Ashtanga Yoga : Twisting For Beginners, Marichyasana C With Kino MacGregor And Julia Lofstrand

hi I’m keno MacGregor we’re here at Miami Life Center today we’re going to be taking a look at marriage asana see this is a twisting posture that comes almost halfway through the primary series of ashtanga yoga this is a great challenge for the flexibility in the back particularly the upper back and the shoulders as well as deep inside the hips if your pelvis is a fully hallow meaning you don’t have a good sense of how to suck in the lower stomach this posture will be exceedingly hard for you Julie would be my model tee and we’re going to be taking a look at how you can safely enter the posture all right starting off in dandasana position sort of a neutral position from which you can sort of figure out how you can best align the body sense we’ll be doing the right side Julia’s going to bend her right knee now this is a place where you can immediately start to see some complications choose a beautiful position of the knee sometimes people place the foot all the way forward out here this creates way too much space you want to have a deep good bend in the knee you also want to have about a hands distance in between your foot and your thighs you can see a good bit of separation you also don’t want to have the foot too wide right obviously this takes the pelvis a little bit out of alignment so a good sense of the line is that hands distance in between your foot and your thigh that’ll let the knee bend and get you deep within the hip socket from which you’re rotating since we’re doing the right side that’s going to bring the head of the right thigh bone deeper into the pelvis once you feel that sense of stability then you want to suck in the stomach and ground the pelvis so you feel the pelvis pushing down into the ground that’s almost your sense of foundation right weight is always going to be pouring into the foot you never lose the stability deep inside of the legs once you feel that sense of stability then we can begin to enter the posture inhaling we lift the spine straight up out of the pelvis and exhaling we inwardly rotate the right thigh and lift the body twisting from the waist and over that little motion has to come all the way down deep inside of the pelvis a lot of people like to lean back somehow there’s a natural tendency to lean far back but you want to keep your chest as close to the thigh as possible keeping the shoulder in close contact with need from the very beginning now we’re going to take a look at how to bind the arm first you’ll notice that the arm reaches around the palm is facing up in order to get the hand around we need to rotate the arm downward it’s almost like a downward spiral that takes the shoulder down and around so very important that the shoulder keeps rotating down so we keep the binds all right once this hand the left hand reaching around the right knee is set in place you’ll see that the hand is waiting in perfect position around the back very important now that this hand is done working so we want to feel as you exhale that the other hand reaches around and we feel a deep rotation in the opposite shoulder so you can see how our shoulder blade is dropping down the back so you’ll see a twist through the clavicle through the collarbone one shoulder dropping down while the other one rotates down the back now what can often happen is that the pelvis starts to destabilize a little bit so a great way to counteract that is to press weight firmly in to the opposite sitting bone and that again is why we press down on the pelvis with the strength of the Bundys or the strength of that sucking in of the lower stomach looking over the right shoulder helps keep the twist through the entire spine one last little pitfall that people often do is forget that their keep that they need to keep the bind around the knee and they twist right off so sometimes if you twist up and up and up oh the shoulder just pops right off so I want to try to avoid that as much as possible let’s see if we can just try the other side normally in the Ashtanga Yoga method you would actually jump back but we’ll save you that for today and give Julie a little break so we’re trying the left side remember that nice alignment that hands distance in between it’s very important that we understand that the twisting motion comes as a result of that solid foundation deep inside of the pelvis every twist includes a side stretch meaning we’re lifting from the side and reaching over right we can only do that when pelvis is really nice and stable so feeling that sense of stability inhaling lifting all the way from the pelvis inwardly rotating the left leg and reaching all the way around right so you can see how our body lifts all the way from the pelvis and reaches over this is the key element of this posture cleansing the digestive system working with all of that lift deep inside of the low belly then that rotating the arm the spiral reaches around it’s almost like you’re just dropping the shoulder around it doesn’t require that much effort having the bun firmly established this arm is done working then as you exhale we spiral the other arm to make contact guiding the opposite shoulder down the back so you can really see how our shoulder blades are in two opposite positions the shoulder that’s reaching around the knee reaches a little bit up to keep the shoulder down while the shoulder blade of the opposite arm reaches deep down the back giving a nice twist along the upper back keeping the opposite sitting bone from which you’re twisting away ground it will help keep a sense of stability in the pelvis remembering that the twist is deep in the body rather than lifting up will prevent your arm from sliding after five long breaths you can release and jump back so this is some good tips for marriage asana see I hope you’ll be able to give it a shot trying at home or with your teacher thanks for listening I’m keno MacGregor
Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFZPI77gpeI