Neti Pose
neti-asana
neti = no English translation
This pose is the third of 84 poses described in the early 18th century CE Joga Pradipyaka (not to be confused with the Yoga Pradipika). The Sanskrit “neti” has no English translation. Along with instructions regarding the leg placement, the text gives additional instructions about the arms and gaze, viz. cross your forearms in front of your torso, holding each elbow with the opposite hand. Then “churn” the arms clockwise for a few turns (so specific number is given), then anti-clockwise for the same number of times, “observing silence. Gaze at the tip of the nose.” Two effects are noted, physical and yogic. According to the former, the pose “purifies the body, removes physical disorders,” and the body “attains lightness.” For the latter, “the nadis [i.e., subtle energy channels] are purified,” and the arms “churn” the body’s subtle energy (prana vayu). For the pose to be most effective, we’re instructed to practice three times daily.
1. Sit on a thickly folded blanket or two, depending on the openness of your outer hips; sit higher if you’re tighter, lower if you’re more open. But in either case, sit on some kind of lift, and sit near the firm front edge of the blanket, so your pelvis is tipped slightly forward on the fronts of the sit bones. Always be sure the top rim of your pelvis is parallel to the floor, not tipped back toward the tail bone. If it is, sit even higher.
2. Bend your knees, stand your feet on the floor. Slide your left heel to your right sit bone and lay the outer leg on the floor. Then cross your right ankle just to the outside of the left knee and lay that leg down toward the floor as well. If this is too difficult, just cross your shins in front of the torso, right in front of left.
3. Burrow your right thumb into the right hip crease (groin). Push down on the groin (never on the knee), grip the thigh bone and turn the thigh outwardly (laterally). Keep the thumb in the groin and lean forward slightly. Make sure the groin stays deep. If it seems to push up against the thumb, back off slightly, press the thumb deeper, and try to lean forward again. If you can’t keep the groin soft when leaning forward, then keep the torso upright.
4. When ready, reach your hands out onto the floor in front of the shins. Press them down against the floor and “scrub” them back toward the shins, using that down-and-back pressure to lift the top sternum up and through the arms (“scrub” means to pull the floor back toward the shins but don’t physically move the hands). Lean forward from the groins, not the lower belly. Always lengthen the lower belly between the pubis and navel. Also be sure to keep the collar bones wide, don’t hunch forward.
5. It’s more important to keep the groins soft and deep than it is to increase the forward fold. So your pose may be mostly upright if your hips are tighter. Every now and then with an inhale, lift the torso slightly through the top sternum and draw the lower belly out of the groins, then try to lower down a bit more. Imagine the back of the pelvis widening side-to-side, spreading out from the sacrum’s mid-line, as the front hip points narrow toward the navel. Stay for a minute or more, pushing the outer knees away from the pelvis. Come up with an inhale, reverse the legs and repeat for the same length of time with the left leg high.
CAUTION: always be sure the top ankle is outside the bottom knee, so the top sole is perpendicular to the floor. Never press the top foot against the inner bottom thigh, so the ankle is angled and the sole parallel to the floor. Always see the top foot sole is perpendicular to the floor.
ADVANCED TIP: if this stretch is fairly easy with the bottom heel at the opposite sit bone, you can create a deeper stretch by sliding the bottom shin forward, parallel to the top shin.