Virabhadra was a fierce warrior of Lord Shiva’s army. The head priest, Daksha, was an orthodox rule-maker and preserver of traditional society. Against his consent, his beautiful daughter Sati married Lord Shiva. Shiva destroys the world at the end of each world age, and he also destroys the ego. He is therefore the Lord of Mystery.
For various reasons Daksha considered Shiva impure. Shiva had peculiar habits such as meditat-ing in burial grounds smeared with the ashes of the dead, and meditatmeditat-ing on mountaintops for long periods, rather than participating in society. But the main reason for Daksha’s disdain was that Shiva always carried a skull with him. The story behind this was that, to punish him for his vanity, Shiva had once cut off one of the five heads of Lord Brahma, whereupon Brahma laid a curse on Shiva: that the skull would stick to his hand. To this day some worshipers of Shiva always carry with them a skull.
At one time Daksha organized a great ceremony to which he invited all deities and dignitaries with the exception of Shiva and Sati. Against Shiva’s advice, Sati attended her father’s ceremony.
Before the thousands of guests she asked her father why he had not invited her husband. Daksha responded by exclaiming that Shiva was a despicable character, an outcast who did not know the con-ventions of society.
With this insult to her husband, Sati’s anger was so aroused that she burst into flames and was reduced to ashes. When Shiva, in his solitude, heard of Sati’s death he became terribly angry, jumped up and danced the dance of destruction.
Eventually he tore out one of his jatars (dreadlocks) and smashed it to the ground. From the impact the terrible warriors Virabhadra and Bhadrakali arose. Shiva ordered them to proceed to Daksha’s festival, destroy the hall, kill everybody one by one, behead Daksha, drink his blood, and throw his head into the fire.
The story continues, but as far as our posture is concerned we can leave it there. Virabhadrasana is dedicated to this terrible warrior.
In the Mahabharata, Arjuna is frequently addressed as “Oh mighty armed one.” With regular training, vinyasa eleven will give us a chance to replicate Arjuna’s strength.
INTENSEWESTERNSTRETCH12
Drishti Toes
As with all following asanas (excluding the finishing postures), here we pick up the vinyasa count at seven.
Vinyasa Seven
Inhaling, jump through to a seated position.
At first you may execute this movement using momentum. With increased proficiency you will be able to jump through with little or no momentum while still clearing the floor. The key to effortless performance here is to connect the breath to the bandhas. As long as we are airborne in the jump, we must continue to inhale, as the inhalation has a lifting and carrying effect. Once the lift-through is complete we initiate the exhalation to lower down.
To learn this movement it should be divided into two clearly distinguishable separate phases. Phase 1 is hopping forward into an arm balance with the shoulders over the wrists, and the hips and folded legs lifted high. Phase 2 consists of letting the torso and legs slowly swing through the arms, using the shoulders as an axis. As you swing through, suck the feet up into the abdomen and the knees into the chest to clear the floor. With the last of the inhala-tion, straighten the legs into Dandasana, still sus-pended in the air. With the exhalation, slowly lower down like a helicopter. Performing the movement in this way will establish a firm connection between breath and bandhas. It will also strengthen the abdomen and the low back, preparing for the chal-lenging backbends and leg-behind-head postures in the later sequences.
Sit in Dandasana for five breaths. Dandasana has no vinyasa count of its own: rather, the seventh vinyasa of Pashimottanasana is the state of Dandasana.
Nevertheless Dandasana is the basic sitting posture.
We will usually transit through Dandasana before and after each half vinyasa.
Dandasana is like Samasthiti seated. The sit bones ground and the spine lengthens with the attempt to reproduce its natural curvature. The heart is lifted and buoyant, open in the front and broad and open AS H T A N G A YO G A
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Pashimottanasana
Left to right, top to bottom, jump through to Dandasana 12. Referring to the back of the body, which traditionally faced
away from the rising sun and therefore toward the west.
in the back. The armpits lift in the front as the tops of the arm bones (humerus) are positioned in the center of the shoulder joints. Extend the arms and place the hands on the floor with the fingers pointing toward the feet. If your arms are longer than your torso, place the hands slightly behind the hips. The
kneecaps are pulled up. Lengthen out through the base of the toes and spike the heels down into the floor to awaken the hamstrings. The gaze is toward the nose.
