-------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brad's Iyengar Yoga Notebook -------------------------------------------------------------------------------General principles for all asanas

"Yoga has a beginning, but no end."

-- Geeta Iyengar

Yoga is not an exercise; it is an exploration. The yogasanas are not static po ses, but a changing dialogue with your body that is different every day. Yoga is not so much a means to achieve some outcome like flexibility or health as it is a lifelong path of deepening the "intelligence" of your body, to use Mr. Iyen gar's parlance. In each asana, one goal we are working toward is achieving some amount of "effor tlessness within effort." This comes about in part from proper alignment allow ing your body to support itself more and more on its skeletal structure than wit h muscular effort, and also through a type of somatic memory gained through repe tition. It is always good to ask yourself when you are holding an asana what m uscular effort you can dispense with and still hold the posture intact. Elimin ate unnecessary physical effort. Do not be static in any asana -- feel where y ou are and do something. Constantly be feeling where your "edges" are and tryi ng to push them back softly. In each pose, keep searching for a better, more e ffortless place. Every person's body is different. Some individuals will always be less flexibl e than others. Having less flexibility does not preclude a person from becomin g an advanced yoga practitioner. The most important flexibility is mental and emotional flexibility. Physically, the question is, can you perform the necess ary actions and alignments for you to be able to breathe deeply in the asana, an d perform it with increasingly less effort? We all live in a little box called our "body." How tight our hamstrings or cal ves are is just one of the edges of our box. Yoga practice allows us to push b ack all the edges of our box so that we get to live a little more freely, with m ore of a feeling of ease, like living in a bigger box everyday. The asanas are designed to have both a physical and mental effect and their effect does not de pend in the slightest on how deeply you can bend your torso forward in Pascimott anasana or whether you can touch your toes in Uttanasana. When you practice yo ga, somewhere along the way you touch your toes, but that's just one arbitrary p oint in a whole lifetime of pushing back the edges of your box and it doesn't st and out there as a real "goal" to achieve or anything all that significant. Th e important aspect of yoga practice is receiving the benefits of the asanas in s mall daily doses over years. Mere contortionism is not yoga if it is done without extending intelligence to e very body part and surface, or if it is devoid of a spiritual aspect. What mak es something yoga is not so much what is done, but how it is done and what the e

ffect of doing it is. The subtle details of asana alignments can be so numerous as to make concentrati ng on many of them at once nearly impossible. Fortunately that is neither nece ssary nor advisable. It is perfectly reasonable to take certain alignments to focus on during a given session while giving less conscious attention to others. Through repetition and maturity of practice, as our cellular learning deepens and our awareness expands throughout the body, many of the alignments occur mor e or less spontaneously or habitually without conscious thought. Never rush into your deepest pose all at once. Move slowly and gradually to yo ur deepest position. As you begin to move into an asana, feel for the first pl ace of tension or "edge" that you come to. Pause at that place, and relax into that edge. Clarify your posture, and wait for the sensations of stretch, pain , or tension to fall away somewhat. Then move into the pose deeper until you f ind a new "edge." Pause again, breathe. Repeat this process over and over un til you reach the final edge for that pose for that particular day, when the sen sations of tension no longer release with sufficient waiting. After you have made all the adjustments and actions you know how to make in a gi ven asana, then the practice of that asana begins. You need to remain in the p ose for a length of time before coming out, allowing each edge to soften. Resi st the temptation to come right out of the asana when you have finished making a ll the adjustments you know to make. Hold the position and wait for the inner cue to know it is time to come out of the asana. There is no final edge or fin al posture. New edges always appear. It is somewhat superfluous to try to recommend certain lengths of time to stay i n each posture. The amount of time you should spend in an asana will vary base d on your experience, level of practice, level of energy on a given day, difficu lty of the particular asana, and personal constitution. While 30 seconds in Ad ho Mukha Svanasana may be all one individual can do, another will find 5 minutes suits their disposition on a given day. While you should aim for an overall l engthening of the amount of time you spend in each asana, trying to recommend a number of seconds or minutes that will fit everyone is impossible. Stay in eac h pose as long as it feels integrated, solid, maybe sublime, and then move on to another pose when that quality fades. That is to say, stay in a pose until yo u lose equanimity or peacefulness in the pose. This does not mean that you giv e up early because an asana is difficult or uncomfortable for you, only that you do not carry on unnecessarily long in a posture in which you have lost somatic attention or are no longer able to extend your intelligence to each body part ev enly and clearly. The importance of the standing poses is often neglected. The standing poses de velop leg and hip strength and flexibility, increasing pelvic mobility. The st anding poses are not a hazing ritual for beginners, but rather the safest and be st method for increasing leg (especially hamstring) flexibility required by the seated forward bends and other poses. If your hamstrings are tight, their pull keeps your pelvis from rotating forward over toward your thighs freely which wi ll inhibit all forward bends. Attempting to do Padmasana with tight hips which do not externally rotate fully is asking for knee injury. You should not atte mpt Padmasana until you have adequate hip flexibility as measured, for example, by your knees being close to the floor in Sukhasana and Baddhakonasana. This h amstring and hip flexibility is cultivated mainly by the practice of the standin g asanas (although there are also other asanas that are helpful).

