Five-Minute Yoga

A normal curve and a hyper-kyphotic curve of the spine

We all have a kyphosis, or at least we ought to – it’s the natural outward curve of the upper back, which balances the inward curves of the neck and the low back.

Hyper-kyphosis is different. The outward curve becomes exaggerated, and we lose our ability to move in the opposite direction, into a concave spine.

Sadly for us, we live in a society that encourages hyper-kyphosis. Most of what we do, including typing, cooking, driving, reading, and gardening, encourages us to lift our shoulder blades, round our backs, and jut our heads forward. Nothing we do in our daily lives encourages us to bend over backwards – at least not physically. Over time, the rounded posture settles in, and becomes the shape of our bodies.

When I found Wende, my first Iyengar teacher,  and the poses she called “chest-ompenings,”  with a slight but perceptible ‘m’ in the word, I fell in love with them.

At 39, my upper back was a dead zone, already stiffening into the curve I could see in my mother and big sister. It was liberating to learn that I could lie down over a rolled blanket, a bolster or a wood block, and ease the stiffness out of my back.

But it wasn’t just physical tightness that released. From the beginning, I’d get up with a sense of lightness and – there’s no other word for it – openness, in my emotions, and in my mind, as well as my body.

This makes perfect sense. By reversing the curve, we create space in the ribcage. More space means easier breath, easier breath means less tension, less tension means a better ability to deal with whatever emotional states arise. No wonder I could release so much more than muscle.

Can chest openings change your upper back even if you’ve already settled into a curve?

Perhaps not all by themselves, but in a full yoga practice, yes, they can. By stretching some muscles and strengthening others you can make a permanent change in your posture.

On Thursday I’ll write more about a rigorous scientific study that found improvements in people with hyper-kyphosis after six months of an Iyengar yoga program – and the median age of the participants was 75.

This week’s Five-Minute Yoga challenge invites you to see what five minutes a day of chest opening might change in your life. If you already have a favorite setup, by all means use it. If you’re new to yoga, or don’t have many props, this chest opening with a rolled blanket (a rolled beach towel will do in a pinch) is a great place to start.

Check that your shoulders are being tugged away from your ears and your lower back is long before you straighten your legs.

Here’s how:

Roll a firm blanket into a tight roll, wide enough to support your back. Put a yoga block or other support for your head on the floor behind the blanket.

Sit down, knees bent, and roll back so your shoulder blades come to rest on the blanket. Your arms should rest on the floor, on the head side of the blanket, upper arms rolling from the inside to the outside, palms facing the ceiling.

With your shoulders firm on the blanket, slide back until your head reaches the support behind the blanket. You should feel that the blanket is gently tugging your shoulder blades away from your ears.

With your  knees still bent, press your feet down and lift your pelvis an inch or so from the floor. Lengthen your tailbone toward your ankles without changing the position of your shoulders on the blanket. Bring your pelvis back to the floor and straighten your legs, one at a time.

Now bring your awareness to the centre of your chest.

As you inhale, expand your heart centre evenly in all directions. As you exhale, allow the weight of your body to release into the blanket and the floor.

If your head begins to feel pressed into the block, try removing the block. If it’s more comfortable, leave the block out. If it’s less comfortable, put it back in. 
Stay in the pose for five minutes, then bend your knees and roll to the right-hand side. Stay there for a breath or two, then press your left hand into the floor and look down as you sit up.

Move the blanket off your mat, lie back down with your knees bent. Allow your back to settle into the floor and return to neutral. Stay for a few breaths, then roll to the right and sit up.

Benefits: Most of what we do in a day – drive, use a computer, cook dinner – involves lifting our shoulders, rounding our upper backs and stretching our heads forward. Chest-opening poses give us a welcome chance to reverse the curve. They make more space for our lungs, bring our shoulders back into place, relieve upper back tension and softly stretch the front chest muscles.

Sequence: As a five-minute practice, a chest opening can easily stand on its own. You might round it out by moving into child’s pose, downward facing dog and back to child’s pose. In a longer practice, do your chest opening near the beginning, and enjoy  your expanded chest in the rest of your practice.

