Five-Minute Yoga

What if you could remove discord from your life, and make it harmonious and ever so much simpler?
Yoga philosophy says you can. How? You need to weaken the hold that the kleshas (afflictions or defilements), five powerful psychological drivers, have on your mind.
At first glance, Patanjali’s list of kleshas in the Yoga Sutras (II.2) is an odd one: ignorance, egoism, passion, hatred and the will to live.
Ignorance is, pretty clearly, an affliction, and hatred is one too. But in our day to day understanding, egoism is just an unpleasant character trait, passion is something we hope we will find in our lives, and the will to live is perfectly natural, and in fact, admirable.

Raga (attachment) and dvesha (aversion) are kleshas that create clashes

It’s only when we look more closely at the terms and what they mean that the power of working with the kleshas reveals itself.
In the Yoga Sutras, ignorance (avidya, literally without sight) is not a lack of knowledge that can be fixed by accumulating facts.
It’s a fog that hides reality, an all-pervading misunderstanding of the nature of things, or as Patanjali defines it: “mistaking the impermanent for the permanent, the impure for the pure, pain for pleasure, and that which is not the Self, for the Self.”
Ignorance is the vast forgetting of our true natures that happens to all of us for large chunks of every day, and it’s the field in which all the other kleshas take root and grow.
Once we no longer recognize the Self, it’s a small step to egoism (asmita) – mistaking a particular body and set of memories as the Self.
As soon we take on our false identity, our memories of pleasure lead us into raga, passionate attachment to the people and things we want, need, and must have. Memories of pain create negative attachments, or hatred (dvesha), toward people and things we dislike.
And the will to live (abhinivesha) is, yes, natural and instinctive. It also removes us from the present, the only moment when our Self is available to us, into fear for the future.

At any time in our lives, each of the kleshas can be dormant, weak, interrupted or full on. They drive us into action, and because those actions are rooted in ignorance, they create discord – hence the nickname, “the clash-makers.”

How do you work with something as abstract as the kleshas?
Asana practice is a handy laboratory. Within minutes of starting your practice, you’ll be in touch with the mind that likes and dislikes. It might be the poses, the sequence, the way your body feels on this particular day, or the conditions of your practice space.
As soon as you notice raga (passion) and dvesha (hatred), no matter how mild or strong their presence, you’re also in touch with “I,” who is either pleased or offended. Notice egoism (asmita) and you have stepped into the larger intelligence that can watch “I” thinking, and disengage from it.

Benefits: Immeasurable. Afflictions drive action. Action done under the influence of afflictions creates negative karma, at the same time as it messes up the present.

Sequence: Any time they pop into visibility. Once you know what the kleshas are, and why they’re worth weakening, life offers boundless opportunities for practice.

Sanskrit Corner: Say Clay-shah. Klesha means affliction, or defilement.

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons, the half-blood prince

When we first encounter it, most of us find downward dog somewhat daunting, with its simultaneous demands for strength and flexibility in arms and shoulders, hips and hamstrings.
Over time, it gets significantly easier. Once you’re past the raw beginner stage,
one of the best ways to bring even more ease into your dog pose is, paradoxically, to make it harder.
Try this variation, and when you return to Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward dog pose), you may feel a new sense of ease.
Come into dog pose, heels resting on the wall, toes on the mat.
Press back into your dog pose. arms straight.
Stretch long through your side body.
Now bend your right knee and take your right foot up the wall.
Take the leg as high as you can. Tuck your toes under.
Straighten your right leg by firming your front thigh muscles and drawing both front thigh muscles toward your hip creases.
The tendency will be for your right hip to lift towards the ceiling.
To bring your pelvis into balance, remember to roll your upper inner right thigh in, your outer right thigh down towards the floor.
If you’re not sure if your hips are level, try bending the right knee for a moment. Firm your left front thigh, and notice the position of your pelvis.
Keep your awareness on your pelvis as you slowly straighten your right leg. When you feel it tipping, roll your upper inner right thigh in, your outer right thigh down towards the floor.
Now press your hands deeper into the mat.
Straighten your arms and press your body back from your hands to your hips making one straight line.
Stay for several slow, relaxed breaths, then change sides.
If you can work with straight legs in your normal dog pose stride and would like more of a challenge, then walk your hands in about four inches – the length of one of your palms.
Do the pose in the new position on both sides. Continue to move your hands in gradually until you find your edge.

