Do you ever find yourself hunched over your keyboard, shoulders up around your ears and a dull ache taking hold in your upper back?

Yeah, me too.

That’s why this simple chest opening is one of my favorite five-minute yoga breaks, and also one of my favorite ways to ease into a practice.

The older you are, the more important it is to put yourself, every day, into a position that reverses your computer posture. But it’s never too soon to start. If you work at a computer, you’re plenty old enough.

For those of you who would rather read than watch a video, here are my instructions in brief:

Sit with your buttocks at one end of your mat, and a wood or dense foam brick to the side, within arms reach, in line with your shoulders.

Then lie back with the massage balls on either side of your upper spine, as close to your neck as possible, and lift your pelvis to roll back so the balls come an inch or two lower.

I like to take a moment here, rolling my upper back on the massage balls, looking for a little instant relief.

When that’s done, it’s time for the one tricky part: to get the lift and opening of your front chest, you need to have your weight on your shoulder blades as you roll further.

The way to get that weight is to lift your pelvis and push into your feet.

Make sure your shoulders are being dragged away from your ears as you continue to roll back. By the time your shoulders are resting on the floor, the balls will come to the very bottom of your shoulder blades.

With your elbows bent, palms facing and upper arms close to your sides, press your upper arms down into the floor to lift your chest more.

Keep your pelvis lifted, your knees bent, your feet hip distance apart, and slightly toed in.

Now, mentally divide your hamstrings in two, crosswise, then from that line, pull your upper hamstrings toward your buttocks. That action will help you lift your pelvis higher.

When you’re ready for a more restful pose, put the brick, on its medium height, under your pelvis.
Then relax, keeping just enough of the action in your arms to hold your chest in a broad and open position.

Stay here for as long as you like, enjoying the freedom of breathing into an open ribcage.

Don’t have massage balls?
You can also do this chest opening over a rolled blanket.

Start with your neck on the rolled blanket, and roll backwards, keeping enough pressure on your shoulder blades to drag them away from your ears. You’ll miss the joy of all those little massage-ball fingers in your upper back, but you’ll get the most important part of the chest opening.

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Regular readers of this blog will note that this is my second video post. (Many thanks to Diane Park for shooting, editing, and hand-holding.)

No, I’m not going to start posting a new video every week – from my experience so far, that could be a full-time job. Still, I’m having fun exploring a new medium of expression.

I’m curious, do you like the video format? Would you rather read than watch? Or watch than read?
Let me know what you think.

And if you do like this video, please share it on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social site you like to use.

You can spell "best" out of the same letters – with some left over, of course..

Ah yes, September. Season of self-improvement.

Inevitably, my inner child, deeply imprinted with the yearly drama of going back to school, goes ballistic with excitement. It’s a new beginning! Another chance to finally get it right!

In bygone days, I wrote detailed September plans, complete with daily and weekly schedules that generally involved getting up earlier, working harder and eating less chocolate.

Over time, I’ve learned to scale down the plans.

Last year, for example, instead of a rigidly scheduled master plan for asana practice, I set myself the challenge of doing a shoulder stand every day for 90 days.

There was no restriction on when it happened, how long it was, or what variations I did. It just had to happen. And it did.

This year, my September plan is simpler still.

I want to get up in the morning and do breath observation for 10 minutes every day.

If I continue into a more formal breathing practice after that, fine. If I don’t, fine. But I want to start each day connecting with my breath.

Perhaps because I started yoga in the weak but flexible camp, it has taken a long time for me to identify breath as a central part of my practice.

For most of the past 25 years, I’ve been entranced by the poses and their effects on my body and mind. I’m still stunned that I can stand on my head, do elbow balance and push up from the floor in a full backbend.

But gradually, the truth of breath has begun to penetrate.

I don’t own my breath. I didn’t start it and I have no say over when it stops.

A simple setup for breathing, with three chip foam blocks and a blanket.

When I lie down on some configuration of blankets, bolsters and/or wood bricks, and consciously remind myself of my real relationship to my breath, then I feel my inhalations and exhalations as part of a universal breath, of a life force connecting every living, breathing being.

