5 STEP IYENGAR YOGA WARM-UP

Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual experience with oneself.

During asana practice, there is a lightness in the body and the brain is attentive but silent. How might we slip into  this state of being quickly, honestly?

Before beginning our practice, it is a good idea to invite every cell in the body to soften, open up and receive the offering of what is about to begin. We can ask our mind to empty quotidian to-do  lists; we can release and renunciate emotions, sealing off concerns that might drain energy.

Here are five steps being taught at the start of senior Iyengar teacher Dassa Oppenheimer’s classes to establish a stable, steady internal environment.

1. Begin soft and slow, on your back in a Supported Resting Pose. Set up on a bolster, pranayama pillow, or neatly folded blanket that supports the length of your spine. Supporting the spine this way allows exhalation to be long and relaxed without having to willfully focus on or manipulate the breath. Exhalation relaxes the body. Place a block and thin folded blanket under your head so that it is comfortable and does not drop below your shoulders. Dassa requests her students relax in this position for 15 minutes before she begins instruction. It is an important time for rest, to slow down, to soften our bodies and to begin letting go of ego.

2. Next step is of medium intensity: Leaning Forward Bend Against the Wall. Feet are hip-distance apart. Position and correctly align feet 12 inches from the wall. Place buttocks on the wall. Keep feet firmly planted and fold forward, crossing arms at the elbow and placing the folded arms behind the head. Allow the torso, neck, and head to relax. Close your eyes. The folding forward, dropping the head lower than the heart, empties the mind. The senses become passive. This pose stretches the back of the legs, particularly the lateral knee. Roll the lateral side of the knee towards the back of the leg. (In order to do Iyengar standing poses correctly, it is very important to understand how the lower leg–foot, ankle and knee–works and stretching the back knee is a beneficial warm up.)

3.The third move is strong intensity: Padangusthasana.  Remain in wall hang position. Without lifting your head shift weight to front of foot. Open backs of knees so legs are completely straight. Backs of legs are now parallel to the wall. Firmly slide the index fingers between big toes and second toe. Hook under the big toe so that skin on neck of big toe and back of second joint of the index finger are joined. Grip strongly and pull up with the fingers; press down with the toes. Extend the spine.Lengthen front and sides of the torso. Ascend the sternum away from the navel. Expand under the armpits. Move elbows out like parentheses. “Pull! Pull harder!”  Draw forehead towards the shins. In the pulling, release lingering emotions from the body/mind.  The big six are anger, desire, ambition, pride, jealousy. “Pull harder!” Allow intelligence to sweep through the body like a rush of water. Feel the four sides of your legs–inside , back, front, outside. Equalize the energy on the four sides of the leg.  Enliven throughout the body, from the cells on the soles of your feet to the cells of your scalp.  “Pull!”  Check your ams. They should feel the same energy and be putting out the same effort as your legs. Experience  total attention in every cell.

4. Now gently release your toes. Slowly roll up to standing position: Tadasana.  Come up very slowly. Deliberately, without wiggling or adjusting. Stand stable and solid on your feet. Feel the ankle and shin bones lifting up towards the center of the kneecap.  Feel empty, like an washcloth that has been soaked, drenched and then wrung out. Go back to the feet. Empower the feet without gripping your toes. The toes lie long and soft, like flower petals. Energy flows up the front legs, skin moves from the front groin up the front torso and over shoulders. Then rolls the trapezium downwards. Energy continues to moves down the back towards the buttocks and down the back legs to the feet. Balance right and left sides of body.  Balance top and bottom. Relax the armpits out towards the front and back body.

5.Welcome the nectar of life that resides deep in your heart. Feel steadiness, stability, and balance. Your body is the temple and each asana is a prayer. You have coordinated mind and body.  You are at home in yourself.Your skin is a thin shell, the inside lining of your skin is the frontier of your soul.

15 Steps for Refining Your Sarvangasana

Dassa Oppenheimer studied with B.K.S. Iyengar in South Africa when he first began teaching westerners and when his classes were very small. She also studied with him at his institute iin Pune, India. I have been studying with Dassa for nearly a decade and her other students just as long and longer. Currently she is “not teaching the pose”  so to say, because we know the poses. She is teaching refinements so that we enjoy and understand a pose more completely.

