An afternoon with Bharadvaja and Matsyendra

After work I had a bit of time for practice this afternoon. I have been subbing heavily and taught eight classes this past week! Needless to say my personal practice has been neglected. Partly because of lack of time and partly because of sheer exhaustion. I absolutely love teaching, but it takes a lot of energy to do that many classes coupled with a full time job and family duties.

As I approached my mat, I wanted to work steadily and not strenuously. After supta padangusthasana, I was inspired to do twists. I started light, with Bharadvajasana I which is a simple upper back twist. I then remembered one of Laurie Blakeney’s classes where she spent 45 minutes on Jatara Parivartinasana, and thought I would have a similar practice with one or two twisting poses.

I haven’t done much Bharavajasana II since my assessment and not sure why. I remember it was one of my most challenging poses as I could only grasp the foot on one side and not the other. After trying it I realized I cannot grasp either foot now. So I went back and forth between the two sides using a strap around the foot. While I was preparing for my assessment, I neglected to notice how nice Bharavajasana II is for the hips and lower back. Even though I ended never finding my foot, the going back and forth was a satisfying practice. Below is Faeq Biria’s flawless pose.

I then kneaded Ardha Matseyandrasana into the mix. That is another challenging twist for me. I aspire to have a pose like Birjoo Mehta as he has a similar build than me and can easily negotiate the pose with a few choice props.

I can’t even get my hand to the knee, so I use a strap around my front foot and hold that.

The nice part of ardha matseyandrasana is it gives a strong spine twist complete with “cracking.” It reportedly does wonders for the gastric region as well.

I found that the constant repetition for one hour in these two poses (sometimes one after another, and sometimes two times each) and losing track of how many I have done, I sensed that tato dvandvānabhighātaḥ state mentioned in the sutras where one is not concerned about the dualities. It didn’t matter if I caught my foot in either poses, just the practice was enough to reach the mental state.

It is interesting to note that Bharadvaja, of whom the asana is named, was one of the authors of the Rg Veda which is one of the world’s oldest texts (1700-1100 BC). He was considered a rishi who attained extraordinary scholarship and had a powerful meditative practice. Very fitting that studying and reaching a peaceful state can both be achieved in the pose dedicated to him.

 

Sunday backbends

Today was a nice day to reclaim part of my practice as I have been subbing heavily for my mentoring teachers who are teaching in China. During my own teacher training years ago, my mentoring teacher Ray said that a teacher gives up part of his practice for his students. I understand how true that is as time studying to prepare for weekly classes cuts into one’s one personal sadhana. But that is the sadhana of a teacher.

This is “backbend week” (save Tuesday’s forward bend sequence for International Yoga Day), and I am working on a sequence and modifications for one of my students who has a wrist injury and another student who gets severe headaches after backends. I am grateful for Guruji’s innovations to accommodate injuries and medical conditions of all kinds.

Because of the body I have been given, backbends come fairly easily for me. It has been a blessing as I see how other struggle with this clan of poses. Because of that, I don’t practice backbends as often as other clans which I truly struggle with–namely twisting poses.

But today I cut loose and did a few cycles of Urdvha Dhanurasana at the wall. I am nursing a shoulder injury which I attribute to my sedentary desk job and hours of driving. Today, my shoulder cooperated and and gave me the freedom to push up into the classic  pose.

I have heard that injuries are a blessing for a teacher as they make one think of how to practice around it and then utilize actions that benefit and heal it. That gives much potency to one’s teaching to another student who has a similar injury. My left shoulder struggles in Gomukhasana due to a pinched nerve. But the more I work on other actions, the Gomukhasna eventually comes.

When one delves into the deeper yogic philosophy, we see that we have many sheaths of our being and that the physical body is only part of it. I find it a bit humorous that it is referred to as the “food” layer (annamayakosa) and is the most transient layer of who we really are. It is always changing.

Home practice is a charming endeavor. In between poses, my wife calls and asks me to find some cabinet clips. Being a husband is my first duty, so I help. Then back to practice. I read a few pages of Light On Yoga here, google a few photos there, then try something new. I fail, then re-check the picture, then redo. It is like doing homework with your own  body.

Home practice feels comfortable and satisfying. I am now grounded and recharged for the hectic week ahead…

 

 

Today’s self practice showed me my challenges for the new year

It was a fun yule tide, wasn’t it? All that feasting and sitting and feasting and sitting. I have to say that my personal practice has taken a back seat between the holidays, three jobs, and teaching more classes. Teaching classes for me does not equal practice, because I actually teach. In yesterday’s class I was teaching twisting poses, and realized that my practice has been sorely lacking. Today, I had a gap in my schedule that allowed me to sneak in some asana time at the studio.

