Mindfulness Yoga
Page 18
Coming out of this asana, straighten the right leg and pivot back to your starting position
Repeat on the other side.
13. Warrior Two
5-15 BREATHS EACH SIDE
WARRIOR TWO starts from the same foundational stance that begins TRIANGLE, EXTENDED SIDE ANGLE STRETCH, and WARRIOR ONE. Then, turn the left foot in slightly and the right foot out 90 degrees. Keep grounding down through the back (initially, left) leg, especially the outer heel, as you bend the right knee toward 90 degrees. Make sure that the bent knee comes to rest directly over the ankle and keep it from falling in or out of perpendicular to the ground. Keeping your arms horizontal, turn your head to gaze toward your middle right finger. Let your tailbone drop like an anchor, without tucking and holding in the buttocks.
As you stay here, observe the sensations throughout your body. If you feel a burning in the right thigh, you are not grounding down through the back leg strongly enough. It is the back leg, more than the front, that is your support here. Soon sensations will arise in your shoulders. As they begin to grow uncomfortable, notice how quickly the mind wants to cut them off. Let go of this tendency toward “psychic amputation.” Our practice is one of “nonsurgery.” Soften the muscular and energetic tension and let yourself enter fully into the sensations. The discomfort may or may not decrease or increase, but we can still maintain a stable and easeful mind. It is this ease and stability that sustains this asana practice, not some idealized perfection within the pose.
When you’re ready to come out of this asana, straighten the bent knee leg and pivot your feet back into parallel. You can relax your arms before you repeat the other side.
14. Tree Pose
10-30 BREATHS EACH LEG
From MOUNTAIN, place the sole of your left foot into your right inner thigh. Press your foot into the thigh as the thigh presses back into your foot. Place your palms together at your heart in namaste (Anjali Mudra).
If your balance feels challenged, just stay here and keep grounding down through your feet and keep the heart lifted and open. But if you feel confident in your balancing, reach your arms up over your head. Avoid sinking into your lower back by keeping the kidneys “inflated” and the front ribs soft and not jutting out.
As you stand here, keep the focus on your breath. Notice if there is any tendency to hold the breath, as if that could help in keeping balance. Remember, stability and ease is what defines asana, but this refers to maintaining stability and ease in the mind, even if the body feels less than stable. Notice what movements the breath initiates as you stand like a tree. Maintain your awareness of all the feelings that may arise.
When ready to come out, lower the hands to in front of your heart, and then with full awareness, slowly lower the left foot to the floor, returning you to MOUNTAIN. When you come out of TREE, there may be some strong sensations that arise in the foot that you had been standing on. Notice how the tendency to want to avoid feeling these sensations may quickly follow. Recommit to watching and feeling what arises, using your breath as your base. What happens to the sensations?
Repeat while standing on the other leg.
Modification 1:
If unsteady, you can try with your foot pressing below your knee on your inner shin, or even have your toes on the floor for some added balance assistance.
Modification 2:
Practice against a wall, with your right hand on the wall. Use the wall to steady yourself. Try to reach your left hand over your head. If this feels okay, try taking your right hand up too.
15. Locust Pose
4-10 BREATHS, EACH VARIATION
Start by lying face down on your belly with your legs together and with your arms down along your sides, reaching through your fingertips with the palms facing down on the ground.
Variation 1: As you inhale, lift your legs straight up and back without bending the knees. Make sure you lift from the buttocks and not by grabbing from the lower back. Keep your hips and pubis firmly pressing into the ground. As the legs come up, draw the shoulders up away from the ground and curl the head and upper chest off the floor. Try not to simply lift the upper chest up, but think of a sardine can and how it opens. Keep reaching out through the crown of your head, and do not drop your head back by jutting out your chin. Then, reaching out through your fingertips, let your palms rise up off the ground until your arms are parallel to the ground. Breathe here, noticing where you experience the breath, its quality, and any changes in it as you continue to breathe in the posture. Notice too any movement of the body as you breathe. Watch whatever feelings arise and how they change, both while working in the posture and when you release. When you are ready to come down, simply exhale back down to the starting position.
*Variation 2: Start by lying as above, but reach back behind your back and clasp your fingers. Keep pressing your pubis, hips, thighs, and the tops of your feet into the ground, and as you inhale curl your head, shoulders, and upper chest up off the ground. Reach back through your clasped hands and, keeping the wrists in toward each other, lift them up off your back. See if this draws more attention to the heart area and if the breath moves to fill the chest. As you continue to breathe in this posture, pay attention to how the breath moves in the body while also moving the body.
