Day 8 — Ashtanga Yoga Challenge — 30 Day Journey

Hi everyone, it's Kino here. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Ashtanga Yoga Challenge. It gives me so much happiness to share this method of yoga with you and to know that you're enjoying it and that you're practicing and that you're inspired to do this practice is really just the inspiration that I need. So please stay present with me throughout this challenge and leave me some comments. Let me know how you're doing, that you're still engaged, particularly after yesterday's full practice, even if it was a short practice. I got some comments from people that said that, gosh, that was really hard. Well, the Ashtanga Yoga method, even if you work with modifications to make the practice accessible and adaptable to your own body, is in fact quite a challenging practice. So don't be intimidated by it, but treat this as a progressive course and treat this practice really as a lifelong practice. You don't snap your fingers and then boom, you're done. Okay? I've been practicing for over 20 years now and there are still asanas to this day that I'm working on and even the foundational asanas I return to and I'm constantly challenged. It feels like this series of poses is never the same asanas over and over again. Instead, the Ashtanga Yoga method is constantly changing, just like I am and you. We all are constantly changing. So you can think of yoga kind of as a mirror to shine light on the self within. And in that revelation, this practice can be there with you every day for your entire life. So with that in mind, we're going to continue with the balancing poses. And the balancing pose we'll be working on today is the standing external rotation called Ardha Bhaja Padma So this is a half bound lotus fold forward pose. So first, we need to really understand what's up with the half lotus position. Ooh, we start getting very interesting in the world of yoga, right? So I will caution you and say that if you've never tried a half lotus position before, I probably recommend that you don't start your half lotus practice from standing. Instead, go for one of the modifications or the other options that I'll be sharing with you and then save that half lotus practice for when we get there in the seated poses. And I promise we will get there in the seated poses. So this tutorial on Ardha Bhaja Padma Uttanasana is not going to go so deep into the dynamics of external hip rotation. We're going to save that for when we're seated and we're not working on balance. So to think about like this, that the main intention of the balancing poses is, well, balancing. That's what's really important. So I want you to really, really work your standing balance as much as possible and let your balance be a physical expression of an inner mental state. And one of the things that often comes up in balancing poses is that you might pop off to the side, you may actually lose your balance. And that's the moment to practice mental balance, kindness and forgiveness towards yourself. All that you do when you fall off to the side is forgive yourself and try again. That's all you do. There's no better way to learn balance than by falling over to the side. If you did it perfectly in the first try, this wouldn't be called yoga practice. It's not yoga performance. It's not yoga perfection. It's not yoga competition. It's your personal practice that you can learn deep lessons about yourself and about the spiritual journey. And most importantly, learn to love and accept yourself with each step along the way. So if you take a look behind me, you'll see that I've got a chair and two yoga blocks and a strap. So this will make the practice of this asana just a little bit more accessible when you move into it. So first of all, since this is a standing forward fold, we want to think about checking out your standing position. So I mean your standing forward bend position. If your standing forward bend position is challenged, then I'm not going to be advised to fold forward. Now normally in the flow of the practice, by this point you would have already done padangasasana, padahasasana. So in case you haven't done that for today, let's just start off with a hanging forward bend. So if you'll come onto your mat, straighten your legs, bend the knees, put your chest down to your thighs, and then let's just hang over. And we'll stay for about five breaths like this, okay? One, draw the navel in, relax the spine. Two, and just check out your forward bend. Remember all the good forward bend technique that we've gone over. Three, you can lengthen the spine if it feels appropriate for you. You can bend the knees a little bit. And we'll stay for four, just continuing that movement, pivoting at the hip joints, elongating the spine. Let's go for one more breath. Very good. Now bend your knees and we'll roll it on up to standing, okay? I'm just going to make sure you can see me remove this just a tad back. There we go. Okay, so first, let's take a look at how to appropriately use the chair for this posture. First, if your balance is very challenged, you might find that it is yet ever more useful to work on that external rotation from a complete seated position. So you can do that by sitting with the hips moved and shifted forward to the front of the chair. Then you can fold your right