For the first half hour of practice, I used the rope wall just to elongate my spine in Adho Mukha Svanasana and Uttanasna and address my tight hamstrings. I then hung in rope Sirsasana for a few minutes. That felt wonderful.

A good self practice is much like improvisational jazz music. You start with a theme and realize variations in that theme and go with it. What started out as back pain perceived from my tight hamstrings led to realizations of tightnesses in my groins and hips. I did a long supta padangusthasana I and II, ardha baddha padmottanasana and eventually wound up in Matsyasana. My groins cried.

I finished with this chair Sarvangasana cycle that utilizes baddha konasana.

There is the famous saying “physician, heal thyself.” That applies even more to yoga teachers. I felt a profound relief after my practice, not just physically, but emotionally. My jobs are quite stressful and I am holding much of that stress in my body. My mentoring teacher Ray says that for every hour you teach, you should be doing double in your own practice. For me, that translates into 9 hours of practice. 7 more hours to go this week…

 

Making the leap from the studio to a home practice

The other night I was subbing a class and asked some of the students if they had a home practice. These were students who have been practicing for years, and their responses were a bit surprising. “I don’t know which poses to do,” one said. “I prefer just doing yoga in the studio,” another said.

I am finding that not practicing at home because of these two reasons is very common. Doing yoga without a teacher is very much like studying Spanish for 10 years in a classroom and being asked by someone from Spain where the bathroom is and drawing a complete blank. And then when the Spanish guy leaves and finds the bathroom on his own, you come up with a beautifully crafted sentence with agreeing tenses on how to find the loo.

Making a jump from studio practice to home practice is tantamount to that scene in 2001, A Space Odyssey where the caveman throws the bone in the air and it jump cuts to a large spaceship. You get a much richer experience trying it on your own! I remember when I started supplementing my classes with a home practice, my yoga experience increased exponentially.

A bit of history about my own practice. I was one of those people who picked up “Light On Yoga” got inspired, and tried the courses at the back of the book…the kind with 40-50 poses for a single practice. I remember those days. I would blast Coltrane while trying to do Parsvottanasana which I thought was a backbend in stage I because Iyengar’s chest was so open.

Of course Parsvottanasana is actually a forward bend and the prep as seen above is to open the chest. To get to my point, I had to do the manual labor of those courses and fail miserably in my own practice before I could appreciate what my teacher was actually trying to tell me. But a magical thing happened while I was trying out those courses and could not make it past week 16 in Light On Yoga…I developed some type of internal discernment about how to sequence poses.

One of my top posts is to do Supta Padangusthasana if you cannot think of any other pose to start your practice. To develop that idea a bit further for seasoned students, I would start doing a home practice by first selecting a clan of poses on which to focus. There are Utthishta Sthiti (standing poses), Paschima Pratana Sthiti (forward bends), Purva Pratana Sthiti (Backbends), Upavistha Sthiti (seated poses), Viparita Sthiti (Inversions), Udara Akunchana Sthiti (abdominal poses), and Visranta Karaka (restorative poses). Each clan has it’s own personality and effects.

Standing poses are vigourous and are the “donkey work” of yoga. It is said that raw beginners should do at least 6 months from this clan before proceeding if their practice is regular. I would say more like 2 years for the practitioner who does yoga twice a week.

Forward bends are considered “cooling” as they calm the nervous system when done properly. However, if you have tight hamstrings, parsvottanasana (see above) is anything but “cooling” and that is why you need the prerequisite foundation of standing poses.

Seated poses are “quieting” and allow the practitioner to learn how to build time in poses. With a strong earth element in the pose, they ground the practitioner. With experience, one later uses this clan for pranayama and dhyana.

Backbends are approached with caution. The are “heating” and energizing, but you can blow a gasket (or a vertebrae) if you don’t respect this clan. It is best to start with the “baby back bends” like salabhasana before getting too adventurous.

Inversions are also approached with care. They have an assertive effect on blood circulation. If you have any blood pressure issues, you should consult your teacher and your doctor. It is also not advised for women not to do this while menstruating. Once that is out of the way inversions should be a daily practice and advised to do in the evening as they contract many of the ill effects of sitting throughout the day.

Abdominal poses can be treated more like a garnish, more than an entree and can be interspersed between poses in certain sequences. These are poses like Paripoona Navasana, and Supta Padangusthasana. However, I have been to many classes where all we did was abdominal poses.

Lastly, restorative poses are done for several reasons. I like to think of them as “repairing” myself for any mistakes I made in my other clans. In the Iyengar style, women who are menstruating should adhere to restorative practice during their cycle and omit inversions. Yoga in the West nowadays is turning into a glorified aerobics craze, and this clan allow the practitioner to start focusing on the inward aspects of the practice.

To start one’s own practice, I would chose a clan according to experience and energy level. Yoga is an art, a science, and a philosophy. By doing your own practice, you practice the art. You construct what you need to do. You explore concepts that you are curious about. You will fail. You will succeed.