That early morning connection changes my orientation to the day, in a way I like.

Last winter, for the first time, I established a regular breath practice, and watched with surprise as it developed from 10 minutes of observation to 35 minutes of mixed relaxation, observation and pranayama.

I am still in the very beginning stages of breath work. Simple Ujayi breath – long slow inhalation, long slow exhalation – has plenty to teach me.

But I noticed that just as doing asana practice improves my posture all day long, my breathing practice made itself felt all day.

Whenever I paused to notice my breath, I found a fuller, more relaxed exhalation.

Once in a while, on one of those relaxed out-breaths, I’d feel a tension I didn’t know I was carrying drop away, like a chunk of ice off a glacier.

And, oddly, when I made one of my periodic returns to the swimming pool, front crawl had changed.

My old pattern, one I’d been trying to correct, was to hold my breath and blow it out just before the next in-breath. Now, without working at it, I could relax into a long, full exhalation.

You’d think I’d never have stopped my breathing practice.

But then it was time for summer Sadhana, and getting up at 5 a.m. to be at the studio just after 6 meant I had no time to lie down and breathe.

And then it was summer break, and traveling, and being away from routine.

Now it’s September. And I’m ready to go back to pranayama school.

As I said, I’m starting small. If I have anything of interest to report, I’ll let you know.

And if you’d like to join me, please do.

You’ll find more about breath practice and on the simple setup for breath observation in the photograph here.

September in scrabble tiles by Rosemary, via Flickr.

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

How to turn on your willpower and stick to your yoga practice

Black Sheep, White Sheep, or Just Asleep?

When it comes to yoga practice, how much is enough?

Well, it took two years, but now I can do it. And no, I'm not sitting on the wood.

How does the impossible become possible?

I don’t really know the answer to that. But I do know that in yoga it happens all the time.

Take rope Sukhasana, for example, or Shirley’s rope trick – as I think of it.

I first saw it two years ago, in an intensive workshop preparing for Junior certification.

We had been working on a pose called Lolasana, normally rendered into English as “pendant” or “earring pose” referencing pendant earrings that sway from a woman’s ear.

To do Lolasana, you press your hands down, and using the strength of your arms, back and core, you lift your legs off the ground and swing them back and forth.

This is not an easy pose for me, but it was never impossible.

The steps for working on Lolasana are clear and accessible.

By raising your hands on bricks, stools or even chair seats, you make your arms longer. That gives you a mechanical advantage that lets you work on connecting your legs and your core body. Then as the pose becomes stronger, you can decrease the height you use under your hands.

Shirley Daventry French, a senior level Canadian teacher who founded the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Victoria, was teaching the intensive.

She wanted to demonstrate the power you need in your upper back in the pose. This is power that comes from creating a rounded back, rather like a bear’s. The difficulty is that most poses ask us to lift our chests, not round our backs.
To help us grasp the movement, she stepped into the ropes, pressed her hands down, floated up, and stayed there, talking about the power of the rounded back.

When it was our turn to sit in the ropes, I couldn’t begin to grasp it.
I pressed down and jumped, but my legs dragged me back to earth. I had no way to lift their weight.

The pose was closed, and I couldn’t see a door or a gateway anywhere.

Fast forward to June, and my last Sunday class for the spring session. The students had settled into a long relaxation pose. I was idling, leaning against the wall, between a set of ropes, when the idea of Shirley’s rope trick scampered across my mind.

I pressed my hands down over the knots, lifted off the floor, and for a very surprised moment, felt myself inhabit the pose.

I don’t have ropes at home. I haven’t been faithfully working at it every time I’m in the studio. I haven’t even worked particularly hard with Lolasana.

Yes, I’ve been strengthening the work of my arms in simple poses, and keeping my core connected in every pose I do.

But it’s just been practice, no triceps-toning visits to the gym, no gruelling schedule of abdominal poses.

So what happened?

All I know is that the pose opened.

And I don’t really know what this means, but the answer I’m groping towards is grace.

You do what’s in front of you, the best you can. And something you didn’t know you were working towards becomes possible.

Do you have an impossible pose? One you’d love to do, but can’t even imagine how to get there? Has an impossible pose suddenly become possible for you? Do tell.