knee, keeping it open, kind of making a number four shape with the body or like a seated version of pigeon pose. Then you can draw the navel deeply in and hold this for five breaths by pivoting forward. And then instead of the fold forward with the straight leg, you can exhale and just fold forward, placing your hands on the floor, fingertips on the floor, dropping the head down. So this is the first way to use the chair. Now make sure I will maybe also show you from the side. So when you're working this position, you've got the number four shape. Then with the number four shape, make sure that you're not hanging back in the chair like this, but really pivoting forward so that you can kind of really get that front access point to your hip joints. And then you can either just stay upright where your spine is going to be more elongated, or you can fold forward, pivoting at the hip joints. Then exhale, layer your arms down. You could even layer the head down. When it's time to come up, we follow the same forward bend technique. You inhale, come up, prepare, exhale there, and then inhale, come all the way up to the seated position, and then your seated version of samasthiti. This is the first way to use the chair. Second, if you pop on over to the chair, move it over to the side, sometimes people find that balancing poses are actually a little bit easier when you step off of your yoga mat. This is because you can really feel your feet making contact with the ground. So if you're having a hard time with the balance, you can use the chair or the wall for a little bit of support. And then we're going to do the tree pose. So you can externally rotate the hip joints, keeping the base of your right big toe firmly planted and the heel up. And this is kind of what I call the planted tree. And you can hold onto the chair and take one hand in prayer position. And you can practice taking that other hand off, going back for balance, coming back up, going back for balance. If the chair is very stable and strong, you may be able to even lean your hip into the chair for that little bit of extra balance. But if the chair is not so stable, I would recommend either using a wall or just leaving the hand here. Then you can slide your foot up to the calf muscle, making sure your standing leg is nicely rooted into the ground, or all the way up to that fully externally rotated tree pose. Again, using that opposite hand for balance, staying for a little extra moment, maybe taking both hands, and then using the chair to glide it on down to samasthiti. So when you're thinking about using the chair, you can kind of lean into it for balance, or you can just tap the chair for a little bit of extra assistance. And these are the two ways that I recommend that you use the chair to help you with ardha-bheda padma-tanasana. I'm going to move the chair a little over to the side now. So now I've got the chair. It can be over here. Good chair. Now let's take a look at how to work ardha-bheda padma-tanasana maybe without the chair. First, think about your tree pose. So in the tree pose, since I did the right side, I'll show you the left side. Work through all of that same technique. You're going to externally rotate the hip joint, draw the navel in, and lift up along the center line. Then, hands in prayer. In the tree pose, it's important that you do not push into your knee, or you could destabilize the knee. Then, if you want to bring that foot up, you can bring the heel all the way up towards the pubic bone and press into the inner thigh of the right leg. Inner thigh of the right leg presses back into the left foot. Left hip joint is externally rotated, and hands in prayer. This is very important in the ashtanga method. In the tree pose, we do not fold forward. In the tree pose, no folding forward. You just stay with the hands in prayer. You can extend the arms if you like, and bring them back down. Totally up to you. After you stay for a few breaths, then exhale, samasthiti, standing. Okay, so now let's say that you want to work somewhere in between the seated chair pose and tree pose. So let's say you cannot close your knee joint all the way up like this, but you don't feel that this is really enough for you. So you want something in between. You feel comfortable being off the chair, but you don't feel comfortable going further than this in tree pose because maybe there's tightness in the hip, or tightness or injury in the knee. So you could stand in a number four shape, keeping the knee open. As long as the knee is pointed out to the side, you can take your hands in prayer and do sort of like a seated version of the chair pose that we did before. All right, so this is kind of like half of utkatasana and half of the seated pigeon. You're sending your butt muscles back, and then inhale, we come up, stabilize, exhale, samasthiti. I'll show you that from the side as well. So we got that external rotation, and we're going to come into a number four. Make sure your knee points out to the side before you try. If there's any pain in the knees, obviously do not continue. Then bend the knee while sending the butt muscles back. So you're treating this very much like a seated pigeon, and it is a balancing pose. So you're firing up those muscles around your pelvis. Hold it there, nice and steady, and then inhale all the way back up, stabilize, exhale, samasthiti, back to standing. Okay, these are some options or variations. So now let's just move that chair completely over. I've got two blocks here because there's yet still more ways to work this posture. How am I going to set this up? So let's set it up this way. Now let's say that you are comfortable. Let's say that you're comfortable in your half lotus, but not yet comfortable in your forward fold. So you can take your right leg into a half lotus, reaching the strap around and holding on with the strap. As long as your knee points down to the ground when you fold forward, you might be able to take one hand on a block. However, if your strap contact is giving you any stress around your knee, you might take both hands down to the block, or even both hands down to the floor. So you just want to keep the integrity of your forward bend as much as possible, all right? So like it is a forward bend, it's important that the lotus knee points down to the ground before you fold forward. Inhale, straighten the arms, exhale the air. If you feel stuck to come up, you can let your knee bend a little bit, which is where we go into that kind of similar shape to that seated chair. Straighten up and samasthiti, back to standing. Okay, so again, what are we looking at here? You're looking at number one, when you're doing your half lotus, prepare that you're externally rotating the hip joint and you want to make sure that the knee points to the ground. Finally, you can remain standing and just hold on to your elbow here. For example, if you're in the lotus, but the knee is elevated, please do not fold forward or it can stress out the knee. So you're drawing the navel in and you can just stay standing. And when it's time to return to samasthiti, simply control the movement and samasthiti. Okay, so let's say that you do not need the blocks or the strap. You want to work the posture. All right, so let's see how that looks. So here we go. Inhale, we externally rotate the hip joint, closing the knee, bringing it all the way up into half lotus. Now, engage the big toe on the right side, reach around, hold the elbow, and then spiral all the way down, holding on to the big toe. And then exhale, fold forward. Don't worry if you lose the balance. You can always do what I just did is put both hands on the ground. So that was actually quite a good illustration of what happens when you lose a balance. You just put your hands on the ground, both hands on the ground for balance, and then exhale, fold. Then push a little weight over onto the left side and see if you can bind again as you fold forward and down. Then wrap that left elbow back and in. And then inhale, prepare. Exhale here. You keep the gaze down, shift your body weight onto your standing legs, slowly come all the way up, and exhale. All right, so most important thing, if you fall, if you teeter off to the side, don't try to hold you rigidly onto the posture. Instead, do what you need to do. Put your both hands on the ground, just like I did there, and then you'll slowly find your way to work through these balancing poses. So maybe let's try it one more time on this side. So now we would externally rotate, slide it on up, and check your knee. Make sure everything feels good. Always do that body check-in. And then exhale, fold forward and down. Stay for a few breaths. Avoid this kind of action. And if that happens, you might want to soften the bind and just not bind, but keep your hand nearby. And then inhale, prepare. Exhale here, and then slowly inhale, track it all the way up, and exhale. Samasthiti. Back to standing. Then shake it out, forgive yourself. That's the most important thing that you can think about, is to shake it on out, forgive yourself, don't worry about the balance too much. Because like I said, you learn balance best by falling off to the side. So if you don't ever allow yourself to fall or give yourself permission to fall, it's very likely that, you know, you won't properly learn the balance. So there are a lot of options for today's asana of the day. And remember that there's no absolute moral right or wrong way to do any asana. It's really what's working for you. So you want to work with consciousness and with intelligence. And that's really the key. So it's really what you're aware of, what you're conscious of, that's what matters. If you're moving unconsciously and the end result is a little bit of pain or discomfort, the only way to heal that is to shift towards more conscious movement and more conscious awareness. And yoga is the journey of consciousness. So thank you so much for joining this challenge. Stay with me, keep the enthusiasm, keep the integrity of the practice, just get on your mat every day. Let go of judgment, let go of competition, and just find what works with consciousness, with intelligence, with patience, love, and kindness, and you'll be on the path of yoga. Thanks so much, everyone. I just want to send you a lot of love and thank you again for your support. It really means a lot to me when I read your comments and I get your feedback about how wonderful you're feeling with the challenge is going and how much you're enjoying the yoga practice. It keeps me inspired. So stay inspired and let's support each other and keep this practice going. All right, everyone, lots of love. See you tomorrow. Bye!