Tadasana or Samasthiti – Mountain Pose and Standing in Balance

Mountain pose is often touted as the prime posture for experiencing the inherent poise of properly performed Asana. What is poise, first? We should perhaps consider. Poise comes when we feel present in every fiber of our being. It feels like all your inner resources are right there at your beck and whim and you can play it as cool as having an ace in the hole. Physically, it is feeling balanced and at ease to deftly move in any direction.

Truth is, lately I think about mountain pose or “the upright standing posture” of people more often outside of the yoga class. I watch how people stand everywhere. I look inside them, and see their spine.

When we stand tall our bodies naturally moves towards balance. This means that all of our postural muscles are working with the appropriate weight load and don’t become stressed. All of our vertebrae, joints, and organs come close to an internal stasis, of having equal pressure.

The lungs also move towards this stasis and breath is distributed evenly to and from all portions of the lungs. I don’t need to cite all the benefits this has for your metabolism, immunity, mental health, etc.

So why does it seem many people slouch, have bad posture, or curl over with age? They are being pulled away from their center in one way or another. Physical objects like our gadgets pull us in, social confrontations pull us to a side so we feel stronger to move in a certain feeling or direction, and gravity pulls us down. It is also accepted that many peoples’ posture is a result of cultural conditioning. We hold ourselves the way we see other people do. All the more important for us than to be a good role models!  To come back to center takes recognition, some concentration, and sometimes  more. Keep going through the process. Be aware. Recognize. Re-adjust. Notice what it feels like to be in your balance physically. Consider what it means to be in emotional and intra-personal balance. Can you still feel poise when someone is creating invasive or reactive energies.  When your in balance does it seem like there is a bigger world, more energy, or a better feeling about yourself? Keep doing it and make yourself new. This process of coming back to your physical balance center with the spine is the symbolic representation of bringing your self back to the present moment in which lay your real work and pleasure of discovering a new manifestation of your eternal soul.

Soo….to a group of readers who are probably very familiar with how to practice mountain pose, I lead you to my presentation now!

Mountain Pose – How to Stand Tall

A lot of people make a big deal out of feet in this pose. And as they should, the base affects the entire structure. We can spread our weight evenly on our feet in this pose easily. Place the feet so the big toes are touching side by side. Your heels may be slightly apart or touching. Put them in the place that makes you feel balanced in the center of your heel and you can put weight into the balls of your big toe and pinky toe.

You can also try placing the heels to the position that makes your legs face straight forward. Pay attention to the relationship of alignment from your toes, to your knees and upper thighs.When your feet are set right, your ankle joints should feel centered, or even hollow. When you are setting your feet it’s also good to lift and spread your toes as high as you can to wake up muscles and broaden your base for greater  balance. If you are set in the feet but your knees seem rotated inwards or outward it may mean you need to develop balance in hip and thigh muscles.

With your alignment set you can now create the synergistic action of engaging the quadriceps to lift the knees and push down through the axis of your legs to “root in” to your feet. This kind of synergistic action should be created in all standing poses and in a similar way, into any part of your body that touches the ground to create lift in another part or vice versa. This makes mountain pose a model for proper asana practice.  At the same time let the lower back lengthen down through the tailbone towards the floor and the pubic bone to lift slightly upwards, if at all. Here you should essentially be making the bowl of your pelvis level with the earth. All of these muscle contractions should be done to create a sense of poise but can also be engaged stronger on exhales to give you a therapeutic alignment “reset” if you will.

While you were doing all that you were probably already beginning to feel your posture growing taller. When you practice focus on the crown of your head and the sensation of being perfectly centered. You may feel slight sways in your posture. Don’t fight them, just feel where the center is, and increase your sensitivity and with practice you’ll stay there more easily. Let your breath also guide you in this. Observing the dimensions of your breath as it changes inside of you is powerful way to learn about your body and your balance. As for arms… I always say arms are for expressing so explore what feels right for your arms. I like to gently turn my palms forward to open the chest for breathing. Keep your head level and your face calm.

To me, mountain pose, and good posture in general, is as if a straight line is passing through the center of my head, the center of my hips, and the center of the earth. My body is soft and open, the spine feels comfortably suspended in the fluids and tissues of the body. I feel equally connected to the earth, aware of space all around me, and a little something extra special pulling me upwards and ever closer to my balance wth the center.

Namaste.

George Anthony

Pranic Balance and Sushumna Nadi

The most straight forward way to develop energetic balance and spiritual awareness is by our most essential energy. That energy is most easily regulated by the breath and it’s balance in the left and right sides of the body. You may have often heard the differences described of the two hemispheres of the brain, or considered what it might mean being left or right handed, extroverted or introverted. The qualities of energy in each side of the physio-logical action of breathing are unique and influence our attitudes and behaviors. We can also work backwards from behaviors that influence which side of the breath is predominant. For a little background info look up Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna nadis here.

Before we continue I think I should state that the following practices in today’s post are more effective when we utilize an expanded area on the interior surface of the lungs. This is done by a healthy and vigorous asana practice, deep breathing in forward folds, backbends, twists, and finally side bends as these asana lead to an understanding of side breathing and breath balance.

