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How to Be A Student

6/28/2020

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It is hard to be a student. We are faced with juggling what we already know along with new information. As our bodies change, our minds change, and our practices change, we have to constantly adjust. Here are some tips for being a good student. 

1. Do the work
No matter how good the teacher is, they cannot do the work for us. We need to practice in order for learning to be a good use of our time. This means putting in effort every day. 

2. Be prepared 
Ask the teacher questions that have come through practice. This is the difference between "How do I do the posture?" and "While practicing I realized I don't know how to bend my spine effectively. Can you watch and see what you think?" The first question shows no initiative to try and figure it out or a commitment to our own practice. The second question is what a teacher is there for: to guide us through roadblocks. 

3. Listen
When assuming the role of a student, we are agreeing to learn from the teacher. While questions may arise for us, the best thing to do is listen. Give it a chance. If we immediately question what the teacher says, we are inhibiting our own chance of learning something new. 

4. Be patient
Every time we learn something new we are a beginner again. This is tough to swallow. It's like a constant cycle of big fish/small pond to small fish/big pond. It's important to remember that we're not bad at the practice, we are simply progressing. When something is new, we won't be good at it. That is exactly what practice is for. We have to embrace what we are not good at, put in the work and be patient. Trust practice. It always works. 
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Modern Bow Posture

6/19/2020

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Bow Posture, Dhanurasana, in Yoga Mimamsa 1925
Read about the premodern version of Bow Posture, dhanurasana​, here.

For the past 100 years or so, Bow Posture is done lying on the belly, holding the feet or ankles, and bending the body backward, as pictured above in 1925. Prior to that, the posture seems to have been done sitting and pulling the feet toward the ears. The question remains: Where and when did the posture transition into its modern iteration?
Postures done lying on the belly and grabbing the ankles from behind have existed for at least a couple hundred years. The 18th century Gheranda Samhita has a position called Ushtrasana, Camel Posture, that we wrote about here. 

In South India, the Sritattvanidhi contains a posture called Nyubjasana. It is instructed: "Lie face down. Cross the heels and take hold of the toes with the hands and roll. This is nyubjasana, the face-down asana" (Sjoman 1999: 84). This text is likely from the 19th century and seems to have been influential at the Mysore palace where Krishnamacharya innovated many elements of modern postural yoga. Interestingly, the instruction is to "roll" the body back and forth rather than hold in stillness.
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Camel Posture as instructed in the Gheranda Samhita
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Nyubjasana as instructed in the Sritattvanidhi
These premodern prone backbends are not called Bow Posture. By 1925 when Yoga Mimamsa publishes instruction, the modern die for dhanurasana​ seems to be set.
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Yoga Mimamsa 1925
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Popular Yoga Asanas 1931
The earliest modern representation of Bow Posture known to us is from 1925 in Yoga Mimamsa. It is pictured at the top of this article and to the left.  "It will readily be seen that this posture is a combination of the two exercises Bhujangasana [Cobra Posture] and Salabhasana [Locust Posture]". This posture is said to accomplish the benefits of those others but to a lesser degree. 

In its early days, Yoga Mimamsa was a proponent of more traditional yogic practices and unsupportive of the increasingly exercise-focused iterations of yoga that were developing. This leads us to believe that Bow Posture was accepted as part of the yogic canon, even though we discussed its older history last time. Contrarily, the insistence that Bow Posture is not a useful as bhujangasana or shalabhasana may suggest that it was not as established as these other, older postures.
Kuvalayananda's book Popular Yoga Asanas from 1931 also includes Bow Posture, which is no surprise since it is drawn largely from issues of Yoga Mimamsa. 

​Krishnamacharya's Yoga Makaranda in 1934 is curiously devoid of the posture. It makes one wonder about the influence of the 
Sritattvanidhi above.
From 1930 onward Bow Posture seems quite set in the canon of yogis everywhere. Shivananda's 1931 Yoga Asanas​ contains it. In many ways this work draws from Kuvalayananda and Yoga Mimamsa, though some new research shows that Shivananda was also influenced by Jain asana practices.

Buddha Bose's Yoga Asanas in 1938 contains the posture. This is not surprising because of Bose's clear influence by Shivananda and Kuvalayananda. Bose's Bow Posture is pictured to the right. Interestingly, Bose also includes Ushtrasana, the Camel Posture, as a prone backbend similar to the Gheranda Samhita​. 
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Buddha Bose 1938
Nearly every modern text that we examined contains the posture, from North India's Shivananda lineage, East India's Ghosh lineage, South India's Krishnamacharya lineages, to Europe.
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Selvarajan Yesudian ~1950
One of the most interesting variants actually comes from a European publication in the 1940-50s by Selvarajan Yesudian and Elisabeth Haich. Yesudian was raised in India and moved to Hungary in the 1930s, taking yoga instruction with him. 

