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