Ouch: If your lower back pinches, bend your knees, bring your feet to the outer edges of the mat and let your knees drop together. If you feel hung up on the blanket, or uncomfortable, try moving an inch or two in the direction of your head.

Do chest openers play a large part in your practice? How would you describe what they’ve done for you?  I’d love to hear the story of your practice.

If this was your kind of post, you might also like:

Prop Up Your Child’s Pose and Breathe into Your Back

Disarm Practice Resistance With Viparita Karani

Can Yoga Prevent Dementia?

Outdoor yoga with guitar at Kits beach

Since Monday, I’ve found what seems to be a WordPress knight on a white charger, and tech Hell has resolved itself into a much more pleasant spot, more like tech Heck.

Still, I needed a walk on the beach today like someone lost in Death Valley in August needs a cold drink.

At the beach, I saw a Great Blue Heron perched on a rock by the water.

All that remained of the winter shore birds were two female Buffleheads, soon off to northeastern B.C. to nest in cavities made and later abandoned by Northern Flickers. And we think we have a tough time finding housing.

I also saw someone doing an outdoor yoga practice, with guitar accompaniment. I took a picture but didn’t intrude further. His music was reflective and calm. Her practice was just beginning, and she looked absorbed in it.

Here’s the photographic evidence: let no one doubt that this is a yoga city.

Need more proof?

Vancouver is home to the anonymous Yoga Spy, whose blog today is a careful consideration of the pops and cracks you hear in yoga classes, and, more to the point, in your own body when you do certain poses.

It’s a post worth reading, especially if you’ve ever heard a loud pop from your hip, or a series of clicks from your spine and wondered what was happening and whether you ought to be pleased or concerned.

I hope to be back on schedule with a new Five-Minute Yoga challenge on Monday. See you then.

First, my apologies to anyone who has tried to access this blog lately and run into a 404 Error message that begins, “Gnarly, Dude.” I’ve lately changed the address of the blog, and the error message is automatically generated by WordPress when anyone tries to use the old address. As soon as I figure out how to change the error message, I will.

Until then, it’s going to be gnarly, Dude.

In the meantime, while I work out the technical problems, I thought I’d pass on a link to this clip of the Ross Sisters, doing their 1944 routine from the show Broadway Rhythm, Solid Potato Salad. The song isn’t much, but these three sisters from Texas, who inexplicably changed their names from Vickie, Dixie and Betsy Ross, to Aggie, Maggie and Elmira, do an amazing contortionist routine, with some of the most controlled backbends you’re ever likely to see.

Click on the image to see the YouTube clip

It’s not yoga, but it’s interesting, most particularly in what exactly makes it not yoga, and how that might lead us to think about our own practice.

I suspect that most of us get caught up at some point in the more contortionist aspects of yoga poses. It’s somehow satisfying to know that you’re probably the only person in the 4 p.m. Tuesday meeting who regularly kicks up into Pincha Mayurasana (elbow balance) or does headstand.

B.K.S. Iyengar performing the final stage of Ganda Bherandasana

The Ross sisters intended to entertain, and put a great deal of hard physical work into doing it.

We intend to quiet our minds, and put a great deal of hard physical work into doing it.

How odd that these two intentions should meet in in the physical expression of Ganda Bherundasana. (“Ganda means the cheek, the whole side of the face, including the temple,” B.K.S.  Iyengar writes in Light on Yoga. “Bherundasana means terrible, or formidable, and is also a species of bird.”)

Yoga shares a universal physical language with every form of movement from dance to circus acts. In the current yoga climate of North America, it’s also part of a dizzying array of trends including Doggie Yoga and Yoga and Spinning classes.

What really makes it yoga? I’d say it’s the intent. What would you say?

And if anyone out there is a WordPress wizard, please get in touch.  I’m looking for help.

This edition has much more interesting cover art than mine

Several years ago, while stocking up on reading for a beach holiday, I bought an old Pelican paperback (which has the name Doris Shadbolt written on the cover in a small, round hand).