Dassa Oppenheimer giving instruction in yoga class

“Be sure to remember this!” she says. “Stay in your yoga body when doing EVERY pose. Each pose has the same feeling.”

All poses go back to Tadasana. We lift the sternum and move the skin up the front body, flatten and broaden the back, move the kidneys down, and exist in strong legs without pulling up the kneecaps. “The knees move up from the back,” Dassa says, “never from the front. You exhaust yourself if you pull the knees up from the front.”

To sequence into a Sarvangasana (shoulderstand) class we practice Ustrasana, being sure that the feet are in line with the knees and knees in line with the hips; and to strongly move energy up the inner thigh–between the knee and inner groin. This inner groin lift helps slide the skin on the front torso up and consequently lifts the sternum in a nice yoga body way. Then we we do the opposite movement–Ustrasana with the feet on a chair and the shoulders on the floor (or you could call it Setu Banda Sarvangasana with feet on a chair). Sometimes we practice Navasana or Ubhaya Padagusthasana,  Supta Virasana, Uttana Padasana, or the standing pose Parsvottanasana, finding a “bolt” of energy at the inner tailbone.

In our shoulderstand practice, we start with a chair prop placed behind our heads and go into a supported Halasana. We place our knees/thighs on the chair. Since I am tall, I need a bolster under my quads to create a right angle in the groin. We stay in this position quite a while to release the groins, to make shoulder adjustments and to pull our energy up to the inner tailbone and flatten the back body. Then we go up one leg at a time. First the right leg. Then the left. Repeat: right leg then left. Then both legs. We never just lift up into full Sarvangasna. At this point Dassa moves the chair prop away and we continue with an intense practice and variations.

This checklist assume the yogini is not a beginner and understands this quieting, nurturing queen of a pose. It is not instruction for how to enter the pose or exit the pose but a bottom-to-top list for refining the practice.

1.YOUR BLANKET. Never stack up more than 2” of blanket. “An inch and a half is the best.”  Use a firm blanket, or two firm blankets, that are neatly folded in exactly the same shape. No lumps. No angles. No misaligned overlaps or shifts. Too much height causes you to jut your chin and cranks the neck into the wrong position. When the chin is up you cannot extend the thoracic or root the base of skull straight down.

2. NECK PLACEMENT. The neck is absolutely free. No portion of the neck rests on the folded blanket. Neck retains flexion and moves deliberately out of the chest.The back of the head presses into the mat.

3.VOICE Your should be able to talk in your normal voice. If you talk and it sounds lower, higher, or stressed, adjust your position. If your face is red, you also need to make adjustment.

4. NOSE points straight up

5. COLLARBONES roll like the tubes of a window shade, up towards your chin and the floor around again.

6. ELBOWS AND SHOULDERS. There is an inside-out-rotation going on in shoulderstand. Press tips of elbows into the mat to take the weight, pin triceps on the ground, move elbows in towards center line–closer towards each other. Cracks of the armpits move forward.

7. THUMBS. When you place your hands on the back, thumbs point up towards the feet. Correct placement helps you to lift inner tailbone,.

8. FINGERS point towards spine. Use the inner arch between thumb and index finger to help raise abdominal muscles.

9. ANUS TOWARDS PERINEUM facilitates opening of the groins and lifting of tailbone.

10. EYES OF THE GROIN. Open the front of the hips. Hip flexors push forward while legs and tailbone lift up and elbows press down. BTW: Nipples are in line with center of the groin.

11. INNER HEELS. Move energy in the legs up to inner heels. Lifting inner heels facilitates important inward rotation of thighs

12. OUTER EDGES OF THE FEET roll down. (Inner edge and metatarsals push up.)

13. EYES are completely relaxed and passive. Let the pupils sink back into the skull and then tuck them behind the sternum. Face is relaxed.

14. BACK BODY Charge the body from the back. Nothing goes on in the front body . All adjustments are made from the back body.