Devoting part of your yoga practice to experimentation

My teachers are making me an offer that is hard to refuse. They will give me free constructive criticism on my teaching for the next level, Junior Intermediate I. The JI1 syllabus is rife with arm balances. In Iyengar yoga, it’s not just one thing to be able to have complete competency in doing the pose. That’s a given. You have to have complete competency in teaching the pose SAFELY to someone who has little experience or has never tried it before. That changes the way one approaches the asanas. One has to try different ways of doing the pose to make them more accessible in stages. Today, after doing an hour of standing poses, I worked on Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Downward Facing Tree Pose) and Pincha Mayurasana (Tail Feather of the Peacock Pose).

 

A nice way to approach poses that counter gravity is to first try the actions of the poses taking gravity out of the equation. Here is how I worked the arms and the chest for Adho Mukha Vrksasana.

I used a wall for Tadasana, and extended my arms to urdvha hastasana. The second action was lying on a block with the far edge at the corner of my C7 and T1 and pressing my hands against the wall. This creates a tremendous opening in the chest.

I would not recommend this pose for beginners until you can do Gomukhasana arms without a strap as seen above.

Next, I used wall ropes to take the weight out of the wrists. 

 

Now I try the pose kicking up to a wall with the hand rotated to the side which is the final version for the JI1 syllabus.

I give Pincha Mayurasana a similar treatment.

I wanted to finish my practice with Supta Baddhakonasana (Reclined Bound Angle Pose). I normally practice with a strap, but today I experimented with a blanket which presses the soles of the feet completely together giving a different effect to the groins. 

And then I tried classic Supta Baddhakonasana. I was inspired by a blogger earlier today who was lamenting about the use of props in yoga practice. Note there are no props with this variation.

The genius of BKS Iyengar is his ability to take the classic pose apart, work on the individual pieces, then put the pose back together. He did this through experimentation with props. Very few would argue that he does not teach “real yoga.”

The advantage of home practice versus taking yoga in a class, is you have the time to experiment with concepts you are curious about. I would advise to experiment within the scope of your ability.

Can’t think of a pose to start your practice? Do Supta Padangusthasana

Iyengar-tier Supta Padangusthasana

Good Job! You set aside time to do your own practice. You’ve got your props, your hour or so, your motivation, and bam! What the heck to I do now? You say to yourself “I’m too tired for standing poses, my back, hip, shoulder (etc etc) is sore.” Stop everything, grab a strap, and do Supta Padangusthasana (reclined big toe pose).

Mere mortal-tier Supta Padangusthasana

Why would I suggest this pose? I have found in my own practice Supta Padangusthasana does many things. You are lying down, so it’s not that energy draining. You address those stiff hamstrings that were victimized by your day of sitting (or from a night of sleeping). But more than anything it is an excellent “diagnostic” pose. By doing Supta Padangusthasna in my own practice, I can tell fairly quickly what I need to work on it terms of stiffness, in terms of energy expenditure, and in terms of inward balance. Like magic, an internal guide kicks in when I am in this pose to try out things I have recently learned in class, or to get after my tightnesses from the previous yoga session.

Here is a quick “how to” for Supta Padangusthasana I:

• Lie on the floor on your back in Supta Tadasana (reclined mountain pose).
• Keeping the left leg straight, bend your right knee and place strap around ball mound of right foot.
• Press the right “big toe” mound into the strap to straighten the leg.
• Hold the belt in each hand and keep the arms straight like you are trying to reach your foot.
• If you can reach the foot, grasp the big toe with the right thumb, middle, and index fingers.
• Top leg should be straight. Arm or arms should be straight.
• Keep the bottom leg straight with toes pointed toward the ceiling. Put the left hand on the left thigh and press down if you are using one arm.
• Do one minute per side and repeat several times.

The shoulder should not travel up toward the foot, but should be rooted on the ground. If the back the neck curls up, place a folded blanket to fill the space behind the neck to the floor. The forehead should be slightly above the chin.

This is considered and “abdominal pose” and not a “forward bend” as it may appear. Therefore, when in the pose, make sure your abdomen is soft and deep. How deep? Look at Mr. Iyengar’s pose above. You can see his ribs are very pronounced from his abdomen deepness.

As I said in my previous post. The buttocks should be soft enough that the back thigh can touch the floor. You can see in the “mere mortal” pose her back thigh has plenty of light shining through.

When I first started my teacher training, my mentor took one look at my bowed legs in standing poses and gave me a never ending homework assignment to do this pose daily. It started bringing life into my forward bends.

When I was recovering from my prostate surgery a year ago. I did this pose after getting okay’d by my doctor to practice yoga. Coupled with Supta Padangusthasana II, and Supta Baddhakonasana, I feel it aided greatly in my recovery.