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One of the best postures for awakening the senses to the here and now is Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), a beginning backbend that strengthens the legs and hips, massages the spine, and opens the heart. Methodical practice of this asana also offers an opportunity to explore the body and its movements with attention and care. In the process, the mind is calmed and the body becomes energized, leaving the practitioner feeling revitalized and refreshed.
To begin, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet hip distance apart on the floor, 10 to 12 inches from your pelvis. Rest your hands near your hips with the palms up, which helps open the front of the shoulders and collarbones. Invite your body to settle thankfully into the ground. Take several easy breaths, noticing which parts of your body rise and fall to the tune of the inhalations and exhalations. Now send a gentle rooting action down through your legs, as if you were trying to press the floor away from you and into the earth. Press down evenly, envisioning the deep footprints you are making in your mat as you do this.
Curl the tailbone up and allow the pelvis to float just an inch or two off the ground. Breathe easily for a few moments, keeping your mind focused on those strong and steady feet, then slowly allow your hips to melt back downward. Gently sweep your tailbone away from your waist as you return to the earth, inviting your spine to feel long and unwrinkled
This week I wanted to share with you a "Guided Relaxation" script one student in my yoga class at the State University of NY at Oneonta wrote for an assignment. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Close your eyes and feel the mat under you. Settle your arms and legs where they are most comfortable, and release the last bit of ache and tension in your hard-worked muscles. Feel your breath as it rises and falls softly and steadily in your lungs, the gentle undulation of your belly as you breathe in and out. Total calm is spreading through you: your arms, your legs, your fingers, your toes, every tiny bone and every tiny pore. You are completely at rest. Nothing exists outside of this calm.
You slowly become aware that you are standing in a wheat field. It’s a beautiful early summer’s morning; the sky is a soft, subdued blue, clouds fluffed up like cotton balls are scattered across the sky, and the sun wraps around you like an old, worn blanket from childhood, filling you with a warmth that glows deep down in your core.
You start walking through the field, picking your way through the waist-high grain that trails like distant whispers over your skin. The grass beneath your bare feet shakes off the last drops of dew onto your toes, and you slide through the field without agenda, simply walking.
Surrounding this wheat field is a dense, old forest of pine, ash and maple. As you walk, you notice a line of wild turkeys moving slowly along the tree edge, their low clucks and gobbles the only noises you hear, their slick black bodies bobbing slightly as they walk. They pay no mind to you and disappear into the trees almost as soon as you have noticed them, but you’re grateful for the brief glimpse of them.
The wheat field suddenly comes to an end, and you can see the remnants of a farm. Now, instead of turkeys along the forest edge, there is an old snake rail fence, lazily meandering the property. No longer tickled by stalks of wheat, you are standing on the soft and uneven ground of a pasture. Wild flowers, pink and purple, orange and yellow, sprout up joyfully around you, freed by the farmer’s absence to grow unimpeded once again. A rabbit rustles the grass as it bounces up to the refuge of the snake rail fence. He looks at you briefly, his little nose twitching unceasingly, waiting to see what you will do.
You walk across the pasture. There is a barn in the distance, and you move towards it. Squirrels chatter idly in the trees that surround you from a distance, and the sharp sound of small birds twittering to the morning dances unseen about you. These are the sounds of an utterly unplanned and unrushed morning. You breathe them in and they mingle in your blood, and you become even more relaxed even than you already are.
You have reached the barn. A section of the snake rail fence separates you from it, but you climb over it easily, the feel of its brittle, moss-covered wood rough and ancient on your palms. The barn’s deep, red paint has begun to peel like wallpaper; large curling strips of it hang down from its walls, the wood beneath peeking out to the world for the first time in years. You grasp the rustled handle of the barn door, and slide the big door back.
Slipping inside, you see in the dim light that the barn is deserted. The stalls are empty; ropes and rakes and a range of other tools hang untouched around you. You move deeper into the barn, your bare feet treading noiselessly on the cool, smooth-worn planks. The sweet, dry smell of hay hangs in the air, mixed with the warm musk of horses. But these animals are not there now. The barn has been left uninhabited, as if it were waiting for you and you alone to come along and make it your own.
In the center of the barn, nestled between the rows of stalls, you find a loose stack of hay. You flop back into it, and it catches you with a soft bounce. You nestle down into the hay, like a robin crouching down into her nest. Looking up, you can see shafts of sunlight poking through the slats in the roof, and birds flutter in the rafters. The heavy, dry smell of the hay envelopes your senses, and you close your eyes and let it lull you away; not to sleep or to daydreams, but to a lingering loft in between, where distinctions blur and coalesce so there is now no longer this or that but everything.
You stay there for a moment. It is utterly silent. You hang suspended in this silence, and slowly, almost unnoticed, start to settle back to the present. You start to become aware again of your breathing, of the gentle brittleness of your improvised bed. The smell of the hay is not longer as noticeable. It has floated away. Somewhere above you a bird flaps away, the rush of its wings cutting with a sharp staccato through the air. You take one slow, final, deep breath of this cool atmosphere.
Now walk out of the barn and open your eyes.
This week's pose is:
DOWNWARD FACING DOG
which is pronounced Adho Mukha Svanasana in Sanskrit!
(AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAHS-anna)
adho = downward mukha = face svana = dog
Step by Step
Come onto the floor on your hands and knees. Set your knees directly below your hips and your hands slightly forward of your shoulders. Spread your palms, index fingers parallel or slightly turned out, and turn your toes under.
Exhale and lift your knees away from the floor. At first keep the knees slightly bent and the heels lifted away from the floor. Lengthen your tailbone away from the back of your pelvis and press it lightly toward the pubis. Against this resistance, lift the sitting bones toward the ceiling, and from your inner ankles draw the inner legs up into the groins.
Then with an exhalation, push your top thighs back and stretch your heels onto or down toward the floor. Straighten your knees but be sure not to lock them. Firm the outer thighs and roll the upper thighs inward slightly. Narrow the front of the pelvis.
Firm the outer arms and press the bases of the index fingers actively into the floor. From these two points lift along your inner arms from the wrists to the tops of the shoulders. Firm your shoulder blades against your back, then widen them and draw them toward the tailbone. Keep the head between the upper arms; don't let it hang.
Adho Mukha Svanasana is one of the poses in the traditional Sun Salutation sequence. It's also an excellent yoga asana all on its own.
