Hi, I am Patrick. One of the most common questions I get is about two poses, which on paper look pretty similar, Cobra and upward facing dog. What's the deal with these poses? Are they basically the same pose or are they totally different? Well, today we are going to try to answer this question. To help me I got Kumika one of our teachers on the veranda on a nice day.
If you think about a cobra and a dog, there really couldn't be any two different animals. They move in totally different ways, have a totally different structure for their bodies and you find that the poses are equally as different.
But if you want a quick answer to your question, the difference between cobra and upward dog is the hands. You can see on the right here Kumika is doing upward dog. In upward dog, the hands are always just below the shoulders. In cobra on the left the hands are always in front of the butt.
So if you want a ten second answer, the difference between the poses is the placing of the hands. If that has not satisfied anybody, so we will take it a little deeper now. The real difference between these poses is that they use different kinds of energy to different effects.
So let's look at Cobra. In Cobra the power isn't only in the hands. You are also pushing strongly down with the pelvis, right here. So in effect, you have two points of them, one pushing down and one pushing up and you are going to feel the stretch where those two points meet which is your lower back. If you need an image to understand this power, think about opening a crate with a crow bar or something. One point of the bar is grounded into the crate and the other is lifting up and it is the interplay between these two energies that you your effect. Cobra is the same thing essentially.
Now where I think people get confused is that as the spine opens up and becomes limber, students will begin to straighten the arms to give more power to the pose so that they can feel the same effect. This makes the pose look a little bit like upward dog because the arms are straight. But don't be fooled. The force of the pose is still coming from that downward portion of the pelvis and the upper back portion of the pelvis.
Some people become so flexible that even with totally straight arms they are still not getting a really good stretch in their lumbar. You might see them having a little more action to the pose by raising the legs to the back of the head in King Cobra. This looks really fancy but the physics are all the same. The pelvis and the arms working in opposite directions to stretch the lower back. So that's Cobra.
Let's take a look at upward dog now. In up dog, the hands are below the shoulders and you will see this has a really dramatic effect on the type of energy of the pose. Cobra pose is all about pushing up and back. Upward dog is all about lifting. A good image for this pose is something like the golden gate bridge. On the bridge all of the strength is found in the towers. The cables that connect the towers are just falling with the line of gravity. So in a sense, upward dog is much more graceful and architectural than Cobra which relies more on overall power. In up dog, all the strength is found in the upper back and the tops of the shoulders. The rest of the body, the spine, the buttocks and the legs are allowed to fluidly drape down towards the mat just using gravity.
You would never build a bridge with lazy, sloppy towers and in the same way you don't want your up dog to have weak arms. You really want to lift, open the chest, expand the back. Make it as tall and as proud as possible. But that's not the end of the story. In addition to lifting strongly out of the body, you want to move the chest through the arms as if your back doesn't stay out and the wind had really caught the sail and opened it up. To get a feeling for this, have a friend or a teacher place the knee in the middle of your back and at the same time move back with the hands. This is the kind of feeling you should recreate with your own power as you do upward dog. This is where the meaning of the pose really starts to become apparent. Okay. So what is the difference between cobra and upward facing dog?
Cobra, by having the hands placed in front of the body and the hips strongly grounded into the mat allows you to push upward back into the pose, stretching the lower spine and revitalizing the lower organs, stomach and the intestines. Upward dog, by having the hands below the shoulders allows you to lift up and out of the body. At the same time, you are going to open and expand the chest, stretching the upper back and rejuvenating the higher organs of the upper body. So that's it. Good luck.
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