15. FIND TADASANA

MORE ON QUIETING THE BRAIN FROM SENIOR IYENGAR TEACHER

Please refer to previous blog article TEN STEPS TO QUIET THE BRAIN: POSITIONING THE EYE IN ASANA, PRANAYAMA, PRATYAHARA for instructions about how to enter state of relaxation.

Relaxed eyes = a relaxed brain.  There is no tension.  No waste of energy.

• Lengthen the upper eyelid skin gently from the brown to the eyelashes.  Do not tighten the upper eyelids or make them loose when you relax.  The eyelids are like flower petals hugging the eyelid ever so gently.
• If the eyes are squeezed too tightly shut or held too widely open, then there is tension.  When your eyes are open too wide, for example, you will not be able to enter the interior of the yoga asana (i.e. let the pose do you instead of you do the pose). In pranayama, when your eyes are tensely closed,  you will not be able to achieve the blissful silence.  In meditation, if eyes are tense you will see colors and patterns that distract you.
• As Senior Iyengar teacher Dassa Oppenheimer says: “Only when the eyes are in the correct position can the body relax into silence while in an asana.”  Eyes, like limbs and shoulders have their correct spot. Yoga practitioners go from gross body to subtle body through the eyes.
• Eyes control the fluctuation of the brain. “What happens when the eyes are in the proper position?”  The answer:  “Not a thought occurs in the brain.”
• Keep your eyeballs steady Do not flicker.  When doing pranayama, try not to allow your pupillae to move as you breath.  Movement causes unnecessary brain activity. In pranayama, eyes tend to unconsciously turn upwards on the inhale, so you may have to pay attention so that eyes do not lift.

EARS CONTROL THE MIND. EYES CONTROL THE BRAIN.

WHAT IS THE MIND?  Subjective knowledge, or intellect.  in Sanskrit known as buddhi, the instrument of knowledge, discernment, and decision. In buddhi we use our intuition.

WHAT IS THE BRAIN? Where we acquire objective knowledge, any knowledge whether true or false in science, learning, scholarship, philosophy. In Sanskrit the brain is vidya. In vidya we make to-do lists.

TEN STEPS TO QUIET THE BRAIN: POSITIONING THE EYE IN ASANA, PRANAYAMA, PRATYAHARA

Dassa adjusting yoga student

At the ropes last week, doing Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana at the rope wall, our teacher Dassa Oppenheimer pointed out that we could not ‘ find center and be still’ in the pose if our eyes were not in the correct position.  “The eyes have to find the exact point in the center of the eye socket where they float without tension.”

According to Dassa, if you move your eyes while doing yoga, you can “perform a pose but cannot be in a pose.”

To explain quickly: the eye position in yoga is very similar to the eye position in aikido (My husband Matt is an aikido master & we met twenty five years ago in Mitsunari Kanai Sensei’s Cambridge aikido class. In aikido you see everything but you do not see just one thing. You look through your opponent and peacefully observe everything in the environment, taking in as much to the right and left–and even behind–without moving the eyes, using a calm steady gaze.

The same eye position–in increasingly detailed refinement–holds true for  asana, particularly in shavasana, pranayama, pratahara and finally for meditation.  “I’ll teach you about the eye today,” Dassa said.

Here is what we learned about withdrawing the sense of sight, as  for entering pratyahara and beyond:

