Richard Freeman Ashtanga yoga The Intermediate series DVD
Visited the Yuku forum last night (formerly Ez) on Patrick's recommendation. Eight pages on Pincha and Karandavasana. Some advice and suggestions on getting up and staying up, forming lotus and coming down, but not so much on coming back up again. I need to look at it again to see if I missed anything but the two things I did make a point to remember were "find the pose in all those that have gone before" (something like that). I like this idea, it's something I noticed when I started working on Kapo, that there were elements in lots of other asanas that helped prepare you for it and not just the more obvious ones. Same with Karandavasana.
But the most interesting suggestion for coming up was to arch your back, as if you were doing a back bend. Really???? Would never have thought of that, but it definitely has an effect and when you look at the my picture in yesterdays post you can see why it makes so much sense. My backside is down too much, too much weight too low down. You need to get that lifted before you can start engaging the hips.
Then I remembered Susan saying that you needed to bring your knees towards each other which helps give you lift and takes the strain off the lower back. If you put those together you can try arching your back, but with the knees thing to help support the lower back at the same time, so as not to strain it.
The picture above and video below show how much lift I managed to get this morning employing this technique.
The other thing I'm finding important is to land the lotus further up the arms, just a little further up. In the video I'm trying to curl my lotus in tighter to try to land it higher.
Started to think this might be possible again. If I can land it just a little higher, have my shoulders a little further from my hands to give me more space and get a little more lift from arching my back such that I can engage my hips..........
PS. The loud bang as I land my knees sounds worse than it is due to noisy floorboards. Still, am very glad of my thick Manduka.
PPS. Finally managed to order a Yogitoes Skidless towel (in stone), more on this later.
3 comments:
Oh geesz. I leave for ten minutes and now look at you.
This is a nice and touchy one. Like handstand and scorp, it starts to get too subtle to put in to words, once you have the alignment keys. Eventually, when you have the fundamentals down, I would stop taking advice and play around to find your own little inner corrections.
FWIW, for me this is really about the internal obliques and good, surfacy old rectus abdominus. I center my energy in the hands, outer elbows and the pit of the belly (which gets completely hollow).
Hello travelling poet, missed you. You seem further away there somehow but loving your posts.
I think your right about all the internal stuff, am beginning to sense it and chuck in some uddiyana and think about the breath more. Be glad when this ruddy two weeks is over and I can just let it come with all the usual daily tweaks we do. Going to be such a great day when i do get it. Been good to focus the mind though, two weeks ago I had a very weak and lazy Pincha M and had to do this in tripod. I keep watching the Richard freeman Dvd to see if I missed something, if after saying, it may take at least two weeks he turns to camera with a grin and says "just messin with ya".
! I can't believe he says that. Maybe he meant the number of hours that are in a whole two weeks...
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