One thing I like about Bikram Yoga

One of the things I most wonder about in yoga as we practice it here in the US is all the emphasis that teachers place on keeping the shoulders down in all poses. I've written about this before.
It doesn't make sense to me. When reaching overhead, the shoulders naturally come up. Reach for something on a high shelf, the shoulder comes up. It seems to me this is the way the shoulder is meant to work when reaching overhead. This is our natural range of motion. Everywhere else in yoga we try to maximize our range of motion, but by keeping the shoulders down when we reach overhead, we're limiting the range of motion in the shoulders and arms.

Anyway, in Bikram yoga, there are a few poses where you keep the arms raised overhead, fingers interlaced. And they say shoulders up, arms straight, squeeze your ears with your arms. Mind you, I think they do lots and lots of things wrong in Bikram, but this is one thing that I really they do right.

My Favorite Twist -- The "Fire Hydrant Twist"

Twisting is one of the more complicated things we do in yoga. There's always a lot going on, especially in complicated twists like arda matsyendrasana or twisted marichi asana.

I look at people doing arda matsyendrasana (seated spinal twist) and just cringe sometimes. Teachers will always say 'make sure both seatbones are on the floor', and, really, almost no one's sitbones are both on the floor. It's just very hard to do this when tucking one leg under and crossing the other in front over the top. So pretty much no one's pelvis is level, and worse, most people aren't sitting up straight, they're rounding the back quite a bit.

I think the best way to find a deep twist while keeping the pelvis level and the spine straight is what I call the "Fire Hydrant Twist". I adopted this name because I frequently do this twist on the street using a fire hydrant. It's actually a twist that they do in Iyengar yoga all the time, only there they tend to use a chair or a stool next to a wall. But a fire hydrant works great, as does a chair, table, or anything about 12-24 inches high. (You should definitely experiment with the heights, to find a height that's comfortable for you.)

Here's what you do. You stand facing the fire hydrant or chair or whatever firm surface you're using. You step one foot onto the firm surface. The knee should be bent substantially, more or less at 90 degrees. All your weight is on the standing leg, and you should feel very stable on that leg. (When you first start to do the pose you often need to adjust where you're standing by an inch or two in one direction or another.) Stand up super-tall, feeling the spine really long and straight.

Place the hand opposite the lifted leg on the outside of the thigh, and rotate the torso. That's it. Use the front hand pushing against the leg to push yourself into the twist. Make sure you don't move the front leg when you're pushing against it. The back arm can be extended straight back (not recommended if you're using a fire hydrant), or wrapped around the back grabbing the front thigh, or just hanging.

Because you're standing, your legs and pelvis are really stable, and so all the twist takes place in the spine and torso. And it's also easy to keep the spine nice and straight as you push yourself into the twist. I think this twist is by far the most controlled twist.

I don't think that all twists need to be this controlled. The body's really complicated, and sometimes we twist it while raising one hip or curving the spine or whatever. But for a controlled twist, it's hard to beat the 'fire hydrant.'

Inner and Outer Rotation of the Thighs and Arms

Everyone who does yoga with any kind of seriousness has some things that they constantly remind themselves to do or think about as they do yoga. It might be ujaya breathing, it might be tilting the pelvis forward in forward bends, any number of things. My favorite subtle self-adjustments are inner and outer rotations of the arms and legs.

In particular, I think it's really, really helpful to think about inner and outer rotation of the arms and legs in standing poses.

I have a general guideline for this. In the warrior 1 family poses, you rotate both thighs inward. In warrior 2 family poses, you rotate both thighs outwards.

In warrior 1, you're always working to bring the pelvis as square to the front as you can, as parallel to the front of the mat as you can. Internally rotating the legs helps you do this. For me, the back leg rotation has more of an effect, but I think for others the front leg rotation may be as important.

The other warrior 1 family poses, where you're also squaring your hips to the front, are parsvatanasana (sometimes called pyramid pose) and parivritta trikonasana, rotated triangle. Here the thigh inner rotation is revelatory, it can totally change your experience of the pose. I've had several people thank me profusely for this tip in rotated triangle.

Try this yourself in these three poses. Really rotate the thighs inward as you try to bring the back hip forward and the front hip back. Try emphasizing one thigh first, then the other, then try to combine the rotation of both legs.

In the Warrior 2 family poses, the external rotation of the thighs helps you open your hips to the side of the mat. For me, in warrior 2, the internal rotation of the front leg really helps me tuck the front sitbone under. I think about both of these at the same time -- rotate thigh out and tuck sitbone under. As I rotate the back leg I think of also pulling the back hip bone back, trying to make the hips more parallel to the side.