1. Start in an upright, in  properly aligned seated position.  Lover the chin towards the sternum. Shoulder blades down. Turn the palms up,  “Never palms down!” Skin moving up the front of the torso.
2. Extend the upper eyelid toward the lower eyelid, gently touching the upper lashes to the lower lashes.  Extend the eyelid skin from the eye brow to the lash rim. One long stretch of skin.
3. Lift the brown slightly to release forehead tension and move the inside edges of the eyebrows away from the center of the bridge of the nose to release the tension that collects between the eyebrows. Move the skin from the center line of the forehead towards the temples. relax.
4. Allow slight pressure to settle on the inner eye, near the bridge of the nose, as you roll the pupillae down. This movement won’t be relaxing, but it’s the first step.
5. Now, keeping the pupil down, you slide the pupil towards the temple and outside corner of the eye.  Find a resting spot.
6. Again check the extension of the upper lid. Extend the skin of the lid from the brow to the lashes. Release tension from forehead.
7. Slightly lift the inside outer corner of the upper lid.  I like to think of it as lifting the edge of the outer eye where I flick up my eyeliner.  Meanwhile, your pupillae hasn’t moved from its downward gazing position. Once parked, it never moves.
8. Now move the upper cheek bones away from the lower eyes, increasing the distance between the lower lid and the lower eye socket. This movement counters the tendency to squint and push the bottom lid up. The lower lid extends from the  cheekbone up to the lower lid eyelashes.
9. Ok. Now go back and check the details. Upper eyelid extended from brow to upper eyelashes. Pupillae is still parked towards the outer eye while at the same time floating towards temple. Upper outer eyelid lifted.  Forehead relaxed.
10. Practice the above until you get it.

The next step takes you a further into the interior Self via eye position, readying for meditation. Dassa says this next step is not necessary to practice since after a while the eyeball will automatically roll up when it is ready. “Don’t force,” she says.

Find the half moon of your upper boney eye socket. Allow the half moon of bone to widen, enlarge, and soften, creating slippery space at the edge of the entry into the interior self.  For me, it’s like getting ready to gently leap into warp speed. Think: special effects in sci-fi  movies, when gears shift and the spacecraft is sucked into the stars and opens up in the next realm of travel. Of course in meditation the leap is not as dramatic as in the movies because meditation is personal and not entertainment.

The eyeball: still, stable and with the pupillae down can now slip up behind the eye socket

After practicing the eyeposition, we did our shavasana.  It was the most beutiful shavasana transporting me far beyond the relaxation of my everyday shavasana. That’s becasue you had already entered pratyahara before you began,” Dassa said.

NEXT  ENTRY: A FEW MORE DETAILS MORE ABOUT THE EYE POSITION

FYI

More about Iyengar yoga   OFFICIAL B.K.S. IYENGAR SITE IYENGAR RESOURCE

Aikido site  NEW ENGLAND AIKIKAI AIKIDO JOURNAL

NEW YEAR WISHES FOR YOUR HEART: QUOTE FROM DALAI LAMA

We leave you with some wise words:

Never give up
No matter what is going on
Never give up

Develop the heart

How to do Pratyahara, the Least Known Yoga Pratice: Five steps, Five senses.

Early on in her students’ study of yoga, Dassa Oppenheimer teaches Pratyahara as an entry into Shavasana. Pratyahara is the yoga practice of  ‘withdrawal of the senses’  from the body and from the environment . The practice facilitates the journey into the inner world where there are no loud noises, advertisement to buy, lists to do, and other things that might distraction us from our intelligent being. Dassa said, “If you don’t learn how to withdraw from your senses during Shavasana, you might as well sit in a chair and do something else.”

Here I will tell you how Dassa teaches us to use ‘withdraw our senses’ as the gateway into a surrendered Shavasana.

5 Five Steps to Pratyahara ( while in Shavasana)

1) Sight/Eyes. We begin with the most dominant sense. Lightly close your eyes and then lift the upper eyelid ever so slightly so that it does not press against the lower lid. This is difficult because when you lift the upper eyelid, you can easily tense the forehead. Do not tense the forehead. Slightly lift the outer edges of the eye toward the temple to avoid forehead tensing. Once the eyelids are in position and you are aware of a lightness around the eyes, roll the pupil downwards, as if looking towards the heart. No straining. Once in position, the eyes do not move.

2) Taste/Tongue. Relax the jaw. Let the tongue drop away from the palate. Do not hold the tongue back. The tongue tip nestles gently behind the lower teeth. Relax the corners of the mouth, letting the corners melt downwards toward the jawbone.

3) Nose/Smell. Bring your attention to the root of the nose. That’s the bridge of the nose. It doesn’t take long to relax here; just focusing attention at the nose’s root seems to relax the sense of smell. For help, image a dark warm circle—a black hole, if you like—sinking from the nose’s root into the brain.

