have armpit. See. See that rib that's there under my fingers? There's lung just under those ribs. So pay attention to the breath that happens. Aah! That's nice. Kind of made you want to make more space there, right? Cool.

So a little bit of armpit-breathing is a good thing. And now, can you maintain that sense of openness as you let your hands release down?

There's all these alternative places where breath can be happening, in the back of our body, in the top of our lungs. It's not all about here. It's a great position in which to explore that.

[02:24:00] Balasana: Joint & Muscle Actions

Amy: When we look at the joint actions involved in balasana, to list them from the toes up, the toes are in flexion. The ankle is in plantar flexion. The knee is in flexion. The hip is in flexion. The spine is in varying degrees of flexion, and in this position the shoulders are in flexion, her elbows are slightly flexed, her wrists are neutral and the hands are neutral.

If you change the position of your legs, don’t do it yet. If you change the position of your legs, it can have an affect on what's happening in the spine and in the hip joints.

So at this moment Lisa has her legs relatively parallel to each other. If you now separate them from each other, so abduct them, it doesn't really change the rotation of the legs, but just separates them. Then there may be more hip flexion available. But an interesting thing often happens in the spine, which is that it might come into more extension, which can be more easeful in some cases if the muscles of the back are more accustomed to being in this position. This makes more space for movement in the front to happen.

It does then, though, ask for more hip flexion if the spine is moving more towards the floor. But less spinal flexion.

Bring your knees back together. Where in this position there is more spinal flexion.



Bring your arms down alongside your body. In this position with the arms alongside the body, the shoulder blades might, in relationship to the pull of gravity, slide more away from the spine into what's called abduction. With the arms down alongside the body, the shoulder joint is closer to being in a neutral position than with the arms overhead.

In terms of muscles, being in this position may be a release into gravity and not take any activity. But there might also be some internal organization to keep the parts in relationship to each other. If the head does not come to the floor, could you imagine that your head could not come to the floor? Yeah. But then release it like, yeah.

If the head doesn't quite come to the floor, then, at the same time that these are lengthening, they may be also active. At the same time the muscles of the back are in a position where they would be lengthening, they may also be active in some kind of eccentric contraction, lengthening but supporting the weight of the head. That will change if the head touches the floor.

Go ahead and bring your head to the floor.

The activity of the muscles in the back will change when the head is supported by the floor, or by a blanket, or by a block, as opposed to when it's not.

[02:27:27] Balasana: Workshop

Amy: We’re going to take a look at balasana, or child's pose. One of the first things, I think, is interesting to consider in child's pose is how wide the knees are. So I'm going to talk about things that happen if they're very, very wide, like the width of the mat, things that might happen if they are medium-ish width, where they catch the edge of your ribcage, and then some of the things that happen if the knees are close together.

So start, come into a child's pose with your knees wide apart. Maybe the width of the mat. Maybe approaching that.

Then go ahead and come forward into it. One of the first things to notice is that the spine can more easily come into extension here and the forehead comes very easily to the floor. Both of them have extended their arms out overhead, which is commonly done with this version of the pose.

See, what happens also if you bring your arms back alongside you, which shifts where the weight is distributed in your shoulders. With your knees that wide, you might widen your elbows. So it might put more pressure in your neck than you like. It might release your shoulders, in a way. See what happens.

But the spine is in more extension here and the ribs are free to move forward with the movement of the breath. So this can feel like a comfortable place to breathe for some people.

Then, if you come up and you bring your knees a little closer together so that, as you come forward, your chest, the edges of your ribcage, land on your legs. You can see what happens here. For many people, this brings a little more flexion into the spine. But the upper body can still come into a little extension. Maybe the neck comes into extension.



The arms can be alongside the body, or out overhead. Either one, either choice in the arms, will have a different affect on the shoulder girdle, the upper ribs, maybe the sense of the rest of the spine, maybe a question about what happens in the neck. There isn't a right way to do it. There may be a way that it's done in a particular tradition.

But there's nothing more healthy about doing this with your arms overhead than doing your arms alongside your body in a general way. For each person, something might be more or less comfortable.

Then come back up and bring your legs all the way together.


This position asks for actually a lot of width across the back of the pelvis. Then, as you come forward, you may find all kinds of things happening quite differently than with your legs wide apart. There's much more flexion in the spine, for most people.

Because the ribs are resting on the front of the legs and the abdomen may also be more compressed, much more opening in the back of the body is required. Much more mobility for the movement of the breath there. So sometimes when the legs are close together this can feel like a very hard position to breathe in.

In this position, again, the arms can be alongside the body or out overhead. The head here can be either on the forehead or the spine might curl all the way into flexion and the top of the head might come to the floor.

Which might lift your body a little bit away from your legs. But it gives a more continuous flexion to the spine.

If the forehead comes to the floor, then some of the spine is in flexion and the cervical spine might come into extension.

All of them are legitimate versions of child's pose.

So one of the ways that I like to explore child's pose is to get the sit bones to the heels. So if you're sitting on your heels and your sit bones don't quite come down, you can put something between your heels and your sit bones.

Then bring your hands forward onto your knees or onto the floor and begin to move forward through your spine. You can do this from your tail to your head or you can do this from your head to your tail. But begin to come forward. Go bottom to top for you guys.

As you come forward, pause anywhere that it feels like your heels start to lift up, or your sit bones start to lift up from your heels.

Pause there and breathe. Then you can come a little further forward.

As you come forward, you may want to put something under your forehead. Take a few breaths. Put a block. Flip a block up on higher sides. You could bring your hands to the floor.

So the idea is to somehow have weight in both your sit bones and eventually in your head so that nothing is hovering. Or, if your head doesn't quite touch the floor, to feel your weight pouring into your hands,



and then to see where you can feel the movement of your breath and how you could feel this curling in on yourself distributed through your hips and your spine.

If you find you get into this and you can't breathe, I don't think it serves any purpose to stay there. But it is interesting to find just the edge of where your breath is challenged and then see if you're holding onto anything that you could let go of make it easier to be here.

Then, when you're ready to, come up out of it. Thanks.


Unit 9: Anatomy in Asana and...

Documents

Transcript of Unit 9: Anatomy in Asana and...