The other Warrior 2 poses where you focus on externally rotating the thighs are trikonasana/triangle, parsvakonasana/side angle, and arda chandrasana/half moon. (Here I mean the half-moon where you're standing on 1 leg with the other parallel to the floor and the arms open wide perpendicular to the floor. There are at least 3 totally different poses called half moon.) All 3 of these poses really benefit from the external rotation. In particular, try it in arda chandrasana. Most people think of pulling the upper hip bone back to open the hips to the side, but it's hard to do this when you're supporting all that weight on 1 leg. But if you think of externally rotating the standing leg, you'll find this is easier to do, and your hips almost magically open up to the side. I don't think the rotation of the upper leg is all that important here, it's much more important what's happening in the supporting leg.

That's basically it. I could go on more, but I don't want to bore anybody.

One thing worth noting is that in Anusara yoga, they call this Inner and Outer Spiral. Anusara drives me a little crazy in its specialized vocabulary -- I think they mean a bit more by inner and outer spiral than I mean by inner and outer rotation. I'm focusing more on the joint, the alighnment of the thigh at the hip joint, of the arm at the shoulder joint. In anusara, they want you to imagine a spiral running all the way down the leg and arm (I think! It's been a while since I studied Anusara.)

The anusara people are onto something. I do think there is more to thigh and arm rotation than what's happening at the joint, but I think focusing on the joint is fine for starters. Most of the power of the rotation happens at the joint -- the rotation of the limb really affects the mobility at the joint. So a focus on the basic inner and outer rotation at the joint is really beneficial, and maybe more accessible than the more obscure anusara-style spirals.

Fixed Sequence Practices

I have some experience with yoga traditions that use a fixed sequence -- i.e. every class you do, you do the same poses in the same order. I have been taking class at Atmananda, where Jhon Tamayo teaches the Atmananda Sequence. And actually i did my formal teacher training with Jhon T (as he likes to go by), though I had been doing yoga almost ten years at that point so I was very experienced already.

I have also taken a fair number of Bikram yoga classes, which is the so-called 'hot yoga', where you do a fixed sequence in a heated room. I've written about Bikram classes elsewhere in this blog, so I won't go into it too much here. And also I'm somewhat familiar with the Astanga 1st series.

These three yoga traditions -- atmananda, bikram, astanga -- are all pretty physical, and the founders and followers are pretty insisitent about doing exactly the same sequence every time. (Atmananda less than the other two, actually.)

I can see some of the benefits -- you really find your groove, you develop a deep familiarity with the poses and in particular the transitions. But mostly I think these traditions follow a fixed sequence because the founders believe that they have discovered some 'best' way to do yoga. These three guys -- Jhon Tamayo, Bikram Chowdury, and Pattabi Jois, who founded Astanga yoga -- have big egos, and want people to do what they say. So in a way I think the insistence on following a fixed sequence is a control mechanism -- you have to do things the way I think they should be done. This is something I really don't like.

First, as I say over and over, every person is different, both mentally and physically, and what's right for one person is not likely to be right for the next. And I think part of the learning process of yoga is figuring out what works for you, and what you need to work on. If you just show up and do the same poses over and over, you're losing some of that involvement in your own practice. It's too easy.

And truth be told, I'm just not a fan of following in general, of being a follower. People need to make up their own minds about things, lest we be sheep, lest we fall into line and herd the jews into the gas chambers as we're told. (oops, sorry, let that slip out!)

Here's another thing -- I think doing the same sequence over and over is just boring. It's comfortable, familiar, but too much comfort and familiarity is boring, it's lazy. I think we need to keep challenging ourselves, to find some discovery.

Now, granted, you can always work within the same ol' poses that we always do, and find some discoveries there. And that's why I can keep taking the atmananda sequence classes, because I can work with the same old poses. But I think there's a great joy in discovering something new, including a new yoga pose, or, more likely, a new variation of one of the poses you've known and loved.

There's part of me that thinks that the people who insist on doing sequences are just lazy. Because, make no mistake, it's hard to plan a full vinyasa class with new and interesting sequencing of poses. I don't do it so often myself, I usually just kind of wing it. But I know teachers who do these vinyasa classes that require a lot of planning, choreography really. And that is a lot of work, so I can see why some teachers don't want to bother. But I don't think that just concocting a standard class and doing it over and over again forever is the answer.