*Variation 3: Begin as in Variation 2, but after four breaths extend out through your feet and let the legs rise up off the floor. Continue to breathe in this full posture and let the breath guide you in your effort. Again, notice any differences you may experience, but with an open, nonjudgmental mind. It’s okay if you notice preferences, but see if it can be free of attachment.
16. Cobra Pose
6-12 BREATHS, 1-3 REPETITIONS
Start by lying on your belly, with your legs together, lengthening out through your toes. Put your hands at your sides, palms down alongside your middle ribs. Let your shoulders roll back and down, broadening your chest as you press your hands into the ground. Make sure your elbows don’t collapse outward or in, but keep them straight back.
As you continue to press your hands into the ground, let your head, shoulders, and chest lift off the ground into a backbend. Rather than pushing yourself up, think of rolling your front torso up and back, to avoid dropping into your lower back.
Go only as far as you can without compressing the spine and with the straightening of your arms supporting the lifting and opening of the spine and chest. If in straightening your arms your shoulders roll forward or up toward your ears, back out of the posture until you can maintain this lift and opening. Keep your legs grounded as you continue to arc back. Breathing here, follow the breath throughout the body and keep yourself open to any and all feelings that arise.
In coming out from here, roll yourself back onto the ground, lengthening the body rather than merely dropping back down. Follow the breath and all sensations as you lie there for a few moments.
*17. Bow Pose
6-12 BREATHS, 1-3 REPETITIONS
Lying on your belly, bend your knees and take hold of your feet at the ankles, keeping your knees hip-width apart. Stay with the breath and try to avoid leaning forward into the pose. You have already begun to practice BOW.
Let the front of your body be relaxed. Open the lower back as your let the tailbone drop slightly toward the ground.
Then, as you inhale, press the tops of your feet into your hands and lift your thighs from the floor. Let this dual action of your legs assist your head, shoulders, and chest in lifting off from the ground. Try to avoid pulling with your arms. Honor your body and its range. To do otherwise is to ignore the body’s natural intelligence and to let ego decide what’s best. If you feel tension in the lower back, don’t lift so high and keep some length between your buttocks and your lower back.
As you continue to breathe in the posture, notice any mental formations arising around the sensations and see if your conscious breathing can help to calm them.
When you’re ready, exhale down.
18. Child Pose
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15-30 BREATHS
From lying on your belly, push yourself up and back so that you are sitting on the backs of your calves with your sitting bones dropping into your heels. Your big toes should be touching, and your knees are slightly apart. Lengthen your spine, letting your torso rest on the tops of your thighs. Place your forehead on the ground and your arms alongside your legs. Make sure that your weight is moving back toward your heels and not on your neck and head by adjusting the distance between your knees. Release yourself fully into the posture and let the breath be natural. Where do you experience the breath?
As you stay here, notice any changes in the qualities of the breath. Just letting the breath be cultivates calm as you rest in CHILD. Let yourself experience the feelings, but notice any tendency of the mind to want to stay here or to wander from the immediate experience. When ready to come out of CHILD, continue to drop the sitting bones down onto your heels and, drawing the navel in and back to your spine, roll up into the next posture.
Modification:
If your hips do not touch your heels, and you feel most of your weight in your upper body and head, lay your torso on a bolster or some blankets. This will support your torso and allow your head to come to the height of your hips.
*19. Diamond Pose (Variation)
6-20 BREATHS
From CHILD, have your knees together and your ankles pressing in together with your toes tucked under as you sit back on your calves. Work to get your heels within the space between your sitting bones. Let the spine rise up strongly from the basin of the pelvis. Your shoulders are relaxed down your back, and the chest is broad and lifted.
As you sit here, sensations may arise in your knees or ankles, but more likely at the toe joints. Be mindful of the quality of the sensations. Work with discomfort, but honor true pain. Usually pain is of a sharp, acute nature and to avoid the risk of injury should be heeded. But look honestly at what is happening. Most “pain” in this posture is actually discomfort—highly unpleasant, but not likely to cause injury.
Notice reactivity and aversion, and let your breath bring you back to a pure awareness of the sensations. Drop the story line and just see. If you can find even a few breaths free of the tension of aversion and resistance, do you experience the sensations differently in any way at all?
Release from here by drawing your legs out from under you.
20. Cobbler Pose
6-20 BREATHS
Sit with the soles of your feet together and, holding your ankles, bring your feet within 4-6 inches of your crotch, letting your legs drop open. Don’t press your knees down toward the ground, but instead press your heels and the outer edges of your feet together and move your knees away from each other. Use your arms to help lift the torso up from the pelvis and forward onto the front tips of the sitting bones, so that your sacrum deepens in rather than rounds out.
