Urdhva Dhanurasana Variations
Urdhva Dhanurasana translates as Upside Down Bow, some traditions call this Cakrasana, Full Wheel, and sometimes I have heard it called Bridge Pose. This posture works the muscles of the back of the body that are necessary for upright postural alignment. It also works the muscles of the shoulders and arms and the back of the legs. The entire front of the body, including the ribcage and front of the pelvic structure is opened by the pose. Areas to be careful of in the posture are the lower back and the shoulders. As with all of the postures you want to avoid unnecessary strain, while moving into the posture. If you open your body to where it can go in the pose you will get more from the pose than if you try and push to get farther into the pose that your body wants you to go.
posted by upsidedowncarl at 7/28/2007 12:30:00 AM
9 Comments:
Hi Carl,
I met you with my wife last week after your Wednesday class. This is a great site. Hopefully I am not asking redundant questions.
I am very curious about your foot position in this pose.
It looks to me as though there is an outward rotation to the hip.
I have seen this corrected many times with claims of better use of inner thigh muscles and low back safety.
Personally I feel a much greater demand on the thigh when using the block to reinforce this position.
Comments?
11:50 AM, September 11, 2007
You have left a question that is complicated to answer. I do know that a lot of yoga teachers correct rotations of the legs by foot angle. This is not always correcting the rotation of the leg. If you notice, I also have my feet a little wide. If you look at the version of Urdhva Dhanurasana in the post lableled Breathing in Urdhva Dhanurasana you will notice the same thing.
If you take a skeleton and look at the shape of the pelvic structure you will notice that the pelvic structure is angled towards the bottom like a bowl or a point. If you look at the hip joints, the joint where the femur, the thigh bone, meets the acetabulum, the hip joint, it is angled out, forward and down.
If your legs are closer together the pelvic structure is in the way of extension of the hip joint. So if your feet are closer together you have limited movement in the hip joint and forced more of the movement to come from the sacrum and the spine, usually the lumbar spine. This is not a positive or a negative thing really. It is just harder and, contrary to how it is normally presented in certain methods of "yoga alignment", this makes it possible to put more stress on weaker joints.
Of course, if you push to far, any alignment can be damaging, and if you go to where you should, any alignment can be useful for you.
Now if my feet are farther away from each other, this movement in the hip joint is actually abduction--NOT EXTERNAL ROTATION--and if my knees are farther away from each other they will be pointing a little out. If my knees are pointing a little out and my feet point out at that same angle this is NEUTRAL ROTATION and it causes there to be less stress on my knees, hip joints, sacrum and lower back. If I had my feet the width they are, which is a little over 12 inches apart, my feet will be turning out a little. If I had my feet 4, 5 or 6 inches apart then it would be a problem if my feet were pointing out.
The position with the feet closer is Harder. But harder is not better or worse, it is simply more challenging.
Sometimes you see people with their feet really wide and with that a lot of turnout and that can stress your knees. But it does not really do much, in itself, to your lower back or sacrum. Again, if you took any of these foot positions and then pushed yourself farther into the position than you can go, that would be a problem. But how I would think about different angles is that they are different angles.
The image I use for this is the exercise of curls in a gym. When you do a curl with a flat bar, your palms face straight up. With a curling bar your hands are at a slight angle to the ground while the palms face up. You could have the hands at that same angle with the palms facing down. You could use a hammer curl bar where your palms would face each other. The idea that one is the RIGHT way to do curls limits your ability to work at different angles. Our bodies do not work that way. Each different angle of the hands gives you a different angle on the targeted muscles to be worked. Now yoga postures work a little differently. You are not simply stretching or strengthening muscles. You are using your whole body and that effects every level of your system but, nevertheless, different angles are simply different angles.
And if your feet are more than 8 inches apart and you try to have your feet parallel to each other even though your knees are pointing slightly out, you will run the risk of damaging your knees because you will be putting a rotational force, a torque, on your knees. Your foot wants to be pointing in the same direction as your knees. Like in Warriors 1 & 2 you don't want the knee to be pointing forward and the foot to be turned in either direction; you don't want the foot to be pointing forward while the knee drifts in or out. You want them pointing in the same direction so that there is no torque on your knees while you are bearing weight through the joint.
