Day 24 : Dandasana (Staff pose) lead in, subroutine practice notes from Vinyasa Krama Asymmetric sequence

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The lead in to Dandasana above includes the challenging jump through the arms to seated, below is a simplified version of the lead in where we enter dandasana from utkatasana (full squat) I've included it at the end of the video.

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Dandasana is an important 'hub' pose of all the seated asana, as such I sometimes like to explore the posture a little by borrowing the hand/arm vinyasas from the On your feet subroutines.

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Hints/Tips/Suggestions.
It's good to keep the 'On your feet' subroutines in mind with the seated postures, we have the same lifting up and stretching out of the pelvis that we stress in tadasana. The chin trends to be down as is the gaze and in the upcoming forward bends we bend from the hip pushing our buttocks back so want to be sitting forward on our sit bones in Dandasana.

Jump through
The jump through is challenging. One of the best ways to learn it is, from downward facing dog, to jump/hop to just behind our arms landing with our feet slightly crossed, then with our knees bent shuffle through our arms and sit down. Engage the arms all the time in preparation for taking all the weight of the body when progressing to the full jump through. We should also aim to engage mula and uddiyana bandha as this will help to give is some lift.

In the practice Book I include screenshots ten different kinds of jump through and jump back, they can also be found HERE and can be seen on the Video link below the poster.

Below is the legs uncrossed jump through that Ramaswami recommends, it comes towards the end of the video.

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I find the above approach to the jump back very challenging and tend to stick with the crossed leg version I'm most familiar with. Here though is a link to a video of my friend Chris from Ramaswami's 2010 Vinyasa krama teacher training course we both attended http://youtu.be/qGQSH-2OOjI.

NB: These are practice notes that will be tidied up and put into the new edition of my Vinyasa Yoga Practice Book along with the current sequences and subroutines. The book can be freely downloadedHERE. There is a page on Facebook HERE with all the latest sheets and updates. This book is in no way a substitute for Ramaswami's Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga.