Thursday, September 09, 2010

Another Up-Side-Down Inversion Workshop

I am going to be teaching another one of these inversion workshops at Finding Sukha Yoga School on Sunday September 19th. It should be a lot of fun. The details are below.

Up-side-Down: Inversion Workshop taught by Carl Horowitz.

Finding Sukha Yoga School
638 East 6th Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY - 917-499-5262
http://www.findingsukha.com

Sunday, September 19 1:30pm- 3:30pm
$20 pre-registration $25 day of workshop

Join us Saturday, June 12 at 5:30pm. This 2 hour workshop is a practice focused on strengthening and lengthening the core for inversions. Headstand, forearm stand and handstand require strength and the ability to lengthen from a powerful core in order to balance over a stable base. This workshop will explore ways of developing these qualities to enhance a feeling of float in jumps and steadiness and control in a number of inverted variations.

Carl Horowitz is a New York City yoga teacher who is most interested in revealing effective ways for individuals to personalize their practice. His work is influenced by the teaching of T. Krishnamacharya and his son T. K. V. Desikachar. It is based on the principle that there is an appropriate yoga practice for everyone and, in order to achieve the best results, this practice must be adapted continually to suit the individual'ss changing needs.

Carl performed for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for two years and has a wealth of knowledge on how to access the full potential of your body's ability to move. In his work he also draws on his knowledge of anatomy, movement theory and therapeutic applications of movement.

This practice is recommended for anyone who wants to improve their ability to perform inversions.

Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Upside Down - An Inversion Workshop

Coming up on Saturday June 12th I am teaching an inversion workshop. If you are interested the information is below. I am excited about it and it should be a lot of fun.

Carl Horowitz
917.301.1616
http://www.yogascope.com
upsidedowncarl@yogascope.com

http://www.findingsukha.com/Workshops.html

Upside Down - An Inversion Workshop
Saturday June 12th,
$25, 5:30-7:30pm
with Carl Horowitz

@ Finding Sukha Yoga School
638 East 6th Street 3rd Floor
917-499-5262
info@findingsukha.com

A practice focused on strengthening and lengthening the core for inversions. Headstand, forearm stand and handstand require strength and the ability to lengthen from a powerful core in order to balance over a stable base. This workshop will explore ways of developing these qualities to enhance a feeling of float in jumps and steadiness and control in a number of inverted variations. This practice is recommended for anyone who wants to improve their ability to perform inversions.


Carl Horowitz is a New York City yoga teacher who is most interested in revealing effective ways for individuals to personalize their practice. His work is influenced by the teaching of T. Krishnamacharya and his son T. K. V. Desikachar. It is based on the principle that there is an appropriate yoga practice for everyone and, in order to achieve the best results, this practice must be adapted continually to suit the individual’s changing needs.

Carl performed for Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus for two years and has a wealth of knowledge on how to access the full potential of your body’s ability to move. In his work he also draws on his knowledge of anatomy, movement theory and therapeutic applications of movement.

Friday, May 07, 2010

The YogaScope Kaleidoscope Back

So I am sorry it has been so long since I have been able to post to the YogaScope Kaleidoscope but it has sort of been out of commission. There are some people who tried to post comments and those comments actually never came through even though I was sent a copy of the comments. I believe you should be able to post comments again now. Since I don't really know how to deal with the kind of technical issues that were preventing my blog from publishing I was unable to fix them. But it looks like it is working now.

upsidedowncarl@yogascope.com

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

This blog has moved

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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Another Quote from Ram Das, Paths to God

I like this quote. There is a lot in here:

Now, in a way, purification I s a hype. You take your body, just as it is, and your mind, just as it is, and your feelings, just as they are—and right here, in this very place, lies the Brahman, the enlightened state. It’s right here! It’s not there or then, it’s not in India or Tibet, it’s not being kept secret by “him” or “her,” it’s not in this book or in that book. It’s right here, and you are it—right now.

Okay, so then what’s the point of purification? What, in fact, is the point of any of these practices if we already are the Brahman? They’re to get rid of whatever in us prevents us from really knowing who we are at this moment. See, from a practical point of view, we’re faced with an interesting paradox. At one level of our intellectual understanding we know that we already have all the riches—we know that we are the atman, that we are the Buddha, that we are free. We know all that. But if we look inside, we’ll notice that although we know it, we somehow don’t believe it. And that’s what all the purification methods are about: getting us from where we seem to think we still are, to where we don’t think we’re anywhere anymore. Hence we have all these practices, like karma yoga and jnana yoga, like sacrifice and mantra, like renunciation and purification. All of them, by one route or another, are designed to get around that roadblock between our knowing and our believing.

P 128 Ram Das, Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita

Monday, July 27, 2009

Quote from Ram Das, Paths to God: Living The Bhagavad Gita

This is a great quote from Paths to God: Living The Bhagavad Gita by Ram Das

Those of you who have been in human relationships where real love was present recognize experiences in which the well-being of your beloved was more important than your own. You’d offer your own discomfort to ensure their well-being. If you can extrapolate from that experience to a time (called the Satya Yuga) when everybody makes that kind of offering in relation to everybody and everything else, you’ll have a taste of what it is like to live in the Spirit. (P. 111 Ram Das Paths to God.)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Bujangasana, Cobra Pose Variation for Lower Back Strengthening

This gentle but strong movement can be really useful for the strength and health of your lower back.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Urdhva Prasarita Padasana

This is a gentle movement with the breath. It is interesting how repetitive movements like this, where you are linking the movement with the breath really do far more than you might realize just by looking at it. One of the secrets to a movement like this is that the movement is really synched up with the breath in a way where the breath starts first and the breath finishes after the movement so that the breath envelops the movement. That takes a lot of concentration. Another aspect of this is the way in which you are breathing. If you are inhaling into the chest first while keeping the lower part of the abdomen gently pulled inward a little, the breath while help your body move and cause the movement to be initiated by the breath and the core. This will actually help you improve your movement mechanics in ways that you would not even expect. My experience has been that, as a result of doing movements like this where I am focused on simple, clean movement mechanics and connecting the movements with the breath, it makes it much easier for me to to do many of those more complex looking movements like the floats, because movements like these teach your body how to move with control. These seemingly simple movements are truly well worth taking the time to work on.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Turning Downdog Split Upside Down into Full Wheel

