DAILY Plow Pose This pose usually follows Salamba Sarvangasana, Shoulder Stand, although you can easily roll back into it from a seated position. If coming from Shoulder Stand, exhale and lower legs down toward the head, keeping torso as upright as possible. Do not take chin toward sternum, if anything, allow sternum to move toward chin. With toes on floor, keep lifting tailbone up, use hands to support lower back if needed, or clasp hands and extend down onto floor. Keep weight off the neck. But if it bothers the neck ,y fold a blanket under the shoulders and upper back, leaving neck free. Hold as long as you can, and when ready to exit, lift legs up into Shoulder Stand, or grab behind the legs, pulling them toward face and slowly roll down spine, getting a good hamstring stretch on the way. Because this is a softening pose, it’s often nice to follow it with Savasana. Health Notes: This is considered a folding pose, therefore it calms the body and brain, reduces anxiety and stress, helps with insomnia. It helps stretch the back, and is good for mild backaches, but if you have serious back or neck issues only do this under hands of a good instructor. It stimulates thyroid gland, helps relieve menopause symptoms, and sinusitis
Read moreSearch Results for: Halasana
Salamba Sarvangasana/Shoulder Stand
This is a ‘Mother of a Pose,’ according to Iyengar, as it supports and nurtures the entire body. Begin by lying on your back, bend the knees and pull them into the stomach as you exhale. Lift hips up off the floor on the next exhale, supporting hip with your hands if needed. Continue lifting legs and hips straight overhead, pulling the elbows in line with shoulders, hands in middle of back, keep weight off the neck. Exhale, extending legs and feet strongly, connecting the abdominal support to legs for added extension. Remain for a minute at first, working up to five, then ten. Keep breathing even and soft. When ready to dismount, either bring knees in to chest and roll down the spine, or take feet over head into Halasana/Plow. Salamba Sarvangasana is a pose supporting harmony within. It can be used as a panacea for many ills as it supports the endocrine system, which absorbs nutrients in the blood, secrete hormones. It relates directly to the thyroid and parathyroid glands in the neck area, soothing the nerves, helping with headaches, nasal congestion, asthma, breathlessness, colds and throat ailments, as well as insomnia, anxiety, and hypertension. In going up side down, it supports proper elimination, freeing toxins that create constipation, therefore giving the body greater energy. It also aids urinary and uterine disorders, menstrual issues and hernia. It may help in relieving epilepsy and anaemia. Clearly spending a few minutes a day in this ‘Mother of all poses’ will repair and heal much of what modern life tears down. To make Salamba Sarvangasana a restorative pose, place the hips on a bolster, or block, and extend legs in the air. Or place the bolster or block against the wall, sit sideways, with legs up the wall, and roll up onto… Read more »
Read moreKarna-Pidasana
Ear Pressure Pose Asana: Karna-Pidasana/Ear Pressure Pose. This pose is often the release from Sarvangasana/shoulder stand, as you lower legs overhead to floor. Move through Halasana/ Plough Pose, then bend knees, drop them toward the floor on either side of the head, by the ears. Hands can help prop the back up, or clasp together on floor away from shoulders, opening pectoral muscles. No weight on neck! Health Notes: This is not only a great stretch for the spine, but an inward turning pose where you easily hear the quality of your breath, and can think great thoughts in the composure of a stable, relaxed pose. It is a perfect Asana to complete before Savasana as you simply unroll the legs, unroll the spine and surrender.
Read moreThe Really Big Picture
If “the goal of the journey is to discover yourself as consciousness,” as Joseph Campbell said, then what revelations did this summer’s wing-ding of an Astrological force-field bring you? These past months of inner heightened intensity and emotional landmines, seen via the outer picture through ‘The Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami and nuclear spill, the Syrian revolt, and the downfall of Khadafi, to enumerate a few, bring most bodies to new doorways. Were you engulfed? Or were you one of the more fortunate to be merely drop-kicked out the back door? You may have see yourself changing via another, perhaps your teenager who stood with a raised fist, wrapped in a black glove? Is there a new voice within declaring greater freedom, more power over self? I’m asking because we have a few months of respite to reorganize ourselves before the next big planetary hurricane returns in the spring of 2012. This fall and winter give us time to clean up what we could not finish over the summer. The same issues, perhaps in a different form, will be back, with the planetary repetition, and the ‘perfection of the Pluto-Uranus square.’ What have we learned? What needs loving repair? What is the depth of the wound? How do we heal Self, and other? Clearing the old emotional detritus from the door of consciousness offers an unbelievably powerful appointment with our Dharma. Our inner Arab Spring has greater chance of a long term Democratic shift if we prepare for the uprising by giving Spirit greater say, ego less. If we can spend time on the childhood wounds, and see them as symbolic, then chances are we begin to understand them and recognize them as they come up over and over, in different forms. What is the metaphor for the discomfort? How… Read more »
Read more