Maybe I'm most opposed to the ego involved. Yes, honestly, I think that's it. I think it's really, really presumptuous of thse guys to insist that everyone does their sequences of poses over and over, like they've uncovered some great secret. It's just a bunch of yoga poses in an order, with transitioning moves. But each of these guys is certain that their poses, in their order, is the 'right' version. Drives me crazy.

Thoughts on Bikram yoga, part 2

It's funny, this Bikram yoga really gets under my skin. Meaning, it gets me all worked up. There are definitely aspects of it which I really appreciate, but other aspects just drive me nuts.

In a nutshell, I think the thing that bothers me the most is how so many hundreds, thousands, of yoga teachers have just adopted Bikram's 'my way or the highway' approach. I think one of the greatest attractions of yoga is its scope. There are just so many aspects to it, so much variety available, that it allows the individual teacher and practitioner to find a path that makes the most sense for them. Whereas in Bikram, not only do you do the same poses in every single class, but, good god, all the teachers say the same things. And I think it's just part of the culture, Bikram is very adamant that everything has to be done the way he says.

I think one of the best books on yoga I've read is called The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar. He's the son of Krishnamacharya, who was the teacher to Iyengar, Pattabi Jois, and others, and is probably more responsible than any other person for yoga's blossoming in recent decades. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in yoga. Now, as it turns out, what I was going to mention isn't actually in The Heart of Yoga, but rather in another book by Desikachar called Health, Healing & Beyond. This book is in no small part a biography of its father; the subtitle is Yoga and the Living Tradition of Krishnamacharya. Both of these books made an impression on me when I was going through my yoga teacher training about three years ago.

Anyway, the most important thing I took away from these books was how Krishnamacharya used to teach and why. Generally he did one-on-one teaching, because he believed that everyone is different, and the yoga they do should be tailored to accommodate their needs and abilities.

This is something I've felt relatively strongly about the whole time I've been teaching, which admittedly is only about three years. Not every pose is suitable for every person. I think the skillful yoga teacher adjusts their classes and their teaching for the people in the room. More importantly, I think perhaps above all else the individual practitioner should be working to understand how their body and mind respond to the different asanas and other things we do in yoga class.

The subtitle of The Heart of Yoga is "Developing a Personal Practice", and I think this is what everyone should be doing to some extent. You have to decide what works best for you, those postures and practices that you respond best to, and that challenge you in suitable ways. Even if you're never going to do yoga at home by yourself, I think you have to make every class a personal practice. You have to do what the teacher says, but I think you have to make it your own somehow, by finding your own areas of focus.

So the Bikram-style emphasis on everyone doing exactly the same thing, exactly the way Bikram says you should do it, that just sits badly with me. And I think it especially rubs me the wrong way because I dislike Bikram himself. It just kills me that all these people just swallow everything he says as gospel. But more on that later.

Thoughts on Bikram yoga, part 1

I have taken a couple of Bikram yoga classes recently, and feel compelled to try to make some sense of my extremely mixed reactions.

In Bikram classes, you do a fixed sequence of poses in a room that's heated to around a hundred degrees. It's so hot that you gush sweat -- everyone puts two towels down on their mats, and for the men at least, the towels are pretty soaked in sweat by the end. Men never wear shirts, and women tend to wear job bras or some such minimal clothing. All Bikram studios seems more or less the same, they're always carpeted for some reason, and the front of the room is mirrored. The carpeting, combined with the heat and the profuse sweating, results in pretty much every bikram studio smelling totally rank. You get used to it really quickly, but when you walk in the room, oh man.

I'm very non-dogmatic about yoga -- I believe that you have to find the positive aspects of all the many different approaches, the aspects that work for you, your body, and your personality. So I've taken lots of Bikram classes in my day. I used to take it in San Francisco when I would visit my friend Miles there, and I've taken a bunch of classes in LA, including one with Bikram Chowdhury himself. I'll leave my impressions of Bikram until later, but suffice to say that there are aspects of the bikram approach that I like enough to keep me returning to it periodically.

But seriously, there are aspects of the Bikram approach that are just exasperating. The teachers all prattle on and on, very much like Bikram himself. And basically what they're prattling on about is (a) how great Bikram yoga is, and (b) how you should be working harder, harder, harder, harder. They're very much like personal trainers at a gym, except way more verbose. It's all about effort, and how that effort is going to benefit you. It's kind of narcissistic in a way -- dedicate yourself to our type of yoga practice, and you'll be more attractive and healthy and successful and all that. Kind of icky.