Vinyasa Eight
Exhaling, reach for the big toes. The low back must be kept flat. To round the back in a seated forward bend is the equivalent of bending down from a standing position to lift a heavy object off the floor while rounding the back and keeping the legs straight. To avoid the danger of disc bulge and prolapse (see page 37, and figure 6, page 38) it is necessary to keep the low back straight in any weight-bearing situation.
This includes all forward bending postures and also leg-behind-head postures like Ekapada Shirshasana. In postures where gravity is the only load, such as Karnapidasana and Bujapidasana, the spine can be safely flexed.
Without resorting to bending your back and/or using a strap, you have two options if you are too stiff to reach the big toes in Pashimottanasana. One is
to bend the knees and take the toes. This enables the pelvis to tilt forward, which is the imperative first stage of a forward bend. Keeping the iliac crests (upper front of the hip bones) in close proximity to the thighs, work on slowly straightening out the legs. Press out through the base of the feet and, at the same time, reach the sit bones away from the feet. The pubic bone slips down between the thighs.
The other option is to take hold of the shins, ankles, or whatever you can reach. With a firm grip, slowly work your way forward as the hamstrings lengthen.
Some students will find their hamstrings so stiff that the pelvis tilts posteriorly when sitting on the floor with legs straight. This means that gravity is working against you. In this case, it is advisable to
elevate the sit bones by sitting on a folded blanket.
This helps to bring the pelvis upright, enabling proper alignment of the spine. Whichever approach you choose, with the inhalation lift the chest and straighten the arms.
Look up between your eyebrows as you pull up on your kneecaps, and draw your shoulder blades down your back. Lengthen your waist, letting the
65 AS A N A: TH E PR I M A R Y SE R I E S
YOGIC CONTEXT
The Use of Props
All asanas are designed to form energetic cycles — especially postures like asana and Baddha Padmasana, where the hands are connected to the feet. The earth, being receptive, draws out our energy. These bound postures recycle energy that is other-wise lost. Yogis often meditate on a seat that consists of consecutive layers of kusha grass, deer or tiger skin, and cotton to insulate them from the earth. These energy cycles are thought to have a profound influence on the pranic sheath (pranamaya kosha), which is reduced when the energy flow is interrupted through belts and straps.
The use of a strap or belt might seem like an easy solution for students with stiff ham-strings who find it difficult to reach their toes with their back straight. How ever, as Shri K. Pattabhi Jois has pointed out, the use of props interrupts the energy cycle of the posture.
Pashimottanasana, vinyasa eight
ANATOMICAL FOCUS
Psoas — The Seat of the Soul
The hip flexor muscle group includes the rectus femoris of the quadriceps, the sartorius, the ten-sor fascia latae, and the deeply internal psoas muscle. Continuing to contract the rectus femoris after it has tilted the hips in a forward bend causes it to bunch up in the front of the hip and prevent one from working deeper into the pos-ture. The psoas muscle originates from the sides of the body of T12 (the last thoracic vertebra), where it touches the diaphragm and all five lum-bar vertebrae. It runs along the back of the abdominal cavity (the front of the spine) through the pelvis and inserts at a mount on the inside of the thighbone (femur), the lesser trochanter. It flexes the hip joint and laterally rotates the femur in the process.
When the thigh is fixed, as in standing and seated postures, the psoas is flexed. Ida Rolf states that a healthy psoas should elongate during flexion and fall back toward the spine.13It is necessary to release and lengthen the psoas, once the hips are tilted forward, in order to deepen any forward-bending postures.
The superficial muscles of the body relax com-pletely after they have been worked, but the deep muscles always retain a certain tension, even at rest. This is especially true of muscles that origi-nate on the spine, like the psoas. They are there-fore prone to spasm if worked intensely. The con-scious relaxing of these muscles is as important as exercising them.
