BADDHA UTTĀNĀSANA
baddha: bound, tied, fixed, fastened
uttāna: to extend, to stretch, extend or bend; upright, erect; lying on the back
In the long history of āsanas, there are two poses named uttānāsana (that is, as far as I can determine), and maybe a half dozen more that have uttāna as a prefix to their full name. The older original uttānāsana is a supine reclining pose, which may seem odd to us, since the pose we know of the same name is a standing pose. In the world of āsana names, such fluidity isn’t unusual. The original uttānāsana is very similar to a pose known both as the Ball Pose (kandukāsana) and the Wind Relief Pose (pavana muktāsana). In this pose, not surprisingly, the practitioner lies supine, draws her thighs to her belly, lifts her head to her knees, and wraps her arms around her shins, appearing much like–take a guess–right! A ball. The difference between the two poses is that in original uttānāsana, the practitioner has her hands clasped on the back of her neck with her elbows pressing her knees. When applied to this pose, uttāna (as you can see in the definition above) means “lying on the back.” We can trace the original pose back to the nineteenth century Śrī Tattva Nidhi (Blessed Treasure of Reality), though it might have been inspired by the older Ball Pose, described in the eighteenth century Hathābhyāsa Paddhati (Guide Book for the Practice of Hatha [Yoga]).
I might have mentioned in a previous post that the Sanskrit language is well known for its multivalency, a look-up-in-the-dictionary word essentially meaning, when applied to Sanskrit, that any one word of that language can have a wide range of definitions, some hard to understand how they’re related, others even seemingly contradictory. So in addition to being defined as “lying on the back,” uttāna also means “upright, erect.” Yes, that’s right, the same exact word is used to indicate both a reclining and an upright position. Welcome to Sanskrit 101.
Uttānāsana as “erect” describes our familiar standing forward bend, which I imagine has been around for a long time, although the oldest text in which it’s described (again, as far as I can determine) is the Yoga Rahasya (Secret of Yoga). It was written in the 1920s or 1930s by one of the granddads of modern yoga, T. Krishnamacharya. I don’t think Mr. K invented the pose, but it’s possible he was the one who dubbed the pose uttānāsana for modern practitioners.
I imagine most students know that one of the prime benefits of our modern uttānāsana is the wonderful “stretch” it gives to the backs of our thighs, specifically the trio of muscles known as the hamstrings, or hammies as they’re affectionately called. But most students also know that at the same time one of the prime restrictions to a forward bend are the aforementioned hamstrings, now not quite as lovingly regarded. Because they’re attached to our sit bones, that pair of “stirrups” at the back of our pelvis–or, if you prefer, the rockers on our built-in rocking chair–tight hammies prevent, to some greater or lesser degree, depending on their tightness, the full forward fold of our pelvis over the heads of the thighs bones or femurs (there may other factors involved too).
If you’re hamstrung by your hamstrings, it’s important to know how to properly enter the forward bend. You may have seen your teacher exhale and sweep gracefully into uttānāsana, pressing her hands to the floor beside her feet. Such a grand entrance is, to some degree, hindered by tight hammies. Many students though, determined to mimic their teacher, give it a try but when they reach the end of the line with their pelvis, complete the fold by bending ungracefully over their belly (by the way, it’s not advisable to descend into uttānāsana with your arms stretched forward; always “swan dive” into the pose). We see this especially among raw beginners. In their enthusiasm, their only goal is to go down and touch the floor, come heck or high water, rather than to create a pose that most benefits their body-mind, regardless of how far down they get. Typically, compensating for tight hammies by bending from the belly tends to create the “Humpback Whale” pose, which is actually not a laughing matter. In such cases, because the hammies refuse to release, the pelvis may be tilted slightly backward, as if in a back bend, an extremely unhealthy situation in a forward bend. Such a pose repeated over time could eventually strain the lower back and lead to serious and unpleasant consequences. It’s essential then that you realize a full “forward bend” with tight hammies, if done properly, is different for different students. A student with hamstring-itis may be, for her, in a full “forward bend” though her torso is parallel to the floor.
