viklikesfic: Icon of a person doing a yoga stretch in silhouette in front of a sunrise (yoga)
[personal profile] viklikesfic posting in [community profile] sun_salutation
Well this is somewhat of a misnomer, since I'm not going to jump right into daily, but I did want to participate! As I said earlier, I had a wrist injury but I think it's finally healed. I'm starting very slowly--I did one gentle hatha practice last weekend and this morning I did Yoga for Strength from YogaDownload, which is my favorite for when I'm afraid of my own motivation (it goes by very quickly so it's good for building confidence).

Unsurprisingly, I'm very tight, so I'm trying to be gentle with myself. I only move forward a few inches in forward bends, and I'm keeping my feet very close together in warrior poses. I noticed that my calves and feet were especially tight in warrior poses, which are some of my favorite poses, so I hope that remedies itself quickly. One of my biggest challenges for sticking with yoga is that my hands slip in down dog and I get very frustrated. I read the recent post about this but I'm nervous about shelling out money when it might not work. I've tried putting my hands on blocks and on a guest towel that's pretty thin, and neither of these really work. The towel will work at first but then I'll start sliding steadily along. So annoying!

I'm going to shoot for every three days for the next couple of weeks, and then drop to every two.

Date: 2011-10-10 11:23 am (UTC)
rydra_wong: a yoga practitioner does a jump through, the motion turning into a blur (yoga -- jump through)
From: [personal profile] rydra_wong
Re: down dog, you could try putting your hands at the base of a wall (turned out, so that your thumb and first finger press against the wall -- it's an Iyengar thing for working on externally rotating the shoulders).

Of course, that might just mean that your feet start sliding, but it's worth a go.

Date: 2011-10-10 12:09 pm (UTC)
jumpuphigh: Pigeon with text "jumpuphigh" (Default)
From: [personal profile] jumpuphigh
If you aren't grounding properly through your hands, you will slip even with a towel. If you are, you'll be able to stay solid even in a pool of sweat. It's unfortunately something that is hard to learn unless you have someone right there adjusting you. Think about spreading your fingers wider and pressing through the top part of your palms and extending out through the fingers. Most people put way too much pressure through the wrist and lower part of the palm.

Date: 2011-10-10 01:38 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] indywind
I attest that one can still slip even when grounding 'properly'.

Yoga does not magically circumvent laws of physics.

Date: 2011-10-10 02:07 pm (UTC)
jumpuphigh: Pigeon with text "jumpuphigh" (Default)
From: [personal profile] jumpuphigh
Well, I don't recommend trying it on a wet tile floor and cheap yoga mats can be super-slippery. Good equipment is essential in this equation in order to provide enough friction to keep from slipping. However, just like I can walk across a slippery floor without falling by placing my weight correctly on my feet or I can completely wipe out by not taking care, there is a sweet spot in down-dog that will make the difference between sliding and not sliding.

Date: 2011-10-10 11:22 pm (UTC)
jumpuphigh: Pigeon with text "jumpuphigh" (Default)
From: [personal profile] jumpuphigh
For tightness, you can both bend your knees and take your feet wider. Those are both pretty common modifications for tightness in the low back and legs. To play with how your shoulders should feel in down-dog, do it standing with your palms flat on a hip-high countertop. My kitchen counter is the perfect height for this for me but ymmv. There you can play with taking the tops of your shoulders wider and expanding through your chest without encountering as much tightness in the body to inhibit you. Paul Grilley, mentioned by [personal profile] indywind below, has several resources that may be worth purchasing. I've not used his yin yoga video but I have done at least one workshop with him and I like what he teaches quite a lot.

Date: 2011-10-10 02:45 pm (UTC)
gnomad: Girl doing upward dog (Yoga- Movement)
From: [personal profile] gnomad
I've had problems with slipping on all yoga mats in most weight bearing positions because I sweat so much, so I use climbers chalk to keep my hands and feet dry. I'd dust some on my hands and feet and the top and bottom of my mat before class, and that seemed to do the trick for about 90% of the time.

Date: 2011-10-10 03:52 pm (UTC)
From: [personal profile] indywind
[personal profile] viklikesfic, are you looking for suggestions for how to work around the slippy-hands-in-down-dog problem? Or more sympathy?

I get where you're coming from; when I'm on a slippery enough surface, I do still slip even though the dog is one of my favorite and most solid poses otherwise. You could probably tell how much I like it by how much I have to say about it below :-D ; read on if you would like suggestions.

I second [personal profile] jumpuphigh's suggestion for self-adjusting. Though I don't think it's a surefire cure for slipping, it may help (maybe a lot), and it may benefit your practice in other ways.

There's so much going on in Down Dog, that to find stability may call for changes in more than one part of the pose. For instance, the hips/low back, calves and ankles--where you said you experience tightness-- are very involved in the balance of the whole pose. Sometime when you're not worried about keeping up with a video, you might try just playing with Down Dog, changing one body-position variable at a time to experience all the variations available in the position. Some of them may feel more secure. Changing alignment can also bring the stretch to different areas of the body --you might find a version that better releases the tightness you feel.

Yoga Journal has an article by Paul Grilley on the mechanics of Downward Dog, especially longer or shorter stances. Sounds like a shorter stance, or with bent knees, might be useful for you to experiment with.


When you're working with a video, and you want to do something to keep up with the video's sequence of poses without so much frustrating slipping, you might try
substituting another pose for Down Dog in the flow. Depending on what fits with the poses before and after, a high plank (make sure shoulders are directly over wrists), puppy pose, dolphin pose. This isn't "dumbing down" -- Dolphin, especially, can be more work for the upper body and more stretch for the hamstrings/calves than Down Dog. Puppy is an excellent stretch for the shoulders, high plank is a core and upper body strength builder.

Best wishes.

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