From here, lengthen out over your legs into a forward bend. Maintain the length of the spine, even though there will be some gentle bending in the midback.
Resting here, observe the feelings arise and change as you stay with your breath.
Coming up from here, lift up and out, keeping the length in the spine, and then release to straight.
*21. Wide-Angle Forward Bend
6-20 BREATHS
Sit with your legs open wide, keeping your knees and toes pointing directly upward. Don’t let them drop out or in. Position your hands behind you as you gently deepen your sacrum, avoiding the pelvis tilting back into a posterior tilt. Press the backs of your legs into the ground, keeping your heels on the ground, while reaching out along the length of your leg bones from your sitting bones toward your heels.
Slowly bend forward, keeping your knees and toes pointing directly upward. Bring your hands to the floor or take hold of your big toes. Keep the length in your back as far as you can into the forward bend.
Keep the breath flowing naturally as you observe the sensations. Where do you feel the sensations? What is the quality of the “mind space” in response to the feelings in the body? When coming up, again lengthen up as if you were leading from the heart and release back to the starting posture.
Modification:
Those of us who have tightness in the hamstrings and feel the lower back rounding out, or have tightness in the inner thighs, can do this posture while sitting on a blanket or two. Extending the spine, come forward and rest the torso on a bolster or a stack of blankets. Make sure you keep the entire length of the legs actively pressing down into the ground.
22. One-Legged Forward Bend
10-25 BREATHS EACH SIDE
Starting from STAFF POSE, (pp. 122-23) with your legs straight out in front of you, bend your right knee upward, sliding your right heel in toward your right sitting bone. Then open your right leg out to the side.
Keeping lift in your torso, ease forward and reach out for your left shin or foot. As you ground down through your legs, lift your chest forward and out over the left leg. Tilting the pelvis forward, hinging from the hips, let your sitting bones spread back and apart. Don’t pull, but go to your edge—pushing the boundary of your comfort zone—and notice any resistance you may feel in the back of the straight leg. You don’t need to get anywhere, but see if you can relax the resistance to being here.
When coming up from this forward bend, keep lengthening up and out as you inhale. Then, exhaling, release the posture.
Repeat on the other side.
Modification:
If you are coming into this forward bend primarily from bending in the lower back and not from the hips, sit up on a blanket or two and keep extending the torso out over your straight leg. Stop when you feel the pelvis start to roll backward and round your lower back. You can support yourself here with your hands gently pressing into your shins.
*23. Lord-of-the-Fishes Pose
10-15 BREATHS EACH SIDE
Bring your left leg into a simple cross-legged position, sliding your left foot under your right thigh, so that your left heel will come to rest at the outside of your right hip. Then, cross your right foot over your left thigh so that the sole of your right foot is firmly on the ground. Hug your right leg with your left arm just below the knee, and use your right hand to press into the ground behind your back so that you can extend your spine up as you ground your legs. Begin to twist to the right, using your left hand to aid the left side of your body in coming around to the right.
You can take your left arm to the outside of your right leg and press into the leg for added leverage, but let the twist rise naturally from the base of the spine upward. Let your head turn to the right at the end of the torso’s movement, and keep the neck relaxed. Don’t lead with your chin.
Stay present with your breath guiding you in your exploration of your feelings. How do the feelings change depending on the degree to which you can stay present with your breath? Release as you exhale and gently untwist.
Repeat on the other side.
Modification:
If you have tight hips, you may find that your pelvis and back are collapsed back as you cross your legs to set up for this twist. Try sitting up on several blankets so that you can establish the natural curvature of your spine in the starting position for this posture.
Then keep a sense of lifting up from the pelvis as you twist from the base of your spine upward. Using a block for your back hand will also help you from collapsing in this posture.
24. Seated Forward Bend
10-20 BREATHS
From STAFF POSE, reach out and grasp your feet or your shins. Soften your groins, letting them deepen, as your thighs roll slightly inward, sitting bones moving back and apart. Think more about lifting the torso out and over your legs than about how far you get in the pose. The back will round, but let it round evenly, and not until you’ve folded from the hips first. Move the chest out over your legs by using the strength of your arms, bending your elbows up and out to the sides. Gaze toward your toes, until the chin comes to rest on the shi
n. Then turn the gaze within or onto your “third eye.”
As you surrender into the posture, keep your focus on the breath. Let yourself find that balance between working in a posture and giving yourself up to it. Don’t strain. Can you stay present with the feelings arising without adding anything by way of interpretation, projection, or identification?