This is a video that shows two versions of turning Downward Facing Dog over. In the first version I go part way over and do not take both hands to the floor. In this pose the outer edge of one foot stays on the ground as that leg stays long and straight with the foot turned out to help lift the hips. Sometimes when people turn the pose part way over and leave that top hand off the ground they still turn their feet parallel to each other and are in a pose that is a lot like Four Legged Table, Chatur Padapitam. The pose where the leg stays turned out with the leg straight and the outer edge of the foot on the floor is much more powerful than if you turn the feet parallel to each other and have the soles of the feet on the floor without taking both hands to the floor. The second variation shows turning the pose all the way over into Full Wheel, Urdhva Dhanurasana (Which literally translates as upside down bow). In this variation you can see how the first variation, as an intermediate step is part of the process of turning the pose all the way over

Sunday, March 08, 2009

Jumping Through to Sitting Broken Down in Stages

This video breaks down the process of jumping forward through the hands to sitting. It gives a few techniques to work on that would help you develop the ability to jump through the hands to sitting incrementally, safely, intelligently. I don't think the end result is really the issue. I think the work you get during the process of trying while keeping yourself safe, is the actual thing you are looking for. The work in something like this should be fun and enjoyable. If it is not, there are other things that would be more beneficial.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Jumping Forward into Crow Broken Down in Stages

This is a video that breaks down the process of jumping forward into Crow Pose into a few stages giving the practitioner a few techniques to practice that would help develop the skill of floating forward and placing the knees on the arms. I have seen people teach how to jump so that you stay low and aim the knees at the arms and get them to land. In my opinion it would be more valuable to work on developing the skill of holding your weight, balanced over the arms, floating, hovering above the arms, and placing the knees softly onto the arms with control. Even if you never are able to do this, I think it would be more valuable to work on the techniques that would help you develop that core strength than to learn how to simply jump the knees at the arms.

Friday, March 06, 2009

The Philosophy is in the Practice

It is always interesting to me how the philosophy is really contained in the practice but then, being human, and having a brain that wants things to be one way, easy to understand, we end up trying to rigidify practice into sets of rules about right and wrong when really practice and reality are about experience and being conscious, connected, aware and letting things flow, not grasping onto things and trying to make them concrete when they are really transparent...liquid. But that bipolar manner in which our mind works, wanting things to fit into simple categories, good-bad, right-wrong, up-down, hot-cold, we only think these things are real but they are perspectives, they are relative terms.

One of the ways I try and explain this has to do with the Hot Yoga Center I teach at. You walk into the lobby of the Hot Yoga Center from outside and invariably it feels hot in the lobby. You change and walk into the practice studio and it feels hot. When you are done practicing you walk out of the practice space and into the lobby and the lobby feels cold. Now the temperature of the lobby has not changed. So is the lobby hot or cold? The obvious answer is that it depends on your perspective which depends on how you are looking at it and where you are coming from. Which means that hot and cold are not absolute terms but relative ones.

So with a lot of styles of practice which settle on one specific way of doing certain things, my experience is that if you stay within that style and go deep, the style will work. The versions of things that have been chosen for you will be beneficial and useful and have their applications. Often, the style will have a reason for the choices that have been made and they will help you go deeper. And interestingly, even when the style does not seem to have much reason, or such intelligent reasons, for the choices that have been made, the style still often does something useful.

However, if you are serious about practice and if you do go deep enough you should get to a point where the limits imposed by the style or any style are holding you back rather than helping you. Ultimately all styles are there to be transcended. So you use them while they are useful and then leave them when you have entered that territory of your own authentic journey, whether that journey is within asana practice or the deeper aspects of practice. Ultimately these two categories (asana and deeper aspects) are not really separate.

So the idea I am getting at is that when one style does things one way, and another style does the same things a different way, a lot of the times, people want to understand things as right and wrong: which style is right? Which one is better? And a lot of the time when you have different styles or systems that have made different choices, a better question to ask is: What does each variation do? What is each system emphasizing? What are the benefits to these different techniques and methods?

When you do this and try and examine things in this manner of openness and exploration (rather than judging and choosing), you can understand the application of different techniques and methods and the ways in which they are beneficial without being stuck or attached to a particular method.

And in the end, practice is about freedom. The freedom you obtain in your body with asana is only a metaphor to help you try to find freedom in other aspects of your life. Although, having a body that moves in a variety of ways and is flexible and healthy is also beneficial in itself.

If your physical practice, your seated practices and your in everyday life awareness practices are open and not stuck on right and wrong, if you use your time during practice to open to the experience within which you are currently immersed, interesting shifts and transformations will unfold. Really, they are unfolding whether we realize it or not. But if the process is about awareness, more consciousness, cultivating that deepened awareness, we may see more of what is actually unfolding. And there is so much in each moment that it is worth making practice about initiating that process of cultivating consciousness. But with a soft touch and an open heart; trying to be present without being judgmental: of yourself, of others.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

A Quote from A Path With Heart

I like this quote. It points to the idea that we can use other peoples teachings and techniques, we can learn from someone else's process but in the end we need to do the work for ourselves, to feel and experience things for ourselves.

This is from A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield p. 158.

Initially, in our enthusiasm for our practice, we tend to take everything we hear or read as the gospel truth. This attitude often becomes even stronger when we join a community, follow a teacher, undertake a disciple. Yet all of the teachings of books, maps, and beliefs have little to do with wisdom or compassion. At best they are a signpost, a finger pointing at the moon, or the leftover dialogue from a time when someone received some true spiritual nourishment. To make spiritual practice come alive, we must discover within ourselves our own way to become conscious, to live a life of the spirit.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Jumping Back from Sitting Broken Down in Stages

This video shows the process of jumping back. It is broken down into a few stages that would help you develop the ability to jump back from sitting.

