Getting Started 3: Chaturanga Dandasana
Jan. 27th, 2010 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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sun_salutationDisclaimer: I am not a yoga instructor. I don't know anything about exercise safety or fitness instruction. I'm not even an advanced practitioner of yoga. But I have come to love yoga and am completely self taught.
You know your own body best, so please respect your known health conditions and use the variations offered by instructors that are best for you. Remember to balance where you are now with where you could be in the future. There is no perfect pose.
Yoga and Upper Body Strength
If you are a woman just starting to think about improving your fitness, I expect the chance that upper body strength is your biggest fitness "deficiency" is about 99.999%. When was the last time you did a single pushup, much less ten in a row?
Yoga is about to change all that.
You've been watching the different variations of Surya Namaskar A, and I'm sure you noticed that Luke Jordan demonstrates Surya Namaskar A using a posture called Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose/Push-up Position). Almost all instructors will actually call this one by it's shortened Sanskrit name, Chaturanga.
I strongly encourage you to start attempting Chaturanga, either in the full version, or at least in the bent knee version, as soon as you can. If you think it is too much for you, save it for your last sun salutation of the day. One of the great things I have found about getting into shape again is the feeling of strength and accomplishment that comes from being able to do (or at least attempt and approximate) the arm balances.
A few comments on Chaturanga
As I started doing sun salutations, I basically just tried to do a pushup as best I could. I pushed myself NOT to do the bent knee version. Later, I realized that Chaturanga is not just any old pushup.
For one thing, you should be attempting to pull your elbows straight back, along your sides, not just let them flail out, as is common in pushups. Not only is this a better approach to the actual posture form, but also, pulling your elbow straight back, while I believe it may put more stress on your triceps muscle, puts much less stress on your elbow joints.
Second, in Chaturanga, your hands are not, actually, right under your shoulders. Here's the Yoga Journal illustration again. Note that her hands are waaaay back, low on her chest, near her waist, with much of her torso far forward of her hands, being held up by triceps, shoulder and core strength.
Now. That is tough to do. I backed into it from a traditional, American style pushup, using the strength I developed that way to then reform myself until I was actually doing Chaturanga and not a pushup.
What might be better is to go ahead and use the bent knee version, getting the hand position right, but with some of your body weight on your knees at the beginning.
A third possibility is to flip the variation. Brian Kest suggests that rather than use a bent knee version, that you let your chest rest on the floor. As your strength develops, you will eventually be able to lift your chest off the floor.
Of course, when you can barely manage the strength to approach the pose at all, you are not going to be able to get a perfect variation of this pose. Remember you are at the beginning of developing strength. Just have these ideas in your mind, think about them as long term intentions, then do the best you can.
And DO THIS POSTURE. At least once a day. more as you feel ready, until you are using it almost always for your sun salutations.
Exercising to Exercise
Here is one place where I strongly encourage you to exercise to exercise, as my mom says.
I got a book on strength training with the awesome subtitle Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess, by Alwyn Cosgrove. This book gives an excellent system for building the strength to do pushups. I cannot recommend this strategy enough. And it is so quick to do, that anyone should be able to work it into their day.
For a person who is not ready to go all the way to full pushups, instead of using the "girl pushup" approach, with bent knees, Cosgrove instead has you do your pushups on an angle.
To prevent muscle injury, maybe you could do these AFTER your sun salutations, so that your muscles will be warm before you start.
So you start with 60 degree pushups. Imagine your body – straight from heels to crown of the head, back straight, belly pulled in, tailbone tucked – as the long side of a right triangle with the floor. You want to make your body 60 degrees to the floor. I found that a kitchen countertop was perfect.
With your body in correct pushup posture, do 10 pushups off the counter. Pause for one minute. Then do a second and third set, with one minute pause between.
Skip a day. Then on the next day, find 5 minutes to do another 3 sets of 60 degree pushups.