Classically we begin each asana on the right side. Do your "bad" or less flexi ble side of a pose longer than your good side to even your body out from side to side. As your somatic intelligence increases, you will almost always feel tha t one side of your body is better in a given asana than the other side. Seek t o equalize your two sides. As Mr. Iyengar has said, when one side of the body is doing better than the other side, the first side has to become the "guru" of the other side. If some body part is sore from yesterday's practice, it is goo d to work that area with the same pose again today, starting light. You will h ave to bear a little discomfort in order to learn yoga, as nothing can be learne d with complete comfort. However the object of yoga practice is not to cause p ain, but to relieve it and more importantly prevent it. Incorporating good postural habits into your daily routine will pay dividends in your yoga practice and vice versa. When sitting in a chair, whenever possible fold your legs up and sit in Sukhasana or Ardha Padmasana. Sitting cross-legg ed in a chair, or cross-legged on the floor as much as possible will help to kee p your hip flexors supple to aid in hip flexibility. Make sure you are sitting on the front edges of your sitting bones, not the rear sides or even worse, bac k on your gluteal muscles and flesh. Sitting back onto your tailbone (sacrum) causes your pelvis to tuck under, your low back to round, and your chest to coll apse. Lengthen the front of your torso when sitting. Raise your sternum towa rd the ceiling. If your feet are on the floor, sit on the front part of the ch air, keeping the normal concave lumbar curve (lordosis). Allow your shoulders to fall naturally down away from your ears. It is fine to use the back of the chair for support if you use it properly, with your buttocks at the back of the chair and an arch, the normal lumbar lordosis, rather than a rounding in your lo wer back. Many chairs force us to sit with our thighs level, or even worse, wi th our knees higher than our hips. For most people, this causes the pelvis to tilt backward and the lower back to lose its natural concavity. Sit on a towel or pillow to elevate your pelvis if this is happening to you. Backbends massage the adrenal glands and energize us with a surge of catecholami nes. They are emotionally uplifting. Forward bends are calming. They are p oses of surrender. Even the deepest forward bend should be cooling. Backbend s are poses of extroversion. Forward bends are poses of introspection. Once you have the gross movements of an asana achieved, you should begin to work on the more subtle actions. Sometimes, an asana may be too challenging as a w hole unit to allow working on the small actions of individual body parts. In t his case, you may need to use props or modify the pose to remove some of the cha llenges and allow you to work on individual small actions. One of the great gi fts of Mr. Iyengar to yoga is his detailed use of props and asana modifications. Once you integrate these small individual actions, you can restore the pose t o its complete form without props to practice the inherent challenges of the pos e as a whole. Jumping your feet apart and together is the classical method for entering and co ming out of the standing poses. If you choose to do it, you must do it lightly and with poise. Jumping helps to open and resolve the standing poses symmetri cally in a way that must be experienced to be understood. When you are jumping your legs apart, make the action occur from the back of your body, arms, and le gs, not the front side.

Extend your spine in every pose. Do not compress the front of your body, espec ially in the forward bends. This inhibits deep breathing. As you lengthen th e front of your torso, also lengthen the back of your neck. Do not shorten the back of your neck in any asana, even in the deepest backbend. In any asana, whatever body part is on the floor, press it into the floor; merge it with the floor. This includes, for example, your shins in Ustrasana and yo ur hands and feet in Adho Mukha Svanasana. Your breath should be natural in most asanas (although some asanas like Karnapid asana will inevitably cause some restriction in breathing). There is always a tendency to hold the breath when trying to get into a challenging position. Re mind yourself in each asana to breathe. Inhalation is the time to lengthen you r spine, exhalation is the time to make further progress in the pose. In gener al, when coming out of an asana, you should inhale as you come out. Keep your digestive system as empty as possible before an asana session. It is really impossible to specify a certain number of hours you need to wait after e ating before practicing since that will vary widely with the size of the meal an d your own digestive speed. A deep sense of humility will help you learn yoga. It is important to remember that no one path or school has a monopoly on the truth. There are excellent a nd poor practitioners in all schools of yoga. Gaining maturity in yoga practic e involves learning to respect the paths that other people are on and acknowledg ing their merits, maybe even acknowledging that your own path is lacking in some area where another one excels. ********** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brad's Iyengar Yoga Notebook -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Courtesy at the Yoga School

