Male: Full saddle-pose so if you would sit on or between your feet. That is the major variation do you sit on your feet or with the feet very close to the buttocks or do you actually sit between your feet, your feet wide apart. Suzie sits on her feet her knees come apart to any comfortable natural angle and slowly goes back.
Thurston sits between his feet but going back all the way is too stressful on his knees and his ankles so we use bolster so that when he goes back we do not over stress his extremities, his knees and his ankles. And again the knees are going to come to some comfortable unforced uncontrived with. For some people it is the natural thing for them to have their knees nearly together or parallel. For other people it is completely against the natural contour and shape of their body and to force the knees together if we have Thurston trying to squeeze his knees together as he is going to put a lot of stresses in his ankles and his knees and he is not going to be successful and as soon as he stops using his muscles his knees will fly apart again and this is called following the watercourse way. The path of least resistance, the hips, the acetabulum, the hip sockets of the body do not sit the same on everybody. So we have a stream of variations here again reflecting deep skeletal differences in our body types.
Suzie is at one extreme. She is actually sitting on her feet and knees apart minimal stress for the knees and more arch to the back and stretch to the thigh. Thurston is sitting between his feet and knees apart. Bryan is sitting between his feet but his knees are nearly together and in fact if I asked Bryan, Bryan squeeze your knees together he can do this. If he relaxes his knees will also move apart slightly and then finally Cassandra feet flexed. This is very difficult. Difficult is not even the right word either you have the bones for this or you do not. If you do not have the bones for this and you will know the first time you ever attempt it and you try to sit with your feet this way you are going to ruin your knees. But for Cassandra, it is easy, it actually exaggerates the beneficial internal rotation of the thigh giving her a better stretch through here to have her feet positioned this way.
This is perhaps the climactic back bend. The flexibility of these tissues and the flexibility of the lumbar spine and the ileal sacral joint are intimately connected. Stretching these and compressing these are the yin and yang of a very powerful movement and this is the posture that scares most people and perhaps rightly so if you have not done any yoga before or stressed your knees your joints slightly to prepare them for this motion this is going to be quite scary. Particularly if you try to force your knees or your feet to a certain position your skeleton does not allow. The safest least stressful way to accomplish this pose would be a combination of Thurston and Suzie. Sitting on the feet is the last stressful for the knees, knees apart.
If even that were too stressful we put a bolster under Suzie’s back. Thurston is using the bolster which is helpful but he is sitting between his feet, which is more stressful. So they have chosen opposite extremes of what they are trying to balance. Suzie does not use the bolster but sits on her feet. Thurston uses the bolster which allows him to sit between his feet. These are individual choices that you make depending when you prefer to exaggerate the stress in the thighs or the back. Bryan sits between his feet and does not use a bolster. And the final step in hip flexibility and again you either have it or you do not as far as your bones is what Cassandra is doing, knees nearly together or straight parallel and the feet turned out and as you can see each one of these people is very comfortable in what they are doing.
But if one of them will try to adapt the variation of the other, they will probably be very uncomfortable. So in spite of their differences they are all stressing this tissue and the arch of lumbar spine and the sacrum. So there are differences but they are minor. What they share in common is far more important and that was the arm position that people have chose and slightly different. Suzie’s arm is stretched over her head, Thurston’s arms are relaxed by his side, Bryan’s hands by his heart, and Cassandra’s hands by her hips perhaps checking to see if they still work. Slowly come up please and I am asking Bryan and Cassandra to stay down for a moment. This is typically how a person gets out of this pose using the arms to slowly assist you and then coming forward on to your hands and lifting the stress out of your knees and your ankles and then stretching the legs back and slowly going into downward dog.
These two found out posture the most challenging for their knees and their ankles so they take great precautions when they come out. Bryan and Cassandra, their pelvis allows an easier motion here. They can either just bend the knees and release the feet both at the same time or if that is too much first one thigh and then the other and then they can hug their knees to their chest, rock and roll a few times, and come up and move yourself into downward dog. This is the least stressful way to get out of that posture. But if you do not have the knees for it and you do not have the ankles for it. It is not an option to you and you have to come out the way Suzie and Thurston did. Just the moment to stretch out your knees your ankles and your feet, you do not need to be static. You can tread the ground, flex and move the muscles a bit.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services