So how does our student enter fully into the pose but know when it’s time to stop to avoid transforming her back into a bad imitation of an enormous sea mammal? Not with one swift, balletic movement as she’s seen her teacher make (I’m thinking of our Annie Carpenter here), but slowly in stages, as many as she may need. She doesn’t want simply to go down, as our waist bender does; she instead wants to go out first and then down. It works this way.
Starting from the upright (uttana), our student inhales and lifts through the top of her sternum (manubrium) with a slight backbend (every pose begins with its own opposite). She pays particularly close attention to the space in her lower belly between the pubic bone and navel. It’s here that she’ll monitor her progress into the fold and receive the signal when it’s time to stop. With the following exhale she leans forward to maybe a 45 degree angle and pauses. In forward bends the general focus is always on the front torso (or more subtly, the front spine), and as long as she can more or less maintain the distance she established between the pubis and navel when upright, or re-establish that distance if some has been lost during descent, she can continue on to the next stage. The closer she gets to 90 degrees though, the smaller the folding movements should be, and the more frequent the pauses to lengthen become. Once past the right angle of torso and legs, the torso moves in a sort wave-like way, continually drawing out the lower belly in preparation for the next down. As soon as she feels the space in her lower belly begin to collapse and can no longer approximate its upright length, can no longer go out, her forward bend has reached its safe limit.
Now there’s a trick–maybe it would be more formal to call it a “technique”–that we can use in our out and down that allows us at each stage along the way to maximize the length of the lower belly, thereby making the pose ultimately more effective and, just as importantly, safer. In the 44 years I’ve been a yoga student, it’s undoubtedly one of the most useful techniques I’ve learned. When I learned maybe 35 to 40 years ago, it not only vastly improved virtually all my āsanas, but movements and posture in my daily life as well. I still practice it regularly, and all you need to learn it is a yoga block and a free wall ... and, as is customary with all āsanas, the three P’s: patience, perseverance, and practice.
EXERCISE
Every pose has an anchor, and in uttānāsana that anchor is the heads of the thigh bones (femurs), golf-ball shaped bones that nestle in the hip socket. It’s from this stable base that the lower belly lengthens out and prepares to descend.
Go to your wall with your block. Now a block has six surfaces, two ends, two sides, and two faces. You should use the sides of the block for this exercise, and you must position the block precisely for this exercise to work. Turn your back to the wall and position the block at the very top of your thighs, slightly below but not directly on the sit bones. The block is now more or less behind the heads of the thigh bones (femurs). Step your heels out about 10 inches from the wall, more if you’re on the tallish side, and lean yourself and the block against the wall, remaining upright. If your feet are too close to the wall, you’ll feel as if you’re being pushed forward and your block will probably soon be thumping on the floor. Walk your feet out then a few more inches.
Now press your upper thighs against the block. The tendency at first is to push the knees toward the wall instead, something you don’t want to do, especially if your knees hyper-extend. How will you know if you’re pressing the top thighs and not the knees? If you’re doing the former, you may feel a spontaneous lift of the front torso, along with a subtle increase of pressure of the heels against the floor. These two actions approximate Patanjali’s criteria for a successful āsana, which should be both comfortable (sukham) and steady (sthiram), or in the words of the British sage Lewis Thompson, “strength without tension.” This is, in fact, just how you want to always initiate your move into uttānāsana, or really any foward bend.
Now go out and down to a 45 degree angle and pause. Are you pressing the block with your uppermost thighs, or simply locking your knees? If the latter, imagine your calves are resisting against your shins, and see that your kneecaps, like a pair of eyes, are looking straight ahead. To give yourself a hand (so to speak), press your thumbs deep into your front groins and push back ... hard. The press has to be against the groins, it won’t work if you just press the thighs. Check your low belly: if you’ve maintained its upright space or can re-establish what space may have been lost moving down, you can continue to the next stage using this same method. If you move past 90 degrees (when the torso perpendicular is to the legs), your out and down progress will be more like a caterpillar inching along a tree branch. At some point, as I mentioned previously, you’ll begin to lose and are unable to restore the upright space in your lower belly, so this is where the traffic light turns red. Pushing past safe limits could well lead to the Humpback Whale Pose and its potential for injury. As a student who studied for many years under hard-core Iyengar teachers, I can assure from personal experience that aggressively attacking any āsana is a really bad idea.