Just as in any environment where people come together to work with each other in a close setting, a modicum of courtesy around the yoga school makes everyone's life more pleasant. Many yoga schools have developed a set of policies or rule s, not out of a sense of rigidity, but to foster respect toward other individual s, the class as a whole, and the facilities of the school. If you are new to yoga schools, pay particular attention to the no-shoes areas o f the school. Generally you may wear shoes into the immediate foyer, but never into the main practice area. If you are uncertain about what areas are approp riate for shoes, make sure you ask. Show up on time for class, which means at least 10 minutes before class starts. You need time to find a place for your mat, obtain any props you might need, e

tc. If class starts at 5:30 and you show up at 5:30, you are LATE, not on time . OK, that's sounding rigid; but be respectful of the teacher's time and the i mportant opening moments at the beginning of class which are disturbed by someon e arriving even a little late. If you arrive for class early, don't place your mat directly in the way of the w all ropes since other people may want to come and use the wall ropes before clas s. Leave a healthy distance between your mat and the ropes to allow them to be used by others before class. When the class starts, you can move your mat clo ser to the ropes if space is at a premium. Try not to have anything scheduled such that you have to leave class early. Pa cking up your personal belongings and leaving early disturbs not only the teache r, but the other students who may be in restorative poses or Savasana. If you have only enough time to attend half of the class, skip the whole class, practic e on your own, and make the class up another day. As much as possible, try to wear clothes that are not so baggy that they hide th e movements of your joints and body so the teacher is unable to correct your mis takes. Also be aware that wearing black shirts in particular tend to make your torso anatomy less visible to the teacher. Men in a yoga class may chose to w ear no shirt, not only because of the heat of the work, but to allow the instruc tor to see their torso and arms and make corrections as appropriate. Women gen erally do NOT go topless, not at our school at least. Pay attention to how the yoga school you attend likes to store their props. Fo r belts, some schools like them to be rolled, some schools like them to be in un -looped and hung straight on wall hooks, some schools just chunk 'em in a basket and let people fight it out and deal with the knots in the next class. Whatev er the tradition, follow it or politely suggest a better way to your teacher. Fold blankets into a neat storage fold (see the notes on the ancient art of blan ket folding elsewhere on this site) and place them with the long, neatly-folded side outward in a stack, to prevent the stack from toppling over. Take care to stack the wool (Army type) blankets separately from the cotton blankets as some people have an allergy to the wool blankets and can only use the cotton ones. The wool blankets tend to shed like English sheep dogs. Generally speaking, bolsters are best stored stacked in groups of two, the next two on top, turned 90 degrees from the two below them. This makes a stable str ucture that is less likely to fall over. When putting the chairs away, if the chairs OMS of the chairs facing away from the wall hey will slide down the wall. If they are loor, dedicate a sticky mat to that area to so they do not slide. are leaning on a wall, have the BOTT and there will be less chance that t stored in an area with a hard wood f store the standing folded chairs on

If you're going to get a strap for some pose that the teacher has said you will need straps for, don't just take the one strap for yourself and put your head do wn and walk back to your mat. Take a whole handful of straps and walk into the practice room and hand them out to people or drop one on each open mat in the p

ractice room. Not only is this courteous, it helps save more time for the clas s. The same idea applies to blocks, etc. If you're doing a pose that requires placing a chair on a sticky mat, and the st icky mat belongs to the school, verify with the teacher that it's OK that you pu t the chair on the sticky mat because the chair legs can sometimes tear into the mats and make them ragged. If you think about owning a yoga studio and you've invested money in sticky mats, obviously you can understand that you want them to last as long as possible. If you're setting up for Savasana or some other pose and you realize that there is not enough space between you and the next person, YOU be the one willing to m ove. Say, "No problem, I can turn this way" or "I can move over here." Don't waste the teacher's time by staring some other student in the eyes because you feel like that little space of real estate is yours. Just adopt the mindset th at YOU will always be the one to offer to move and the yoga school will be a bet ter place. When cleaning up after class, don't feel like you're only responsible for the ex act things that you took out of storage. "Let's see, I only took one block out of storage, so I'm only going to put one block back." Consider taking piles o f sorted blankets or blocks by the armful no matter who was using them and put t hem back into their storage places. So what if you wind up doing a little extr a work than you're legally required to do. You'll reap the good karma in the n ext life if not in this very one. In general, in Iyengar schools in the West, water is not taken during the class period (though there are some schools that allow exceptions and certainly in ver y hot weather or hot studio conditions there may be exceptions). Unless it is specifically stated otherwise, assume that you will not be drinking any water du ring the class and leave your bottle of Dasani in the changing area with your ot her personal effects to be enjoyed after class. Empty your bladder before class, not when the Urdhva Dhanurasana repetitions sta rt getting tough. ***** -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brad's Iyengar Yoga Notebook -------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rotation of the thighs in various asanas In some asanas, the thighs have a natural tendency to roll outward by virtue of the position they are in. In these asanas, a deliberate effort is needed to ke ep the thighs centered by rolling them inward. In other asanas, we need to rol l the thighs deliberately outward because they have a tendency to roll inward. Turn thighs inward to keep them centered:

Standing asanas - Tadasana, Rear leg in Virabhadrasana I, Rear leg in Parivrtta Trikonasana, Rear leg in Parsvottanasana Lying asanas - Supta Padangusthasana Backbends - (virtually all) Inverted asanas - Adho Mukha Svanasana, Adho Mukha Vrksasana, Pinca Mayurasana, Sarvangasana, Sirsasana Turn thighs outward to keep them centered: Standing asanas - Lower leg in Vrksasana, Trikonasana, Parsvakonasana, Virabhadr asana II ****