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Yoga Sequence for the Core

This is a little sequence of yoga postures done for core strength. Because of the way you are balancing in these postures they cause the deep muscles of your abdomen and the deep muscles of your spine to work together in a way that is very useful in strengthening the muscles of postural alignment for the health of your spine and lower back. The central technique that would make these postures more effective at getting the core to work is using the breath so that the exhale causes you to scoop your belly inward hollowing out your abdomen while trying to keep the chest expanded, and on the inhale using the breath so that the lower part of the abdomen continues to stay scooped inward as you fill the chest and ribcage. Even without these exercises, if you use this breath technique you will work your core in a useful way. If you add that breath technique to these postures, it will make the work you do in the postures far more powerful. As with all practice, the postures should be adapted to the actual needs and abilities of the practitioner for them to be useful and effective.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Jumping Back from Crow Broken Down in Stages

This is a short and simple video that shows what I feel are the stages for jumping back from Crow Pose, Bakasana. The central issue in the process is the upper bodies weight shifting forward as the legs move first up and then back. The reason you want the upper body to shift forward is so that the weight stays centered over the hands: as the legs move back the upper body moves forward to counterbalance the weight of the legs.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Side Plank: Vashistasana Variations Working the Core

This is a video that goes through a few variations for Side Plank Pose, Vashistasana. This is a great pose because it can be done in so many ways so there is bound to be a variation that works for you. And because you are holding your body at a lateral angle it causes the deep muscles of the abdomen and spine--what I would refer to as the core, the muscles that control posture and are closest to our center of gravity--to work at a unique angle.

New Titibhasana Photo

Somehow I always make some sort of intense face with this pose. I think that is me smiling. :) Nah, just kidding. But I like this photo. I should have another group of videos ready to post in the next few hours.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Eka Pada Koundinyasana II to Ashtavakrasana: Moving with Control: Floating

These hand balances are not really that hard but they are fun and they link together very nicely. Eka Pada Koundinyasana II opens the pelvic structure towards a split while you are balancing on your hands. Ashtavakrasana is a rotation where your spine and hips are turning while balancing on the hands. Each pose separately feels pretty good and when you link them together it adds an extra element of balance as you float from one pose to the next and then back through the vinyasa.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Moving Reclining Twist Releasing Tension from Neck, Shoulders, Hips and Lower Back

Jathara Parivrrti is the Sanskrit name for the pose. This video shows a moving or dynamic version of a reclining twist. It is interesting how much moving into and out of the pose does to release tension and get you ready before holding the pose. If you just go straight into the pose and hold, the body will not release anywhere near as much tension. This rotation really does great things, especially for the lower back and hips but also for the neck shoulders and the whole spine. I am always amazed at how useful and effective some of these simpler movements are for the health of our bodies.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Titibhasana, Firefly: Hand Balancing and Float Through Vinyasa

This is a video of me doing Titibhasana, Firefly pose. You can see decent form in the hand balance and then float through the vinyasa.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Chakravakasana: Releasing Tension from the Neck, Shoulders, Upper Back, Mid Back, Lower Back, HIps and Knees

These movements are often called Cat/Cow. I like the name Desikachar uses for the movement a little better. Chakravakasana refers to a mythical bird that is puffing up its chest. I think this gets at the essence of the back bend better than the image of a rickety cow whose back is swayed so that its belly is falling towards the floor. Instead, if you think of the expansion of the chest and keep the neck and lower back long, using the core strength to stabilize those areas, ultimately you are going to be better off.

When done in a way that is useful to the practitioner, this pose can release tension from the neck, shoulders, upper back, mid back, lower back, hips and knees. Not too shabby for a movement that is so easy and simple.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

A Series Sun Salutation

I made a new version of A Series and this one is different enough that I figured I would put this in as a new post but I am pulling the old post so there is only one A Series Sun Salutation video.

In this video one of the things to take note of is the quality of the movement from one pose to the next. There is a quality of relaxedness and strength, fluidity and control without any of the movements being rushed. The movements are all coordinated with the breathing. The breath is full, deep, even and relaxed.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

B Series Sun Salutation with Handstand Slipped In

So this is simply a B Series Sun Salutation, Surya Namaskar B, with a Handstand slipped into the sequence.

Hugging One Knee In At A Time: Releasing Tension From Hips and Lower Back

This is a video of a gentle Vinyasa that is deceptively effective. I find it interesting how these simple repetitive movements are much more powerful than one might think from simply watching. Because you are moving in a relaxed and controlled manner they remove tension from your joints in an extremely effective way. This movement actually helps to relax and release tension from the neck, shoulders and upper back while expanding the chest and ribcage, and it also removes tension from the knees, hips and lower back.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Balancing Half Moon and Bird of Paradise in Sequence

This is a sequence with Balancing Half Moon and Bird of Paradise. One of the nice things in this sequence is seeing a way of coming into Ardha Chandrasana slowly--balancing and floating your way into the pose.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

B Series Sun Salutation

So I think I am getting the hang of the editing side of this process better and better each time. This is a B Series Sun Salutation. Things to note about this video: It is a little longer than the others. I think it is worth showing good form in a B Series Sun Salutation. The movement is slow, not rushed. I am moving with my breath. The movements are powerful but not forceful. They are relaxed. And my head, neck and upper back alignment is always really good. My neck is never tightening up, particularly on the back bends where I am looking up. So I am not creating unwanted stress in those important areas while I am moving. I guess the last thing is that my alignment in each of the poses is pretty solid and part of that is due to the fact that my alignment while I am moving is pretty good. It is really important to have good alignment while moving from one pose to the next. That is really one of the keys to arriving in a pose with good alignment. I hope you enjoy this.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Bakasana, Crow Pose, Floating Into and Out of Pose Slowly

The idea with this video clip is to see how jumping, or really floating, into and out of crow pose can be done slowly with control if you keep your weight over your hands so that you can stay balanced for as long as possible in the float.

