Monday, 31 January 2011

Day 91 : LOTUS : Kukkutasana & garbha pindasana subroutine Subroutine from Vinyasa Krama Lotus sequence

VIDEO LINK


Bharadwajrasana, raise the arms and twist then lower into the pose

Kukkutasana
Push the arms through the space between your thighs and calf muscles, you may need to spray some water on your arms if your legs are bare and the weather cooler (no sweat). If this is a problem see the notes below for garbha pindasana.

Exhale fully, hold, engage mula and uddiyana bandha and drop the shoulder blades down the back. Press down into the mat to lift but keep the shoulderbaldes lowered .

As you press down visualise moving slightly forward and up. If you just push down there is a tendency to keep falling backwards off your hands. look at picture 7 and notice how there is a slight lean forward, the shoulders over the hands.

Garbha pindasana


Creating space to get the arms through
Here, once in lotus, I lift my left leg a little away from the right holding just above the ankle. this creates a little more space to get the first arm through. For the second arm I press the top side of my left foot against my right thigh flexing the ankle a little to lever the leg up a little thus creating more of an opening to pass the arm through.
Video Tutorial here http://youtu.be/chQwvJN-K98

Try taking the arms through at an angle, the right arm runs parallel to the right calf, same for the left.
Video Tutorial here http://youtu.be/Ct35la57mBw

Utpluthi (Pic 4) is all about hand placement. place the hands too far forward and the weight of the hip bones will keep your grounded, too far back and the weight of the knees will stop you from achieving lift. So place the hands just forward of mid thigh as close to your thighs as possible.

Bring your shoulders over your hands, bring your shoulders down, engage the shoulder girdle and after exhaling hold the breath out and push down into the mat through your hands and lift

Mula bandha should be engaged but engage it more strongly, tuck the tailbone under, the lower half of your body should feel tight and compact, draw your pelvis up into your torso and hold.

Keep the bandhas engaged and the tailbone tucked while your breath.

In the earlier version of utpluthi you bend the body over the lotus, in a this version the body is more erect.

Sunday, 23 January 2011

Vinyasa Krama Sequences home practice sheets and posters

This week I'm working on turning my Vinyasa Krama videos into practice sheets and posters.

Not much interest to the Ashtangi's amongst your perhaps, although I personally found it interestin,g and helpful, finding a posture in Ashtanga that I was struggling with and then looking at the poses in Vinyasa krama that prepare for it EG. Archer and Heron pose as prep for Leg behind head postures in the Asymmetric sequence.

Perhaps it's because I came to Vinyasa Krama from Ashtanga but I'm used to using these kind of sheets as reminders of the sequence, think Mathew Sweeney orDavid Swenson and and the short and full sequences at the back of his book. I think Ramaswami mentioned that it was something he had hoped to do in future editions of his Complete book of vinyasa Yoga but that it never came about. These are no substitute for his book of course, more like 'cheat' sheets for home practice.

So far I've made up the On your feet/tadasana ( picture is of the shorter 10 minute version), Asymmetric and Seated sequences, I hope to have the rest made up by the end of the weekend. Links are below and I'll add the others to this post when they're ready as well as to the VK page at the top of this blog. If you click on the image it should blow it up and be printable. If you think you'll find them useful then feel free to use them as you wish.

The quality isn't that great and some of them don't tally up exactly with the book, I recorded most of the video's before I attended Ramaswami's TT course, hopefully I'll get to improve on them in the future, I just wanted something to be going on for my own practice and that would also serve as a starting point for something better in the future perhaps by somebody more competent and capable than myself.

I welcome suggestions, I'm thinking of making up a set of subroutines as well as Beginner and Intermediate versions of the Sequences, perhaps some sample practice routines as well. If anyone knows how I can set up a downloadable PDF file on this blog with all of them together as a set please let me know.

The Ten major Vinyasa Krama Sequences






Tuesday, 11 January 2011

Inhabiting badha konasana as prep for work on Kanddasana

I've been loving my Primary series lately, using large chunks of it as prep for some of the Advanced A and B poses in the evening and just expanding on the series a little in the mornings. I seem to have fallen in love with hip openers, I guess they're hip openers, what else would you call them? I've always liked the VK Maha Mudra but am now spending forever in the Janu Sirsasana's.




However it's Baddha Konasana that is my particular sweetheart at the moment. Guess for some it's back bends or binding, bet your thought for me it would be arm balances, nope, the humble hip opener. Who'd have thought it.
























I've been spending ages in it, allowing everything to open up a little more, get the heels in closer and just basically deepen the pose, inhabit the posture. It started off as prep for the Advanced A, Kandapindasana ( which is why my ankles are turned out like that) but that's now pretty much an afterthought. I'm exploring the breath, playing with the bandhas, riffing on Vinyasa Krama variations, just having a whale of a time. tomorrow is my day off and I find myself considering Pranayama, even Meditation....

I seem to remember Ramaswami saying that badha konasana is a key posture to spend time in at the end of the practice before moving into pranayama

This morning I thought I'd record it because I can never really remember what goes on, seems to be different one practice to the next. The Kanadapindasana is only marginally improved but as I said it's becoming a bit of an afterthought. This was at the end of a pretty much standard primary though with perhaps a little extra time spent in the Janu's and a few VK variations in Upavista Konasana.