Yoga, by Ernest Wood, is an account written by an Englishman who came to India in 1910, learned Sanskrit and associated with scholars and yogis while rising to be president of four Indian universities.

When it was published, in 1959, few would have predicted that hatha yoga, the yoga of force, would sweep the Western world and result in  Lululemon pants, hot yoga, yoga poses in commercials, and Florida Methodists  in church basements practicing asanas, followed by readings from the New Testament.

So it’s  not likely he was thinking primarily of asana practice when he wrote:

“If the thought were that there is to be enjoyment only at the end of the path of yoga, and not on the way, the candidate would expect to have a hard time before him. Undertaking the uncongenial, he would miss its value, and fall again and again. But if each part of it as he goes along becomes a pleasure, there will be progress indeed.

“Happiness and progress go hand in hand, with happiness leading. Pain has its use as an indicator of missing the way, and gives direction back into the path of happiness.” (I added the boldface.)

But I think it’s no stretch to apply the quotation to asana practice. The eight limbs of yoga are holographic; all limbs are in every limb. Until you find joy in the poses, it’s hard to make progress. Happiness and progress go hand in hand, with happiness leading.

Still, there’s no glossing over the fact that many yoga poses cause discomfort when we start to learn them. I know whenever I teach Warrior I that students with tight calves will feel a less than pleasant sensation in the back leg as they attempt to press the back outer heel to the floor, and everyone will feel the need for more strength in arms, legs and back.

In Triangle pose, it’s often the hamstrings, in Rotated Triangle, the hips. Whenever we ask our bodies to do something outside of their normal range of motion, the first sensations we encounter are usually  unpleasant. Especially for beginning students, the favorite pose is likely to be Savasana (corpse pose, or relaxation pose).

What can we do about that?

It helps to realize that you have your hand on the volume control and can turn it up and down at will. That way you can take your suffering  in small doses. Baby steps and going slow help too. So does stretching your tights spots every day so they gradually yield, and working to build your strength for the poses that demand it.

Ernest Wood, scholar and yogi.

There’s another, less obvious step that’s just as important: find a good way to talk about it.

If you tell yourself, “this hurts my calf,” it’s not likely you will return to Warrior I soon or with enthusiasm. Worse,  it’s not even true. Warrior I gives a very intense calf stretch, but hurting, causing pain, isn’t part of it. (Yes, you can injure yourself doing yoga poses, and you should never stay in a pose that causes pain in your knees, back, or neck, but some of the most troublesome yoga injuries come from movements that cause no pain while we’re doing them.)

What’s happening when you work in a pose, as uncomfortable as it may be, is the opposite of causing harm. Stretching your calf muscles increases the range of motion at your ankles, which is good in any number of ways, from increasing your ankle flexibility to preventing injuries to your Achilles tendon. Staying on an extra 30 seconds in Ardha Chandrasana (halfmoon) when your standing leg hip is burning from the work of the pose builds the strength of your hip muscles, which is equally important as stretching them.

So what do you call this discomfort that is not injurious, but is part of the work of the pose?

My teacher Gioia Irwin used to call it “joy pain,” which I understood as the feeling that is close to the edge between sensation and pain, but still on the sensation side.

I like “golden glow,” myself, because I hear it as humorously euphemistic, and somehow round, which particularly suits the feeling of work when it’s in the hip socket.

What I know is that by redefining sensation, I’m not kidding myself, or avoiding a truth. I’m reframing my experience in a way that gives me more control. I can’t negotiate with pain, but I can negotiate with sensation.

How do you talk to yourself about what you feel when the pose isn’t pleasant? Have you experienced a difference in your practice by reframing the way you describe sensation? I’d love to hear from you.

Make sure your shoulder stays open as you bring your hand up your back.

When I’m not practicing or teaching, I’m often sitting at my laptop, writing, answering emails, doing everything that studio administration, blog posts and finishing the instruction manual for building a bear proof composter demands.

So I’m well acquainted with the feeling of popping out of a period of concentration – really, that was an hour? – only to find my shoulders up around my ears and my head poked forward in full turtle posture.

