Sep 21, 2011

KAPOTASANA
What's really interesting here is finding places of weakness, tightness, or asymmetry, and targeting it directly. If something's out of whack, we gotta build both the length and the strength to put it back. So first things first, we we have to FEEEEL the asymmetry, but then we begin to introduce actions that encourage symmetry. When I practice I don't always know how to do that! Regularly at the gym, I play around with strength building concepts and overlay them onto poses. You've seen a bunch of them so far in this feed, right? #
So much of the practice of yoga is *strength building*-- the front body needs to both *lengthen* and work. Same with the front of the legs, the back of the thorax, back of the legs, pretty much everything.
This will keep your thighs forward enough that the spine can mobilize in all of its different places (not just the low back) and you can research the posture further, for longer.
Pretty great post deadlifts and cleans :-) Grab a pvc pipe!

HIPS: there is a real effort keep the navel over the hips and the hips over the knees for as long as possible so as to give the spine a chance to lengthen and circularize. You're not trying to rest on the ball so much as gesture forward from it.
SPINE: the key is finding an anchored and stretching front body -- floating ribs in, coccyx down, lower spine extended, upper spine extended, back muscles engaged.
The spine goes up up up.
SHOULDERS: To move from an extended shoulder joint to a flexed shoulder joint, you just take your arms from down to up... except for our purposes, it requires scapular protraction (wide) , upward rotation (bottom of the blade in to the rib) , and some elevation (just enough to stretch!) ... WTF: first part getting easy? In the second part, I'm using a resistance band to move from a flexed elbow to an extended elbow in a manner that strengthens the tricep. A stable shoulder girdle is essential for longevity in this posture (and practice)!