I took a workshop once with a heart surgeon/ Yoga teacher who had the good fortune to find himself sitting on a plane next to Yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar. He thought deeply about formulating a proper question to Mr. Iyengar, not wanting to waste this golden opportunity. His question was "What is most important when practicing asana?" Iyengar's response was to balance all of the forces available to us in asana. If the hand is lifted toward the ceiling in a pose, for example, then part of us is working to open the hand, part of us working to close the hand into a fist, part of us is working to splay the fingers and part of us is working to glue all the fingers together. In perfect balance, none of these forces overpower any of the others. Gravity is a strong force to be reckoned with in poses. In a standing tree for example, the force of gravity is pressing down on the practitioner and the balanced effort is to create an equal and opposite lift from the foot up through the crown of the head. The same is true for the inversion, shoulderstand, but because we are upside down, the balanced effort is to create an equal and opposite line of energy from the shoulders, up through the instep of each foot, toward the ceiling. This concept works well with the idea of Resistance Stretching- the way most modern world class athletes now cultivate flexibility. Resistance stretching is where part of our effort is to actually prevent the stretch- more balancing of the forces- and the muscle or group of muscles are contracted as we stretch them. This way of stretching, as opposed to passive stretching, is now the preferred method because it reduces the possibility of injury through overstretching and it strengthens and stretches simultaneously. There is still a place for passive stretching in Yoga practice (Yin style), I just prefer to sprinkle it in judiciously for safety. We will be exploring resistance stretching all this week in the studio. Another physiological concept that is important to work with here as well is the balancing of forces in joints. Some of us have the ability to take a joint beyond 90 degrees- the hyper extension of a joint. There is disagreement in the Yoga world and the medical world about whether this is even a problem, but having suffered physical problems from both hyper extension of knees and elbows, I do see it as a problem and as a structural form that can be therapeutically corrected. When we hyper extend the elbow joint and put the bottom of the humerus bone in a different alignment, the top of that bone, that connects with the shoulder joint, will also be in a different alignment. Hyper extension of elbows often sets us up for shoulder injuries in the same way that hyper extension of knees throws the pelvis out of optimal alignment and can set us up for back problems. At the very least, hyper extension of elbows produces weak and/or flabby triceps (underside of upper arm) and hyper extension of knees produces weak and/or flabby quads (fronts of the thighs). If one is working on handstand, then strong triceps are a prerequisite in order to be able to bear the entire body weight on straight arms and strong quads are necessary in order to perform the donkey kick that lifts the legs into the handstand. If you are able to hyper extend, find some reason to get excited about changing the pattern.
As the mind thinks, so the body becomes.....this is a two way street. Often we find, that by changing a structural pattern in the body, that change is also created in the mind. Knees are associated with foundations in life, fear, security and prosperity issues- standing where we don't want to stand- and arms about the balance of giving and receiving. Arms are an extension of the heart- are we putting our heart out there and into it? Arms develop from the voice box of a fetus- arms are our voice in postures and in the world.
The balancing of the forces in the asana reminds us of balance in the larger sense for practice. We balance strength and flexibility, in breath and out breath, right side and left side, steadiness with comfort, relaxation with appropriate effort, structure with creativity, outer focus with inner focus and gross practices and subtle practices. In life, we strive to balance giving and receiving, doing and nondoing, work and play and material world growth and expansion with spiritual growth and expansion.
