Yoga... blindfolded?

Yoga is a very sensual experience.  Usually, our eyes help us a great deal - letting us know where we are in space, what's up with our alignment, who's going by the window... For a deeper experience, take your eyes out of the equation.  They are restless, always trying to gather information.  By letting them take a back seat, you are able to gather more input from the rest of your senses.

To try this in your practice, simply tie a blindfold over your eyes (just closing them won't work as well, its too easy to peak).  I don't recommend working much with balancing poses your first time, instead stay close to the floor :-) Many of the audio and video practices on this blog can safely be done blindfolded.  Whatever your practice sequence, it'll be a whole new experience and help you gain new insight into your yoga and yourself!

Happy Yoga Feet!

Set your feet free!  This simple move can have a dramatic effect - decreasing pain, increasing circulation and making balance and movement so much better.  Take off those cramped shoes and help your feet to "breathe":-)

Yoga for Exploring the Hips and Low Back

Today's post is an exploration that will help open and stabilize both hips and low back.  It is especially nice for the outer hips and deep in the hip socket itself, places we often forget or avoid.  Take it easy, if you work too hard here, you might miss the juicy parts....

Use the Dirgha Pranayama for the entirety of this brief practice with emphasis on beginning your inhale in the low back and drawing your bellybutton up under your rib cage as you exhale.

Start reclining... 

-Draw your right leg in toward your chest and wrap your arms around it.  Take a few breaths letting your hip and low back open.

-Release your leg and position your knee at a 90 degree angle directly over your hip.  Circle your ankle in both directions at least 20 times.

-Bend your left knee, foot to the floor, and cross your right ankle over the left thigh.  Adjust the ankle closer to your hip or closer to your knee until your find the "sweet spot".  Reach your right knee AND the sole of your right foot toward the wall in front of you.  Fell how this changes the engagement in your hips.  Make sure your abs have engaged to keep your pelvis from torquing.  You want this to be about the hips, not the spine. Take a few breaths here.
-Keep the engagement and draw your legs in toward your chest.  Hold the back of your left thigh and bend and straighten that leg in rhythm with your breath at least 5 times.

-Gently release your legs and rest a bit.
- Repeat on the other side

Come to seated on anything that makes you comfortable with your legs stretched out in front of you... 

-Keep your left leg extended and place support under the knee if its not comfortable straight.  Work your hamstrings and quads against one another to keep your extended knee from hyperextending.

Place your right ankle over your left thigh, just as you did in the previous sequence, and work both the knee and sole toward the floor.  Fold forward with a neutral spine (moving just from the hips) if you can do so with ease.  Stay here and remember to breath for a few breaths.

-Now move your right foot further to the left so the middle of your shin (more or less) is on your thigh and repeat the same action, holding for a few breaths.

-Next, move your left leg to the right (it will be at an angle from your hip) and move your right foot as close to the left hip and the floor as you can.  In essence, you are working toward stacking your knees. Either work sole and knee downward again OR, if you right foot is on the floor, turn its sole toward the sky pointing the toes gently and use the heel of your hand to apply gentle pressure.  Fold with a neutral spine, if desired. and hold for a few breaths.

-Unwind, rest, repeat on the other side.

Now practice these actions in two challenging poses.. double pigeon and cowface...

-For double pigeon, sit tall and stack your lower legs with your shins parallel to the front of your mat, letting your feet hang over your knees so you can reach the soles toward the floor.  This is the fuller version of the pose.  If your knees rise up or your hips say OMG, just back it up - take your knees wider and your feet closer together.  You will only isometrically take your soles toward the floor.  Stay tall or fold forward for a few breaths.
-For cowface, stack your knees with both legs bent, turn your soles toward the sky and use your hands to give gentle pressure to the ball of the foot.  Feels too extreme, work with half cowface a little longer.  You've already done half cowface once today - its the last in our seated pose sequence above.  Enjoy your pose for a few breaths.
Remember to do both sides ;-)

Take a good long savasana after this to allow your body to integrate these challenging openings!

Yoga for Healthy Knees

The knee is a complicated joint and one of the most unstable in the body. It is also one that we often overlook in our yoga practice as we focus on our hips and feet and seem to notice our knees mostly when they hurt.  They deserve more than this!  Check out the anatomical discussion and asana exploration below to give your knees some more love in life...

One of the reasons the knees are so unstable is that there is no good fit where the bones can lend support like the ball and socket of the hip joint. It is primarily the muscles and ligaments that provide support. So, it is especially important that you have supple and strong muscles around your knee. The menisci are also important in knee function, providing padding to the inner and outer knee and helping the joint to track with the hip. If one of your menisci is damaged, you will need to compensate appropriately with props and muscular strengthening. The kneecap also helps keep the knee tracking with the hip and as it is encapsulated by your quadriceps, focussing on proper quadricep function can be helpful. Misalignment, especially in standing poses can cause inner or outer quads to become stronger than the other, resulting in your kneecap not tracking properly. 