In my commentary on this video I was trying to get across the idea that while the jumps are slow, the tape is at regular speed. I had a friend suggest that I do a video where I slow motion the video so you can really see the jumps. And what I decided to do instead was to make this video where I was doing the jumps and going very slowly so that you can see how the jumps can actually be about floating, slowly, rather than being about jumping.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Handstand, Getting The Hips Over The Hands First

I am posting this version of handstand so that I can show a little more clearly the process of getting the hips over the hands first before trying to come the rest of the way up to balance. In this footage, when I jumped, I let my right leg lag behind and waited until my hips were centered over my hands before trying to bring that right leg up. But it is also worth noting that, when I jump, I am not trying to get the left leg over my hands either. I am just focused on getting my hips over my hands. Once that happens the balance falls into place and the legs come up in a nice controlled manner.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Handstand: Two Variations on Getting Up

This is a video in which I demonstrate two variations on how to get up into handstand. The first variation is kicking up with one leg. Often when people kick up with one leg they try to get the foot over the hands. If instead you focus on getting the hips over the hands it causes the feet to follow and you get up there much more easily and you start getting your balance much more quickly as a result. The second variation that I show is coming up with both legs at the same time. With this one also, if you focus on getting the hips over the shoulders then you can start working on those subtle balance adjustments that get you the rest of the way up with a sense of control.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Video of a Moving Bridge Variation that Will Help Release Tension from the Neck, Shoulders and Lower Back

This simple, gentle variation of Dvi Pada Pitam (Moving Bridge) will help release tension from the neck, shoulders and lower back. It is interesting how powerful and effective simple things like this can be.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Photos of What I did for the Circus

I figured I would put a few photos of what I used to do on inline skates (rollerblades) on here so you guys could see the type of stuff that I used to do with the circus.

These first two are dropping in to the ramp. These are called vert ramps because the top of the ramp is a vertical surface. That platform I am standing on is 12 feet above the ground.




These next two are in Miami Beach, Florida.


Sometimes people ask me if the palm tree behind me is real. Yes it is. The photographer, John Twomey, is just good at what he does and he got an angle where I was centered in front of the palm tree. Towards the bottom left of the photo you can see the top of the ramp.


This last one is in New York at a competition that was held at Chelsea Piers. I like this because you can see the background and get a perspective of where I am in relationship to the ground. This photo is on my bio page next to a photo of me in Scorpion.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Yoga Photo Slide Show

So I have now figured out enough about how to play with video to edit something like this and to put it on the web. This video is really just me taking many of those same photos that have been on the blog in other places and editing them into a short slide show. But now that I know how to do this kind of thing I am hopefully going to be taking some actual footage of me practicing and perhaps even, me teaching and turning them into some useful videos. If you click on the box that has a box inside it you will get a full screen view of it. This video can also be found on YouTube. Here is the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X84RSyOQA-U

Sunday, January 11, 2009

A Tiny Little Blurb in Time Out New York

If you follow this link of me teaching it will bring you to a photo and this tiny little blurb about my teaching. It is towards the bottom of the page. It is also in the current issue of Time Out New York (January 8-14 2009).

You will have to follow the link to see the photo but this is what the blurb says:

==

New York Yoga

Vinyasa All Levels class
Photo: Beth Levendis
Vinyasa All Levels class
(1629 York Ave at 86th St; 212-717-YOGA,newyorkyoga.com. $23 plus $2 mat rental.)
So this is what yoga is all about! Yogi Carl is as calming as he is motivating, and hands-on pointers made me feel (literally) centered. His method is “mindful”—don’t overdo it and aim for balance (what you do on one side, do on the other).

==

I think I got called "Yogi". That makes me laugh.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Photos of teaching in teacher training

These photos were taken by students in various teacher training sessions. I thought it might be fun to post them and have people see me teaching in this capacity.




Friday, January 09, 2009

Happy New Year 2009

I almost typed in 3009 by accident. I don't want things to go that fast. My how time flies. I hope everyone has a happy new year.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Some More Photos

Again, no commentary. :) UpSideDown



















Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Random Photos

It has been a long time since I have posted anything and I felt like just posting some photos without any commentary. Here we go.









Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Art of Living: Finding Your Passion

Below is a description of a two part seminar being taught by Jeffrey Rubin. He is really worth checking out. He is doing something that I think is what Yoga is really about. He is using tools from psychotherapy, meditation and yoga practice to help people make their whole life better. To me that sounds like what yoga is fundamentally supposed to be about.

Peace, UpSideDown

==

The Art of Living: Finding Your Passion

Creating a rich and fulfilling life starts with passion—the compelling excitement you feel when doing something you love, which is a doorway into what you value. When you pursue your passions, you discover meaning and purpose and feel alive and vibrant. Explore how to pinpoint your passion with Dr. Jeffrey B. Rubin through lecture, dialogue and experiential exercises drawn from the Eastern yogic and meditative and western psychotherapeutic traditions. Attendance at both sessions is strongly recommended, as second session builds upon the first.

2 times on Tuesdays
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Mar 18 - Mar 25
$30.00 - Member
$40.00 - Non-Member
ACFPAS00W8
Location: The JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St. (Program room assignments will be available at the JCC Customer Service Desk, in the lobby of the Samuel Priest Rose Building.)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Releasing Tension from the Hips, Pelvic Structure and Back While Strengthening the Core and the Back Muscles to Help Reduce Back Pain

These Posts taken together could be turned into an endless number of practices to help the health of your spine. Learning to reduce tension from your hips to your spine, from your pelvic structure to your spine and from the back of the legs to your spine is very beneficial. Learning to strengthen your core is also extremely important to the health of your back. And learning to strengthen your back muscles safely and effectively can also be extremely useful. Taken together to make your spine and the back of your body stronger, more capable of holding itself in good alignment and free of unwanted tension would be a good part of helping to eliminate back pain for a large percentage of people.


The First Principle of Therapeutic Yoga

SthiraSukham Asanam: The Postures Should Be Strong and Soft

Reclining Hip Opening Postures to Reduce Stress in the Outer Hips and Lower Back

Cow Faced Pose: Gomukhasana: A Seated Hip Opening Pose to Reduce Tension in the Outer Hip and Lower Back

Ankle to Knee Pose: A Seated Hip Opening Pose to Stretch from the Outer Hip into the Lower Back

Postures To Reduce Stress in the Pelvic Structure and Spine to Help Relieve Back Pain

More Angles on Opening from the Pelvic Structure to the Spine to help Reduce Back Pain

Bharadvajasana, A Twist that Opens Your Hips and Releases Tension in Your Neck and Shoulders As Well

Janusirsasana: Asymmetrical Opening from the Hips and Pelvic Structure into the Spine Reducing Tension and Improving Health of Lower Back

Parivrtti Janusirsasna: Opening From the Outer Hip into the Side of the Body Reducing Tension in Lower Back

Marichyansana A; Another Angle on Opening from the Hips to the Lower Back to Reduce Tension

Forward Bends: Uttanasana and Pascimottanasana: Stretching the Lower Back to Release Tension

Four Back Bends: Strengthening the Lower Back: The Difference Between Cobra Pose and Upward Facing Dog

Reclining Core Strengthening Twist

More Core Strengthening Postures for Improved Postural Alignment and the Health of Your Spine

Core Strengthening with Pelvic Opening

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

More Angles on Opening from the Pelvic Structure to the Spine to help Reduce Back Pain

Here are some more angles on opening from the pelvic structure into the spine. The more angles you can give your body the better in the end. When done in a manner that is appropriate for the individual, reducing tension from the pelvic structure into the spine can help reduce stress and pain in either or both areas.