•

Last week, with the much appreciated help of Diane Park, I shot my first video – a simultaneous leap into rope Sukhasana and a new medium.

Check it out on the home page. And if you like it, please share it.

•

It’s August. I won’t be internet-connected all the time, and can’t guarantee that I’ll have anything to say when I am.

I intend to post stories and recipes under the general heading of Blackberry Madness at Ant & Anise, the food blog I write with my niece Kris.

I’ll see you back here for sure in September.

Have a restful and energizing summer and may your possibilities expand with your practice.

It's red. And that's only the first coat.

Early this spring, I put an Adirondack chair in our tiny pocket front garden, so, for the first time in the 23 years we’ve lived here, I could sit outside, at plant level.

The chair was white. It sat beside a big turquoise pot positioned underneath the eaves to catch the runoff when it rains. Just behind the chair I planted a patch of yellow-flowered Corydalis.

My heart cried out for a red chair.

Once again I’d identified something I wanted with the pure longing of a child. I ached for a red chair just like I once ached for a skeleton.

But it was a project.

So was I going to be too busy? Too lazy? Too intimidated by the no-longer-familiar act of painting? Stopped by the first sign of resistance?

Or would I be hobbled by something much more insidious – the fear that if I do get my red chair, I won’t like it, which will somehow prove that I shouldn’t try to do the things I want to, because in the end, it won’t make me happy.

With that thought in mind, I realized that if I didn’t at least try for a red chair, I wouldn’t like myself. So I resolved to tackle it, one small step at a time.

I moved the chair around back and washed it with a hose, leaving a snowfall of white paint flecks on the ground.

Next step: clean that up.

I took the chair up to the back deck and scraped off the remaining loose paint. That yielded a surprising amount of fresh paint litter, considering all the paint that came off in the washing. I scraped thoroughly, and drew the line at sanding.

Then I was out to buy paint.

Oddly enough, there’s a certain opposition in the world to painting a white Adirondack chair red.

Alan didn’t like the idea at first.

“I’ve painted those chairs,” he said. “Do you know how many surfaces they have?”

I do now: six for each piece of wood, giving a rough count of 132 surfaces, total.

The manager in the paint store advised me that painting a white chair red was at worst doomed and at best foolhardy, because I’d need five coats of paint to cover the chair.

“You’ll put the first two coats on and come back here asking why it’s still pink,” he said.

The first slat goes from white to red.

The first coat took about 90 minutes.

It was pleasant on the back deck, warm and shady, with lots of birdsong. Slat after slat went from white to red, slow, repetitive work, with an equally slow thought stream slipping by.

I worked out a piece of writing while I painted. Then I spent some time remembering my Dad, whose hands could do anything from carpentry to car repairs.

He would have sanded.

When I thought that, my chair looked a little rougher. I could see how the old drips of white paint that I hadn’t sanded off would look like drips of red paint, and that the odds of new drips of red paint, given all those surfaces, was very high.

At that moment, I could have been catapulted back into the childhood where I learned not to want things. Sanding is good. Not sanding is bad. Instead, I woke up, and thought, “no judgement.”

Later in the day I flipped the chair over and painted all the places I hadn’t been able to reach when it was right side up.

That was Sunday. It’s Wednesday today. I’ve put on three coats so far, and I’m saying it’s done. Yes, it could use one more coat, but I didn’t sand the chair, and I’m using high gloss paint, so every layer of paint makes the flaws in the chair stand out even more. Besides, we haven’t been able to use the deck since I started painting.

My chair is brilliantly red, glossy, rough, and too wet to sit on until Monday at least. When I put it back in the garden, I noticed the mud spatters on the blue pot, and the fact that the Corydalis needs to double in size before its yellow will really speak to the red and blue.

Is this the chair I imagined when I first longed for a red chair? Close enough.

I like it. I plan to sit quietly in it on summer afternoons and early evenings, doing that most yogic of tasks, waking up.

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

Are some yoga poses lemons?