There are really only two alternatives. Ignore it and shoulder tension will feed into a chain of reactions that goes from stiff shoulders into sore necks,  headaches and beyond.

Or deal with it: Stand up, take five minutes, and do this week’s Five-Minute Yoga challenge: stretch your shoulders in Gomukhasana, the cow-faced pose.

If you spend five minutes working your shoulders once a day, every day, for a week or longer, you may be surprised by the results.

In your yoga practice, look for a new sense of freedom in downward dog, more ease in shoulder stand, more lightness in headstand.

In day-to-day life, any ease you bring into your shoulders will also reduce tension in your neck. Check for an unaccustomed sense of lightness and more clarity of thought. If you normally carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, stretching them will allow you to shift the burden.

Do your five shoulder-stretching minutes twice a day, taking breaks from whatever task it is that has brought them up around your ears, and you’ll more than double the benefits.

Here’s how:

Stand in Tadasana, or sit in a chair.
Take your left hand behind your back.
Rest the back of your hand on your sacrum. Notice that your left shoulder rolls forward. Lift your left upper arm bone, and roll your shoulder back as you move your left hand up your back. Use your right hand at your left elbow to help guide your left hand into place. Line up the middle finger with your spine.
Check the front of your left shoulder. If it’s strongly rotated forward, take your left hand lower. Find the spot where you feel a stretch through your left arm, but can still roll your shoulder back.

If you can't connect with your hands, use a strap.

Lift your right hand to the ceiling. Stretch up through your right ribcage, all the way from your fingertips to your hips.
Roll the little finger side of your hand toward your face, and lengthen your right side even more. Now bend your right elbow and connect your hands.

If there’s a gap, put a strap over your right shoulder and hold the strap with both hands.
Look out at eye level, with your chin parallel to the floor.
As you inhale, roll your right arm toward your face and lift your elbow to the ceiling.
As you exhale, let your left elbow sink toward the floor.

If you are standing, move your front ribs away from your tee shirt, toward your spine, and lengthen your buttocks toward the floor.
If you’re sitting, press your sitting bones strongly into the chair.
Hold the pose for one to two minutes. Change sides.
One side will be easier than the other, usually the side with the dominant arm up. Once you know your sticky side, try starting on that side, and repeating it after you’ve done the easy side.

Benefits: Gomukhasana arms free the shoulder joints, create length in the ribcage and stretch the latissimus dorsi – the bodybuilders’ “lats.” That makes it a gateway pose, one that will open up a host of other important asanas, including headstand and shoulder stand.

Sequence: For the best results, work with Gomukhasana more than once a day. Do it as a computer break to relieve tension in your shoulders. Take five minutes before you go to bed, or, if you don’t mind people staring, try it any time you find yourself sitting and waiting.

As part of a longer practice, do Gomukhasana once your shoulders are warmed up from downward facing dog and standing poses. It’s especially useful as a preparation for shoulder stand.

Ouch: Truth be told, Gomukhasana is rarely comfortable, especially at the beginning. The shoulder of the lower arm lodges the loudest complaint.
If you can’t smile and relax your eyes, ease off. Lower your hand and use a strap. Work at a level that is intense and yet pleasant.

Watch for tension in your neck. You may be pulling your head forward. If the tension doesn’t decrease when you move it back into line, do less.
If you have existing neck or shoulder problems, check with your teacher before trying this pose.

Sanskrit Corner: Say: Go-moo-KAHS-anna. Go means cow. Mukha means face. Asana means pose.

If this was your kind of post, you might also like:

Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: Spend a Week Walking Your Dog

Make Right Angles at the Wall to Strengthen Your Shoulders

Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: Kitchen Counter Series, Part Two

Gabriella Giubilaro at her workshop last weekend

If I stand on my back deck and type Los Angeles into the Google Maps app on my iPhone, the instructions on how to drive there begin: “Turn right out of the lane onto West 5th Avenue,” which is as tiny a baby step as anyone could ever want.