But I can live with narcissism -- we're all a little narcissistic. What I really don't like about Bikram is its cultishness. There's a feeling of "our way or the highway," a kind of dismissiveness about pretty much everything that isn't Bikram yoga. There's a 'true believer' quality to the teachers and the regular practitioners. And there does seem to be a little idolatry of Bikram himself, a little slavish devotion. Bikram is given to making some ridiculous proclamations, and these are pretty closely echoed by most of the teachers, as if they're some kind of higher truth. It's creepy.

Now Bikram isn't unique in the yoga world in trying to position himself as a guru, someone whose word should be taken as gospel. But it is a matter of degree, and with Bikram it seems to be taken to a degree further than in, say, Iyengar or Anusara (both of which have cultish aspects) or whatever. But the combination of this kind of icky cultishness with the narcissim and 'results orientation' that they're constantly espousing is especially unappealing to me.

And I should say, it seems to be unappealing to most people with any significant background in any other sort of yoga. Bikram seems to attract newcomers, who might stick with it for quite some time. But it rarely attracts yoga practitioners from other traditions. And, make no mistake, a lot of the beginners who come to Bikram and stick with it for a while, they make some great progress, they really do transform their bodies. And to some extent their minds too -- it really does take some focus and determination to stick with the bikram practice, holding the poses with integrity in that heat. But I think the emphasis in Bikram on push/effort/strength/yang to the exclusion of yield/relaxation/flexibility/yin really turns off most yogis.

It certainly turns me off. But you have to try to find the good aspects of everything, and there are certainly good aspects to the Bikram practice. Plus, I bought a month-long pass at a fund-raiser and I still have two weeks left. So, a few more Bikram classes for me. I will write more about this.

What does it mean to be good at yoga?

This is an interesting question, one that gets at the heart of what makes yoga interesting and special.

When we think about running, for instance, it's clear what it means to be good -- you run fast or far. Maybe it's a little more complex than that, you run smoothly, elegantly, but basically it's about running fast and far. What does it mean to cook well? You turn out good food, that's pretty much all there is to it. But what does it mean to be good at yoga? If you can do a perfect split, does that mean you're good at yoga? Touch your chest to your thigh in parsvatanasana? Bring your pelvis totally perpendicular to the floor in arda chandrasana?

These things don't necessarily mean you are good at yoga, skilled.

I always think of this friend of mine, she was just born with these wide-open earth mother hips. She could stack her shins perfectly in ankle-to-knee and lay her belly and chest on the ground, and she'd say "is there anything I can do to make this hard?" She could pretty much do the same in full lotus too, and she could do lots of the other flexibility-oriented poses with barely any effort. Does this make her 'good' at yoga?

Turns out she was pretty good at yoga, but she could do those things I mentioned when she first started, before she barely knew what yoga was. She was just blessed with amazing range of motion in her hips, so she could easily do these poses that many very experienced yoga practitioners (including myself) still can't come close to.

So what makes you good at yoga? Where is the skill? Of course, this isn't an easy thing to answer. But still we have to try.

My favorite answer comes from Eric Schiffman, in his book 'Moving into Stillness.' My current definition which follows, comes close to what he says in this book.

What makes the physical practice of yoga so interesting and challenging is that most of the poses involve both flexibility and strength. Or rather, as Schiffman puts it, yield and push. You have to yield to move deeper into the poses, at the same time that you have to push, exert some effort, to get into and hold them. There is a balancing act every time you go into any of the poses, between push and yield, between strength and flexibility, effort and relaxation, etc.

And there is no 'answer' as to how much of each you need in a given pose; each instance of each pose the yogi has to find the balance, the edge. And 'working the edge', as Schiffman puts it, is where most of the real skill in yoga comes from.

Pushing, effort, strength, these are never the full answer to a pose. I get very discouraged with the number of yoga teachers who act like personal trainers, emphasizing effort above all else. But neither is yielding or relaxing more always the answer. Rather, you have to do both, push and yield. And how much of both you do, there's no answer to that either. You must find your own edge, your balance between these two different energies. And that edge is always changing.

So your skill in yoga is understanding this edge, and working with it. Maybe pushing a little more today, if pushing is appropriate for you today. Maybe yielding a little more tomorrow, if tomorrow is right for yielding. Only you know the balance that you need to strike, and finding that balance is not easy, and it requires experience, practice, and focus. There lies the skill in yoga.