I am amazed that I could not find an image of myself in Baddha Konasana of all the poses. But this is a nice photo of Erin Wilson in a gentle version of the posture.





Saturday, February 09, 2008

Ashtavakrasana: A Hand Balancing Pose That Works and Opens the Pelvic Structure and Mildly Rotates the Spine

Here is a photo of a pose where you are working the muscles of the pelvic structure while opening them at the same time. You are also rotating your spine while balancing on your hands. As with all the poses the key is that there should be an element of effortlessness while performing the pose. You are working fairly strongly but you are not overworking and it should look like you are not working hard at all.

Friday, February 08, 2008

Postures To Reduce Stress in the Pelvic Structure and Spine to Help Relieve Back Pain

These photos show a few angles on opening from the pelvic structure into the spine. This kind of work would reduce tension in those areas and could help relieve certain kinds of back pain if done in a away that is right for the person practicing. How far you go is not the important part of the posture. What is important is that the poses are releasing stress, rather than being done in an aggressive manner that could create more stress. What you would be looking for in the poses is to feel opening and a release of tension in the inner thighs, the back of the legs, the pelvic structure and the entire back of the torso (lower back, mid back, upper back and even the back of the neck). It is also interesting how effective the bent kneed variations are at helping reduce stress in the pelvic structure and spine.












Friday, February 01, 2008

MEDITATION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: PARTNERS IN HEALING with Jeffrey Rubin, Ph.D.

This is some information about a seminar that is going to be held this Sunday. Jeffrey Rubin is someone worth checking out. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the fields of Psychotherapy, Insight Meditation and Yoga. And the way he combines techniques is really groundbreaking. There is a lot that you will take away from what he has to offer. This work will deepen your practice and give you tools to help make other aspects of your life more fulfilling and more of what you want them to be.

Here is a link to some of the kinds of workshops he offers: http://www.drjeffreyrubin.com/workshops.htm

Here is a link to his published works: http://www.drjeffreyrubin.com/publications.htm

UpSideDownCarl

==

MEDITATION AND PSYCHOTHERAPY:
PARTNERS IN HEALING
Jeffrey Rubin, Ph.D.
Sunday, February 3, 1-4:30pm
Fee: $25
Meditation and Psychotherapy each offer unique and wonderful tools for self-transformation. Meditation provides indispensable strategies for quieting and focusing the mind and cultivating deep concentration, equanimity and compassion. Psychotherapy offers incomparable techniques for detecting self-deception and discovering those hidden forces that sabotage our efforts to change.
Through a combination of lecture, dialogue and experiential practices drawn from the yogic, psychotherapeutic and meditative traditions, we will explore the way meditative and psychotherapeutic traditions can enrich each other. Topics to be addressed will include: cultivating and deepening whole-hearteded therapeutic presence, integrating meditative attentiveness and psychoanalytic understanding of unconscious communication, and integrating meditation and psychotherapy in clinical practice.

New York Insight Meditation Center - to register, see link below.
http://www.nyimc.org/index6.htm

Monday, January 28, 2008

Breath Anatomy for Asana, Pranayama and Meditation

Coming up on Saturday, February 23rd is the first part of a three part workshop that I am doing for Yoga Sutra's School of Yogic Studies. Here is the title of the workshop with dates and times for all three parts:

Breath Anatomy for Asana, Pranayama and Meditation
with Carl Horowitz


Three Saturday Intensives:
Part 1 The Diaphragm: Feb 23, 5:30-8:30pm
Part 2: Accessory Muscles and Efficiency: March 15, 5:30-8:30pm
Part 3: Breath and the Bandhas: May 31, 5:30-8:30pm

Here is a link to more information about the workshops: http://www.yogasutranyc.com/yogicstudies.php

My workshop is the first one listed on that page as of now (1/28/08--this page gets updated to reflect upcoming workshops so some time after the date of the last one it will be changed). The work we will be doing in these seminars will be fairly powerful. We will be looking at the main anatomical features of breathing, exploring how the postures and movement both affect the breathing process and how you can use the breathing process to deepen your experience in the postures. We will also look at ways of making your breathing more efficient.

In the first session we will look at the diaphragm's major role in breathing.

In the second session we will look at the accessory muscles and how to use this deeper understanding of the breathing mechanism to help create more efficiency in the breathing process.

In the third session we will explore how the breath and the bandhas are interrelated, how understanding the breathing process can deepen your ability to use the bandhas effectively, which will deepen the power and effectiveness of your practice.

I am excited about teaching these sessions. This is really powerful material and the way it is organized should make it a really fun and deep learning experience for any level practitioner.

Friday, January 18, 2008

Gentle Yoga at Yoga Sutra Coming in February 2008

So I am going to be teaching a Gentle Yoga class at Yoga Sutra NYC starting in February. The first class will be Monday February 4th and it will be every Monday from 10:30AM-12:00PM.

There is something very beneficial about dropping back a few notches in intensity and seeing what is going on inside. In this kind of gentle approach where the emphasis is on an internal process of listening, the kind of shifts you can make in your system are pretty profound and it is also interesting how much of those shifts and that deeper awareness you are able to bring back into your practice if and when you step things up a notch or two. Some of the deepest work I do is also some of the subtlest, but that subtle work is definitely a huge part of why I am able to do some of the more complex or physically challenging asana practice I am able to do. The more detailed work carries over into the bigger movements because you body absorbs it and your form improves, your mechanics improve, your body knows what is doing better, and that all translates into an internal process that is empowering and healing.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Another Year Appears to Be Winding Down Rather Quickly: Happy Holidays

Okay, it has been months since I posted anything. I have found a whole new category of busy. Things are good though. I guess all I really have to say is that I hope everyone has a happy holiday season and that your practice continues to help you connect internally with what is most important in your life.