It’s too bad there’s no Google Maps application for yoga.

We learn the outward shape of a pose, follow the instructions, come up against our limitations, and then stop.
What else can we do? Our minds can’t tell our muscles how to take us somewhere we’ve never been before.

How do we bridge the gap?

Once, in Rome, I drank coffee out of a cup that had “yoga magic” written on the side. I didn’t try to buy it from the cafe, and I regret that. The longer I practice, the more clear it is to me that the answer to “how do we bridge the gap?” often involves a little yoga magic.

You practice a pose many times, and always stop in the same place. Then one day a teacher says something in a different way, or your work in another pose has opened your body, and suddenly the pathway is there.

Yoga Magic:

Last weekend, I had another experience of Italian yoga magic, this time from Florence, in the shape of Gabriella Giubillaro. Gabriella is a senior Iyengar teacher who has been making yearly visits to Vancouver since the early 1990s.

Friday night, all day Saturday and Sunday morning, we did intense work on relatively simple poses, including  Utthita Parsvakonasana and Warrior I. Any time you have to keep your arms out at shoulder height for five minutes, it’s intense, no matter what the pose is.

I learned a lot: a better way to prop elbow balance for people with stiff shoulders, a new appreciation for height under my head in headstand, a new back bend preparation to practice every day, increased clarity in Warrior I.

But it was on Monday, the teacher-training day, that something more magical clicked into place.

We were practicing the art of adjustment, of moving students more deeply into the pose without knocking them off balance – not such an easy task. Three times, when I was the person in the pose, Gabriella said: “you go, I do,” to my partner.

One of these poses was rotated triangle. We started facing the wall, then rotated so the toes of the back foot pressed the wall. Once I was in the pose, facing out into the room, my partner used her pelvis to stabilize mine at the wall, and pressed the wrist of my upper arm into the wall. It was lovely. Between those two supports, I rotated far more freely.

I thought I was already in the pose when I heard again: “You go, I do.”

Gabriella replaced my partner at my hips, pinned my upper arm wrist to the wall, then reached a hand under my ribcage and like an Italian yoga-GPS, brought my lower ribs forward and up. The movement felt enormous and completely right, as though I had suddenly arrived at a brand new place and found myself at home.

Would I have found that place eventually? Perhaps.

Will I be able to find my way back?

I’m not sure, but at least now I know that somewhere in rotated triangle pose I can find compete freedom for my ribcage. The next time I set out to find it, I’ll have a much better idea of where I’m headed.

Have you experienced yoga magic in your practice? A moment when you moved from “I can’t” to “I can”? What triggers it for you? I’d love to hear about it.

Place a layer of chip foams, or a blanket, under your bolster

As much as we may think we come to yoga for relaxation, in my own experience, it’s easier to get up and do a vigorous morning practice than it is to break the momentum of the day’s to-do list and come to a complete halt.
This week’s yoga challenge asks you to do just that.

As many days as you can this week, try this variation of child’s pose. You’ll be following the dictates of The Happiness Project, in particular, the Secrets of Adulthood that “What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE,” and “By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.”

Don’t be surprised if this supported child’s pose triggers a feeling of withdrawing from the world, and even a memory or two of childhood hiding places – a cupboard or closet, perhaps, or a spot beneath the kitchen table, or, most glorious, a tent made of old sheets draped over some furniture.

But the feeling of retreat from the larger world and a chance to slow down and settle your nervous system isn’t all this pose has to offer.

You might notice that it has some strong connections with last week’s challenge, Malasana (garland pose). In both poses, the torso is between the thighs, and the groins stay soft and receding.

What makes this pose powerful is adding the height under the bolsters to restrict the front ribcage on the inhalation. This moves some of the expansion of the ribcage into the back ribs, a spot that’s usually closed to breathing.
So make sure you have enough height. If your ribcage isn’t well settled on the bolster, then add another blanket or layer of chip foams underneath.