When you can do pushups at 60 degrees, move down to 45 degrees. Then, when that is easy, drop to 30 degrees, then eventually you will get to flat on the floor.
I found that to progress, I would do two sets of 60, then one of 45. Then one set of 60 and two of 45. And so on.
I did my 45 and 30 degree pushups off the lower stairs of our stairwell.
Using this strategy allows you to properly engage and strengthen the core, even when your arms aren't ready to take your full body weight.
You will be amazed at how quickly you make it all the way to the floor, doing 3 sets of 10, using this strategy.
Illustrations of Chaturanga from YouTube
Here is the demonstration from myyogaonline.com.
Sadie Nardini showing secrets of moving from Chaturanga to Upward Dog. This is a beautiful illustration of how Chaturanga should be done.
Here is the CorePower illustration. (Good explanation, but with still photos, instead of video).
Other
For anybody who might have missed it,rydra_wong did a fantastic post about yoga on the internet yesterday in sun_salutation. Lots of great resources there for people trying to learn yoga on the cheap (as in free!).
You know your own body best, so please respect your known health conditions and use the variations offered by instructors that are best for you. Remember to balance where you are now with where you could be in the future. There is no perfect pose.
Yoga and Upper Body Strength
If you are a woman just starting to think about improving your fitness, I expect the chance that upper body strength is your biggest fitness "deficiency" is about 99.999%. When was the last time you did a single pushup, much less ten in a row?
Yoga is about to change all that.
You've been watching the different variations of Surya Namaskar A, and I'm sure you noticed that Luke Jordan demonstrates Surya Namaskar A using a posture called Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose/Push-up Position). Almost all instructors will actually call this one by it's shortened Sanskrit name, Chaturanga.
I strongly encourage you to start attempting Chaturanga, either in the full version, or at least in the bent knee version, as soon as you can. If you think it is too much for you, save it for your last sun salutation of the day. One of the great things I have found about getting into shape again is the feeling of strength and accomplishment that comes from being able to do (or at least attempt and approximate) the arm balances.
A few comments on Chaturanga
As I started doing sun salutations, I basically just tried to do a pushup as best I could. I pushed myself NOT to do the bent knee version. Later, I realized that Chaturanga is not just any old pushup.
For one thing, you should be attempting to pull your elbows straight back, along your sides, not just let them flail out, as is common in pushups. Not only is this a better approach to the actual posture form, but also, pulling your elbow straight back, while I believe it may put more stress on your triceps muscle, puts much less stress on your elbow joints.
Second, in Chaturanga, your hands are not, actually, right under your shoulders. Here's the Yoga Journal illustration again. Note that her hands are waaaay back, low on her chest, near her waist, with much of her torso far forward of her hands, being held up by triceps, shoulder and core strength.
Now. That is tough to do. I backed into it from a traditional, American style pushup, using the strength I developed that way to then reform myself until I was actually doing Chaturanga and not a pushup.
What might be better is to go ahead and use the bent knee version, getting the hand position right, but with some of your body weight on your knees at the beginning.
A third possibility is to flip the variation. Brian Kest suggests that rather than use a bent knee version, that you let your chest rest on the floor. As your strength develops, you will eventually be able to lift your chest off the floor.
Of course, when you can barely manage the strength to approach the pose at all, you are not going to be able to get a perfect variation of this pose. Remember you are at the beginning of developing strength. Just have these ideas in your mind, think about them as long term intentions, then do the best you can.
And DO THIS POSTURE. At least once a day. more as you feel ready, until you are using it almost always for your sun salutations.
Exercising to Exercise
Here is one place where I strongly encourage you to exercise to exercise, as my mom says.
I got a book on strength training with the awesome subtitle Lift Like a Man, Look Like a Goddess, by Alwyn Cosgrove. This book gives an excellent system for building the strength to do pushups. I cannot recommend this strategy enough. And it is so quick to do, that anyone should be able to work it into their day.
