Day 3 Vinyasa Krama Subroutine notes : Uttanasana (forward bend ) On your feet

VIDEO LINK

Big important subroutine this, deepest forward bend to one of the deepest backbends.

Forward bend first.

Most of the notes I add to these posts will be little tips and hints that have come up in my practice while working with the subroutines over the last couple of years or perhaps carry overs from the Ashtanga community that might be useful in the Vinyasa Krama context. This one though concerns safety. 

Engage your bandhas and stick your backside out!

When I practice forward bend I have the seated forward bend, paschimottanasana, in mind. Ramaswami would encourage us to stretch out of our hips as we folded over. This was the only other posture I remember him giving a hands on assist. He would come behind us, put his hands above the coccyx, push the sacrum forward and keep pushing forward while we were in the pose,  then he would encourage us to take turns doing the same on each other. 

I'm also reminded of a video I saw of Dharma Mittra demonstrating paschimottanasana. He would have you sit with your knees slightly bent and then shuffle back so your sitting forward on your sit bones which helps to flatten the legs, taking your backside further and further back before folding over.

All these are reminders that the forward bend is happening form the hips rather than starting at the spine. In that first picture above, stretch up out of your pelvis as before and then as you bend over from the hip really stick your backside out, push it back, it's kind of like a counterweight, same thing happens in a headstand when you bring your legs down into inverted staff, your backside goes further and further back, if it didn't you'd fall out of your headstand.

This takes a lot of the pressure off your back.

Notice the first picture is Ardha Uttanasana, half forward bend. Ramaswami would have us fold to there and then come back up, we might repeat that 2-6 times and that might be as far as your comfortable going. You could then do the other hand/arm variations in the half bend rather than the full. Of course you could work into it too, star with disa uttanasana (sanskrit check, quarter forward bend?) or less and work up to half bend.

When I started yoga five years ago my hands could only reach half way down my shins.

Another way to take take some pressure of your back in forward bending is to engage the bandhas, more  on these in a future post ( there are notes at the beginning of my book) Simply put for now, contract your anus, draw it up, with some practice you'll feel like your gripping the base of your spine, Ramaswami has a fishing rod analogy, holding the base of the spine like the handle of a fishing rod. You should feel your stomach come back and up a little too, encourage that, suck it back a little further, up a little more. Bandhas help give you a firm, secure base to begin your bending whether forward or back.

Backbending.

The bandhas help with the backbends too, think fishing rod whenever you do backbends and hold firmly onto the base of your spine.

In Ashtanga we call the Tiryang mukha Uttanasana mini subroutine we see here a dropback and there are hundreds of blog posts on it (fifty odd on mine alone). It's challenging and something to work towards. Unless your eight in which case you'll probably drop back into it without even thinking.

You might want to work at urdhva Danurasana in the bow sequence first, become comfortable there and strong in your arms and shoulders lifting up into it there before trying to drop back into it here. 

If this is a posture that's available to you then a couple of tips that have worked for me lately are..

1. Ramaswami's fishing rod analogy above, engaging the bandhas so it feels like your gripping the base of your spine and holding on all the way down and back up.

2. Remembering that this is a back stretch rather than back bend, really stretch up and lift out of your pelvis. The backstretch begins in your toes and ends in your fingertips.

3. Just as with the forward bend don't think of this as a spinal bend but rather that it begins at the hips. Where you pushed your hips back in Uttanasan above, here you push your hips forward, as far forward as possible.

4. It's good to work at the wall as you practice this. Take a few steps out from the wall and drop back as far down the wall as feels comfortable and use the wall to push off to come back up, remembering to start the return motion by shifting your hips forward.

keep working a little further down the wall.

I still find dropping back near the wall for the first couple useful. I can do it without it but it takes the pressure off for the first couple of these and thus any strain. I might tap lightly off the wall coming up the first one or two, 

I tend to do five to seven of these. The first couple I tap off the wall the next three I just come up to standing and then drop back again. The last two I'll come up and then fold over into my forward bend. 

5. be mindful when moving from the backbend to the forward bend, don't forget to go from shifting your hips forward for the backbend to shifing them back, sticking your backside out for the forward bend

6. Ramaswami seems to have you doing the backbend with your feet together as in most of the On your feet sequence. I find this challenging, it's unstable. I've done it that way but I prefer to have my feel t a little apart.