Place a layer of chip foam blocks lengthwise on your mat, and your bolster on top of the blocks.
Kneel on the mat, with the sides of your big toes touching, and your knees wide. Have the bolster about a third of the way between your thighs. Hinge forward and bring your upper body to rest on the bolster.
Check that your ribcage is in contact with the bolster. Turn your head to one side or the other.

Make sure your front body is in good contact with the bolster

Now begin to relax your body onto the bolster, releasing your weight as you exhale.
After a few cycles of breath, gently push your ribs into the bolster as you inhale. Resistance from the bolster will prevent your diaphragm from expanding forward. Instead, your breath will move into your back body and expand the back of your ribcage.
Let your breath be slow and broad. Watch your back ribcage widen. First the lower ribs will expand, then you will feel your whole back gently stretching and expanding. As you exhale, release your body weight into the bolster.
Stay for several cycles of breath, then turn your head to the second side and repeat for an equal number of breath cycles.

Benefits: Supporting the front of your body encourages the sense of slowing down and turning inward. Most of us begin our yoga lives by breathing only into the front of the ribcage. By restricting the front of your ribcage, you can make your back ribs more elastic and expand your ribcage for deeper, easier breath.

Sequence: Use this variation of child’s pose on its own anytime you’d like to take a quiet break and connect with your breath. In a longer practice, consider using it as a transitional pose after a front body opening such as Supta Baddhakonasana. Or follow supported child’s pose with downward do, bringing your head to rest on the bolster – add more bricks if it doesn’t reach – to continue the theme of work that quiets and calms emotions.

Ouch: If the fronts of your ankles hurt, slip a rolled up facecloth directly under the joints. If your knees are not happy with kneeling, try placing a chip foam block or a blanket between your heels and your buttocks.
You can avoid knee issues entirely, and still feel the calming nature of supported child’s pose by using two chairs: sit on one, place the bolster on the seat of the second, and hinge forward onto the bolster.

Sanskrit Corner: Say: AH-doh MOO-kah veer-AH-sanna. Adho means downward, mukha means facing, vira means hero and asana means pose.
Child’s pose is sometimes also called Balasana (bah-LAHS-anna). Bala means child.

The left wrist reads santosha, contentment, one of the niyamas. The right wrist reads ahimsa, non-violence.

On Tuesday afternoon I spent an hour in a coffee shop near the studio with a teacher trainee, talking about the first two of yoga’s eight limbs, the restrictions (yamas) and the observances (niyamas).
The yamas are the great vow of yoga, non-violence, truth, non-stealing, Brahmacarya, which is often translated as celibacy, and non-grasping, or non-hoarding.
The niyamas are personal disciplines: purity or cleanliness, contentment, discipline, self-study and devotion. (I’ve written a longer and more detailed explanation of each posted here.)

Her assignment was to interview a teacher about how they had worked with the yamas and niyamas in practice and in life. I wanted to help, although I didn’t think I had much to say.
But fuelled by a cup of excellent ginger hot chocolate, I ended up talking non-stop, and left the conversation feeling slightly fatuous, and also wary, in the “pride-goeth-before-a-fall” way.
Walking back to the studio, I realized, belatedly, that perhaps I was supposed to have offered technical insights about working with the yamas and niyamas.
Maybe I should have suggested an Excel spreadsheet with the yamas and niyamas down the side and the dates across the top.
Although he didn’t have Excel, this approach was good enough for Benjamin Franklin who had a list of 13 virtues that he evaluated himself on at the end of every day.
Gretchen Rubin modified Franklin’s chart and used it for her year-long Happiness Project: monthly resolutions down the side, checking them off every night.
I could also have suggested writing them on a set of flashcards to review every morning before work.

Except, of course, I do neither of those things.

Once I was back on the mat, I relaxed. After all, every time I practice, the yamas and niyamas are all there, waiting for me.

