Another great video from Leeann Carey Yoga. Here we demonstrate Virabhadrasana 2, or Warrior 2 pose, with props. This is a perfect variation to work with your teacher in a private yoga lesson.
Thankfully, this isn’t one of my harder poses, so making the video was fun. The adjustment with the yoga belt is the best one for me.
Watch this yoga video from Leeann Carey Yoga with me in Parsvakonasana to see some great instruction. We chose to do this video because what occurs in my front leg is actually quite common. Our Yaapana variation offers support which helps me access the IT band so I can get the proper lift in the front thigh.
The lovely Dawn DelVecchio from The Healers Way interviewed me about Yaapana Yoga. Watch it here. There is a special offer at the end, but it expires Dec 23, 2011. Enjoy.
As always, I’m available for private yoga lessons in the South Bay. If you live in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach or Redondo Beach and want some yoga therapy, email me at yoga@julesmitchell.com.
It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. It’s not that I haven’t been writing, I have been. It’s just that I’ve been writing academically for my graduate program in Kinesiology. Academic writing is not the same as blogging, not even close.
So while I am ready to write some more material, I have a few other projects lined up. One of these is rebuilding my website. So, until I do that, I won’t be posting any elaborate yoga blogs. You might find some of my yoga anatomy blogs over at Elephant Journal.
For now, I will post a few videos. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth ten thousand words, right?
The particular video below is perfect for today. This semester of academic writing meant extended hours researching and typing. My posture suffered terribly…especially in my hip flexors and upper back. With my flattened lumbar curve, I’m already working against gravity for good posture. In this video, Leeann Carey and I look at “how to stand” – which is much harder than you think.
Enjoy the Yaapana Yoga videos and stay tuned for a new website.
As always, I’m available for private yoga lessons in Hermosa Beach, CA. I focus on yoga therapy for everyone, kinematic skills for the beginning yoga student, and proper alignment for the experienced yogi.
The musculoskeletal body is a brilliant assemblage of bones, muscles and joints. Various forms of soft connective tissue hold everything in place. Ligaments are the form of connective tissue that support, bind, and surround the joints (areas of the body where bone meets bone). Ligaments restrain the movement at the joint by providing a stabilizing structure, while a muscle causes movement at the joint by contracting to move bone.
Ligaments are slightly elastic, not nearly as elastic as muscle and don’t have the contractile features of muscle. They should only be stretched a little. Ligaments will return to their original shape unless they are stretched past a certain point either over a prolonged period of time or abruptly.
Consider ligaments to be like taffy. A brief gentle tug will stretch the taffy a little, while a prolonged gentle tug will stretch the taffy much more. But a quick, forceful tug will actually snap the taffy.
Practicing yoga asana can be beneficial to overall joint health and function. Since stiff and hardened ligaments limit mobility, mild stretching at the joints can bring tremendous freedom in movement. But overstretching the ligaments, called hyperlaxity, will actually cause reduced joint stability.
A similar photo to the one below is used in our program Anatomy: Form and Function to examine the abundance of ligaments and other connective tissues and how they affect movement. Join us! Learn to teach yoga.
The LCY method empowers you to teach the students, not just the poses. Discover how to identify which students will benefit from joint mobility and which need joint stability and how to address them all in a group setting.
My yoga teacher training schedule lately has offered several backbend workshops. While sitting here staring at my computer, wondering what Yoga Anatomy topic would be of interest to the readers of our newsletter, my mind kept going back to backbends. “But they are so complex,” I argued with myself. “How am I going to share enough information and at the same time not overwhelm?” Recognizing this dialogue as avoidance, in the same way that I fidget on my mat when I do not want to be confronted, I knew I just had to dive in. So here I go.
Backbends have been on my radar lately for several reasons. First, I have been on a long, arduous, yet fulfilling backbend journey of my own. I have really had to unlearn what my body wanted to tell me it knew about bending over backwards and teach my body an entirely new skill set to find the beautiful balance of effort and ease that we seek in any yoga asana. Sound familiar to you? As a teacher who teaches other teachers how to teach yoga, I am at ease describing, cuing, adjusting, and demonstrating crucial segments of the poses. But the reality is that a long, evenly proportioned spinal extension is not my go to pose.
Secondly, I see very clearly that I am not alone here. In fact, students who really love backbends are often most at risk for settling into their unique movement patterns. Where there is little resistance, there is often less awareness since there is less to overcome. Basically, students are either inhibited their arms and legs, or not inhibited by their extremities and the various joints. In both cases, specific skills can be called into action to achieve more in the pose with less “work”.