The body has internal pressures from how we “hold” ourselves. By the actions of the abdominal sheath, diaphragm, spinal extension, and intercostal muscles we develop a unique pattern of muscular activity that creates a “breath map” of how much and where our lungs can expand and contract. Many of these “breath maps” are habitual, working from influences in biochemical rhythms, mental activity, and even conscious intention. This causes the breath to work in cycles of left and right dominance. At times the breath may also be experienced as equally open in both sides. This is the ideal condition for evolution of awareness and accessing Sushumna nadi, if you believe in that kind of stuff. And if you don’t, it feels… awesome, so please, try this out.

Watch your breathing for the next few days. Notice when there is breath dominance and when it is equal on both sides. Note how you “hold” your body and observe your emotional states for the differences in experience. When the breath is equal on both sides you might feel inwardly receptive and ready to receive life’s lessons, but also, an excitement is there right under the surface, ready to spark spontaneously with the world and the people in it. It’s like feeling energized with gratitude for everyone and everything + breath and peace right? 😀

If you’ve witnessed breath is mostly on one side more than the other, consider how it relates to your temperament. Have you or can you see yourself described as introvert or extrovert? By conscious effort and special practices you can move towards balance. If you feel introverted work on right side breathing. If you feel extroverted, work on left. To develop balanced breathing its important to understand these two aspects of yourself relative to the other.

As I stated before, side bending can help bring balance to breathing. It does this by giving practice stretching and relaxing the intercostal muscles of the ribcage. Stretching is the best way to find tough spots, where muscles may be holding tension. Side stretching is also one of the best ways to develop lung capacity and to vitalize and exfoliate deeper tissue. Some of the best poses for this are…

Parvritta Janu Sirsasana

Standing side Bend

 

Another technique for working with breath flow i.e., Ida and Pingala nadis, is by use of the yoga danda. The body has a natural reaction when it feels breath may be hindered on one side of the body. By placing the Yoga Danda under the armpit, breath will begin to open more on the other side. You can usually feel the same thing when you lay down on one side long enough, a trick I learned as a child with frequent sinus congestion. Cool, right? So the ancient Yogi’s used this stick in meditation and pranayama practices to explore and balance the energies of breathing. Asana will also achieve this result to an extent but I wouldn’t try doing long meditation or pranayama in the pose below, Yoga Dandasana.

 

 

Use of Yoga Danda

Yoga Dandasana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a way to classify these two main energies… Left side(Ida) is internalized mental energies. Right side(Pingala) is dynamic, catalyzing energies. And balanced(Sushumna) is spiritual energy and harmony awareness.

The resonance of balanced Ida-Pingala in the body-mind complex creates a higher vibrational frequency. The result is often portrayed as the ascent of Kundalini energy rising up the central channel, Sushumna. To me, this phenomenon is a natural part of who we are, but exists in a dimension beyond our normal senses. To develop the balance to feel and develop Sushumna, there is also the alternate nostril breathing practice, called Nadi Shodhana. In the most basic version one simply breathes in through one side, out through the other, and then repeats starting from the opposite side. This has a calming and balancing affect on the nervous system. When Ida and Pingala are equally active you can begin using more advanced pranayama techiniques to coax sushumna kundalini experience into consciousness. Or is it that you begin to bring consciousness into another dimension? There are truly no bounds to being.

Vibrationally yours,

George

Reaching towards the novel

Open your eyes wide and take a deep breath. Something new is rising to the surface of your experience. It breaks older and smaller concepts. The structure of your relationship with life encompasses a bigger picture and the truth of yourself emerges into greater clarity. You know what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced it your whole life becoming the person that, through our friendship or mutual interest in Yoga, is sitting here reading this now.

Yesterday at Yoga Elements I watched two senior Yoga teachers working together. One was in the position of the student.  During the half an hour that I observed they worked on only two Asana. Virasana and Adho Mukha Svanasana. It’d be normal to think that the student, having 20+ years of practicing and teaching Yoga, would have experienced all these poses have to offer. However, with genuine encouragement by speech and touch, and the repeated suggestions guiding his actions through the structure of the body, he was lead into the pose with the completely amazed look on his face of an undefinable experience and remarked, “I don’t know how to explain what just happened.” An excited smile then flashed across his face. I was immediately reminded of when I started practicing Yoga. It was a time of frequent and intensely new sensations and often unexpected revelations about life. I recall many nights in bed, before sleep, and practicing Paschimotannasana with my toes energetically spreading wide, curiously reaching towards something new yet undeniably myself.

It is the movement outward that gives relevance to who and what we are. Each experience influences the direction of our continuing growth and thus our available subsequent experiences. We are never finished with this process. We continue to grow in more refined ways as we age. Even beyond our individual bodies it is happening. We all influence each others’ attention and help steer the growth of humanity at large, indefinitely. Yoga offers models for exploring these relationships that bring the clearest insight about the nature of where it all comes from. We are only limited by our imagination. We can be thwarted only by the foolhardy belief that we have already “gone all the way”  or by developing without an sense of balance. Like a fractal, life is infinitely complex.

I am often times drawn towards the growth of trees as the perfect metaphor. The leaves and branches reach through the open air for the sunlight, the symbol of awareness, and the roots dig deep down, fusing into the ground and stability. The newest growth is at the fringe. It is the finest, the most alive, the most subtle, just on the edge of  awareness, and bringing ever greater sense of balance. The truth of our nature is even more beautifully grandiose. The world of experience is a great array of lights through which we move as a flowing cascade of consciousness generators. We realize the expansive nature of ourselves when we grow in the experiences that bring fresh insights and the enthusiasm to live.

Sincerely and always yours,

George

P.S.   Those two great teachers….Marc Woolford & Adrian Cox