You don’t miss your water til the tap runs dry

How to turn on your willpower and stick to your yoga practice

 •

A while back, my niece Kris and I started a food blog called Ant & Anise. We’ve been playing around with it for a while, getting a few posts up, and figuring out the details.

But now Kris is in the midst of a 30-day Paleo Diet challenge – which for my bread-loving niece is a long 30 days. So I wanted to give you a heads up, and encourage you to check it out, especially if you’re considering cutting down on processed foods in general, and gluten in particular. So far she’s on day 11, which includes a recipe for Paleo banana bread.

And stay tuned, we’re hatching a plan for a Blackberry Madness series in August, with more blackberry recipes than you can shake a stick at.

That's Rhinovirus 14 on the left, and an interior view of Rhinovirus 16 on the right. No fun.

Summer Sadhana 2012, the fourth annual 10 days of early morning practice, has been a bumpy ride.

Every day presented a new obstacle: one student had a family medical emergency; another’s dental surgery date moved ahead from July to two days before we started. There was  a temporary crown that came out; a fall on a sidewalk; headaches and nausea.

And then there was the common cold. It rippled through our ranks: one, then two, then three, then me.

No longer can I say that can’t remember the last time I had a cold. And I’ll be able to date this one if I ever need to. It’s the cold I had while getting up at 5 a.m. to teach every day for 10 days.

The strangest thing about it is that getting up hasn’t been hard for me. I’ve loved my morning drive to the studio, being there by 6 a.m., pulling up the blind, opening the windows, lighting some incense, doing small housekeeping tasks and then encountering the deep quiet of sitting very early in the morning.

I don’t feel sick while I teach. It’s a little piece of yoga magic – without even trying, I tap into a universal reserve of energy that keeps me going until about an hour after the class ends.

Teaching with a cold has even been instructive. Now that I don’t touch anyone with my hands, ever, I’m more precise with my words and somehow keener with my eyes.

I’d like to keep that, even when I’m no longer a mobile home for the Rhinovirus.

In general, I’ve been happy with the practice. Despite our various states of illness, standing poses are stronger, headstands are more confident, and shoulder stand setups go together in record time.

The aim of this sadhana is to send its participants off into the summer, not only inspired to keep on practicing, but equipped with everything they need to modify and adapt in the face of less than perfect circumstances.

Our bodies are different every day – sometimes drastically, sometimes almost imperceptibly. So our practice has to be different too.

There’s no point in doing a vigorous practice in the midst of a full-blown cold. Prolonged Savasana (relaxation pose) in bed is the best thing we can do.

But if we’re going to cultivate the “long, uninterrupted, alert practice” that the  Yoga Sutras Of Patanjali prescribes for achieving a state of yogic union, then we need strategies for the days when we’re not at our best and ways to practice that allow us to turn inward and do good work while honoring our body’s limitations.

As it turns out, the sniffley sadhana of 2012 has been a crash course in doing just that.

If you’d like a pdf of the practice we worked with, let me know in the comments and I’ll email you a copy.

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

Summer Sadhana: The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you

Morning Yoga Practice: If it’s so important, why is it so hard to do?

Find a Time of Day to Watch Your Breath

Illustration from the Bandha Yoga site: those pale lilac fingers are the serrated edges of serratus anterior.

On the day my yoga life officially began, sometime in June, 1987,  I took a private class from Wende Davis.

She taught me spinal stretch, with my hands resting on her upright piano.

Then she tapped her fingers along my spine and asked me to notice the different qualities of the flesh.

My lumbar spine was lively and soft, but my upper back felt like wood, a solid lump that I couldn’t move, and in fact, couldn’t even feel from the inside.

I was not, by the way, at all unusual in this, just early. The deadness in my upper back was the result of extra rounding, or hyper-kyphosis, something that happens to almost all of us as we age, women especially, but men too. The most rapid rounding usually comes between ages 50 and 60.

Since that day I have done yoga chest openers, and many of them.

I have tried, with varying degrees of success, to stay conscious of my upper back in every forward bend, every standing pose, every twist, and every back bend.

Naturally, my back has improved with practice. Twenty-five years later, my spine is significantly less rounded and more mobile.

But I’ve never felt quite free from the prison of my rounded upper ribcage, at least until now.

