"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!" Dr. Seuss
One of the conundrums we face as beginning yoga students is that we can’t know what the pose is supposed to feel like until we’re doing it.
But if you start with the standard issue collapsed chest and tight shoulders of a 21st century desk worker, how can you even begin to know how large and expansive your ribcage needs to be?
One answer: a fabulous, yet inexpensive prop, the imaginary sticky mat.
I found mine last week in Louie’s Wednesday morning class, and I’ve been using it ever since.
Once you’ve learned to use yours, it will help you stretch your shoulders, expand your side ribs, breathe better and let go of anxiety.
Here’s how it works:
Lie down on your back with your legs up the wall.
Make sure that your back rests easily on the floor.
If your hamstrings are long, you can have your buttocks at the wall.
If they’re short and your buttocks are at the wall, your pelvis will be light on the floor, or even lifted. Move away from the wall until you are well grounded.
Now spread the skin on the soles of your feet, from the big toe side to the little toe side. Spread the skin on your heels. Separate your toes.
Press both your big toe mound and your heel toward the ceiling.
Lift your inner arches toward the ceiling, and draw your outer arches down toward your outer ankles.
From this action in your feet, you’ll feel your legs come alive.
Take your arms overhead. Stretch your arms to their maximum. Reach out to hold the sticky mat. Have your thumbs under the mat, so your palms face each other.
Pull the mat away from the wall as strongly as you can.
Grip the mat and pull it away from the wall as though you wanted to rip it in two. Extend particularly on the thumb side of your hand.
You’ll find the effect dramatic: legs press the wall, arms extend, back body lengthens, and belly presses to the floor.
In this position, notice your shoulder blades.
As you stretch your hands away from your shoulders, begin to pull your shoulder blades away from your hands.
Hold for a few breaths.
Then let go of the mat and slowly bring your arms, elbows straight, to shoulder width apart.
Stay aware of your elbows. If they start to bend, don’t take them closer together. Instead, find the place where your elbows can be straight, and stay there.
Palms facing each other, thumbs touching the mat, spread your palms and roll your inner upper arms toward your ears.
Stay for a breath or two, then release your arms to your sides and relax.
Bend your knees, roll to the right hand side and come up to sitting.
You can just stand up, or, for a pleasant transition, move through child’s pose into downward dog, then walk your feet forward to standing forward bend, and roll up.
Now roll out your imaginary yoga mat.
With your feet hip distance apart, bring your arms up, with your hands as wide as the imaginary mat.
Grip the sides of the imaginary mat, and pull. Lengthen up particularly through the thumb side of your hand.
You’ll be surprised by what happens. Your arms will reach to heights never before experienced, and your side ribs will stretch.
Once you have your full stretch, draw down on your shoulder blades.
Then let go of the imaginary mat, and open your hands so your palms face each other.
Slowly bring your arms shoulder distance apart.
Keep your elbows straight.
Stay, breathe, and when you’re ready, turn your palms toward the floor and slowly lower your arms, lifting your ribcage as you bring your arms down.
Imagine taking this expanded chest into the rest of your poses, and your life: “Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”
Photo credits, Robert Gray, Mary Balomenos.
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My name is Eve Johnson.
Are some yoga poses lemons?
in commentary,How to Build a Practice,practice psychology
Lemons can be so beautiful.
On reflection, I’d say no.
There are poses that can cause harm if they are badly done. And there are poses so likely to be badly done that careful teachers rarely teach them – or more precisely, they rarely teach the final pose.
That doesn’t make these poses lemons, just poses to approach with care.
Sadly that doesn’t mean you can’t have your own personal lemonasana, or even a half-dozen of them.
I don’t mean poses you find hard to do, or poses that are, at the moment, too advanced.
For each of us there are simple poses that just don’t work.
If you have an injury or chronic illness, you may already know your lemon poses.
But what if you’re healthy and injury free?
How do you recognize your lemons, and what can you do about it?
How to recognize a personal lemon:
• When you’ve bitten into one of your lemon poses, discomfort shades into pain and anxiety.
Perhaps you can’t breathe well in the pose. Or perhaps, no matter how carefully you follow the alignment cues, your knee twinges or your lower back hurts. In a lemon pose, your body feels locked and stuck.
Rotated triangle pose is a prime candidate in this category, but it happens in many other poses too.
• In a lemon pose, you can’t find the sweet spot. Instead of increasing clarity, you’re stuck in uncomfortable confusion.
• Lemon poses don’t feel good when you’re finished.
If the pose itself feels unpleasant, then yes, you’ll be relieved when you stop doing it.
But the end of the pose should offer more than just relief.
After standing poses, you should feel a pleasant sense of increased energy flowing through your body.
When you sit up after releasing from a headstand, expect energy, clarity and a sense of calm order.
A shoulder stand should have an afterglow of peacefulness, and a feeling that you’ve somehow been internally cleansed.
If the pose as you’re doing it is a personal lemon, you might feel heavy when you come out, less alert and clear than when you started.
There might be increased tension in your neck or shoulders, or a twinge in your back that wasn’t there in the pose.
If that happens consistently, then that pose, no matter how well you appear to be doing it, is a personal lemon.
If you’re committed to your practice, then simply avoiding your lemon poses isn’t going work in the long run, especially if they’re fundamental poses. Instead, you’ll have to take the time-honored route when life hands you lemons.
How to Make Lemonade:
• To help you stay motivated, create an intense desire for lemonade. Remember, lemons can be juicy.
After all, this pose is your own personal lemon. What makes it sour is a restriction in your body that you need to work on.
If you can identify what that is, and resolve it in your lemon pose, you’ll get a ripple effect of improvement through all your other poses.
• When your lemonasana comes up in class, pay special attention to any preparations or beginning stages your teacher suggests. Then take notes after class, and practice them at home.
Headstand, for example, may be a lemon pose for you.
Half-headstand, with foam bricks at the wall, is close enough to the full pose to give you the head-clearing, spirit-lifting effect.
If you pay attention to the details of how you place your hands, press your forearms down, and lift your shoulder blades, you may be surprised by your improvements the next time you do the full pose.
• In class, consider doing less, but doing it well.
If there’s a brick involved, use it at its tallest height. Rather than aiming for the full pose right away, build it step by step.
When you reach your familiar restriction, stop. Take your awareness back to your feet in standing poses, and to whatever part of your body touches the ground in other poses, and work from there.
If, for example, you’re already locked in a grim struggle with reverse triangle, don’t bother taking your arm up to complete the pose.
Instead, retrace your path into the pose, and work at the spot where you still feel as though you could move further into it.
• Presenting poses in stages, by the way, is typical of Iyengar classes.
If you’re not getting that kind of instruction, seek out an Iyengar teacher at least until you learn how to get your lemons into the citrus juicer.
• Practice at least twice a week with the stage of your lemon pose that’s sweet, or at least workable. Spend time working on related poses.
Ask your teacher for suggestions, or do some research. Yoga Journal online is an excellent resource.
Do you have poses you think of as personal lemons? What are they? And what do you do to work with them?
If this was your kind of post, you might also like:
It’s not all bliss: how to work with poses you don’t like, part one
It’s not all bliss: how to work with poses you don’t like, part two
Find your working place in hamstring stretches
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