Yoga Lab: Feet! May 21

I'll hazard a guess that a yoga teacher has said to you, "lift and spread your toes."  It's also likely that you've been told to pay attention to where your weight is on your foot or to ground through a particular part of your foot. Maybe you've even been told to keep your toes lifted for a significant portion of an asana class.  Good, there's awareness in the feet.  In my asana practice I look for energies that move in opposing directions and work with them, whether that's using directional breath and bandha that balances Prana and Apana Vayus, or extending the spine in a back bend then holding a forward fold.  In the feet there is a grounding and reaching, and there is also a lift, most specifically of the arches.  The lift of the arches is called Pada Bandha.  Take a yoga field trip down to Santa Cruz sometime and check out Mark Stephens.  He's a wonderful and very experienced yoga teacher who loves to talk about Pada Bandha.

Further, in asymmetrical standing poses we're often told to stand with the feet at a 90 degree or a 45 degree angle from one another.  That placement as well as where the heels are in relation to one another play a crucial role in how we're able to construct a pose over the point below which gravity pulls.  So think about that for moment, it's pretty simple: the feet are the foundation over which any standing or standing balancing pose is built.  Where the feet are, how they're placed relative to one another can help or hinder what's intended to happen above.


This, as all the Yoga Labs thus far, is the maiden voyage for me of teaching with this particular emphasis.  On the one hand some of the specific grounding I do in parts of my feet when I practice seems like a subtle, potentially advanced part of practicing asana.  On the other, it seems strikingly straightforward and, um, pedestrian, though while how we place the feet in standing poses very basic I don't know that I ever got a good breakdown or explanation of how the foot placement assists the building of different poses.  Thus my motivation to do this class.

In class on Saturday we'll be taking the attention down there for the grounding, the lift and the intelligent placement.  I hope to see you there.


Further reading about Pada Bandha from Tias Little.

Yoga Lab May 7: Come do some shoulder stuff and maybe end up upside down on your forearms.

The next Yoga Lab is gonna be about the shoulders.  We'll be trying to make a habit of moving the shoulder blades away from the midline.  We'll stretch the shoulders in a smorgasbord of ways, and we'll eventually move toward working with forearm balance, or Pincha Mayarasana.

So really the class will be about one particular way of moving the shoulders.  That's the particular.  Let's move to the general for a moment.  When I practice asana, I want the totality of my physical body involved in a pose or a movement.  That means being aware of the most important aspects of a pose (for example how my feet are hands are set to bear weight and set the foundation of the pose, being certain that I'm not doing something that could cause injury, seeing that my breath is moving as openly as possible, etc.) but then also being aware of what the less critical parts of the body are doing.  So I have specific things that I do with my shoulders when they're not really a very critical part of a posture, like the raised or lifted arm in triangle or side angle pose.  Part of what I'm doing is trying to be aware of the whole body, and the specific movement is intended to habituate a pattern of movement that will lead to a healthy opening when in a posture that asks for either weight bearing or greater flexibility.

That last idea is important, that in more basic postures one is laying a certain groundwork that will be called upon in more advanced postures.  That's another part of the bigger, general picture.  Whether you think it's a week, a year, several years, or several lifetimes down the road, I think it's beneficial to develop movement habits in asana that would be used in advanced postures.  And the example of that relevant to this class would be how the shoulder is safely used to bind pigeon 1:

This yogini's shoulders aren't even that involved in this binding.  Must be nice to have such a bendy lower back, huh?  How about something with a higher "whoa!" factor:

Kinda funny how Valakhilyasana makes the first photo of bound pigeon look like a restorative.  The point being that whether or not you ever even want to go anywhere near there or not, it's never a bad idea to get a grasp on the awareness of the movement that is a step down that path.

While we're not going to try Valakhilyasana, who knows, maybe we'll do bound pigeon with a strap, or, if you have the shoulder (and hip and spine) mobility, perhaps without a strap.  What we will for sure practice is some work on the shoulders, some stretching, some breathing and perhaps the planting or nurturing of a seed that can grow into a powerful idea with practice.