It happened in a Google moment.

Searching for some help with my nemesis pose, chaturanga dandasana, the yoga push up, I clicked onto the Bandha Yoga website.

Bandha Yoga is an anatomy driven site written by Ray Long, an orthopedic surgeon and long-time yoga student who has studied extensively with BKS Iyengar and other leading teachers.

Chris MacIver does the phenomenal anatomical illustrations, on the site and in the Bandha Yoga books.

I found myself looking at an explanation of how to activate serratus anterior, the muscle that rises up out of your ribs and attaches itself to the whole front surface of your shoulder blade.

Rounding the upper back and lifting the shoulders, as we do when we work at computers, or drive, cook, garden or do almost any forward-oriented task, leaves this muscle slack and unused.

On the Daily Bandha blog, Long and MacIver illustrated the action in staff pose, the seated equivalent of mountain, which is to say, as simple as it gets.

I tried it. It worked. My upper back moved more freely than it ever has before, and I fell in love, stopping just short of asking, “Where have you been all my life?”

Want to give it a try?

(You could make it a Five-Minute Yoga Challenge: never underestimate the work of sitting up straight.)

Sit in staff pose: legs straight. (If your hamstrings are tight sit on enough height that you can easily lift your spine. Put a wood brick under each hand if your palms no longer reach the floor.)

Activate your legs: skin of the feet spreading, heels stretching away from the buttocks, front thighs lifting, thigh bones pressing down.

With your arms straight, palms on the floor or bricks, fingers facing forward, draw your upper arm bones toward the wall behind you.

This is a small action, the top of your arm bone moving a half inch or less toward the back of the shoulder socket.

Then stretch your elbows toward the floor as you lift your chest.

When all of that is in place, resist your palms out to the sides.

By resist, I mean: don’t move your hands sideways; instead push out gently without moving.

That’s it.

When it all works together, my front chest seems to rise on its own toward the base of my throat. Physically, it feels as though I’ve created more space in my upper chest, as though I’ve finally, at last, lengthened my thoracic curve as far as it was meant to go.

At the same time, I have a sensation of having lifted myself into a clearer atmosphere, where I’m calmer, more balanced, and more aware of what surrounds me.

Naturally, this action travels into other poses: arm balance, elbow balance, seated forward bends – any time the palms can be flat on the floor.

Most wonderfully, the first time I pushed up into upward bow, set my upper arms and shoulder blades and then pressed my hands apart, I floated into an entirely different pose.

Lifted and lengthened by serratus anterior drawing my shoulder blades into my back ribs, I briefly thought, “I’m not coming out, ever,” before, of course, coming out.

In fact, once you’re used to feeling serratus anterior contract, it’s possible to sit in any meditation pose with your palms facing up or down, take your upper arms back, and your elbows down, then visualize resisting them apart, and get the lift.

My ribcage? No longer locked, and what dwells inside feels like limitless space.

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I’m so impressed with the Bandha Yoga site, and the Daily Bandha blog, that I’ve become an affiliate. Check it out. (If you click one of these links and end up buying a book, a percentage of the price will be paid to me.)

Maybe you’re neither white nor black, good nor bad. Maybe you’re not even a sheep.

Perfection in an asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached. From then on the sadhaka (practitioner) is undisturbed by dualities.

–– Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, II.47-48, translation by B.K.S. Iyengar

Of all of the dualities – hot and cold, pain and pleasure, self and other  –  the one that has disturbed me most is good and bad.

Give or take a few baby years before I knew the rules, I have lived my whole life between these poles.

Did I get up early? A tick in the Good column.

Did I sleep in? A tick in the Bad column.

And so the day went.

Did I do my practice? Do my work? Cleave to duty?

Or did I daydream and lollygag, do the SuDoku with breakfast, surf the Internet, waste time?

Was I thin? Good!

Had I gained a pound? Bad!

Then about a month ago I read and wrote about The Willpower Instinct, a new book by Kelly McGonigal on the science of self-control.

Among the book’s many surprising conclusions, this one stood out: there is no better way to scuttle your plans than to believe that achieving your willpower goal makes you good, and failing makes you bad.