The psoas is the deepest muscle in the body. Its importance is such that it has been described by some as the “seat of the soul.” To see the psoas in action one has to imagine the graceful gait of African or Indian women carrying large water containers on their heads. To do this, the head has to maintain a continuous forward motion without any sudden jerks. The movement is only possible with a strong but relaxed psoas muscle.
The psoas swings the pelvis forward and back-ward like a cradle. This swinging action initiates the movement of the legs with the rectus femoris (the large hip flexor at the front of the thigh) only coming into action well after the psoas. The
swinging of the pelvis creates a wavelike motion up the spine, which keeps the spine healthy and vibrant, and the mind centered in the heart. If you have ever tried to walk with a large object balancing on your head you know how difficult this makes it to follow the tangents of the mind.
Connecting with the core of the body (the psoas) shifts the attention from the mind to the heart — this is why the psoas is regarded as the seat of the soul.
The other extreme can be observed when we watch an army march. Soldiers are required to keep the psoas hardened. Being constantly short-ened, the muscle spasms and is weakened. In the military attention posture, when the chest is swelled, one naturally dips into the low back, which also weakens the psoas muscle. When marching, the pelvis is arrested and the thighs are aggressively thrust upward and forward.
This movement only uses the rectus femoris. The spine is frozen, and this keeps the soldiers’ atten-tion in their minds. In this state the mind can more easily be convinced to be noncompassionate to fellow human beings, who are instead labeled as the enemy.
If we all walked with our psoas active and our spines caressed with the wavelike motion this produces, our minds would possibly arrive at a state of silence. We would then see every human being as part of the same consciousness that animates us all. One of the reasons our Western culture has conquered much of the world with its arms is that we have abandoned natural awareness and have fallen under the tyranny of the mind. Yoga calls for restoring this aware-ness, which draws us to naturally abide in nonviolence. Nonviolence becomes a nonim-posed ethical law.
As one starts practicing yoga it is very important to abandon the Western aggressive conquering attitude of wanting to derive an advantage out of yoga, but rather to approach the postures from a deep surrender into what is already here. All forward bends inspire this attitude. If, rather than developing yet another wish — such as to lengthen the hamstrings, which actually shorten and contract with greed — we let go into the knowledge that everything we may ask for is already here, the hamstrings will release by them-selves. Ambition shortens hamstrings.
13. Rolf, I. P., Rolfing: The Integration of Human Structures, Santa Monica, Dennis-Landman, 1977, p. 112.
lower ribs reach away from your hip bones by re leasing the psoas muscle. The psoas is the only mus-cle that connects the lower extremities to the spine, which makes it an integral stabilizing core muscle.
Vinyasa Nine
Exhaling, fold forward at the hip joints, maintaining the lift created in vinyasa eight. Rather then collaps-ing the head down toward the knees, lift the heart forward toward the toes.
The work of Uddiyana Bandha is important here to support the low back. Do not breathe excessively into the belly, as is often done in forward bending, but encourage the rib cage to participate in the breathing process.
The inhalation is used to reach the heart forward, whereas the exhalation is used by surrendering deeper into the posture. If this instruction leads to the student “bouncing” up and down in the posture,
we can conclude that Uddiyana Bandha is not engaged suffici ently. Let these movements be motivated from deep within, working the posture from the core out toward the periphery.
The kneecaps are permanently lifted in all forward-bending postures. As explained in Padang ushtasana (page 37), the antagonist of each muscle to be stretched needs to be engaged. The muscle group being stretched here is the hamstrings; their antag -onist is the quadriceps. For beginners it is often impossible to keep the kneecaps pulled up due to an inability to access the quadriceps. It may seem as if we need to grow a new nerve connection to this muscle. This learned coordination is possible through concen tration and perseverance. The teacher may gently press the thumbs into both thighs to “awaken” the quadriceps.
