Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign hello, my friends, this is Lauren Leduc, the owner and founder of True Love Yoga. And this is another episode of deepen your yoga practice. And today we're going to deepen our practices by breaking down one of the poses that we do a lot in vinyasa yoga, which is chaturanga dandasana.
[00:00:34] I'm sure that you've heard this word a thousand times if you're a vinyasa yogi, but do you know what it really entails as a posture? So today, my hope is to give you a little bit of a deeper understanding of the pose to help you find your own alignment for the posture and to help you feel more embodied in your own practice. So I did hatha yoga for years. When I first started doing yoga, when I went to my first vinyasa class, I want to say in 2011, I had no idea what chaturanga meant. And by the way, in Sanskrit, it translates to four limbed staff pose. But I kind of looked around the room and took a guess on what to do based on what I saw other people doing. But in my mind, chaturanga just meant lower down to the mat, or better yet, even flop down to the mat before you do some kind of back bend. And we do it a lot in vinyasa yoga.
[00:01:38] And it really wasn't until I went to yoga teacher training that this pose was really broken down for me that I gained a deeper understanding of it, of how to do it safely. And it really unlocked my practice in a way that, that I built a lot more strength and alignment. And it set me up to be able to do things like arm balances later on in a way that was more healthy and integrated than what I had achieved in my own body at that point. And I definitely have one of my beautiful teachers, Jenny Lee Toner, to thank for this. She wrote the book on chaturanga, literally called the perfect Chaturanga. It's not the easiest book to find online, but we do carry it at the studio if you were interested in it. It's more than a book about chaturanga. It's very comprehensive in yoga history and Sanskrit, and I love it as well because it gives a lot of cross training exercises to strengthen the muscles and lengthen the muscles necessary to do chaturanga. So it's super cool. Highly recommend. And let's get into what is chaturanga dandasana, or four limb staff pose, and what's its role in vinyasa sequences? So oftentimes we go to vinyasa yoga, but we Also do a sequence called the Vinyasa. Think of it as plank to chaturanga to upward facing dog to downward facing dog. Very simply, we can think of Chaturanga as a tricep pushup. So instead of the elbows flaring out, they are next to our sides as we lower, but we're not pressing back up. So it's not really much of a tricep exercise, but it is the beginning motion or the first motion that you see in a tricep pushup. This posture is a really great upper body strengthener, a core stabilizer, and the shape repeats in different postures, and the muscle engagement needed for it repeats in other postures. So when I say it's a strength builder, it's also a conditioner for other postures in yoga, especially ones where you're bearing weight on the upper body. So it's kind of the middle pose in the Vinyasa sequence. We do it a lot. Oftentimes we do it poorly. Increasing our awareness and knowing how to modify as well can be super helpful in this posture. A lot of people might find some challenges in this pose besides not knowing the alignment exactly, but one might be wrist discomfort. People might feel this lack of core or shoulder strength that makes it difficult to achieve the posture or to achieve it with knees off the ground, and they might feel other alignment issues in their body. So we'll break down the alignment kind of step by step to hopefully alleviate some of these common challenges. So, first, you're starting in a plank position.
[00:04:27] And with plank, you want to have your hands shoulder distance apart, your wrists underneath your elbows, underneath your shoulders, your fingers spread wide, and you want to press into your fingertips and thumb tip and feel the perimeter of the palm pressing down too. It's just a little lift in the center, center of the palm that is called hasta banda. So wrists are stacked under the shoulders, and the hands are a super strong foundation starting right off the bat in your plank. A couple other tips while you're still in plank are to engage your core. So draw your front ribs toward each other to engage through your glutes, to engage through the thighs as well. A thing to think about with the feet is your heels are right over the balls of the feet in your plank. So if you were to be like, up against the wall, feet up against the wall, almost the whole sole of the foot would be up against the wall. As you're in the plank pose, you also want to look slightly forward, not crank the neck forward, but just slightly forward. So the back of the Neck is nice and long, and that often correlates to what's going on in the lumbar spine area as well or in the low back. So long neck, long low back, everything is supported by the core muscles. So. So that was an awful lot about plank. But we need a good plank setup to be able to get into a great chaturanga. So from plank, you start to lower by bending the elbows back. And the elbows might graze the ribs, it might not. It really just depends on the proportions of your body. But if you were to be standing up and you got into the chaturanga position, your elbows would be under your shoulders. So you start to bend the elbows, but as you're doing so, you also shift forward onto your tippy toes. So instead of staying in that same foot position as plank, you shift forward onto your toes as you lower. And this helps align the elbows and the shoulders to exactly where they need to be. So in the pose itself, the elbows will be fairly close to the ribs and at about a 90 degree angle. So what you want to avoid are the shoulders dipping below the elbows. In fact, if you can't get to 90, it's totally fine. You're just not lowering to that kind of squared shape. You're. You have a little bit less of an angle going on. You might try holding the posture for a little bit. Usually we inhale and go right into upward facing dog, but you might try holding it to really feel what you're working here. So a lot of the same stuff is plank. You're still using hasta bandha and the hands, the gaze is still just slightly forward. You are shrugging the shoulder blades down the back by depressing the scapula.