In fact, as soon as an action becomes a test of character, all is lost.

If, for example, doing my asana practice means I’m good, human nature makes the practice less appealing, no matter how much I love the poses, and how many times I experience the well being that follows.

Our dear, rebellious souls do not want to be “good,” perhaps because we believe that being “good” is likely to be dull, boring and no fun, while being “bad” is likely to be exciting and adventurous.

So we make plans for ourselves and then rebel against the plans we’ve made, a continuous process of tripping over our own intentions.

The good news, for me at least, is that my disturbing pair of opposites recently fell apart.

I didn’t have an epiphany in headstand, or feel a jolt of realization run through my triangle pose. But practice makes me happy. The more years I practice, the happier I get. And happiness brings with it clarity and mental space.

In a recent clear and spacious moment, I realized that “good” and “bad” exist only within a frame of mind that judges.

In that frame of mind, they are two sides of the same coin. No matter which side I’m on, I’m equally bound by the internal critic with the clipboard, ticking off good and bad actions, and my self is divided in two.

Now I have a third option: awake.

When I find myself in the land of opposites, I know I’m asleep. When I put good and bad aside, and think “no judgment,” I’m awake.

“No judgment” doesn’t mean no observation, or no discernment. Surprisingly, it seems to mean seeing more clearly.

Experience says that this clarity won’t last forever, and I’ll fall asleep again, only to wake up with a start and realize I’ve been dozing.

So now I’m hatching a new plan for staying awake. If I don’t follow it, I won’t be bad, just asleep. And if I do, I won’t be good, just awake.

Image courtesy of Ionics, via Flickr.

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

Weaken the Afflictions to Bring Harmony Into Your Life

Release Your Grip by Practicing Non-Grasping

Smack in the Middle of the Mandala: It’s a Good Place to Sit

Savasana, no props needed.

(Need more sleeping cat pictures?)

Relaxation pose is the name we give Savasana (shah-VAH-sah-nah) in English.

In Sanskrit, it means corpse – a pose that mimics death.

But if you have a rounded upper back you can easily become one of the undead: not quite able to settle without something to prop up your head.

Sadly, everything in our technological society conspires toward rounding our backs. We sit and stare at computer screens. We drive, we hunch over bicycle handles. And even non-tech activities – cooking, caring for a baby, gardening – bend us in the same forward direction.

For some of us, the tendency to a rounded upper back also seems to be inherited, or at least picked up as a posture we learn to imitate as a very young child.

For me, it’s both. I work at a computer and come from a long line of women with dowagers’ humps.

For years my chosen prop in Savasana was a folded blanket under my head.

Centre the eye bag on your mat, and your spine on the eye bag

Without it, I might start relaxation pose in comfort, but within a few minutes, the back of my head would begin to feel too heavy on the floor. My shoulders would tense, and I’d feel constricted in my upper chest.

My blanket, however, was a doubled-edged sword. It made my relaxation pose more relaxing, yes. But as long as I used the blanket, I wasn’t coming closer to the classic pose.

Then, in a recent class, Louie  suggested using a facecloth, folded in quarters and then fan-folded in thirds to make a small, narrow oblong.

Placed in the right spot in my upper back, it lifted my rounded spine away from the floor. My collarbones broadened and my shoulders rolled back.

Heaven.
And not only that, it was a heaven which might conceivably lead to a better pose over time.

But as I worked with the facecloth at home, I ran into difficulties. It proved to be a tricky little parcel, apt to come unfolded as I moved into place.

When it was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was a fidgety mess.

Lately I’ve started using my eye bag instead. It’s a little longer than the folded facecloth, and not as high, but when it hits the right spot, I get the same effect.

The facecloth, folded in four, and then fan-folded into thirds

If you don’t have an eye bag, by all means try a facecloth.

Here’s how:

Place the eye bag (or facecloth) on your mat in the centre, lengthwise, with the top of the prop where you expect to place the bottom of your neck.
Lie down. Make sure that your spine is centred on the prop.
With your knees bent, push yourself along the eye bag until you feel your shoulders broaden and your neck lengthen.
Keep your weight on the prop as you move: part of what makes this work is the way your skin is pulled downwards as you slide.

