Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of deep in your practice. I am your host, Lauren Leduc, the founder of True Love Yoga. And today we're gonna take a little bit of time to break down a pose that we all know and love, which is Adho mukha svanasana, or better known as downward facing dog. So if you take yoga classes, especially Vinyasa yoga classes, this is a posture that we do a lot. It has been referred to often as a resting pose, which we'll talk a little bit about that, I think, and what I think about that, since this pose is done so frequently, I think it's really important to break it down. And I'll be going over, I think, a lot postures in this podcast, but I think one of the things to remember is that something might seem really basic, but there are intricacies within it. There are ways to stay present and alive and awake during the posture, and there are ways to continue, I think, elevating it through your practice, strengthening yourself, finding more mobility, and feeling more present, engaged and alive. So, five tips to elevate your downward facing dog. My first tip is to, to know the energy and the purpose of this pose. Like I said, it has often been referred to as a resting pose, and I actually disagree with that, especially if it is a posture that is still somewhat new to you. It is an active posture if it is being done correctly. However, once the strength and the mobility are there in your body, to the best of its ability or potential, it can become a little more restful compared to moving with the breath during a full. Think of this posture as one of the best spinal decompressions that we get within a yoga practice. So more than resting, more than like chest opening, even although it can do that, it's really about lengthening the spine. Most of us spend a lot of time sitting, walking, standing. Any chance that we can give our spine a rest to lengthen it, to help it feel more supported, is an opportunity to feel more comfortable in our own bodies. So, know that the energy of this pose really is about spinal decompression. You might hear a teacher say something like lift the hips up and back, and yes, that is the direction of the hips in this pose, which allows the spine to lengthen. But I'm going to get into some other tips that help facilitate this energy. So tip number two is using your hands correctly, and this is known as hasta bandha, or your hand lock. So instead of just placing flat hands on the mat, there's some activity going on the fingers are spread wide. You're pressing into each pad of the finger, including the thumb, and then pressing around the perimeter of the palm. So what you might feel is a little bit of a lift in the mid knuckle and a little bit of lift in the center of the palm. And it's pretty subtle. But you can think of this hand almost like a suction cup, or think of, like, lizard hands or frog hands climbing up a wall or some glass. It's almost like you're gripping the mat with your hands, and it's not with all of your might. Most of what we do in yoga isn't with all of our might. It's with this balance between effort and ease. But you're definitely using the hands, and this helps place your wrists in a really good position. Most of us don't bear weight on our hands from the time we're crawling to the time we're an adult, unless we are doing gymnastics or some sort of sport where you need to bear weight on your hands. So this position helps take some pressure off of the wrists, and it builds grip strength as well, so that over time, you feel a lot more comfortable placing weight on your hands. And this will help facilitate later on in your practice, maybe things like arm balances or handstands. You can also think of the hands, one in this hosta banda position, but two, pressing down into the mata and away from your head. So, no, you're not actually sliding your hands away from your head, but that is the action that's being taken in the muscles. And this will also help lengthen the spine, and it creates this tension. There's a lot of. I don't love the word tension, necessarily when I'm talking about yoga poses, because we're not looking to find tension in areas where it isn't necessary. But often in yoga poses, there is this beautiful tension that's happening, a push and pull, if you will. So the hands are pushing down and away from you, and the hips are pulling up and back. And this helps, again, create the decompression that we're looking for. Tip number three is finding an external rotation through your humerus bones. So what does that mean? Your humerus bones are your upper arm bones, so they're part of the shoulder joint, but they're connected to the shoulder. And an external rotation would be finding that soft inner crease of your elbow and spinning it forward. So instead of backward toward your head, forward toward the front of your mat or the front of your room. This helps place the entire shoulder girdle in a strong position to hold your weight in this pose. If you are very flexible through the shoulders, it's very easy to let go of any shoulder engagement in this posture. And instead let the chest sink down. And it might really feel really good for a moment. But that's not how we are holding this posture. For several breaths at a time. We want to do it in a really engaged state. So this external rotation of the upper arm helps bring the shoulders into this strong position to hold your body weight. We'll talk about it a little bit later, but if you're the opposite, you're less mobile in this posture. You might feel like a rounding in your upper back. And it can be more difficult to find the shoulders in the correct position here. And that's okay, too. We'll talk about what to do with the legs to help correct that. You can also think in the upper arms of hugging them toward each other. And again, that helps correctly engage your shoulders. I will add one caveat for this external arm rotation that for some people, it doesn't quite work with the way your joints are put together. You'll see, or you might feel or see in your own body, like your elbows sort of bow out to the sides. And to help correct that, I think it's totally fine to take your hands and fan them out. So, taking, like, your middle finger and opening them up toward the side so that your hands are more pointed toward the corners of your mat instead of the front of your mat. And that can help externally rotate the upper arms and bring the shoulders into correct position. So that might be something that you try out. If you feel that. It's very difficult to draw those soft inner creases of the elbows forward. Next, we'll talk about tip number four, which is finding a neutral pelvis. And there are a couple of ways that we do that. So, when I say neutral pelvis, I don't mean a flat lumbar spine or lower spine. What I mean is a natural curve through the low back. And that means that we are not finding a posterior or anterior tilt through the pelvis. Meaning we're not tucking the pelvis under. We're also not sticking the tailbone out. We're finding something in between.