Benefits: This intense hamstring stretch also stretches your shoulders and builds strength in your hands and arms. Think of it as a preparation for standing splits (Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana), or as a step along the road to full arm balance. It’s an even more invigorating pose than downward facing dog.

Sequence: If your time is short, spend most of it warming up in downward facing dog. In a longer practice, begin with leg and shoulder stretches (Supta Padangusthasana and Gomukhasana, for example), and standing poses. Once you’ve worked with your legs up the wall, take your luxuriously long hamstrings into seated forward bends.

Ouch: If your wrists complain in downward facing dog, avoid this pose until you’ve solved that problem. If your hamstrings are tight, stay with your regular dog pose stride, and work on getting both of your legs straight.

Sanskrit Corner: Say AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAH-sanna. Adho means downward. Mukha means a face, and svana means dog.

It seems that no matter how long we’ve been yoga students, there’s always something new to learn about downward facing dog. What’s your favorite way to work with the pose? Is there a cool yoga trick you’ve found that brings the pose to life for you? I’d love to hear about it.

How ironic that the subtlest and hardest to grasp of all the yamas, the moral restrictions that make up yoga’s ethical code, should be aparigraha – non-grasping.

We can understand why grasping is harmful when we see a miser, or a person who takes at the expense of others. We can even see some of the downside when we look at the clutter and confusion of possessions in our lives.

But just when you think you’ve got a grip on it, you find another layer. We cling to all kinds of things. Clinging to a fixed idea or grasping for a particular experience is no different from desperately needing an iPhone or a new pair of shoes. Just to be clear: it’s not the possessions or the thoughts in themselves that are the problem, it’s the tightness of our grip.

And when you release the grasping around ideas, there’s another level still. Practicing aparigraha means we eventually stop clinging even to the idea that we exist as a separate, definable self.

Asana practice presents a fertile field for grasping. There are so many poses we’d like to claim as our own, and the line between burning zeal for practice and clinging to the results is exceptionally fine.

Happily, asana practice is also a great place to start practicing non-grasping. Here’s how.
Choose a pose that has an easily identified goal, such as bringing your chin to the floor in Upavista Konasana (wide-legged seated forward bend). No matter which pose you choose, make it something you can hold for several minutes.
Now come to your working place, and consciously practice releasing your grasp on the pose.

Let go of any sense of ownership you might have about “my pose,” and what “my pose” might look like. Let go of the idea of completion, and of measuring the distance you have yet to travel. Release what you “should” be able to do. Then release the idea of yourself doing the pose, of “me in the pose,” a modest step toward letting go of “me” altogether.

Shift your focus to the pose, its geometry and energy, its direction and movement, its expression in your body. No matter where you are on the continuum of the pose, in the moment of purely experiencing it, what you have is all you need.

Benefits: Practice asana with non-grasping, and you’ll save yourself from the self-inflicted injuries induced by reaching too far, too fast.
Better still, it will help you grip less tightly when you’re off the mat. According to the Yoga Sutras, once you’ve perfected non-grasping, you’ll attain knowledge of past and future lives. In the meantime, the more you practice non-grasping, the more happy and satisfied you will feel.

Sequence: Any time, anywhere.

Ouch: Exploring non-grasping is a lot like peeling an onion. You may never reach the point where there are no more layers to peel off. Give up the hope of perfection, let go even of the idea that you might come to the end of your own grasping.

Sanskrit Corner: say Ah-par-ee-GRA-ha. Aparigraha means “without possessions,” usually translated as non-grasping, or non-hoarding.

Creative Commons image by Rumpleteaser.

Where in the world did they come from?

I have fallen in love with Google Analytics. Every morning, it tells me how many people visited this blog the day before, how long they stayed on the site, what cities they live in – Vilnius! Abu Dhabi! Helsinki! Snellville! – and, if they came by Google search, what they searched for.

That’s why I know that someone arrived by typing: “Can you do Tadasana all of the time?”