Am I clean, content, disciplined, paying attention to myself and my Self in the poses? Do I remember to dedicate my practice? That pretty much takes care of the niyamas.
Am I non-violent towards myself, even in thought? Am I truthful about what I’m really doing, how far I can push, and when I’m slacking?
As far as non-stealing goes, my biggest theft is to steal time from my practice. I let other, more urgent, but less important tasks eat away at my practice time, or, worse, I fritter it away on pure time-wasters. If I’m on my mat with no obligations for two hours, then I haven’t stolen my practice time.
Do I “walk with God” as Vimila Thakar and Judith Hansen Lasater would translate Brahmacarya? Do I remember that practice, as achingly physical as it can be, is also holy?
And, finally, did I let go of the grasping, of the idea that the practice is “for” something, and instead, just practice, open-handed?
Coincidentally, the sutra reading in class for this week has been the effects of becoming grounded in the yamas and niyamas.
When non-violence is mastered, Mr. Iyengar writes in his translation and commentary,  Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, “others abandon hostility in one’s presence.” With truth, the practitioner’s words “become so potent that whatever he says comes to realization,” and with non-stealing “precious jewels come.” Brahmacarya brings “knowledge, vigour, valour and energy.” And with non-grasping, “knowledge of past and future lives unfolds.”
The effects of practicing the niyamas are equally potent, including control of the senses, “joyful awareness needed to realize the inner self,” supreme happiness, the spark of divinity, “communion with one’s desired deity” and samadhi, or integration, the goal of yoga.

Judging by that list, I have a long way to go. But when I’m overcome with delight, which happens fairly often these days, I think I’ll attribute it to practicing contentment.

Is there a way that you consciously practice the yamas and niyamas on and off the mat? Have you ever felt some of the promised rewards?

Photo courtesy of djkalyx, Flicker Creative Commons.

I’m a big fan of Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog, and her book, The Happiness Project. She writes beautifully and does a lot of interesting research.

(My latest find, thanks to Gretchen,  was a link to Paul Bloom’s article First Person Plural in the November 2008 Atlantic Monthly, a fascinating look at our multiple selves.)

Among her Secrets of Adulthood, there are two that particularly relate to Five-Minute Yoga:

“What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE,” and

“By doing a little bit each day, you can get a lot accomplished.”

In that spirit, I’d like to throw out a Five-Minute Yoga challenge.

After all, no matter how busy you might be, there are five minutes somewhere in your day that you can devote to doing just one pose or preparation. And depending on the pose, it can have huge benefits.

Malasana from the Yoga Journal

Lately I’ve been realizing how many poses benefit from regular practice of  garland pose (Malasana). It’s a gateway: practice it often enough and poses as disparate as Marichyasana I and Eka Hasta Bhujasana will become much more manageable, even if the only time you practice them is in class.

So here’s the challenge. Spend five minutes a day, every day this week, practicing some variation of Malasana, and see how you feel at the end of it.

You might choose to work with squatting, with your back supported by a wall and your heels on a foam block. Or hold on to the kitchen sink or counter and come into squat. If you’re working more deeply with the pose, try stretching your arms forward onto a wood brick, and, when you’ve reached your maximum, rest your head on the brick.

Whatever variation gives you a reasonable amount of sensation, without causing pain – other than yes, that burning sensation in the front shins – is the perfect place to be.

I’ll be teaching variations of Malasana in class all this week, so if you have any questions or difficulties, there will be plenty of opportunities to work out a solution. If you’d like to start now, but are worried about compressing your knees, spend your five minutes in happy baby pose until we find you a good Malasana variation.

Five minutes is a long time to hold Malasana, particularly at the beginning. Instead, set a  timer for one minute, hold the pose until the timer goes off, then stand up, release whatever needs releasing for a minute, and return to the pose. If a minute is too long to hold, try 30 seconds, or go  to an easier variation.

It doesn’t really matter if you don’t make all seven days. Three and above is a definite win, five and above is a triumph. Of course, if you have time, you can practice other poses. But if five minutes a day is all you have, experiment with spending it in Malasana.

Below I’ve posted a great way to work with Malasana using a strap on the rope wall – something you can easily duplicate at home with a door that closes toward you.

I hope you’ll join me in making this Malasana week. Let me know it goes.

If this was your kind of post, then check out the Five-Minute Yoga Challenge category to see 40 more.