[00:07:57] There are a couple of ways to do this. So, one is internally rotating your femur bones. So we talked about externally rotating the humerus. Now we're thinking of a slight internal rotation through the thigh bones. If you took that all the way down the leg, what that would mean was you'd see your toes slightly pointing toward each other. And heels slightly out. And that line would follow up the leg. This helps bring the pelvis into a neutral position. But one of my favorite ways to find neutral pelvis. Is actually via the core. And what I mean by that is you're doing a couple of things. One is lifting the pelvic floor. Also called mula bandha. So it's a slight lift. If you're familiar with kegels. It's like that. And similar to the engagement I'm talking about before. It's not like a clench, it's not with all your might. It's this balance between effort and ease. So, lifting of the pelvic floor. And then drawing your navel or your belly button in. Toward your spine and up. Which helps engage the transverse abdominis. So it's like you're drawing navel in and up. And drawing the front ribs toward each other. Almost like you're putting on a corset. Nothing that extreme, of course. But when you lift the pelvic floor. And then engage through the transverse abdominis. It helps naturally bring the pelvis into neutral position. So I definitely recommend playing with that. I'll also add one of the ways to neutralize the pelvis. That I think is really important. Is bending your knees. So I know we see pictures of downward facing dog. And knees are always straight with heels on the ground. That's not what it's going to look like in a lot of people's practices. Instead, to help bring the hips up and back, neutralize the pelvis. And even get out of the shoulders. Like I talked about earlier. Being kind of punched over the shoulders. Too much weight forward, you can bend your knees. So bending your knees, lifting your hips up and back. Helps create the traction through the spine. Helps neutralize the pelvis. And helps bring the shoulders into proper position as well. So I'm going to call that tip four and a half. Because I do see that being so helpful for so many people. Tip number five is prop it up. So this is using a variety of yoga props. In different ways. To find more ease and more alignment in this posture. So I'll give a few examples. One is using a wall. So you don't even need to be hands on the ground. And downward facing dog. You can find the posture with your hands at the wall. So you stand a few feet away from the wall. Place your hands on the wall. Walk them down. As you hinge your hips. And lower your chest. And explore the posture that way. See how it feels in your body. I'll also say that the rotation of the arms and the shoulder engagement is a little less important in this particular version. So even if you find a lot of ease in downward facing dog on the floor, you might try this anyway and let the chest lower a little bit more and feel the opening of the chest and the decompression that happens through the thoracic spine or the upper back, that can feel quite nice in a really, really safe way at the wall. If you're finding it difficult or you're feeling a little bit of pain in the wrists during downward facing dog, during vinyasa yoga in general, you might need to lessen the extension of the wrist a little bit. Meaning extension is when you draw like your fingernail, side of the fingers back towards your wrist or back towards your forearm. And that position can feel uncomfortable for a lot of people, especially depending on your lifestyle. So there are a few different tools out there to help with this. Very simply, you could fold a yoga blanket a couple of times and place the heel of your hand onto the crease of the blanket. And this will help elevate it a little bit so that you're nothing, extending the wrist quite as much or lessening that angle. They also make little pads, wedges that help with this exact same thing. And if it doesn't feel good to have your hands flat on the mat and you need almost more of a straight wrist, they make these really cool yoga blocks that have like a handle on them. So you can place the blocks down and hold the handle with your hands instead of placing your hands flat on the mat or propping on a blanket or something like that. One of my favorite props in this posture is placing blocks under your hands so that can help with the spinal decompression. You're pressing the hands into the blocks and then away from the head. It elevates the hips more. And if your heels are quite far off the ground, it can help bring the heels down as well. For a little bit more grounding in the posture, it might help you straighten the legs as well. And lastly, you could place a folded blanket underneath your heels if they're quite close to the ground but not quite there, you again find more of a sense of grounding to give your heel something to make contact with so that you can work on lengthening the legs. So I often see a couple of different things in this posture. One is kind of an overmobility happening with lack of engagement. And you'll see this as the chest dipping low. And this isn't a posture again to rest in. So following all of these tips will help you create more integration, meaning this balance of strength and ease or strength and mobility within the posture. On the flip side, I see a lot of tension through the whole back body. So that might mean tension especially through like the low back, the hips and the legs that can really hinder this posture. So all of these tips thankfully work for that as well. So no matter where your body is on that spectrum, try these five tips and see how it elevates your downward facing dog. I would love to know how this works for you. So if you give it a try, you can me on Instagram or you can email me laurenruloveyogac.com. you could also show your downward facing dog on Instagram or wherever you like to post and tag me. I would really, really love to see it. And if there are any more postures that you would like me to look at to break down, to give tips on, I would absolutely love to help.
[00:14:09] I love talking about yoga. I love breaking these things down. I love that the basics aren't so simple. And then once you build the muscle memory and find your own alignment, you'll find this beautiful simplicity again in the posture. So yoga is always this constant discovery. We're always peeling back layers. We're always building more awareness and finding more of that balance between effort and ease. If you love this episode, I would love it if you would go in and rate it and review it, that helps the podcast so much. Thank you so much for listening. Have a beautiful week. Om Shanti om peace.