Their text encourages rocking in the posture, recalling the Sritattvanidhi's instruction to "roll" the body back and forth: "The effect of the exercise can be heightened if we rock gently to and fro during the posture." (Yesudian 1953: 133)
All the students of Bishnu Charan Ghosh include Bow Posture in their instructions. This includes Buddha Bose (above), Labanya Palit in 1955, Ghosh himself in 1961 (demonstrated by his daughter Karuna), Dr Gouri Mukerji in 1963, Monotosh Roy in the 60-70s, and Bikram Choudhury in the late 60s.
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Labanya Palit, 1955
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Karuna Ghosh, 1961
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Dr. Gouri Shankar Mukerji, 1963
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Monotosh Roy
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Bikram Choudhury, ~1968
A couple further interesting instructions: A student of Shivananda wrote an encyclopedic book in the late 60s called Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha. Its instruction of Bow Posture is quite specific about which muscles to use: "In the final position the head is tilted back and the abdomen supports the entire body of the floor. The only muscular contraction is in the legs; the back and arms remain relaxed." (APMB: 209)
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Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha
Iyengar, in his hugely influential ​Light On Yoga, is specific about where to carry the body's weight and also to keep the knees slightly apart: ​"Do not rest either the ribs or the pelvic bones on the floor. Only the abdomen bears the weight of the body on the floor. While raising the legs do not join them at the knees, for then the legs will not be lifted high enough." (Iyengar 1966: 101-2)
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Iyengar 1966
Iyengar's instruction to keep the knees apart is in direct opposition to that in Yoga Mimamsa in 1925, which says, "As the muscles become more and more elastic, the knees should be drawn closer, till at last they are made to stand together, carrying the intra-abdominal pressure to its highest limit." You can see the knees together in the picture above from Yoga Mimamsa.
The instruction and performance of Bow Posture has been mostly consistent from about the 1920s. It is still unclear when it transitioned from the premodern, seated version into the prone backbend. Its hyper-modern shift to greater depth that resembles contortion more than dhanurasana is also interesting, but a topic for another time.
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Premodern Bow Posture

6/15/2020

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Bow Posture, dhanurasana, is one of the few postures of premodern Hathayoga that is not a seated, cross-legged, meditative position. Its first known instruction is from the 15th century in the Hathapradipika, and it is also included in the 17th century Hatharatnavali and the 18th century Gheranda Samhita. Interestingly, these premodern versions of Bow Posture may be different from the modern understanding.

The modern version of Bow Posture, which has been prominent for the past 100 years or so, is done lying on the belly, holding the feet or ankles, and bending the body backward.  Prior to that, the posture seems to have been done sitting and pulling the feet toward the ears. ​

Bow Posture's earliest known instruction is in the 15th century Hathapradipika: "Bring the toes as far as the ears with both hands as if drawing a bow. This is Dhanurasana" (HP 1.25). (1)

The Hatharatnavali from the 17th century repeats the Sanskrit instructions word for word. Here is a different English translation: "The big toes are held with the hands and are pulled up to the ears (alternately). Thus, one assumes the shape of a stretched bow. This is dhanurasana" (HR 3.51). (2)
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Bow Posture crossing the body.
This posture is done sitting and pulling one foot to the ear as the other leg stays straight, making the body look like a drawn bow. There are two ways that the instruction has been interpreted, depending on whether the hand grabs the foot on the same side of the body or opposite. So this posture has been interpreted as pictured at the top, with the hand pulling the same side foot toward the ear; or with the leg crossing the body as pictured directly above. The instruction is not specific, making it likely that crossing the body is not intended.

Nowadays, these positions are still taught sometimes. They are often called akarna dhanurasana, which means Bow to the Ear Posture; or akarshana dhanurasana, which means Bow Pulling Posture.
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​Some modern translations of the Hathapradipika interpret these instructions --- to pull the toes to the ears --- in light of the more modern Bow Posture done on the belly. They offer a posture that involves a deep backward bend, touching the toes to the ears from behind, what might be called Full Bow Posture today, pictured to the left.
Bow Posture is also in another well-known premodern text, the Gheranda Samhita, from the 18th century. The instruction has changed a little from the Hathapradipika and Hatharatnavali: "Stretch the legs out on the ground like a stick, extend the arms, hold both feet from behind with the hands, and make the body curved like a bow. That is called Dhanurasana" (GS 2.18). (3) 

The interesting new instruction here is that the feet are held "from behind". Some interpret this as bending the legs backward and holding the feet, as one does in the modern backbend. But it is entirely possible that this is the same posture as instructed earlier, and the cue to hold the feet from behind is not particularly ground-breaking.

The first words in this instruction, to "stretch the legs out on the ground like a stick", are identical to the instructions for Stretching Posture, paschimottanasana. This is perhaps a clue that the Bow Posture in the Gheranda Samhita is intended to be done sitting down with the legs stretched forward.
Furthermore, there are three postures in the Gheranda Samhita which are done on the belly with clear instruction: Locust Posture (2.39), Crocodile Posture (2.40), and Camel Posture (2.41) pictured to the right. They include directions to "lie prone" or "lie down with the chest placed on the ground", clearly meaning to lie on the belly.  This type of instruction is entirely absent from Bow Posture, again suggesting that it was intended to be a seated position.
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Camel Posture as instructed in the Gheranda Samhita
It seems most likely that the premodern Bow Posture was intended to be seated, pulling the toes toward the ears. The questions arise: When and why did it shift to the modern understanding of a prone backbend? As we will explore next, it seems to be established as the 'modern' Bow Posture by the 1920s. 