In all forward bends it is important to release 67 AS A N A: TH E PR I M A R Y SE R I E S
FIGURE 12 PSOAS AND ILIACUS
Ilium Iliacus
Femur T12 Vertebra Psoas
AS H T A N G A YO G A
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and spread the buttocks. The buttocks are often tightened in a fear response to the stretch felt.
Tightening the buttocks, however, draws us up out of the forward bend since the gluteus maximus muscle is a hip extensor. The ligaments of the sacroiliac joints (sacrum/pelvis joints) can also be
strained. Focus on releasing the buttocks, allowing them to spread, and lengthen through the low back.
This is eccentric lengthening of the quadratus lum-borum muscle. Eccentric lengthening means that the muscle is active, as we need it to keep the back straight, but at the same time it becomes longer as we elongate the waist. In other words the muscles lengthen against resistance. It is important to create additional space between the hipbone and the low-est rib because a shortened, contracted waist is an obstacle in all forward bending, backbending, and leg-behind-head postures.
The shoulders move away from the ears in Pashimottanasana. Contracting the trapezius and levator scapulae muscles hunches the shoulders
around the ears and blocks the flow of energy to the cervical spine. Excessive contracting of the neck muscles can lead to a red face in forward or back bending, which indicates a constriction of the blood flow to the head. Use the anchoring of the hands to counteract this, by drawing the shoulder blades
down the back, which is called depressing the shoulder girdle (latissimus dorsi), and by drawing them out to the sides, called abduction of the scapu-lae (serratus anterior).
Pashimottanasana is another great posture to demonstrate the principle of simultaneous expansion in opposing directions. The feet, the heart, and the crown of the head are reaching forward to elongate the spine. The shoulder blades, the sit bones, and the heads of the femurs are extending backward.
The elbows and the shoulder blades reach out wide to the sides. The muscles hug the body, compressing prana into the core. The core remains open, recep-tive, and bright. Its luminescence permeates the whole of the posture and shines forth.
Pashimottanasana A (the state of the asana)
Surrender is most important in Pashimottanasana.
This posture is not about conquering the hamstrings but about letting go. To breathe into and release the hamstrings can be very upsetting. We store many powerful emotions, such as suppressed anger, com-petitiveness, and fear of inadequacy, in our hamstring muscles. All suppressed emotions are potentially
crippling to our health: they are toxic and have an impact on our personality. It is essential that, if strong emotions do arise when we breathe awareness into the hamstrings, we acknowledge whatever we feel and then let go of these emotions. Breathing through a posture requires that the stretch be kept at a manage-able intensity. If the stretch is too strong we will harden and numb ourselves further. One needs to stretch with compassion and intelligence. Otherwise, instead of letting go of our old unconscious con ditioning, we will superimpose yet another layer of abuse. Stay in the state of Pashimottan asana A for five breaths.
Vinyasa Ten
Inhaling, lift the torso away from the legs, straighten-ing the arms. Exhalstraighten-ing, take the outsides of the feet.
The next three vinyasas reflect Pashimottanasana B, and the three vinyasas after that reflect Pashimottanasana C.
Vinyasa Eight
Inhaling, lift the heart and the entire front of the torso.
Vinyasa Nine
Exhaling, Pashimottanasana B, five breaths.
Vinyasa Ten
Inhaling, lift the torso away from the legs, straight-ening the arms. Exhaling, reach around the feet to lock the wrists.
Vinyasa Eight
Inhaling, lift the torso, straightening the arms.
Vinyasa Nine
Exhaling, fold forward, Pashimottanasana C, five breaths.
These three variations of Pashimottanasana stretch the inside, outside, and center of the hamstrings, which coincide with the three separate muscles of the group: semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris (see figure 7, page 40).
Vinyasa Ten
Inhaling, lift the torso, straightening the arms.
Exhaling, place your hands to the floor.
Vinyasa Eleven
Inhaling, lift up and move the feet back with a single hop so the body forms a straight line from the head to the feet.
The inhalation has a natural upward lifting function;
the exhalation has a grounding and rooting function.
the exhalation has a grounding and rooting function.