Monday, September 10, 2007

The Connection Between the External Form of Pose and the Benefits the Posture Creates

Lauren Cahn asked another great question and it took me a while to get to it but now, here it is.

UpSideDown

======


YC Said: Thank you so much!! Now I have something interesting to explore in my next practice!

Oh! And now I have a follow-up sort-of question. Maybe you could write a post about this: the external expression of a pose, like what you see in a photo or in the mirror, versus the actual action of a pose that you feel in your boy. Discuss.

Thanks!

My reply: Excellent. It is always nice to have new things to explore which is ultimately where practice leads us. And as usual your questions and inquiries are deep and there is more than meets the eye to them.

The complicated thing about form is that there are several issues at stake here. In any pose there are a variety of ways of doing a posture that will be useful to a practitioner. Different angles cause you to work or open different areas of the body. So any one person can do several different variations of any posture. An easy example is that a standing forward bend can be done with the hands holding the elbows and the arms hanging, the legs could be straight or bent; you could have your palms flat on the floor, again the legs could be straight or bent; you could have your hands holding your big toes, they could be under your feet from the front, from the side, from the back of the heel; whether the legs are straight or bent the feet can be together or apart. I could keep going. There are variations with one hand behind your back or both. The more you look at things the more different angles you can give.

This is mainly concerning arrangement of limbs and spine. Within any of those variations there are positions where you could be in a good alignment where your body is getting good healthy work that will strengthen and open or you could be creating unwanted stress in certain areas unnecessary to the movement and work of the posture. That unwanted stress could be minor and therefore not such a big deal. This would merely represent a lack of awareness of the most efficient way of bringing your body into the posture. However, repetitive stress like this can, over time, cause cumulative damage, so, hopefully the practitioner learns to improve his or her form over time so that the body is not wasting effort in ways that are counter productive. Then there is the kind of unwanted stress that is bigger and more damaging. That is the stuff that you need to look out for first.

Now this second aspect of form could be categorized as ways of finding good alignment and avoiding damaging alignment within any of the variations of a posture.

And then there is the individual practitioner to be considered. Different people have different bodies, different shaped bones, different joint structures. I think I will talk about genetics and flexibility for a moment, which has to do with joint structure to some extent. Some people walk into their first yoga practice never having done anything like yoga and are quite flexible in many directions. They never worked on it. It just has to do with that person’s body type. There are others who practice for years and feel they can never get past a certain degree of flexibility no matter how much they work on it. Some people are stronger and can do postures that take a high degree of strength without much effort. Some cannot hold certain postures for very long because of their lack of strength for that kind of work. A certain amount of this can be changed and a certain amount of your inherent body type is just what you were given.

Now most of us would be more flexible than we are if, during the years from when we were around 10 till we were around 20, we were doing a considerable amount of movement that required a high degree of flexibility. The reason this is the case is that somewhere between those ages most of us experienced what we could call growth spurts. When your bones are still growing, if your bones grow really fast and you are not doing movements that require certain ranges of movement, you start to loose those ranges of movement in the joints. The bones grew but the joint capsules that surround the joints and prevent movements beyond a certain range don’t necessarily change much if you are not moving the joints in those directions. If your bones grow really fast and you do not continue doing movements that require a certain range of flexibility, it is almost like your joint capsules, your ligaments, which hold your bones together, shrink wrap around the joint. If you don’t do a certain range of movement your body does not know you need that range of movement and by the time our bones have stopped growing, the body pretty much thinks that the movements you have been doing are the ones you need. So a person who spends the years during which the bones in their body were growing the fastest, doing something like sitting in a chair, at a desk, reading, writing and doing schoolwork, might end up with something like chair length hamstrings.

Some of this can be changed but the kind of opening that happens in yoga postures or the kinds of assisted stretching that happen in a lot of yoga adjustments is not the most intelligent method of stretching the connective tissue that keeps your joints stable. There are joint mobilization techniques that can precisely stretch joint capsules in particular directions but I would not recommend a yoga practitioner or teacher to mess with this stuff unless they are well trained in the techniques and know what they are doing. This is also not something you can do to yourself. But joint mobility is not really something you want to mess with too much anyway.

Now you also have the length and shape of the bones. One person might have long legs and a short spine; another might have long arms and a short spine; long legs and short arms, or short legs and long arms. A person might have a long upper leg and short lower leg; a long lower leg and a short upper leg; a long forearm and a short upper arm; or a short forearm and a long upper arm. Things like this will affect the way the external form of a posture appears to someone who is looking from outside.

The length and shape of the posterior spinous processes can play some role in determining how much mobility the thoracic spine has when moving into hyperextension (back bending). Of course there are a lot of other things that could come into play as well.

The shape of the upper part of the thigh bone can play a great role in movements of the leg in abduction, adduction, external rotation, flexion and extension. The angle of the femoral neck in relation to the ground, it is usually somewhere close to a 45-degree angle to the femoral shaft, but can be closer to parallel to the ground or closer to vertical. As the shaft goes from the greater trochanter towards the pelvic structure there is also an angle. Sometimes the greater trochanter is lateral and posterior to the hip joint, sometimes it is directly lateral to the hip joint and sometimes the greater trochanter is lateral and anterior to the hip joint. This angle will determine a certain amount of range of movement in certain planes as well. And how long or short the shaft is will also determine a certain amount of range of movement because a longer shaft, while not being as strong and stable is more mobile since the trochanters can move farther in more directions before coming up against the bones of the pelvic structure.

(I am re-reading this and you need to look at photos of several different femurs from several different angles to get what I am trying to say above. I wish I had the graphics to lay out.)

The shoulder girdle is more complicated and sometimes there are similar things at play that cause one person to have greater or lesser ranges of motion in all planes. An example is that one person might be able to reach the arms up higher than another before the shoulder blades start elevating, creating tension and doing funny things.