For a person who is not ready to go all the way to full pushups, instead of using the "girl pushup" approach, with bent knees, Cosgrove instead has you do your pushups on an angle.
To prevent muscle injury, maybe you could do these AFTER your sun salutations, so that your muscles will be warm before you start.
So you start with 60 degree pushups. Imagine your body – straight from heels to crown of the head, back straight, belly pulled in, tailbone tucked – as the long side of a right triangle with the floor. You want to make your body 60 degrees to the floor. I found that a kitchen countertop was perfect.
With your body in correct pushup posture, do 10 pushups off the counter. Pause for one minute. Then do a second and third set, with one minute pause between.
Skip a day. Then on the next day, find 5 minutes to do another 3 sets of 60 degree pushups.
When you can do pushups at 60 degrees, move down to 45 degrees. Then, when that is easy, drop to 30 degrees, then eventually you will get to flat on the floor.
I found that to progress, I would do two sets of 60, then one of 45. Then one set of 60 and two of 45. And so on.
I did my 45 and 30 degree pushups off the lower stairs of our stairwell.
Using this strategy allows you to properly engage and strengthen the core, even when your arms aren't ready to take your full body weight.
You will be amazed at how quickly you make it all the way to the floor, doing 3 sets of 10, using this strategy.
Illustrations of Chaturanga from YouTube
Here is the demonstration from myyogaonline.com.
Sadie Nardini showing secrets of moving from Chaturanga to Upward Dog. This is a beautiful illustration of how Chaturanga should be done.
Here is the CorePower illustration. (Good explanation, but with still photos, instead of video).
Other
For anybody who might have missed it,
rydra_wong did a fantastic post about yoga on the internet yesterday in sun_salutation. Lots of great resources there for people trying to learn yoga on the cheap (as in free!).
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 05:19 pm (UTC)2. I'm lucky in that I easily build upper body strength. I love chaturanga and how it flows within the Sun Salutation.
3. That is a cool idea about working up to push ups and it turns out I've been doing that. In my case, I started with pushing off of a wall, then pushing off of the tall counter at the pass-through between the kitchen and living room before getting back into Sun Salutations again.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 06:26 pm (UTC)It was a long, long time before I managed a semi-decent chaturanga (though I suspect it would have been a lot shorter if my practice had been less intermittent and inconsistent).
Now I'm working on improving my form and getting my elbows stacked right over my wrists, and if I'm tired I'll drop my knees back to the floor to keep the alignment right.
So even after years, it's still a work in progress *g*. On the plus side, regular push-ups now feel easy by comparison ...
On the subject of push-ups, Krista of Stumptuous has a great article on Mistressing the push-up, starting with wall push-ups.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-27 08:55 pm (UTC)Belated thought
Date: 2010-01-28 10:16 am (UTC)Yoga Journal has a useful article, Hands Down. And in iTunes, My Yoga Online have a little six-minute demonstration, Wrist Safety in Yoga, which seems like it has a lot of valuable information.
ETA: I hope you don't mind me linkbombing you -- I'm just full of yoga squee right now *g*.
Re: Belated thought
Date: 2010-01-28 05:02 pm (UTC)It would be interesting to do a post about wrists, arm strength, and carpal tunnel. In Iron Yoga, Mr. Carrillo says that strengthening the forearms is vital to avoiding carpal tunnel. I will be very interested to read the Yoga Journal article.
Re: Belated thought
Date: 2010-01-28 06:25 pm (UTC)(I'm currently pondering how the hand/wrist/forearm stuff in yoga compares to hand/wrist/forearm stuff in rock climbing. In climbing you're continually flexing the wrist and fingers, so you have to do endless exercises to stretch them back out again if you want to avoid injury.
In yoga, you're doing the opposite, putting weight on the hand and fingers in an extended position, and a lot of the advice seems to be about avoiding collapsing the hand, keeping some arch in the palm and flexion in the fingers.
*is thinky*)