all right hello everyone its me Ethan and in this video today I am going to
tell you about one of the most overlooked postures in the Ashtanga Yoga
sequence and that is urdhva mukha paschimattanasana
so I have been looking forward to doing a video about urdhva mukha paschimattanasana for quite some
time and I knew that I would ever since I started creating video content a
couple of days ago because for a very very long time I have seen urdhva mukha
paschimattanasana as one of the most disrespected postures in ashtanga yoga
throughout my time running mysore programs and traveling around the world
teaching Ashtanga Yoga by the traditional method in various shalas I
have very very commonly found that this posture has been glossed over and in
many cases the student has progressed beyond the pose and in some cases
they've even progressed far beyond the pose deep into the intermediate series
without ever really learning urdhva mukha paschimattanasana. This is a real
pity for me because in my opinion this posture is one of the telling poses of
the primary series that indicates very strongly whether the student has learned
to integrate some of the fundamental movement patterns and collected some of
the understandings that you should have gathered over the course of practicing
the Ashtanga Yoga primary series so in this video what I intend to cover is the
correct vinyasa counts the fundamental movement patterns that need to occur and
how to actually do the posture one of the fundamental understandings
that that the students should have begun to integrate at least, at least have some
understanding of by the time they are approaching this posture is that of
bandha. Bandha may or may not have been formally explained to the student but if
they have been doing the correct breathing method
they will have started to have at least a few glimpses of hmm this kind of gives
me access to a posture that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do and that is
because the breathing and bandha are intricately connected in the Ashtanga
Yoga method so I'm not going to go too deep into bandha and what it is and how
it works for the purposes of this video but just for your fundamental
understanding of this posture bandha is a connection between matter and energy
which can be used to create a sense of stability it's a little bit like if you
were to go out into your garden and see a rake lying on the grass if you were to
pick up that rake right from its middle right from the center of balance that it
has you'll be able to easily move and manipulate where that rake is in space
if you were to just approach it from one side and just grab it by its end you
would have to exert a lot more force to lift the rake up off the floor or you
wouldn't be able to lift it up at all depending on how heavy it is or how
strong your fingers are so the forces of bandha are very subtle especially
compared to some of the more powerful muscular forces in the body so say for
example forcefully straightening the legs by engaging the quadriceps
that is a much more conspicuous and obvious exertion of your energy than
engaging your bandha would be but ironically that is exactly how most
people try to muscle their way into urdhva mukha paschimottanasana so to begin
working on this posture I tend to really recommend that students have at least a
decent level of physical proficiency in all of the asanas of the sequence up
until this point and especially that they have at least a good subconscious
understanding of the concept of bandha and have integrated certain movement
patterns along their journey towards this one of the postures that's very
important to have proficiency in is ubhaya padangusthasana which falls right
before this posture the postures in this area of the
sequence are very complex there are a lot of layers that need to be
learned and integrated and a lot of them are not very intuitive so learning them
can be a very very rewarding process if the right attention to detail is put
into these so to take a closer look at some of the movements that need to occur
to start rolling up proficiently I will take you up onto the deck and we will
have a look at this on the mat
Beginning in downward-facing dog moving towards Sapta: inhale jump through, lay down
with straight legs, and exhale
Ashtau: keeping the legs straight, inhale take
back your feet and catch your heels, exhale. Nava: roll up holding the feet and
keeping the legs straight, inhale, at the top of this movement point the toes and
take the head all the way back. Dasha: exhale firming the lower abdomen
bringing the head in towards the shins, chin slightly lifted so that you can use
Padagre Drishti looking up towards the big toes whether or not you see them in
your direct line of sight, take five deep breaths here
Ekadasa: inhale taking the head all the way back and
straightening the arms exhale without moving. Dvadasa: inhale cross your legs
lift up. Trayodasa: controlling the movement into chatvari position
Chaturdasa: inhale roll forward, upward facing
Panchadasa: Exhale press back downward facing
so as you can see being able to do this dynamic roll is really dependent on
having some rounding in the spine and this position is facilitated by the use
of breathing and the engagement of bandha we can do this exercise sitting
exactly where you are watching the video just sit up with a nice neutral spine
and to get a sense of the movement of the spine in connection with the breath
we're going to exhale deeply and fully all the way to the bottom of the exhale
and so while mine might have been a little bit exaggerated, just a little bit