So now that we got that information out, the external form of a posture, even if two people are doing the same basic variation, is often going to look a little different from person to person. A person with long arms, short legs and a long spine doing the variation of Urdhva Dhanurasana where you are trying to get your feet and hands closer to each other so that the apex of the arch in the posture is the abdomen and lower back, would look different in the pose than a person with long legs, short arms and a long spine in the same variation.

So the external form is a very superficial and imprecise guideline to use in looking to quantify what a person will feel in a posture.

The simple information about the benefits of the postures that I generally give, and this is very simplistic, is this:

1) Back bending postures generally work the back of the body and gently open the front of the body. As a general statement, the work in the back of the body is more prevalent than the opening in the front of the body, but the postures can be done in a way that emphasizes the opening in the front of the body or deemphasizes the work in the back of the body.

2) Forward bending postures open the back of the body and gently work the front of the body. Here too, as a general statement, the opening in the back of the body is more prevalent than the work in the front of the body, but the postures can be done in ways that emphasize the work in the front of the body or they can be done in a way that deemphasizes the opening in the back of the body.

3) Movements in the lateral plane, whether lateral flexion or lateral extension, generally lengthen one side of the spine more than the other and as a result open aspects in the shoulders, the hips and pelvic structure as well.

4) Rotations are a little more complicated than the previous three movements of the spine. There are sets of muscles that are lined up at 90-degree angles to each other and at 45-degree angles to the ground throughout the torso. Examples are the internal and external obliques and the internal and external intercostals. There are also sets of muscles in the spine that line up like this. When you twist, one set of these muscles will shorten helping you twist while the other set will be stretched by the action. The rotational force also stretches the external fibers of the intervertebral disks (anulus fibrosus), which also line up at 45-degree angles to the ground and 90-angles to each other. So just like the intercostals and obliques one set gets stretched, but cartilage is non contractile so the set of fibers that is not stretched is merely put on slack rather than shortened.

5) In yoga there are also postures where you lengthen the spine. The ones that are interesting for our purposes are the ones where you lengthen the spine while flattening the natural curves of the spine. Postures like Ardha Uttanasana where you lift the chest and flatten the spine while keeping your palms or, more frequently, your finger tips on the ground, getting ready to jump back to chaturanga. Downward facing dog is another posture where you are straightening your back and flattening the curves of the spine. The work of flexing at the hip joints, and flexing the lumbar spine to flat, while extending the thoracic spine, to flat, takes work in the thighs, the hip flexors, the abdominal muscles, and the spinal extensors of the upper back all at the same time. And if the legs are straight it could lengthen the hamstrings, depending on the angle of flexion at the hip joints.

All yoga postures, and really any movement we as humans can do has to have at least one of those movements of the spine mentioned above. But those ideas of what benefits come from each of the movements of the spine, are really generalizations and when you add things like a bind of the arms or a rotation in the hip joint you add more things to consider.

Here too, the simple way of expressing things is that if you change the way you do a posture you will change the benefits you receive from that posture. So there would be ways of doing a pose like Urdhva Dhanurasana that would emphasize extension of the lower back, the mid back or the upper back; you could do it to emphasize a kind of work in the inner thighs; you could emphasize the extension in the hip joint; you could emphasize the movement of the shoulders and arms.

If the alignment of a posture is useful to the person the pose will probably look powerful and effortless at the same time. If the person is struggling, gripping, creating stress on particular joints that should not be in play to such an extent, the posture will probably not look as graceful; it will not look as elegant or as powerful. The person will not look quite as happy. The analogy that I would use is that a great gymnast makes what he or she is doing look easy, effortless, almost like they could do what they are doing in their sleep. A pretty good gymnast does all the same movements but you can see more of their effort and so it does not look as powerful, as deep or as graceful. The extra effort, the effort that was not necessary, is a reflection of alignment that could be improved.

So now once you are in a posture in a way that is useful to your body the information given above might give a very simplistic guideline to help you understand some of the physical benefits you might feel but every person is different. One person might feel one set of muscles working and another might feel completely different muscles working to create the same basic movement or posture; what joint capsules are being stressed and pulled taught would be different from person to person; what joints come into play might be different as well.

Then, there are the deeper benefits underneath the physical effects, the work and actions of the postures; what I am talking about is how the physical postures affect the underlying energetic and emotional levels of the system. Since we are all a little different this too is complicated. General tendencies here are that back bends are energizing and expanding and forward bends are calming while eliminating waste. But back bends can be done in ways that are relaxing and vice versa. Side leans are sort of calming even though they are expanding and rotations are sort of energizing even though they move waste out of the system. Again, how you do the postures can cause you to get different underlying effects than what I just described as general tendencies.

It is interesting to me that, as I practice and think of my practice as an exploration rather than trying to fit my body into specific shapes, and as I am using my body and exploring the way my body works in my physical practice, over time, I have felt my body change so much. Poses that used to feel one way to me might feel very different now. So rather than say anything too specific about the underlying benefits of practice I will say that as I go deeper into my own personal practice, this is where the juice of my physical practice seems to be: the awareness of what is happening in my body while I am doing. I feel like the shapes are tools you use to help put yourself into positions where you can experience something about your body on that day that you are doing your practice. If you are present to the Now of the particular practice you are in, and content with yourself as you are, something magical might come up as a result of your experience in the postures and with the breath. But, as I see and feel them, the postures are not really specific shapes to put your body into. Instead they seem to be templates or archetypes for exploring certain types of work. This work is sort of liquid and changeable. As your body changes your experiences in the postures change and the postures can be adapted to your current needs.

So go and explore what your experiences in the postures are and I would love to hear the results of some of those explorations: the euphoria or the stillness that you feel in a pose; the power of the release or the energy of the work.

Peace.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Yoga Without Walls with Swami X otherwise known as Asananda or the Wise Guy

This is from a friend of mine who calls himself Asananda X. He is an interesting guy who is quite creative and has a lot to offer. He started something that he calls Yoga Without Walls: sort of thinking outside the box. If this info is useful to you guys check him out:

Peace.