The answer is in two parts, yes, and no.

An earlier post, Set a Timer and Stand in Tadasana, does imply that yes, you can: “You can practice Tadasana in the supermarket checkout line, at the bus stop, at a party, or at any other time you can pay attention to the way you are standing.”

Not only can you stand in Tadasana all the time, you should stand in Tadasana all the time. Bio-mechanically, it’s the best bet for your body. One goal of a yoga practice is to fundamentally realign the body so that it naturally holds itself in a healthy posture. Muscle imbalances are corrected, weak muscles strengthen, and the task of staying aligned with gravity becomes easier.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t be holding an exaggerated, overly conscientious posture. Physiotherapist Dean Smith, who practices on West 4th, epicentre of Vancouver yoga culture, calls this the “Lululemon posture,” with the sternum over-lifted, (resulting in a flattened thoracic spine) and the shoulders pulled too far back and down.

So how do you find the happy spot between slumping and constantly holding a Tadasana that looks like you’ve just enlisted in Yoga boot camp?

Keep your elbow on the floor as you lift your wrist.

One approach is to strengthen postural muscles, so even when you’re not standing in full Tadasana, with all of the awareness that implies, you’re still not slumping.

Among the muscles that contribute to good posture, the lower-trapezius and serratus anterior, have a particular role to play in keeping the shoulder blades from lifting and rounding forward.  They  tend to be overstretched, weak and out of our awareness. But these are the muscles that will, if we work with them, happily hold our shoulder blades in place all day long

In the Yoga from the Inside Out workshop he taught in at Yoga on 7th this winter, Dean showed us two phenomenally useful exercises to strengthen these muscles.

Lie face down on your mat. Rest your forehead on your right hand. Bring your left arm out to the side, with your upper arm at 90 degrees from your shoulder and your forearm at 90 degrees from your elbow. Keep your left elbow on the floor as you lift your wrist away from the floor. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds, release, and repeat three to five times or more. Change sides. Don’t be surprised to find a marked difference between the two sides.

Lift your head and both arms off the floor, keeping your elbows lower than your wrists.

Once you’ve experimented with one arm, try two. To avoid strain in your lower back, roll your back upper thighs outward until you feel your little toenail on the floor. Elongate your buttocks toward your heels. Keep your legs strong and press your sacrum down to the floor.

Now lift your chest and both arms away from the floor, with your elbows lower than your wrists. Hold for 10 to 20 seconds, and repeat from three to five times.

Benefits: You will feel much more connection to your shoulder blades once you’ve tried this exercise. As you strengthen the muscles that stabilize your shoulders, you’ll find poses such as Pincha Mayruasana (elbow balance) and Chatturanga Dandasana (pushup, literally four-legged stick) easier to perform, with less “winging” out of your shoulder blades.

Sequence: Do these exercises at the beginning of a longer practice and notice how your awareness of your shoulders improves.  Or work them into your day as a stand-alone practice any time you can regularly take five minutes to work on your posture.

Ouch: If you feel strain in your neck, make sure you are elongating the back of your neck as you do the exercises. If that doesn’t take the strain away, try working with your wrist lower (in the one-arm variation) or both arms lower (in the two-arm variation).

Om symbol on the gate at the Ramanani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institue in Pune, India

In January, after several months of not taking a weekly yoga class, I started again, in a different space, with a different teacher.

One of the great benefits of taking a break and changing routines is that everything looks fresh, and emotions you’d forgotten come back to the surface, ripe for examination.

Somewhat to my horror, the first thing that rippled the waters was that old sea snake, competition. I watched myself wanting to know how other people in the room were doing with the poses, silently clucking at someone else’s misalignment, and hearing the familiar urgent questions: Better than me? Worse than me?
With them came a feeling of isolation, seeping in at the bottom of my consciousness and starting to rise.
In the past, I would give myself a quick mental wake-up slap. I’d say: “don’t compare,” and switch my attention back to the pose. This strategy works for as long it takes my mind to forget the instruction – somewhere between 30 seconds and five minutes.