4) Ears/Sound. Here we relax the inner ear. Bring your attention to the upper rims of your cheekbones. Allow the cheekbone to melt down toward the earlobe, which in Shavasana is the lowest part of your face. You will feel your inner ear let go of tension.

5) Skin/Touch. Skin is the largest sense organ. This step of Pratyahara teaches you to relax your face. ( Dassa says the results of practicing regular technique on the facial skin are better than botox). Imagine

How to Do a Proper Shavasana (corpse pose)- 10 STEPS

Iyengar has called Shavasana*,  the final relaxation pose, one of the most difficult. Why is it difficult? As serious yoga practitioners we strive to eventually be able to live outside time–inside time’s heart but disconnected from the past and the future: in other words, to be always in the present. Shavasana is training for this triumph.**

To do shavasana is to cut the threads that connect us to the concept of “I.”  We become present but formless.

My yoga instructor, Dassa Oppenheimer studied with Iyengar in the 70s when his class size was no more than a dozen. She got a lot of direct, personal instruction that she passes on to us and stories, too. For instance she told us: “In class, Guruji liked to sit on my abdomen when I was in Urdhva Dhanurasana (the wheel, upward bow pose). ‘Look,’ he would say. ‘Oh, she’s a strong one’.”

I suppose that story let us know that despite her small size and elegance, she’s tough. Not that we hadn’t realized that already. We have been studying with her for decades. Her instruction possesses the sturdy, relentless drive of a master teacher who both cares for her students deeply but who also has little tolerance for lapses of attention to detail.

“No,no, no,” she says when we are about to stop sweating and are ready to close our eyes in a welcome, final relaxation.“How many times do I have to tell you!”  She knocks our legs an inch further apart or a bit closer together.

According to Dassa, an improper shavasana never permits you to let go of your body, which is a necessary step in letting go of your thoughts and therefore entering timelessness.

10 STEPS FOR A PROPER SHAVASANA

1. From sitting to lying. Place yourself on the mat in dandasana, heels at the bottom of the mat. Align your body. Be in the center of the mat and your body. On your sit bones. Your hip bones parallel. Have a folded blanket ready at the head of your mat (or a prop that will lift your head & neck only as much as to be on the same plane as your spine, not higher.)

Going down from dandasana to shavasana is one of the few times in yoga that you are permitted to collapse your torso. Roll down from sitting, vertebrae by vertebrae, to a flat-on-your-back position.

2. Placing head prop Place the head/neck prop

IYENGAR YOGA AND THE SACRUM: a mind-blowing epiphany

My  yoga teacher Dassa Oppenheimer, who was a student in Iyengar’s first Western class, is in her nineties, but we and she would never mention this because it is not important. “In yoga there is no age,” she says. She’s right: we are only as old as our spines are flexible. Her poses are filled with energy and that’s what she wants us to find. “Feel it?” she asks. It’s a sense of awe and freedom that she wants us to find comfort in after we have worked to ‘get’ the pose. It’s a beautiful wave of authority that we find. Not for beginners.

Dassa teaches (and demonstrates) it all: backbends, twists, inversions, dogs,and forward bends. No one teaches the forward bend better than Dassa. 

For years, I have been working on leading with my navel and maintaining a flat back as I descend my upper torso towards my thighs and knees. “The head is last, always last.”

Still, after thousands of forward bends, at a certain point in the descent I round my shoulders before getting my front body onto my thighs and lower my head. It’s not my hamstrings, calves or ankles that cause the rounding.

Each year I have inched up the spine, widening and loosening the muscles away from fascia, or stickiness as I like to call it. To achieve the desired flatness, I’ve lengthened the sides of my torso and arms, stretched under my armpits and the sides of my gluts. I’ve been taught to lift my sternum without hollowing my back. And never move the hips once you ‘go.’

It’s as if something pulls the hips backwards. And there is a compactness in the hips that creates space in the eyelids of the groin (the crack between the upper torso and the upper thigh.) You have to pull in the abdomen to achieve the space and work a rotational movement of the skin that begins at the navel around to the lower back. 

So here’s the epiphany: It’s the expansion of