In order to keep the subject of backbends manageable in this post, let’s discuss what occurs in the legs. Even more specifically, we will look at hip extension during Urdhva Dhanurasana (upward facing bow). This is only one small component of the pose, but I will adhere to the wise words of my teacher, “we learn in layers.” There is a great benefit to breaking down any subject into manageable pieces and then repeatedly returning to them for review.
Urdhva Dhanurasana
In Urdhva Dhanurasana the hip goes into extension, which means that the thigh bones move behind the pelvis to some degree. Our primary hip extensors are the gluteus maximus and the hamstrings. In many of us, the gluteus maximus is a very powerful muscle that originates at the ilium and the sacrum and inserts on the femur and the iliotibial tract (IT band). The key to this discussion is that the gluteus maximus also externally rotates the thigh. So, if you powerfully engage your gluteus maximus to pull the hip into extension as you press up into upward facing bow, you might also externally rotate the femurs.
What does this look like? Well, it depends, but most cases, the feet turn out, the butt squeezes together and gets hard, the groin also gets hard and pushes out, and the spinal extension gets stuck somewhere in the lumbar spine so it can’t sequence through all the segments of the spine. Over time, this could cause discomfort in the low back and the sacroiliac joints. Furthermore, the experience of the backbend is not fully achieved. This is why you often hear teachers say “feet parallel”. They are essentially encouraging less external rotation at the hip, but “feet parallel” is easier to execute if you are new to yoga anatomy.
So what do we do next? Unfortunately (or fortunately), my answer is always “it depends”. Truly, we would have to look at the individual in the pose and test a few theories. But there are some general solutions that work for most people.
First, let’s invite the hamstrings to the party. The hamstrings are also hip extensors and would be happy to share the work load with the gluteus maximus. However, since the hamstrings are also knee flexors, the quadriceps are also invited to the party to help straighten the legs by signaling to the hamstrings to work the upper fibers more than the lower fibers.
Second, we should also invite the anterior fibers of the gluteus medius and the gluteus minumus to contribute. These muscle fibers are internal rotators and when turned on will counter the external rotation caused by the gluteus maximus. As an added bonus, both the medius and minumus are also abductors will help stabilize the pelvic girdle.
glute complex
You learn in a yoga teacher certification program like ours that these cues don’t usually cause results in poses. This is why you hear “soften the groins” or “roll the inner thighs down” in Urdhva Dhanurasana – usually right after “feet parallel”. Your yoga teacher is guiding you work dominant muscles less and search for less commonly used muscle to grow in the pose.
So how do you experience this when you are working so hard in the pose and you also have the core and shoulders giving you their own special dose of difficulty? You take as many variables out of the equation as you can.
Supported Ustrasana - Doing
My personal go to pose is supported Ustrasana. It is still an active pose, this is a key point. If you look at the picture here of me in those, I am working. If I were to relax, my pelvis would drop into flexion – not the position we want in Urdhva Dhanurasana. While supported in this manner, I can safely experiment with the various muscle actions in the legs and hips that I mentioned above. The wall is in front of me to give me feedback on how much I am using my gluteus maximus. All the while, I can experience a long hold in spinal extension where I would otherwise fatigue.
Try it out and let me know how it works for you. I would love to see you in Anatomy: Form and Function, where we discuss and experience all this and more. This module in the Leeann Carey Yoga School is part of our 300 RYT curriculum, but can also be used as continuing education for any 200 RYTs out there. Let’s yoga together, register here.
As a teacher, I hear students self diagnose their pains and discomforts everyday. While I am proponent for self awareness and studying one’s own movement patterns, these skills don’t always translate into a decipherable description of what is really occurring in their bodies.
I offer some basic anatomy to help you visualize what you might be experiencing:
The word pelvis means “basin” in Latin and serves as the container for the organs of digestion, urination, and reproduction. The ilium, the ischium, and the pubis are the three bones make up the pelvis, fused at the pubic symphysis, a cartilaginous joint.
The spine connects to the pelvis at the sacroiliac joints (SI joints). These sacral/iliac connections only experience about 1-3 millimeters of movement and are frequently a source of discomfort, or “SI issues” as we often hear. In any movement, it is relatively simple tend to jam the SI joints in backbends, overstretch them in forward folds, and displace the sacrum in twists. Much of the study of yoga anatomy of the pelvic girdle and hip joint is focused on prevent SI joint injuries and treating SI discomfort.
Register for Anatomy: Form and Function to study the effect on the SI Joints in Twists, Forward Folds and Backbends with a focus on injury prevention and treatment of discomfort and pain.
I look forward to exploring yoga anatomy with you.