That day, I stumbled on something much more effective. I suddenly realized that I had just caught the I-maker, (in Sanskrit ahamkara), at work. And in the moment of thinking, “ahamkara!” the tightness dissolved and something expansive gradually replaced it. I became keenly aware of the truth of the room – one life, fragmented into separate bodies. The sea snake was gone, without leaving a wake.

I sent a bouquet of gratitude to Birjoo Mehta, the extraordinary Iyengar teacher from Mumbai, whose explanation of the yogic idea of the mind is the clearest I’ve ever encountered.
Yoga philosphy, Birjoo told us in a Vancouver workshop last April, divides the mind into three parts. Manas, the sensory input device, takes information from the senses and delivers it to buddhi, intelligence.
Intelligence decides what to do with the sensory input, what meaning it has. Ahamkara, usually translated as ego, spends its time saying “me” or “not me” to whatever the mind encounters.
Countless decisions on the part of the I-maker accumulate to create the sense of a coherent self, enduring over time: I like birds. I like walking. I don’t like fusion jazz.
Ego is a charged word, often negative. But there is nothing wrong with the I-maker. It’s a necessary part of our minds. We couldn’t function without it.
But if we don’t know how it works, or that it even exists, the I-maker can go into overdrive. When it does, the result is alienation. We might feel inferior, or superior, but the result is always the same: suffering and an increase in ignorance (avidya). (In his supremely lucid translation of The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, Chip Hartranft calls it “not seeing things as they are.”)

Just being aware of the I-maker can be enough to rein it back to healthy levels, especially given that yoga philosophy teaches that all of us, body, mind, emotions, along with all other beings and the inanimate world, are made of the same substance, prakriti.

Benefits: Practice noting when the I-maker is at work and you will find yourself less prey to an uncomfortable sense of isolation, no matter where you are or what you’re doing.

Sequence: Invaluable in class as a way of turning your awareness back to your own work. Just as useful in awkward social situations, where it allows you to relax and feel connection instead of separation.

Ouch: Resist the tendency to scold. Just note the I-maker at work. Whenever you catch yourself being caught up in ahamkara, try yoga teacher Judith Hanson Lasater’s suggestion and say: “how very human of me.”

Sanskrit corner: Say Ah-hum-KAR-ra. Aham means I. Kara means maker.

Make sure the strap is snug before you cross it behind your back.

Typing, driving, cooking, gardening: almost everything we do encourages us to slide our shoulder blades up our backs and roll them forward. Over time, that can lead to stiff shoulders, sore upper backs and neck pain.

You can reverse this action, and move your shoulders back and down, with the help of one eight-foot yoga strap – or two shorter straps tied together.

First, take the strap behind your back, as close to your armpits as possible. It helps to bend forward and let gravity assist.

You want the strap to catch the bottom edge of your shoulder blades, or slightly higher. Hold one side of the strap in each hand and balance the length so there’s an equal amount on the right and left sides.
Now take each strap over its own shoulder, letting each end hang down your back. Adjust it so the strap across your back and the straps over your shoulders feel snug.

Then cross the straps behind your back.
Pull down on the straps, moving your hands towards the floor.
When you pull down, you should feel your shoulder blades move down your back, and from their bottom edges, press forward into your rib cage.
If the sensation isn’t like being tucked into a Victorian shoulder brace, the strap isn’t tight enough, or it’s too high in your back.
Now move your front ribs away from your tee shirt, towards the back of your body, but keep the width and lift of your shoulders.

Once you have the strap in place, stand in Tadasana (mountain pose). Move the tops of your thighs back. Bring your weight into your heels. Lift your chest, and enjoy the feeling of open and supported shoulders.

You can also experiment with doing sideways standing poses – triangle pose, Warrior II or Utthita Parsvakonasana work well – with the strap in place. Continue to use your hands on the straps to pull down. When you take one of the standing poses to the right side, pull gently forward with the right strap to increase the rotation in your ribcage.
Benefits: Like a yoga partner who is always ready to help out, the strap will reverse the forward motion of your shoulders and help set the feeling of good posture in your body’s memory.
Sequence: As a stand-alone practice, do this whenever you’d like to move your shoulders into alignment. Some students travel with a strap and use it on long flights to help prevent a slumped posture and back pain.
In a longer practice, stand in Tadasana with the strap on, then move slowly into your standing poses. Feel how working the shoulder blades with the strap helps you keep your chest lifted and open.
Ouch: Avoid this preparation if you have existing neck or shoulder injuries, at least until you can try it with your teacher’s supervision. If you feel pinching in your lower back, you’re over-arching. Move your thighs back, take your weight into your heels, and bring your front rib cage away from your tee shirt, towards your spine.

