Hi I am Patrick and on the screen is Masayo Myesawa, one of our teachers from yoga garden. Today we are talking about Bound Poses. What exactly is a bound pose? Well, we are defining it as a pose in which the power is coming from internal locked forces rather than an external support. It gives you this kind of thing in architecture or all the way down into your own DNA; lots of things uses internal structure but unfortunately many people are put off bound poses because they think it's something like this, the twisted up pretzel way contortion.
In fact, bound poses are a very healthy and necessary part of your practice. And here is the reason why? You can imagine that your muscle fibers are something like this towel which Masayo is cleaning the studio with. You can see that after a few wipes, it has got some junk and nasty stuff accumulated on it, how would you get it out? Well, obviously you put it in some water, grab that by both ends and wring it out. This same thing seems to be happening in our bound poses.
We're taking the pose and using force at the extremities of it, stretching out, releasing and unlocking part in between, it's kind of a detox, just like you clean out your rag and refresh it, you can clean out your body. So enough talk which actually get to some poses. Probably the most recognizable bound pose is this one, Cow face. As you breathe in, lift the arms up, and as you breathe out, bring the hands together, and using the small finger muscles, pull the arms towards each other. This is going to release your shoulders tilt towards in the sides of the back. Now one of thing that I am going to is talk about correct hand position and bound poses.
But I see lot of the time, they are something like this. The student can rarely get their fingers so they kind of get a kind of clog or hook thing going on, they are holding on by the skin in their teeth. This isn't really healthy for the finger muscles and the poses don't feel that good. As much as possible, get a grip on all four fingers and pull collectively. If you are flexible, you can move down to a palm on palm or wrist grip. And if you are not flexible, you can always use a strap. If you can use a strap that's fine. But you're going to make sure that you are still working deeper into the pose, working your hands down step by step along the strap.
This is the only way you will get better and one day, say good bye to the strap, and maybe went to the hand positions. Any time you are doing a bound pose, you are not forcing it deeper, you are just using the hands or the foot, where the extra stability in that last 5 % of pressure which will really clean up the muscles.
Up next is a pose that everybody loves to hate, Bow Pose. Most of the power in this pose is coming from your core and from your back muscles, but the arms provide that little bit of stability. And like I said before, that last 5 % which will really give you the back pain. What I am going to talk about today is Side Bow, which I don't see so much.
Now this is a great variation because you don't need so much power to maintain the pose. Put your head relax on to the floor, and your arms again do most of the work here, resulting in a gentle back pain and a nice stress down inside of the body. Breathe evenly, and when you got enough, roll back to center.
Next step, from standing, wrap one leg around the other, if you are tight, you can just do this version but if you are flexible you can quickly wrap the toe around the floor. Bring the hands to pair, positioning either on the thumb or all the way into the palms. And you will find yourself an eagle pose. Once you've got your hands in the nice sort, you can start to lift the elbows while simultaneously sitting down. This is going to give you the feeling of wringing your body out just like that guy.
The challenge of the pose is to maintain your balance and composer as you feel the strong internal forces working on your body. Keep your breath even, your gaze steady. I couldn't make a bound pose video without bringing Marichi and all his friends. There is so many versions of this pose I will count. Here's four of them. I will spit them all at once so you can review them on your own time. If you are going to bind this pose, you are going to go around that knee. That's what's going to give you the force to get the deep straps, what the pose requires.
Don't forget that we are going for a nice clean fish shapes, not one or two fingers desperately trying to catch on. In the course, we have to mention both of the fishes, Marichi's evil twin. In this pose we go across the body with the arm. This results in a really strong twist that's going to hit the gluteus, the obliques, and the back muscles.
Again the arm and the elbow aren't generating the pose in the shape, they are just supporting in providing that extra little push. If you want to do the bottom right variation, you may want to see it from the back. Here's how the bind works. Through that hole in the leg, reaching around, the hands are classic generally.
Stepping up a bit we will move into extended leg pose. This pose requires both high degree of balance and flexibility that's why it's a little bit tricky. We don't want to see the hip getting too involved in this pose. Rather the leg working independently of the hips is getting a deep stretch going all the way down to head strings. You can use a wide variety of grips from the basic one to this classic, catching the toe style or if you want more power, catching all the way down on the heel.
If you can't quite extend the leg, feel free to use the strap for the same effect. What's most important is that right side of the body is smooth and even without a weird thing into it. We'll finish our standing poses today with Tree. If we take tree and they give with a half letter, you got yourself a bound pose. They are opening the hips, and if you try to bring the knee back and put to the side, you are going to get even more stretch out of that.
But today, we will go a little deeper. Reaching around, we're going to try and catch the toes from the back. I say catch the toes but it really is much more practical to catch the foot bone. If you can, try to reach the side of the foot, you will find the bone which is a great handle for all of these poses and doesn't put so much strain on this small toe muscles. If you are feeling good, you can now go ahead, and fold the pose which will increase the stretch in your shoulder even further. And when you had enough, it's really important that you come up with a bent knee, because with a straight leg you are going to fall for sure.
This variation will open your shoulders and the hips at the same time, it's a great pose. Here are the whole host of step of asana that work on the knees, used by pulling, twisting, tweaking, or otherwise cajoling them into up positions. These poses always look scary and kind of put westerners off but it's actually a really important to keep your knees supple and healthy like that. What we show today is the most basic of this, which is Frog Pose. You can see that Masayo has reached around, and pointing her elbows up, and she is actually using the triceps in her back muscles to push down.
You can also see that she just self-corrected by checking her knees parallel and not spangling to the sides. This pose not only refreshes and replenishes the fluid under the knee cap, it's also really good for all the arm string. And we'll finish off these intermediate poses with tortoise pose. Just doing the regular version with the hands from the sides is already a bind but from the side, what you are going to do is take it to the next level and reaching around and clasping the hands. From sides, I'll switch to one hand on finger grip which is okay, but it would be even better if she get all of her fingers together and make a strong fish shape.
If she want to take her pose deeper, she can straighten the legs and then put chest all the down. A lot of people get frustrated and give up on tortoise pose. But I found that I keep on coming back to the UFDO. We are now entering a level of poses, which a very few people can do. The nice thing about bou
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