Jules
You are teaching a mixed a level yoga class and notice that one of your students relieves her low back in balasana (child’s pose) after her Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I). She is eager to do the pose, but her enthusiastic reach through the arms is accompanied by an exaggerated curve in the lumbar spine. You have now moved your class to the wall to practice Handstands. One of the stronger men in class goes right up with ease, but his chest is caving toward the floor and his heels are only touching the wall due to an exaggerated curve in the lumbar spine. In both cases, the causes of the lumbar extension are most likely due to a combination of muscles actions (or non-actions). However, since both asanas have the arms overhead in common, you can begin your inquiry with the lastissimus dorsi. Consider the following anatomy discussion, try the suggested stretch sequence yourself and then introduce it to your students when appropriate.
The latissimus dorsi is a paired superficial back muscle originating at the spinous processes of the sacrum, lumbar vertebra and lower thoracic vertebrae, twisting through the armpit and inserting at the inner upper arm bone. The lats chief action is to extend the arm (moving it behind the trunk), medially rotate (turn inward) and adduct the arm (draw the arm toward the body). Since the lats are shoulder extensors, tight lats will limit shoulder flexion (arms moving forward and overhead) as in Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Dog), Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I), and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Handstand). The lower back will be pulled into extension (or arching) to compensate for tight lats.
tight lats pull the lower back into extension in handstand
A great stretch for the lats is to lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor. With your arms by your side, externally rotate your shoulders so your palms turn up. Do not confuse the palms up cue with supination (an action of the forearm), be sure to rotate from the humerus (upper arm bone). This external rotation will spool the lats around the humerus for an extra bit of stretch. Now slowly lift your arms up and overhead, your palms will now be facing the floor. Notice if your lower back arched to give the illusion of greater range of motion.
Repeat this exercise paying special attention to the low back. From the starting position of the knees bent and feet on the floor, lift your pelvis only a few inches off the floor and use your hands to move the back of your pelvis toward your heels. Lower your pelvis, feel this extra length and maintain this position as you add previous arm movements. Hold the stretch 2 to 3 minutes, breathing comfortably.
straighten the elbows or hold opposite elbows
When you are ready for more stretch, roll up a yoga mat and place it across the top of your shoulder blades just beneath the nape of your neck. Be sure not to arch the lower back, even with the added height.
Register for Anatomy: Form and Function at www.leeanncareyyoga.com to learn more.
I live in Los Angeles, where the yoga community flourishes and new yoga “stars” emerge almost daily. It’s a great place to live and great place to practice yoga. The available yoga education is high quality and vast. However, among all this competition there is an overwhelming push of the “right way” or “the best way” onto the students. It seems to counter the essence of a yoga experience. Most of us, including myself, will say any way of yoga is a good way of yoga as long as the yoga is being lived. So, the Los Angeles yogis move through their practice and follow the teachers they resonate with – the ones that teach to that student’s particular body composition and interests. Until they experience the Foundation Weekend with Leeann Carey Yoga.
KPS
The Foundation Weekend with Leeann Carey Yoga transforms your understanding of yoga in such a way that you can apply this new understanding to any class and any teacher. You really learn to look at the individual body in each individual pose and then how that translates into your own unique body. It is a weekend geared toward learning to teach and growing your own practice.
I often hear from new teachers that becoming a teacher is taking away from their personal practice. I most definitely went through this experience and it was disheartening. I chose to teach yoga because I loved to practice yoga, yet I was practicing with less focus – always attempting to translate what I was experiencing into a language for my students. The Foundation Weekend was the first teacher training I attended that really focused on both. I had major breakthroughs in my own personal practice and I was able to see in many other bodies how to guide my individual students toward their own breakthroughs.
For me, it was the Key Positioning Skills (KPS) specifically that provided me with that language. I’ve said before that the KPS’s are like anatomy in the form of poetry. By describing the physical position of the body in relation to another part of that same body, the students is left with a level of inquiry that exists when interpreting a poem. These skills provide people with the freedom to apply the instructional verses to their own bodies, constantly changing and constantly up for reassessment. They speak specifically to what is happening in the individual, not what is happening in a typical body. My teaching, as a result has become much more refined and much less generic – which is often a challenge in a group class. Check out our videos featuring the Leeann Carey Yoga Key Positioning Skills and write me a comment – tell me what you think. Imagine you and a group of other teachers practicing and viewing these alignment skills over the course of 3 days. The weekend will transform the way you teach and practice!
my Earth training
To bring it back to the picture of Los Angeles that I created in the beginning of this post, I find that the Leeann Carey Yoga has helped me sort through all the different styles and techniques of instruction out there. I’m finding that what wasn’t working for me before, is now working, all as a result of a new perspective. Yet all the prior study only enhanced my understanding of the Leeann Carey Yoga just as any future training I experience will also be enhanced by what I learned at my Foundation Weekend. I hope to see you all at an Foundation Weekend so I can share with you what has been a powerful addition to my own yoga education.