UpSideDown

====

I started a Yahoo Group called "Yoga Without Walls" as it reflected my feeling that leaving the lessons of the yoga class locked in the classroom seems a waste of consciousness. I teach in Central Park on Saturdays by donation, all proceeds going towards my Karma Konsciousness Kollection in which I duplicate non-copywritten dvd's, cd's and acquire other educational information to give out to people to help raise their awareness about certain issues. I would love to have more yogis join the "kollective" and help spread awareness!

I have some outside the classroom events coming up as well, such as a yoga hike in Minnewaska State Park on Saturday, September 8th
http://mountainyoga9-08-07.eventbrite.com, another yoga hike in Harriman State Park September 30th and will be teaching in Baja, Mexico October 6-13th as part of a yoga/multi-sport experience where we'll be snorkling with sea lions one minute and doing sunset yoga on the beach the next! http://baja2007.eventbrite.com

Swami X

Saturday, August 25, 2007

A Question from Lauren Cahn: More Technical Information On Urdhva Dhanurasana

This was a comment that I thought brought up some great information to explore about Urdhva Dhanurasana. There other variations of the posture shown here as well. Thank you Lauren for your dedication as a practitioner and your inquisitive mind.

yc said...
Hi Carl, I have a question about the form demonstrated in your UD shown in the pic. First of all, I think you look very nice and comfortable and at ease. Ok, that out of the way...

I notice that a lot of your weight appears to be on your hands and that your legs are stretched out. I personally LOVE this way of practicing UD for myself, as opposed to when I walk my feet in closer to my hands. 

Is there an advantage to practicing the way you show it, as opposed to bringing the feet closer to the hands?

Lauren

Hey Lauren,

As always, you ask such great questions.

In the picture you are asking about I am using my legs to lengthen my lower back so my chest expands more and there is less of the back bend in my lower back. I can understand how it might seem that my arms are bearing more of the weight. There would also be nothing wrong with the hands bearing more of the weight, especially if you were getting ready to start lifting up into a handstand from the posture (just as you can drop back and then come up to standing from Urdhva Dhanurasana, you can come up to handstand or drop back from handstand into the pose). But what I am doing is extending my knees a little, and pressing my feet into the ground, and I am using that to try and help me lengthen my lower back and move more of the back bend into my upper back so that I can expand my chest as much as possible.

The benefits of this variation is that it might enable you to keep the lower back safer while you are deeper in the thoracic spine and are opening the ribcage more. If you notice in the posture in question how much of the emphasis is on my chest and ribcage expanding. You can even go all out with this variation and have the feet a little farther away from the hands and the legs fully straightened so the legs look like they are in a version of an upside down plank while the upper body is in Full Wheel. I looked to see if I had a photo of what I am talking about but don’t. I guess I will have to see about taking one because it does end up looking really nice when you do it that way.

That being said, the more traditional, or perhaps more commonly used variation, where the feet are a little closer to the hands and the idea is to try and get your abdomen to basically be the apex of the arc, is quite beneficial as well. In the end, being able to do as many variations of a posture as possible is an indication that your body is open and flexible enough to get a variety of different kinds of work. The one that is more commonly used allows you to get more arch in your lower back and for some people it lets you off the hook in your upper back and ribcage. It might make it so that a person does not have to have as much expansion there because the lower back being farther away from the ground has to be where more of the curve in the spine is. That being said, it really depends on the person’s body. I have photos of practitioners where their feet and hands are almost touching and they have an amazing amount of expansion in the chest and ribcage and I also have photos where someone is doing the variation I was describing above where the legs are moving towards straight and working to lengthen the lower back and there is very little expansion in the chest and ribcage most of the arch is still coming from the lower back. Our bodies are all so unique it is great to explore the effects of different variations. And most people’s bodies are really able to do a variety of kinds of work in any single variation of a posture.

Probably the best piece of information I could give is to try and explore both variations and feel them; compare them. See what is working in each and what is getting opened. Compare the things that are different and you will end up knowing how each of them is useful to your body and ways in which each might be less useful than the other. Since they do slightly different things they will each be better for certain things and they will not work or open other areas as effectively. When you have taken a while to explore each I would love to hear what you have to say.

It is really good hearing from you.

Peace.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Breathing Anatomy for Asana, Pranayama and Meditation Course in the Fall 2007

This link: http://www.yogasutranyc.com/yogicstudies.php has information on a course called Breathing Anatomy for Asana, Pranayama and Meditation that is going to be starting up in September.

The session that happened over the summer went quite well and the response from the students who were there was quite positive. The work is powerful. The way we will be using the breath creates some of the most powerful transformational experiences Yoga has to offer. I am excited about continuing the program.

I am also teaching parts of two teacher training programs in the fall.

This link has information about New York Yoga's teacher training program: http://www.newyorkyoga.com/teacher_training/

And this link has information about Yoga Sutra's teacher training program: http://www.yogasutranyc.com/training.php

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

That Still Point at the Center of Your Being

After a good practice--after the postures, after the rest, after some breathing techniques, when I am ready to sit and be still and go inside, where going inside simply happens naturally, not because I have tried--that internal stillness, that rare and beautiful calm where you can feel how much depth there is to your being, is such a treasure. It is my experience that you cannot try and create this state; you cannot force yourself into this state: all you can do is try and create the right circumstances for this to occur and then it may or it may not. Sort of like a beautiful day. You need to have the right circumstances, but it sure is nice when you fall into that feeling of harmony with yourself and everything around you.

Peace.

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Breathing in Urdhva Dhanurasana

I realize it is worth making a small note on breathing in Urdhva Danurasana.




Because of the position of the arms and what that does to the chest, ribcage and upper back, and the arch in the spine and what that does to the whole breathing mechanism, if you want to be deep in this pose, it is worthwhile to breath softly in a relaxed manner. The spine and ribcage are in such a deep position that there is no room for them to give the breathing mechanism extra volume in breathing, and the abdomen is being stretched as well so there is not much space to give there. The result is that if you tried to breath too deeply in the pose it would result in tension and strained breathing which is not what you want. Slow relaxed breaths that are a length and depth that feels natural and comfortable to the body would help you open deeper into this pose than trying to breath deeply would. The strain from deeper breathing could actually prevent you from opening as much and could make the whole posture feel strained and less beneficial.