Anatomy 101 - find your feet

BUILDING A STABLE FOUNDATION
The human body is a spectacular feat of nature. Each body part is unique, yet works in complex symbiosis with all the other parts. Even after years of study we’re only just touching the surface of understanding the specific roles of each element of the body. The feet, one of the most fascinating body parts, often get ignored until we have an issue with them! They carry our entire bodyweight on a very small surface area, which through the invention of shoes, is reduced even further.

Our feet were cleverly designed to carry our bodies barefoot. Back when we were barefoot, the intricate muscle and bone structure rose to the challenge of constantly changing surface areas and textures. These days, our feet are constricted in shoes for most of the day and rarely experience anything other than perfectly flat, hard surfaces. When we walk or run, our feet flex and extend; they also rotate from supination (outer rotation of the foot) when we connect with the ground, to pronation (inner rotation of the foot) when we push off from the ground. This circular movement absorbs the force of impact and stores energy to propel you forward into your next stride. Notice this complex movement of your feet the next time you’re walking or running.

To keep our feet healthy, it’s important to give them a chance to spread their surface area and breathe at the end of the day. Take your shoes off when you get home and make a connection with the earth, even if it’s with socks on in your kitchen while you make dinner. Lift and stretch your toes out as wide as you can and place them back down one by one; feel your inner arches become light and listen to your feet sing with happiness!

PADA BANDHA
Start your yoga practice by exploring the three points of each foot: the ball of the big toe, ball of the little toe and middle of the heel; and root down into them equally, while at the same time feeling a lift in the arches. There are three arches in our feet: the familiar medial arch (inner arch), the lateral arch (outer arch) and the transverse arches (mid foot arches). When we root down into the three points, the arches natural lift into a triangular dome shape. This action is called Pada Bandha (foot energy lock) – it brings an awakening of the leg muscles that travels up the entire body. Building strong and flexible feet will help you find your foundation in your yoga practice, cultivating a flow of energy from the ground up. You’ll find that when you take time to focus on the placement of your feet in standing – and even seated – positions, the rooting-down effect will naturally help you achieve better alignment of your body.

Illustrated above are a few poses you can use to connect with your feet in your home practice. Start in a seated cross-legged position, lift up your right leg and hold onto your right knee. Flex and extend your foot a few times, followed by some foot circles to wake up the ankle joints. Repeat on the left side. In Adho Mukha Svanasana try placing a block under the back of your mat and notice the difference it makes when your heels have a surface to press into. From kneeing, tuck your toes under to stretch out your arches. Then place them nail side down to counteract the arch stretch and lengthen out the front of your feet. Place a brick between your calves in Utkatasana and press down firmly into your right foot; circle your weight into the ball of your right foot, the outer edge, the centre of your heel and the inner edge. Repeat on the left side. Staying in Utkatasana, lift your heels and feel the micro-movements in the balls of your feet at they work out where your balancing point is. Finally come into Malasana with your hands on the floor for balance, open your knees out to the sides and walk your feet together until the soles of your feet are touching. Slowly start to find your balance and work towards holding your hands in prayer position at your heart.

Having an awareness and appreciation of your feet will not only benefit your yoga practice but also your day-to-day activities. Print out this foot sequence and try to incorporate some of the asana into your home practice. Maybe even commit to giving your feet an Epsom salts bath once a week and feel the benefits of giving them the love and attention that they truly deserve!

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Anatomy 101 - the psoas

LEARN TO LOVE THE PSOAS - THE MUSCLE OF THE SOUL
At our very core, deep within layers of organ and outer muscle, a muscle that is almost as thick as a wrist provides support on each side of the spine. This muscle, the psoas (pronounced so-as), is the only muscle that connects the upper and lower body. It is so vital to our ability to move freely and effectively, and to how we feel, that some researchers have suggested that it should be referred to as an organ of perception. Within the Taoist tradition it is known as the muscle of the soul.

The psoas originates at T12, and each of the lumbar vertebrae, before passing through the pelvis and inserts onto the head of the femur. Along the way it joins the iliacus, with which its action is so intimately connected that they are often referred to as one - the iliapsoas.

The psoas major is the most significant of a group of muscles called the hip flexors, which are responsible for moving the upper and lower body towards one another. However, the psoas is involved with much more than just hip flexion.

It plays a role in stabilising the spine and rotating the hip; it’s the reason why what you do with your legs can affect how your back feels.

If you spend much of your day sitting, or if you cycle or run frequently, it’s quite likely that you’ll have a tight psoas. Stress can also lead to a tight psoas, if you are startled or feel anxious, your psoas will contract. If your psoas is tight you may experience spasms, lower back pain or general imbalance in your spine. A chronically tight psoas can convince your endocrine system that you should prepare for “fight or flight”; this can cause the adrenal glands to produce more adrenalin than you require and play a role in adrenal fatigue, which can leave you feeling exhausted.

So, we all need a long and stretchy psoas, right? Well... yes and no. Our aim should be to build and maintain a toned and long psoas. To begin, we need to develop an understanding of what it feels like when our psoas is working. Then, we should work on contracting the psoas in order to bring blood flow to the area and only then should we lengthen it.