Take your arms out to the sides. Lengthen your buttocks toward your heels. Then one by one lengthen your legs.
You may not get to the right spot on your first try. If, a few minutes into your rest pose, you start to feel a familiar strain, then bend your knees and slide an inch or so toward your head.

You’ll know you’re in the right place when your collarbones roll toward the floor, and the back of your neck lengthens. (If your shoulders are very tight, or your upper back is very rounded, the eye bag may not be enough to keep you comfortable. Have a folded blanket nearby for the back of your head.)

Rest easy.

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

Five Good Reasons to Let a Timer Be Your Practice Buddy

Five Minute Yoga Challenge: Reverse the Curve

Supported Bridge: Cross Over into Quiet

Download Update:

With the help of the talented Angela Wan, I now have a complete, and very handsome .pdf of My Five-Minute Yoga Practice. Over the next week or so, I’ll be adding the .mp3 files and finding an online host for the download.

In the meantime, as soon as I can get it all onto a flash drive like the one below, we’ll have some Facebook fun: a contest! You’ll be able to win this rare, otherwise unavailable logo-imprinted flash drive, with the download installed.

Stay tuned for details.

The pretty little My Five-Minute Practice Flash Drive

One of the yogic uses for a doorway

The most yogic use for a doorway, real or metaphorical, would surely be to come and go mindfully, knowing when you’re on one side, when you’re in the middle, and when you’ve passed through.

But doorways also have yogic uses that are far more physical.

You can, for instance, use a doorway to get a deep stretch in your shoulders and upper chest.
While you’re at it, you can also learn to strengthen the work in your arms, knowledge which will stand you in good stead in any pose that demands strong arms and an open chest, say, chair pose, warrior III or full arm balance.

As a break from desk work, the doorway stretch makes a perfect Five-Minute Yoga Challenge to release your shoulders and clear your mind. In a longer practice, do it early. That way you’ll benefit from the opening when you do other poses.

Here’s how:
Make a loop in a strap, slightly less than shoulder width, and put the strap around your wrists.

Find a doorway that is low enough that when you take your hands up, you can brace the little finger side of your hand against the top of the doorway. If height is an issue, try standing on a small plastic stool, or on two wood bricks. (Put a sticky mat under the bricks so they don’t slip.)

Straighten your arms completely. If you can’t straighten your arms, make the loop in your strap bigger, so your arms can be wider apart.

Now bring your arms up and stand in mountain pose in the doorway.
Press your outer feet into the floor, and lift your inner ankles, inner knees and inner thighs.
Press your front thighs back until you feel your weight in your heels.
Compact your outer upper thighs, pressing toward the centre.
Drop your buttocks toward the floor as you lift your front chest.

Begin to work your arms. Push your wrists sideways into the strap.
Roll your outer upper arms toward the wall in front of you.
Pull your upper arm bones from the sides deeper into your shoulder sockets.
Draw your shoulder blades down your back. Once more lift your chest and drop your buttocks.

Now take a small step forward – a matter of inches. (If you’re on a stool or blocks, you may need to reposition them.)
The work in your shoulders and upper chest will intensify. So will the temptation to over-arch your lower back. Re-do the work in your legs. Drop your buttocks to the floor as you lift your front chest.

When you’re ready, take another small step forward. Align yourself again.

If you’re just beginning a yoga practice, this could be enough.

If you’d like more, come into chair pose (Utkatasana):

Keeping your buttocks dropping and your lower back long, bend your knees.
Eventually, your fingers will drop below the level of the door.
Sit deeper into the “chair.”  Lift your arms and your chest. Work your wrists against the strap. Breathe.

Ready for warrior III?

Keep your upper body in the same alignment. Shift your weight to your left foot. Begin to straighten and lift your right leg.
Continue to press your wrists into the strap.
Take your buttocks strongly toward your right heel.
Imagine your back body, from the crown of your head to your right heel, as a wooden plank. When the heel lifts, the upper body has to descend, and all of it stays in a straight line.

Do you have any favorite yogic uses for a doorway? Please share.

Photo by Alan James.

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