Neglected Nakrasana

OK, I confess, I neglect Nakrasana. I even go so far as dropping it most of the time.

Look, I practice early in a house with noisy floorboards, plus there's not a lot of room. I even misjudged it once and jumped headfirst into the corner of the room hitting my head both sides at once ..... that was quite impressive by the way, painful but impressive.

And lets face it... it's kinda stupid, it's saving grace being that it proves those old yogi's had a sense of humor after all.

However, this morning I was in the bathroom reading Maehle and found that he compares the arm movement with that from Boxing or martial arts ('you need to push your hands with high velocity into the floor' )and the leg movement with kicking a ball. That sounded interesting , decided to give it a go and film it. I think I had four goes and am now struggling to pick up my coffee cup.

This video is from the 2nd attempt. Some nice lift on the second jump, seem to get it almost right, coordination goes out the window after that, maybe I'm too aware of the wall in front of me.

You can probably tell going backwards in particular still requires a lot of work. And yes I know, my elbows! So hard to keep them in.

Would love to see how 'swan neck girl' does hers.

Oh, and I've included some ultra slow motion at the end to study carefully where I'm going wrong..... hell who am I kidding, slowmo for slowmo's sake.

One other thing, Maehle says that Nakrasana is the only asana in 2nd that employs power, as in Power= Strength + velocity. I should find his exact wording.

Here it is.

' Strickly speaking, nakrasana is the only posture in this series in which power is excercised if we accept the definition that power equals strength multiplied with velocity.' Maehle II p 164

Thought that was curious. Is it the only one in all series, not just 2nd? Will have to think about that and check the Sweeney book.

If so why is it there in the first place?

Why not more of them?

Some additional notes:

To avoid overusing the anterior muscles, Maehle recommends drawing the shoulders down the back and into the spine.

Breathing: I have a bad habit of holding my breath on the return jumps. Maehle has this to say.

'Utilize the lifting quality of a deep inhalation to lift up off the floor in Nakrasana and expel the air forcefully upon descent. Let the movement follow rhythm of the breath and not vica versa.' p165