7. Ramaswami also talks about coming up on the exhalation. I've always done it on the inhalation although coming up on the exhalation is interesting, I'll often do both.

8. Feet feet turned out or lifting heels? Both are probably bad habits. I used to turn my feet out now I keep them closer together and parallel but lift my heels a little as i drop back the last little bit and just as I come up.

9. If your about to drop back for the first time, your confident in your urdhava danhurasana, you've been dropping back half way to the wall for a little while and as you work on your backbend you can see the floor, your feeling brave. OK, one last tip, KEEP YOUR ARMS STRONG. The tendency is to collapse your arms a little as you land which means your the top of your head bangs against the mat ( see HERE). If you keep your arms strong as your hands touch the mat you should be fine.

10. Type backbending or drop back into my Ashtanga blog, you'll find a lot of posts with all kinds of ideas. most of these come from the community, tips and hints that have worked for others.

Here are some posts on back bending you might find useful

Dropback It's the hips stupid.

Latest drop back plus checklist

Jump back's little brother, the drop back

Dropback videos from the web

Dropback progress 2008- present

4 & 5 Diamond postures, Usthrasana and Kapotasana ( feet together )

I mentioned in the dropping back post a couple of days ago that in Ramaswami's book the feet are, perhaps surprisingly ( for me at least coming from ashtanga) together. This adds quite a degree of challenge as you have a less stable base to work from.

I try to keep the three locks/bhandas, (Mula -root, uddiyana-belly and jalendhara-throat ) engaged throughout my practice, in some poses more engaged than others. Uddiyana bandha, drawing in the belly, is especially useful for backbends, seems to help protect the back and ground you somehow, makes you a little more stable.

Recently, somebody mentioned a tip from a workshop where they were told to imagine they had a pea beneath their belly that they were trying not to squish as they were laying in the Salabhasana's (trying to find the source of this anyone remember?). great tip, it really helps but what about standing backbends and kapo, here's my variation.....

This only works if your belly button is an innie, sorry outie's your backbends are just going to have to suffer or perhaps you can come up with your own version in which case please let me know.

The yogi and the pea
So the idea is that you imagine your holding a pea inside your belly button. Now you want to grip that pea so suck your belly in and up, grip the pea and draw it back nice and safe, now keep that engaged like that through your drop back's, kapo's and what have you.

In the video below I'm whizzing through the Bow sequence and part of the meditative sequence. The idea here, as with the previous Leg behind head post, is to show how the postures of the sequences build upon each other preparing you for the more challenging poses.



I'd already done my bow sequence practice this morning, here I'm going in and out of each pose on the breath but earlier, of course, I was repeating the postures three times and or staying in the pose for a number of long, slow breaths.

Key to ushtrasana and kapotasana are getting the hips as far forward as possible, lifting up out of the hips as we do every day in tadasana. There's a tendency to collapse the hips backwards as we go over but all the way keep thinking "hips forward, hips forward...". Mine collapse here because this is my first time doing kapo with my feet and knees together. You may find it easier to work toward the feet together version by practicing with your feet and knees apart.

Look inside

The full kapotasana doesn't show up in Ramaswami's Complete book of vinyasa yoga but it's there in his earlier book ( and one of THE best books on yoga I've come across) Yoga for the three stages of life.

Vinyasa Krama drop back, feet together, come up on exhale.

Had a bit of a shock this morning.

I was checking out the dropback in Ramaswami's book The Complete book of Vinyasa Yoga, it appears in the 'On your feet sequence' on p20. I noticed that Ramaswami writes,

"During the exhalation, move back slowly to tadasana"

Exhale? Exhale back up out of a dropback, out of a backbend? Surely he meant come up on the inhalation.  I thought I'd mention it to him latter, thought it was a printing mistake.

Then I checked Kapotasana, p182,

" ...and as you breath out, return to the starting position and then to vajrasana sthitti".

Again the exhale!

I'd learned to come up from backbends on the inhale in ashtanga and it seems to make sense, in fact we often say ride the breath back up.

Thinking about it though, inhaling is all about lifting the chest but as you play with backbends more the attention shifts to the pelvis, to the legs, you push down through the legs and push your hip forward...

exhaling is good for pushing.

So I tried and you know what, it kind of works, in fact I think I might prefer it. Not saying that ashtanga  is wrong just that the Vinyasa Krama approach is different. Wonder when and why Krishnamacharya changed his way of teaching this.