[00:07:09] The core is engaged around the spine, so there's no sagging or arching in the lower back. And the legs are really engaged. So it sort of looks like you're in this straight line hovering off of the floor. And then when you're ready, you can press either right back up if you want to make it a tricep pushup, or you can press into your upward facing dog. So that's a quick breakdown of chaturanga. You want to see this long line of energy from the crown of the head all the way to the heels, really. Um, but this can take a lot of strength and control to maintain and to do properly. You might feel some discomfort in this posture if you are dumping into the wrists, which means you're probably not engaging the hands the way that you need to. If you are collapsing into the shoulders so instead of drawing the shoulder blades down the back and holding them in place, they start to kind of round and collapse or start to draw together. You might feel the belly or the hips sagging down toward the floor. Maybe they even lower all the way to the floor. Without a sense of intention or control, you might take your gaze back and then your hips kind of lift and it just feels all wrong. Sometimes I see people do sort of this like worm, wormy thing, like they're doing the worm. But really from the plank to chaturanga, you want to see this long straight line of the body lower simultaneously. So if you're having a hard time finding chaturanga itself, and it's a really difficult posture, in my opinion, there are several things that you can do, and one is just changing the way you do it. So taking different variations of the posture. One of my favorites is knees down. So for this, you'll take your knees down in plank and then lower all the way down to the mat. If you do that, I recommend taking Cobra instead of Upward Facing Dog. And I also recommend doing this nice and slow, and that's going to help build strength over time. You might also put your knees down and not lower all to the wig, all the way to the ground. You lower until maybe shoulders and elbows aligned before pressing into Upward Facing Dog. And that's a really great halfway point between the knees down lie down version and the full chaturanga. You can also practice an inclined chaturanga. So that means putting your hands on blocks or a bolster, or even up against a wall and giving yourself a little less distance to cover as you're lowering down. So those are a few different ways to explore it. Now I will talk about some on the mat tools to strengthen yourself for chaturanga. The first one would be knee down push ups. So it's coming to plank. Then placing your knees down on the mat, hugging the elbows back as you lower about halfway down, and then pressing straight back up and then doing that several times, maybe about one to three sets of 10 repetitions, and continuing to do that at least a couple of times a week as you continue to build the strength through the chest and through the shoulders and core. If you find that chaturanga is extending your wrists too much and it's painful, you might place something under the heels of your hands like the edge of a hard blanket. Or you might even use something like hand weights that are stable so that you do not have to extend your wrist to get into the plank or chaturanga position. So that's something to try.
[00:10:28] One way I really like to explore chaturanga is taking a strap around the upper arm so just above the elbows fairly tightly and it would keep your arms shoulder distance apart and then lowering to chaturanga. And it's automatically stops you so you cannot dip the shoulders below the elbows. It stops you right where you need to be. So that's a really nice way to feel the shape of chaturanga in your body.
[00:10:53] Um, another great posture to try is dolphin. It's a great way to build shoulder and upper back strength. So just like downward facing dog, but placing forearms on the mat and you might even do dolphin pushups. So you're going between a forearm plank and then lifting the hips to dolphin and then back down maybe again taking about one to three sets of 10 repetitions at a time. Locust pose is also a great way to strengthen the back body to counterbalance some of chaturanga's demands. So really engaging through the back body, focusing on drawing the shoulder blades together, engaging the lower back, the glutes, feeling all of that alive and awake as you lift the body off of the floor. There are also a few tools you might use off the mat to help strengthen your chaturanga as well. And I'm pulling these right from the perfect chaturanga. So thanks, Jenny Lee, for these techniques. One is bicep curls and these you might have to look up online if you haven't done them before, but they're fairly simple exercises. The next is tricep kickbacks. Really any tricep exercises will do anterior deltoid raises. So that's having weights in your hands and lifting the arms straight in front of you and reclining anterior deltoid raises. So same thing, but on the back she has chest presses in here and pectoral flies. So so many fun ways to strengthen yourself for chaturanga on and off the mat. So I'd recommend, as you're integrating chaturanga into your practice, to incorporate it as safely as possible. I typically will Recommend at least 1 to 3 knees down. Lie down cobras in your sequences before going from chaturanga to upward facing dog to help warm up the body. I would also just notice where you are that day. Is it going to be beneficial for you to continue lowering to the mat and taking cobra or locust? Or is your body ready for a bunch of chaturangas, Upward facing dog or maybe should you put your knees down? So it's a mindfulness exercise or a swadhyaya self study exercise? That also means knowing when to take breaks to skip the vinyasa. Maybe you take child's pose or downward facing dog when you're feeling really tired. Then I recommend also just having patience with yourself. Strength doesn't happen overnight. It's something that takes practice and time. So continue practicing and seeing how your body strengthens over time and how it changes. I love actually using like a camera for this one because even if you have a mirror in your practice room, you can't really see your alignment that well for chaturanga. So place your your video camera or what is it, a phone with a video camera down nice and low on the ground and give yourself a moment to actually analyze your chaturanga. Could you look a little bit more forward? Could your hips lifted a little higher? Do they need to lower a little bit more? Are the elbows and shoulders aligned? Take some time to kind of be your own scientist and analyze. So just to recap this short episode, chaturanga is a really complex pose in my opinion, and it requires alignment and strength and lots of patience. So have some grace with yourself as you are tweaking your alignment and improving it and becoming more integrated in your practice. I definitely recommend finding the perfect chaturanga book and exploring that because this is just a tip with Iceberg, what I'm sharing with you today. It goes a lot more into detail with the actual anatomy and with exercises and things like that.
[00:14:19] And I also recommend that you try the exercises that we talked about today and the different variations of the sequence and see what works for you. Just a reminder that everyone's practices are different. Even your own practice is different from a day to day basis. Be the scientist of your own practice. Observe it with curiosity and compassion. Make changes when changes need to be made without attaching to any specific outcome. So much love to you all. If there is another posture you'd love for me to break down, please let me know. In the meantime, Om Shanti, Om Peace. Thanks for listening.