And the torque on the knee can cause problems for the hip joint, the sacral joints and the lower back.
But this is a complicated issue and I don't really have time to cover it in more detail right now. And in truth I don't know if written word can do the trick with something like this. When I am working with someone, I can do a demonstration, let the person feel a variety of angles and then that person walks away knowing for themselves the angles that work best for them. And since we are so different there is no such thing as one size fits all. One person will do better with a wider stance in a posture and another will benefit more from a narrower stance.
You can try this at home with the shoulders on the ground (bridge). Have the feet together and the knees together. Press the inner thighs against each other and lift. Only lift the hips. Leave the arms on the floor, relaxed and the shoulders on the floor. Keep the knees together. Press the inner thighs together, perhaps put a piece of paper in between the legs and do not let the thighs move apart or the paper fall. See what the work is. See how it feels.
Now try almost the same thing with the feet 3 inches apart and the feet parallel to each other. Lift and you will notice you can lift a little higher. Don't let the knees drift apart though. They will want to. Nothing bad would happen if the feet move apart, you would simply miss the point of the exercise. Notice how this feels different than when the feet were together and you were keeping your knees and inner thighs together.
Now try the same thing with the feet 6 inches apart. Keep the knees 6 inches apart as well. Don't let them drift out. Lift only as high as you can while keeping the feet parallel and the knees 6 inches apart. See how this feels. Notice how it is different than either of the previous 2 versions.
Now try with your feet about 15 inches apart. Take note of the angle of the thighs as they are pointing a little out. Take note of the angle that the knee is pointing out which should be the same as the angle of the thigh. Have the foot pointing in the same direction. Lift up and notice how much higher you can lift. Feel how different this angle is. Feel how many different parts of the legs, hips and lower back are part of this. Notice it is easier, softer. But it feels good.
Now keep the feet this far apart and try to have the feet parallel to each other. You will notice that it feels bad to your knees, hips and lower back. This is because you are trying to turn your foot and your knee in different directions.
All of the other ones were useful. Which one to use depends on context; the reason the person is doing the work, the desired goal, the structure and needs of the person doing the work all play a part in the context of the work. Specific details of alignment cannot really be determined until you have the person who is going to practice and an understanding of their current needs and goals.
In the end you need to try different things and see how they feel. But it is interesting how something that works for one person might cause damage to another and vice versa. A lot of the times in yoga, different schools of alignment emphasize variations that worked for a certain person or body type as what everyone should do. I think this is a more beginner level of understanding. When you get deeper into the different schools of alignment that really know what they are doing, there is a deeper level of understanding that you might get to at a certain point.
One time I was in a room filled with yoga teachers and they were arguing about which pose is safer for your knees between Warrior 1 and a lunge which is similar to Warrior 1, but the back heel is off the ground as you turn your body forward. There was a group of people with one kind of knee injury who insisted that since Warrior 1 did not hurt their knee and the lunge did that Warrior 1 must be the safer position for everyone. The other group of teachers was saying basically the same thing in reverse. The lunge did not hurt their knees but Warrior 1 did so the lunge had to be the one that was be safer for everyone.
Obviously the problem was in trying to universalize something that was not universal but was instead specific. If you take the information in context, Warrior 1 was better for one set of practitioners with one specific thing going on with their knees, and the lunge was better for the other set of practitioners with something else going on with their knees.
The alignment of a posture needs to be adapted to the current needs of the practitioner.
In the end practice is about your own experience not what someone else tells you is right. If your body does not like a particular variation there might be a reason. It is worth exploring and understanding that. So if the variation with the block and trying to force yourself into a position that your body is telling you is not quite right for you, does not feel quite right for you, it might be worth listening to.
Peace.
1:29 PM, September 11, 2007
I realize that in my comment someone might get the idea that there might be something wrong with external rotation of the hip joint while doing a back bend simply because I stated rather strongly that my hips are not externally rotating but abducting instead. If I was externally rotating the inner edges of my feet would start coming off the ground. I will give an example of a back bend with external rotation that shows that this can be done safely.