you can really start to get a sense that when you exhale the spine wants to come
into this shape, it naturally moves into spinal flexion, rounding the back and at
the bottom of the exhale you'll also notice that there is a bit of engagement
in the lower abdomen which occurs naturally and that is very useful for
holding the spine in that position the opposite can be done as well, so coming
back to your nice neutral spine position we're gonna inhale deeply and fully and
you should get a sense that when you inhale the spine moves into this
position extension, so a slight backbend at the top of the top of the inhale and
that position is not conducive to doing this roll, if you imagine trying to roll
on a completely flat spine or even while you're in a backbend you will thump
against the mat and the tendency is that when students start approaching this
posture they either don't have enough rounding in the spine or they round
very deeply into some parts of the spine and other parts are not able to round
correctly so what that looks like is that you get some mobility moving
forward in the roll but it's not quite enough to catch the balance point at the
top so for this reason it's very important to set yourself up to roll on
a nice round spine and that can be done in astau when you have the feet back
there is an uncounted exhale before you initiate the roll so exhale fully making
sure that the the spine is nice and round then initiate the roll and when
you come to the top of the roll you should reach the top of your inhale that
is because the position that you're moving towards is not the state of the
asana with a completely round spine you're rolling up into nava position
which is with the upper back extended and the head relaxed all the way back if
you feel comfortable to do that so the position of the spine and pelvis are
vitally important to being able to complete this movement
and another anatomical position that is worth looking at is that of the feet
through the vinyasa for this posture we have two foot positions the flexed foot
position feet together toes spread sending activation all the way up the
legs this is also known as dorsiflexion and we have the pointed toe position
also known as plantar flexion which is equally energetically active both of
these are very common throughout the Ashtanga Yoga sequence
taking a look at hand position which is often described as catching your heels
the outside of the hand, the pinky side, comes into contact with the top of the
heel the hands should catch tightly and should not move during the role or in
the state of the asana. With a tight hold and perfect timing to change the foot
position at the top of the roll you should be able to move a little bit more
of your weight forward and catch the balance point at the top
and so with all of that being understood if you are currently trying to refine
this posture in your sequence and you are unable to roll all the way up, what
should you do? And my advice on that would be to slow it down
give this posture the respect that it deserves and that would be to set it up
correctly every time you attempt to do it. Lying all the way down take the
legs back, straight legs, and catch tightly take the hips high so that you
have space to roll and then try to focus on rolling the whole spine against the
floor if you get the journey right you will probably reach the destination in
this posture I would also very strongly recommend that you do not use excessive
modifications when practicing this and what I mean by excessive modifications
is those modifications that are unproductive and unprogressive
specifically the common ones that I see are people rolling up with bent knees
people just catching the legs or using the incorrect hand position in any way
sometimes not even catching the feat at all and rolling up from there and also
just rolling back and forth in the hope that eventually you'll generate enough
power to come all the way up and catch the balance and the reason why those
modifications don't work is because they are unlikely to bring you to a point
where one morning you wake up and suddenly you're rolling up perfectly
with straight legs and you do the asana flawlessly
also any small amount of progress that you do manage to make in those postures
is usually not replicable so practicing with the correct technique is really
important for this posture I would recommend practicing it up to three
times on any given day because when you practice it more than three times then
you've kind of broken down the practice and turned it into a workshop for one
asana alone and that's not the intention in
ashtanga yoga also when you know that you're going to practice it five to ten
times on any given day the tendency is that the attention to detail is not
there on each attempt. So, I really like this asana because when you practice it
correctly you really start to have the experience that you can learn about yoga
through asana and this posture in particular teaches a lot about yoga
it teaches bandha, teaches the correct breathing technique, it teaches
consistency dedication hard work, really refining the dynamic movement in this
posture can be a very valuable experience here, we learn a variety of
different movement patterns and how to combine them and how to bring it all
together with the perfect timing to reach the end of the posture with
proficiency so give these tips a go and let me know how you do, also let me know
if you want me to cover any other particular asana soon I'll be happy
to do it and I will see you all in the next one