If that wasn't enough of a shock another penny dropped.

The dropback appears in tadasana, the On your feet sequence....

the feet are together.

So not only am I working on coming up on the exhale I'm nowtrying to do it with the feet together, tricky.

Here's my first attempt, almost there but I needed to tap off the wall. The second attempt I fell out of it over to the side, very strange and unstable having the feet together.



Which reminds me, on the course Ramaswami mentioned that kapotasana was done with the feet, legs, knees together in Vinyasa Krama, which makes sense as in VK it's approached from vajrasana.

Vinyasa Krama, not so easy .

5 Diamond postures. Dropping back, Kapotasana (backbending)

NB: Ramaswami marks each of the postures in his book with 1-5 diamonds depending on the challenge.


One of the things that's troubled me about Vinyasa Krama ( oh yes, it's not just Ashtanga I have problems with) is how to work on challenging postures/areas of practice.

In Ashtanga it's kind of straight forward, you do the same postures everyday so your constantly working on the same area of difficulty. If/when you get stuck at the Marichiyasana twists or at Supta Kurmasana, or Kapotasana or the Leg behind head postures, you just keep plugging away at them until you get they get a little easier, more comfortable

In Vinyasa Krama, however, we're seeking to cover a wider range of asana. We also have some key postures to practice daily, paschimottanasana, maha mudra, the inversions, time is often a concern. How to cover a wide range of postures and yet still work on the same ....challenging areas.

Ramaswami mentions difficult/challenging vinyasa in his September 2009 Newsletter .

• In about six months to one year of consistent practice one would be comfortable with the system, the  sequences and especially the required synchronous breathing. This would complete the learning process. 

• Then one may prepare a green list of asanas and vinyasas one would be able to do and wants to practice regularly. 

• There will be another list, amber list which would contain  those vinyasas which are difficult now but one would like to practice them even if they are somewhat imperfect. 

• Then there would be another red list which will contain procedures that are not appropriate or possible for the practitioner—which could probably be taken up in the next janma. 

These are perhaps the four and five diamond marked postures in his book although.

Lets take backbending and in particular kapotasana and dropping back, both five diamond postures in Ramaswami's book. The former comes up in the Meditative sequence (p182) the latter in the On your Feet sequence (p20). I learned my dropbacks in ashtanga and tend to do a handful of them every morning, they're good prep for the more extreme backbends like Kapotanasana, so even if I'm only doing Bow sequence once a week I still feel I'm not losing any facility. I wonder though, how I would have worked towards them in Vinyasa Krama. How I would have been able to put in the time required to nail them in the first place

Two key elements to backbending come to mind. The first is obvious, improving flexibility along the full length of your back, the second is hip flexibility and strength, being able to push your hips forward as far as possible, this takes a lot of strain off your back and basically 'doubles' the effectiveness of your backbend, supercharges it. So to keep up my current backbend facility or for anyone working towards them we want to find places in Vinyasa Krama where we can work on these areas, if possible,  every day.

Tadasana is nice prep, those behind the back hand variations with the back stretch are nice dropback prep, very similar to some of the hang back exercises I used to do when I was learning to drop back.

The big thing in Dropping back is getting the hips forward and that's something you can work on with some of the supine exercises, variations of which come up after most forward bending subroutines as counterposes. Urdhava Danurasana is pretty much a must and makes an excellent counter after the shoulderstand your going to be doing every day anyway.

Armed with these postures we're going to be working towards dropping back, strengthening our hips and preparing ourselves for any of the more extreme backbends and generally keeping the backbending facility ticking over nicely.

For more backbending ideas, tips, hints, suggestions there's fifty odd posts on my other blog Ashtanga vinyasa krama at home. Take a look at THIS post, for dropbacks, or THIS, for Kapotasana, take a note of the date that most resembles where you currently are in your backbends and look for posts on backbending around that time in the archive on the right of the blog.



Here's a video that looks at dropping back and preparing for it with Vinyasa Krama postures/subroutines, it isn't intended as a sequence but just relates to the above.



NB: Just noticed I'm doing a kind of Ashtanga approach to dropping back here. In Ramaswami;s book he has you stretch up and then continue over into the dropback.

another NB : just noticed too, that there are some other differences from Ashtanga re the dropback. you come up on the exhale and your feet are together throughout! See the next post  HERE