PART I - GETTING TO KNOW YOUR PSOAS
To start with we’ll look at a version of Supta Padangusthasana. Take a strap. Make a loop in your strap and place it around the ball of your right foot. Lie on your back on the floor with both legs extended, hip width distance apart, toes pointing towards the ceiling or sky. Holding the strap in one or both hands, begin to raise your right leg off the ground. Stop before your leg comes to 90 degrees. At this point, your psoas is holding your leg up against gravity in an isometric contraction. Continue to hold your leg here and if you are finding it quite easy to do so, loosen your grip on the strap until you feel your hip flexors beginning to tire. Notice any desire to arch your back or neck. This will demonstrate how these muscles impact upon the entire length of the spine. Slowly lower your leg, using the strap to control the movement. Repeat on the left side.

PART II - CONTRACTING YOUR PSOAS
In Part I, we explored an isometric contraction but we allowed it to progress to a point where we put a lot of pressure on the psoas to continue to hold the leg up. In this pose, we will seek only to contract the psoas.

Come into Ardha-Navasana, starting by sitting on the tops of the sitting bones, with the feet flat on the floor. Take your index and middle finger into the crease of each knee, with elbows pointing outwards, upper chest open. Maintaining length in your spine, lean your upper body back, making a V shape between your legs and torso. Keep your feet on the ground throughout. After a few breaths and before your feel your spine over arching, return to an upright seated position.

PART III - LENGTHENING YOUR PSOAS
Now we are ready to lengthen and release the psoas.

Practising Virabhadrasana I, is a great way to lengthen the psoas. However, if we want to lengthen the psoas effectively we must pay particular attention to the position of our hips in this pose.

You can choose to step back into Virabhdrasana I by stepping the left foot back from standing, or by stepping your right foot up towards your hands from down dog, if that’s what you prefer. In either case, ensure that your feet are hip width distance apart and that you can ground down effectively through your back heel.  

Take your hands onto your hips and notice their position. If your back leg has drawn your back hip back towards it, soften your front hip back to rotate your back hip forward. Aim to take your hips level but without forcing your body into the pose. When you feel that your hips are as level as you can comfortably bring them (think about the points of your hips as being like the headlights on a car), inhale and raise your arms, reaching upwards with the palms turned in but keeping your shoulders soft and away from your ears. Draw your tailbone down and think about bringing your tailbone and public bone towards each other. Draw in your lower belly, as if you were zipping up a muscle below your navel where you would zip up your jeans. Maintain the pose for five breaths, or longer if you have the time and energy, then change to the left side, either taking weight on the front foot and stepping the back foot up to meet it or taking a vinyasa and coming back through Adho Mukha Svanasana.

At the conclusion of a sequence including these poses, when you relax into your Savasana, you will do so with greater ease through your body and a sense of connection to your deepest core.

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ANNA CLARKE
The majority of Anna’s weekly classes take place within the mental health departments of Dublin hospitals. In addition, Anna teaches pregnancy yoga and post-natal yoga (for mums with babies) at Init Yoga, Ringsend. She also regularly covers classes at The Yoga Room, Ballsbridge.

To contact Anna email annamclarke@gmail.com or find her on Facebook.

Practise with distractions

THE PRACTICE OF PATIENCE
Summertime can offer some challenges to your yoga practice. Trying to find a quiet space to roll out your mat on summer holidays without too many onlookers; the draw of the sunshine in the longer evenings or, like myself, having a gang of little ones on school summer holidays that seem to rise with the birds!

In an ideal world we’d all have our own little yoga studio where we could immerse ourselves in daily practice, with a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. A very tempting thought! I’ve often looked at my modest garden and wondered if I could fit in a trendy German Huf Haus. But unfortunately most of us have to find a quiet space in a busy house with a lot of traffic from early morning.

After the initial period of panic and uncertainty, I realised the practice of yoga for my summer was going to mean the practice of letting go of expectations and accepting the distractions when you do manage to get on the mat. My summer routine always starts with a walk or run at around 6:30am, to clear the head of chatter and list-making before finding my way onto my mat, which I roll out before heading out so I can slip back into the house and onto it with as little noise as possible. Inevitably the household is in full swing, with rumbling tummies and list of requests, before I’ve managed to find my way into Savasana. Depending on the moods and hunger levels, I can sometimes finish my sequence with three little onlookers, who even join in for a quick Savasana at the end. They’re beginning to recognise that when they give me a few minutes to find my balance, I’m more chilled out and it’s a win, win situation!

ME TIME
While it is recommended to practise in a quiet, clean and uncluttered sacred space, sometimes this just isn’t possible. So think of your summer yoga as the ultimate challenge of being creative with where you practise, cultivating inner focus and lots of patience! Whether it’s for 5 minutes or an hour, such are the benefits of yoga that it’s worth practising with acceptance of all the distractions that life throws at you.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Yoga like a tortoise

UNEXPECTED SLOW DOWNS
Life throws us little injuries every now and again to test our patience! When the initial annoyance of an injury subsides there is huge scope for learning. An injury teaches you to examine your approach to your yoga practice, your day to day exercise routine and your approach to life in general.