When muscles are too tight it can be difficult for them to function properly as nerve signals become impeded and circulation can be easily compromised. Thus we encourage a little stretch and flexibility in yoga poses to open the lines of communication where appropriate. However, if you are hyperflexible, having more than functional range of motion, encouraging more flexibility will have a detrimental effect, so decide appropriately.  The knee does flexion and extension and a TINY bit of rotation (this can be explored in the knee release below). The ability to do this rotation is important to healthy knees but having or extorting too much rotation causes problems. Except for a few extreme poses, we always try to track the knee with the hip in yoga, especially when in is under load.

Knee pain can even be caused by excessive internal or external rotation of the hips, this is often an imbalance in the flexibility and strength of the hips, not the knees.  The poses below will help you understand this concept.

I cannot help you diagnose what knee problems you might have, only your doctor or physical therapist can do that. But I hope that this down and dirty discussion encourages you to pick up an anatomy book (or look online) and explore your own knees through yoga. The more you know... the better you can feel!

When you practice, NEVER allow for pain in the knees. This is not a situation you can “push though.” And if your knees are already injured, it may require a great deal of patience in helping them to heal.  What is most key in helping your knees live a better life is threefold – open your hips in all directions, make space in the knee joint, learn to use your muscles in stabilizing your knees.

Here's a practice to help you explore proper knee alignment and engagement...

Modified Hero Pose – Stand on your knees, with whatever padding you need beneath your ankles for comfort. Ensure that your toes point straight back. Take a rolled blanket and place in across the backs of your knees – the thicker the roll, the more intense this will be. Sit your hips back toward your heels, keeping your back straight. If your hips don't comfortably come to your heels, place a block beneath your bottom. Sit here for at least 2 minutes. This pose helps to gently stretch the quads, intrisic muscles of the knee and tibialis anterior in the lower leg without creating compression in the knee.

Knee release – seated with knee bent, hold one thigh to ensure it will not move. Move your toes to face in and then out, trying to bring as much of the movement from your knee as you can. This helps to release the muscles at the back of the knee and encourage full range of motion. Remember, your knee is not meant to move much except forward and back, so don't push it!

Anjaneyasana/ knee down lunge – keeping hips square and isometrically flexing front foot, inhale hips forward and back, in and out of the lunge, being mindful of the alignment of the front knee. Don't let it wing out or roll in. Then hold in a lunge, hands to floor, keeping knee pointing in same direction as the toes. Remember, taking your knee forward past your ankle creates strain on the knee is loadbearing postures.

Warrior 1 two ways and foot flexion – You may need the help of a partner to find your alignment for this one... Stand in a high lunge with all ten toes pointing straight ahead, back heel off the floor. Point both knees in the same direction. Square your hips. Once you are confident in your alignment in this version of Warrior 1, turn your back toes out a bit and bring your heel to the floor. As you do this, keep your hips as square forward as you can, keep the alignment of BOTH knees pointing in the same direction as your toes. This second version of Warrior 1 can cause torque on your back knee if your alignment is correct, so be extra careful to maintain that.

Triangle – Move into your triangle with more awareness not just of your knees always pointing in the same direction as your toes but with more awareness of NOT hyperextending the knees. Hyperextension means that the knee is locked into its most extreme straight position. This causes a stretching of the ligaments and ligaments have very little ability to “unstretch”. Work your hamstrings (back of the legs) and quads (front of the legs) against one another to keep a stabilizing slight bend in the knees.

Revolved Triangle – This is a great pose for exploring how your hips exert pressure on the knees. Keep the knees always pointing in the same direction as the toes, even as you twist your hips. Keep space in the knees here by pressing the feet into the floor and pulling your thighbones into your hip sockets, this will also help stabilize the low back. Remember not to hyperextend!

Standing Squat – This pose is great for learning to equalize support around your knees. Be sure you can see your toes when you look down so as not to overstress your knees – this means you need to stick your butt out! Having done the previous poses, you know a little more about your assymetries and strengths/weaknesses. See if you can bring your knees into alignment and provide equal muscular support all the way around with this pose.

Bow Pose – This is a great posture for really understanding how your knee alignment affects your low back and vice verse. Take bow pose keeping your knees hip width apart. You will need to be sure to support your low back with your abs. If this challenges either your low back or your knees, you've got some hip opening to work on ;-)

 

Nature Inspired Yoga

Thirteen miles in from the Grand Canyon's South Rim on a backpacking trip this May, we encountered this tremendous scene - Ribbon Falls.  Overwhelmed by the beauty, it seemed necessary to do some yoga in celebration.  My good friend Lee Dalton snapped these gorgeous pictures (thanks Lee!).

What beauty inspires your practice?