(1) Akers, Brian Dana, trans., 2002 Hatha Yoga Pradipika NY: YogaVidya.com
(2) Gharote, M.L., Devnath and Jha, editors, 2014 Hatharatnavali Lonavla Yoga Institute: Pune [2002]
(3) Mallinson, James, trans., 2004 Gheranda Samhita NY: YogaVidya.com
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Yogis Against Racism

6/7/2020

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As we write this, from our home base in Minnesota, we have been reflecting on issues of race in yoga. From a philosophical perspective, any perceived difference between people (or beings of any kind) is not only a problem, but the cause of suffering. 

In Samkhya, all physical matter is pakriti and therefore, not purusha. Meaning, bodies, skin, physical features are all of the material world. While the material world is real, we suffer because we mistake it for who we are. Liberation is the knowledge that we are not matter, but spirit. 

In Advaita Vedanta, names and forms are nothing but Brahman. It is Maya, or illusion,  that makes us see individuals as separate and prevents us from seeing everything as one. This sense of separation is why we suffer. Here, liberation is knowledge of the true self. This self is the same in all beings. 

​We were recently in a class where we were studying the Upanisads. A classmate raised some issues with a passage that we thought seemed standard at first glance. The passage says this:

Lightness, health, the absence of greed, a bright complexion, a pleasant voice, a sweet smell and very little faeces and urine-- that, they say, is the first working of yogic practice. Svetasvatara Upanisad 2.13

Our classmate highlighted "lightness" and "a bright complexion". When he pressed on, it was revealed that it could literally mean a light color of skin. Let's hope that was not the intended meaning for the verse. Regardless, it is a reminder to keep our eyes and ears open. 

So, this is a time to carry on as people and as yogis. As students we have to be aware of what we don't already see. To continuously learn, question and practice with as much humility and discipline as we can muster. 

As yogis we need to be ever kind, peaceful and clear with our words and actions. Black lives matter. Racism is wrong. On down the path we go. 
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How to Help Your Students with Stress and Anxiety

6/1/2020

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There is a whole lot of stress and anxiety in the world right now.  As yoga teachers, we can offer our students tools that can help. Here are a few ideas to consider. 

Forward Bends of the Spine 
Forward bends of the spine help to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Because of the compression of the front side of the body, they can help to calm the body and lower the heart rate. Postures such as Rabbit Pose, Stretching (with a rounded spine) or Half Tortoise fall into this category.

Teach your students to focus on their exhales. The lungs are compressed in these positions and therefore the breath will be small. 
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Be careful not to confuse this with forward bends of the hips such as Paschimottanasana with a straight spine.

Also, be aware that backbends, while fabulous for many reasons, do the opposite of forward bends. They activate the sympathetic nervous system and raise the heart rate. In moments of stress or anxiety, be conscious of this if you're teaching in a high stress situation. 

Postures with Abdominal Breathing
Breathing with the diaphragm is calming. Since this is not possible in many postures due to the muscular engagement necessary for the posture itself, emphasize postures that allow for this type of breathing. These postures include Shavasana, Wind Removing and Half Tortoise. 

Language like "breathe into your belly" or "feel your belly rise on the inhale" is helpful.

​If you see students with their chest or shoulders moving, remind the class that only the abdomen moves in this type of breathing. 

Pranayama
There are two breathing exercises that are very simple and very effective for reducing stress. These are Chandraved Breathing and Even Count. 

For Chandraved Breathing, the inhale is always through the left nostril only and the exhale is through the right nostril. Don't make the breath too slow, just 4-6 counts for the inhales and exhales. (See below for further instructions)

Even Count breathing is a practice of making the inhale and exhales even and smooth. Use an short count such as 4 counts in and 4 counts out. Anything beyond 8 counts in and out is not necessary for the purpose of reducing stress. Keep the count short, but even and consistent. Also, remind your students that there should be no stress or tension in their breathing. If it's too difficult, they can just breathe normally. 

Teach to the Class In Front of You
Don't be afraid to add these practices into your teaching or adjust your classes to fit the needs of your students.

As always, we're here to help. Leave a comment or email us if you need further instruction or information on these practices.  


Chandraved Breathing instructions: "Bring your right hand in front of your face. Close your right nostril with your thumb. Inhale through the left side. Close the left nostril, open the right and exhale. Close the right, open the left and inhale...." Repeat.
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    Scott & Ida are Yoga Acharyas (Masters of Yoga). They are scholars as well as practitioners of yogic postures, breath control and meditation. They are the head teachers of Ghosh Yoga.

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