You may want a chair in front of you to support your hands if they don’t comfortably touch the floor. Incidentally, even if your hammies are relatively stretchable, you may want to try this method of descent. You might find that your pretty good forward bend gets a bit prettier. Stay in place for several minutes, maybe pressing your hands, if possible, against your calves to resist pushing back on the knees. Come up on an inhale with a long front torso, initiating the ascent in the same way you initiated the descent, by pressing the heads of the femurs against the block. Be aware that it’s very common for a block to drop when ascending. It’s entirely possible that you won’t “get it” at first. I urge you to persevere, the benefits of “grounding” or “centering” the femurs, or whatever it is we’re doing, are well worth the time and effort.
BADDHA UTTĀNĀSANA
Now for the pose of the month, baddha uttānāsana, for which you’ll need your yoga belt, ideally around 8 feet long (a shorter belt may be sufficient if you’re shortish). You may not have heard of this pose before, and that’s because I just made it up (at least I believe I did; after almost four-and-a-half decades of practice, all the poses sort of run together, so if I did learn this from another teacher–which I honestly don’t think I did–then I apologize to the offended party). The pose is baddha, “bound,” because of the way the belt is used.
Make your belt into as large a loop as the belt can make, with maybe just an inch of the free end sticking out past the buckle. I prefer to do this pose with my buttocks on a wall, heels once again 10 or so inches out, but I need this help for my balance. If you feel comfortable without a wall support, that’s fine.
Swing the loop behind you and step your feet back over it, securing it to the floor. Then bend forward maybe half way, knees bent, and loop the loop over your pelvis, across the sacrum, close to the tail bone (be sure to have its free end pointing up on your dominent hand side, that makes it easier to tighten). Now with the knees still bent, get a sense of where the pelvis is relative to the floor. Then apply what you learned in the block exercise. Imagine there’s a heavy weight on the back of your pelvis, so as you “ground” or “center” the femur heads, the pelvis can’t lift any higher. As you press back on the thighs, lengthen forward and descend slightly more. Every time you want to go farther, repeat this sequence: bend your knees slightly, snug the belt, weigh down the pelvis, press back on the femurs. Continue until your lower belly signals “stop.” You may find you’ve gone a bit farther down than usual, but no guarantees.
Now there’s one more step to try if you can comfortably grip your ankles without the manifesting the Whale. Wrap your thumbs around the inners and the rest of your fingers around the outers. Press the bases of your big toes firmly against the floor and pull up on your ankles, imagine you’re attempting the impossible–which is what yoga is actually all about–and lift yourself off the floor (yes, in your imaginaton). As you do, draw imaginatively up along your inner legs and “sharpen” your inner groins up into your pelvis. Feel how the belt across your sacrum “caps” the rising energy, so that it spreads out across your pelvis side-to-side toward the outer hips. What you’ll have then is a “geyser” of imaginary energy creating a feeling of enormous space in your pelvis. From that space, allow your torso to release downward. Be sure not to pull your torso down, that creates tension; rather, think of your torso hanging down from that space in your pelvis. Be sure too to let your head hang from the “root” of the neck, deep inside your upper back between the shoulder blades, and feel its weight. Stay as long as you like, but at least a few minutes. To come up, first bend your knees, then release the loop and, pressing the femurs back against an imaginary block, ascend on an inhale with a long front torso.
When you become more adept with working with the femur heads, you’ll discover they have more uses than you can shake a block at, pretty much all the poses, even savāsana. OM tat tvam asi.