Sanskrit Corner: Say tah-DAHS-anna. Tada means mountain. Asana means pose.

Mesas in Monument Valley, Utah, Brent Faber photo

When you first take up yoga, progress is swift.
Downward dog moves from shockingly hard to challenging,
and then to perceptibly less so. Hamstrings begin to stretch, standing poses start to feel familiar, and, with each class, there are new poses to try, and new sensations to experience. Progress comes by leaps and bounds.
But that’s the raw beginner phase. As an intermediate yoga student, the work is less about big changes and exciting new poses than it is about steady practice. Today’s Warrior II is likely to resemble yesterday’s Warrior II fairly closely.

The truth is that no matter what we practice, be it asana or violin, much
of our practice time is spent traversing plateaus. We slog along, the
view stays roughly the same, and sometimes we wonder if the next peak
is getting closer, or receding from us as we walk toward it.

At times like these, it’s good to remember that while we are, yes, engaged
in perfecting our asanas, physical progress isn’t all that we work on.
Subtle changes in concentration and awareness often aren’t discernable to
the practitioner. Like the writer who can’t tell whether today’s work is good
or bad, and is wise to put it aside and keep writing, the aspiring yogi needs
to develop faith that each practice session, no matter how it feels to us at
the time, develops our awareness for the next one.

Instead of seeing your asana practice as a path from an imperfect present
to a better future, try thinking of it as a piece of embroidery: each new
stitch strengthens connections both within your body and within your being.
Rather than waiting for sign posts to the big destinations – going into
headstand with straight legs, or bringing your palms to the floor in a
standing forward bend – slow down and celebrate the single stitches.
Every practice you do will have at least one of them.

Benefits: It’s easier to practice the yogic virtue of contentment if you focus
on the subtle details of your practice rather than on the big goals.
And if you drop the image of asana as a climb to greater heights, you will
begin to free your mind from the unconscious and limiting habit of equating
“up” with “good.”

Sequence: All the time, in any area of your life that involves practice.

Do you have strategies to keep yourself motivated when there aren’t any big practice gains day-to- day?  What’s your best hiking tip for traversing a plateau?

Link to photo here

Half-hero pose is a strong, safe stretch for your front thighs

One of the most fruitful areas for a new yoga practitioner to explore is something I call television yoga.

It’s not a formal practice. You don’t have to put on special clothes, roll out a mat or light a candle. And if you watch TV, talk on the phone, or sit and listen to music, you’ve don’t even have to make time for it. You just have to be willing to devote some of your sitting-down time to gentle, intelligent work with your body.

Any seated hip opener will do. But if you’d like to stretch out tight front thighs, it’s hard to beat half-hero pose (Virasana).

Here’s how: sit on the floor with some chip-foam yoga blocks, or a stack of books, at your side. Bend one leg back in hero pose (Virasana). Bend the other knee and rest your foot on the floor.
Put as many blocks, or books, under your buttocks as you need to sit comfortably. Unbreakable rule: you should have no pain in your bent knee. Even if what you feel is just a small electrical pulse running across the front of your knee, sit higher.  Check that your bent knee faces directly forward, and that your inner ankle draws toward the foam blocks.
Now lean back, supporting yourself with your hands. Curl your tailbone toward your pubic bone. On the bent knee side, draw your thighbone deeper into your hip socket.
Find an intense but still pleasant stretch in your front thigh muscles.
Hold it for at least a minute, preferably longer. Then change sides.
For most of us, one front thigh is noticeably tighter than the other. Once you know which is which, start on your tight side, alternate with the easier side, then give the tight side an extra minute or two of stretch.
As your tight front thighs begin to loosen, you will need fewer blocks. Eventually you may be able to lie down with one leg in Virasana.