If you took Supta Baddha Konasana (lying on your back with your feet together and your knees out in a butterfly like position), and combined it with a restorative bridge pose (the hips on a block or bolster with the feet on the ground) you would have a position where your hips were up off the ground with your knees out and the feet together with the outer edges of your feet on the floor. The rotation that makes the outer edges of the feet come to the ground, instead of the sole of the foot, is external rotation. The knees moving away from each other is still abduction though, so there is abduction and external rotation in this position.
If you try this posture it might feel really nice. Now how far one should go into the back bending aspect of the posture is dependent on the person's needs but as long as you don't go too far into the back bend for your own body and as long as you don't try and force your feet to be closer to your groin than is right for your body, you will be safe and it will be useful for you.
Another posture to consider: Prasarita Padottanasana, (the forward bend where your feet are spread apart, like Upavishta Konasana but standing): if you go into a back bend before going into the posture or after coming up, it kind of feels pretty good, especially to your pelvic structure and in this position your feet are pretty far apart.
Try these things and see what and see what they feel like. Then let me know what you think about abduction and/or external rotation with spinal hyperflexion (Back Bending).
Peace.
1:56 PM, September 12, 2007
Hi Carl,
I am new to blogging and just found your reply now, thank you.
I do understand what you are talking about and the concept of abduction vs rotation. I have also experimented with the sensation in the various positions as you mentioned though I am sure going back to it will be helpful.
I guess my real question comes back to something you said when I was in your class during upward dog. About using the legs to protect the back in backbends. As I see it, rectus femoris would exaggerate/ sharpen a lumbar curve, whereas the hamstrings would assist in lengthen ing it. But abductors/adductors and rotators? How do these influence back safety?
And what is the safety we are looking for? Preventing the facets from overcompressing? Or the discs? Or is it something else? I get these same questions coming to me in camel pose and other backbends.
Also how do we distinguish between what feels good at the time but has longer term negative implications that are harder to perceive, a style one of my teachers referred to as "unga bunga" yoga.
Perhaps my questions are more a searching to understand proper biomechanics and reflect a need for more education there.
I look forward to your thoughts.
4:15 PM, September 28, 2007
Hey Iceyoga, (I cannot remember your real name but I do remember talking to you after my class at Yoga Sutra).
I am putting together a reply but shoot me an e-mail at this address UpSideDownCarl so we can be in contact that way as well or feel free to find my phone # on my contact info and call me.
A lot of what you are asking is better sorted out in person where we could look at a skeleton, an anatomy book, try things with your body and have you feel different things. By doing things that way we would be able to cover far more in a few minutes than months of written word would ever be able to cover. In spite of this I will do my best to give you some cohesive answers in writing since I know you are not in NYC right now.
Peace.
10:23 PM, September 28, 2007
This is not a positive or a negative thing really. It is just harder and, contrary to how it is normally presented in certain methods of "yoga alignment", this makes it possible to put more stress on weaker joints.
lifestyle
3:35 AM, April 13, 2010
This is not a positive or a negative thing really. It is just harder and, contrary to how it is normally presented in certain methods of "yoga alignment", this makes it possible to put more stress on weaker joints.
Women's Health
1:09 AM, April 16, 2010
Emily Scott left this message:
emilyscott has left a new comment on your post "Urdhva Dhanurasana Variations":
This is not a positive or a negative thing really. It is just harder and, contrary to how it is normally presented in certain methods of "yoga alignment", this makes it possible to put more stress on weaker joints.
Women's Health
==
My statement is, try it and see. It is actually not harder on most people's joints. It really depends on the person's body, but for most people, the feet a little wider and a little turned out is easier. I think I already explained this above. But try it. Test it for yourself.
The reason the feet parallel position is usually taught is not that it is safer or easier or better. Even though the rhetoric is that it is safer. The original reason Krishnamacharya used this variation for children who were flexible was to make the work harder. He used to have them put a piece of paper in between their legs and make them try and hold it when they were really flexible and he wanted to make them work really hard. Try that too.
Try the things I asked Iceyoga to do and see how they feel. Then you can understand how this stuff feels in your body for yourself. Without having felt all the variations I suggest you will be formulating an opinion with limited information.
11:55 AM, April 16, 2010
The original reason Krishnamacharya used this variation for children who were flexible was to make the work harder.
Cool Life
4:47 AM, April 22, 2010
Post a Comment
<< Home