Benefits: Do this as television yoga, and you’ll have the joy of knowing that you’re not just vegging, you’re helping your body gain some flexibility. Do it daily for at least five-minutes and the next time you do Warrior I in class, you’ll find a different, more open pose.

The quads are  the strongest muscles in your body. Keeping them strong but flexible helps prevent knee injuries. And as you move more deeply into your yoga practice, flexible front thighs will give your backbends more freedom.

Sequence: Any time you’re sitting down and relaxing you have an opportunity to stretch your front thighs in half-hero. In a longer practice, half-hero is especially helpful before lunges and backbends. If your practice includes Supta Virasana (lying down hero pose) working one leg at a time as a preparation will help you move more easily into the full pose.

Ouch: If your front thighs are tight, go slowly. As you lean back, find the first place you feel a stretch. Stay there and breathe. Resist the temptation to push into pain.
• If the front of your ankle hurts, put a rolled- up facecloth under the ankle joint.
• If the back of your bent knee feels compressed, come up to kneeling and put a folded yoga strap, or a folded sock or facecloth deep into the knee joint at the back of your knee. If you can’t get a good front thigh stretch without compressing your knee, don’t work with this position. Talk to your teacher about alternatives.

Sanskrit Corner: Say veer-AHS-anna. “Vira” means hero. “Asana” means pose.

Kim Yu Na in Natarajasana (lord of the dance pose)

Eight weeks ago, I laced up my skates for the first time in almost 40 years. (No, not the same skates. They lay in the front hall cupboard until the inner lining turned to dust and were finally sent off to the Salvation Army.)

On my first few shaky turns around the rink, my front shins ached and I tensed as though I’d never skated before.

A few skates later, I found myself back in a familiar pattern. My left skate was solid and stable on the ice. By the third skate I could come onto my outside edge and stay there, one skate on the ice, for as long as I wanted.

My right skate wobbled. The outside edge was hard to find and harder to keep. And though it improved every time I skated, it never felt as stable as the left leg.

Amazing. Forty years later , I have the same left/right imbalance as I did when I hung up my skates. Even more amazing, after 23 years of yoga, I know what to do about it. This is, after all, the same problem that presents itself in every standing balance pose.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Figure skating draws heavily on dance, and dance shares a common movement vocabulary with yoga. Anyone who watched figure skating during the Olympics had lots of chances to play “name that asana,” but the connections go deeper.

To firm the standing leg on my looser right side, I need to pull the head of the thighbone deeper into the hip joint. This creates an automatic lift of the core, but the results are even better if I also lift my pelvic floor.

On ice, pulling my thighbone in is magic. My right blade steadies underneath me. And lifting the pelvic floor creates more room for the ball of the thighbone to snug into the hip socket. On my yoga mat, the effect of skating, even once a week, is more stability in my right hip in poses such as warrior III (Virabhadrasana III).

Any time you stand on one leg, skates or no skates, the same action with your thighbone will make you more stable and improve your balance.

One way to feel this action is to stand in Tadasana with a yoga brick between your thighs. Place the brick with its narrow side facing forward, as high between your thighs as you can manage. Then walk your feet as close together as you can.

First, grip the brick with your inner thighs, then release it. Then squeeze the block from your outer thighs, moving the ball of your thighbone deeper into your hip socket.

Activating gluteus medius pulls the thighbone deeper into the hip socket

If you have the correct motion, the muscle you’ll feel contracting is gluteus medius, which connects the top of your thighbone to your pelvis. But it’s a subtle motion. And if your gluteus medius is underdeveloped or simple hard to access, your more superficial buttock muscles, gluteus maximus, can take over. If it does, you’ll feel the block moving forward.

Try this: keep the block in place and shift your awareness to your feet. Press your heels down strongly. Without actually moving your heels on the floor, pull them towards each other. You should feel a sensation moving up your outer legs to the hollow of your hips. Hold this position long enough to feel strong work in the hollow of your hips. Once you know how it feels, you’ll find it easier to recreate this action.

Athletes all over the world use yoga to help them excel at their sport. Happily, the exchange goes both ways. Have you felt the interplay between your practice and your movement when you’re playing a sport, running, cycling, swimming?