I’m currently working on rehabilitating an instability in my piriformis (deep hip muscle). I’ve learnt from experience that the sooner I tackle the problem, with self awareness or a trip to the physio, the faster I recover. I lead an active life and am inclined to overstretch myself, both mentally and physically. My yoga practice teaches me to listen to that inner voice telling me to slow down, pull back and acknowledge the warning signs.

NO SHOULDS
My practice changed hugely during and after teacher training. Where I might have expected it to get more intense and physical, I found I was learning to pull back from over pushing and to drop any perceived targets for how far I should stretch or what asana I should be able to do. I learnt that there are no ‘shoulds’ and that each practice is totally different.

My new challenge is to slow my practice down to the pace of a tortoise, making the transitions just as important as the asana itself. By moving in this way you can feel the actions of the muscles more intensely, making it easier to find where your edge is and, in the case of injury, listening to what the body needs and knowing when to stop or pull back. From a physical point of view, moving slowly is far more challenging. For example, moving with control by stepping your foot forward from Adho Mukha Svanasana/Downward Dog in preparation for Virabhadrasana II/Warrior II is a stronger transition than swinging your foot forward and hoping it reaches the inside of your hand! In your next practice, try stepping forward as slowly as you possibly can. Notice how different it feels and observe the intense action in the abs, quads and glutes. See which version challenges you most, whilst at the same time feels more controlled and secure. It can be very helpful to set your phone up to video one of your transitions and see if there are any areas you need to be mindful of: a knee buckling out to the side; a shoulder dropping; or one hip dipping lower than the other.

Injuries can often be caused by habitual misalignments in transitions. Or, in fact, in our everyday lives: how you stand; how you sit cross-legged; how you sit on the couch (weakened piriformis, I speak from experience!). From a yoga point of view a transition misalignment, like a dropped shoulder in Chaturanga, can gradually cause an injury which, in my experience, is harder to shift than an overstretched muscle. By slowing down, we give ourselves a chance to observe and keep in touch with correct alignment and avoid repetition injuries.

Make your next practice all about transitions. Flow fluidly with grace and awareness, move as softly and lightly as possible. Feel your whole body thanking you for listening!

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Props are your best friend - belts

Aisling Conn, who teaches in The Yoga Room and My Yoga Body, has given us some expert tips and ideas of how to incorporate yoga bricks and yoga blocks into our yoga practice. This time she looks at ways belts can help us reach into some difficult asana, that would sometimes be beyond us, and help deepen our practice.

AISLING’S GUIDE TO YOGA BELTS
Yoga Belts are fantastic for extending the length of our arms in certain poses and for limiting movement in others.

Whereas it’s a good idea to avoid having an attachment to ‘perfecting’ any asana, there are lots of cases where using a belt and being able to connect to other parts of the body, will help to achieve greater structural alignment.

Belts are useful at any level of yoga. Here’s how I use them in my personal and teaching practices. On a physical level, Supta Padangusthasana A, B and C is a great way to stretch the hamstrings, calves and inner thighs. It can also help alleviate stiffness in the lower back and address imbalances or asymmetries in the pelvis.

Using a belt in this pose allows the hand to connect with the foot while the arms are straight, without the hamstrings over-stretching. Make sure to always keep the arms straight and creep them up the belt as the tight muscles stretch, instead of bending your elbows. This way the force assisting the stretch is kept constant, allow correct alignment to be maintained, and you’re more likely to avoid tensing the shoulders.

The wide-leg forward fold Prasarita Padottanasana C has the added chest-opening action of interlaced hands behind the back, which can be a source of dread for anyone  like me, who has tightness in the front of the shoulders.

A really helpful way to warm-up the shoulders for this pose is to practise it with a belt held between the hands. Being able to pull strongly on the belt (instead of using possibly slippery/sweaty interlaced fingers) it is easier to achieve the correct rotation of the upper arm bones in the shoulder sockets as you fold forward. This allows those tight areas of the chest and shoulders to stretch more efficiently.

If you are unable to interlace your hands behind your back using straight arms and rolling your shoulders back, a belt will be your best friend in this pose!

Gomukhasana (arms) is a really interesting asymmetrical pose for stretching the shoulders because it rotates the arms and stretches the corresponding muscles in two different ways. The top arm is externally rotated, raised and bent at the elbow (no mean feat!) and the lower arm is internally rotated, drawn back and bent at the elbow to, maybe, bind with the top arm.

A bind here is not always possible, generally due to restriction in any combination of parts of the shoulder’s range of motion. This is not necessarily a problem as it is still possible to feel a nice sense of the stretch by placing the palm of the top hand on the base of the neck and the back of the lower hand wherever it reaches on the back. However, in order to progress with the stretch, having a belt to bridge the gap and extend the reach of both arms is really useful and much safer in terms of keeping the correct alignment of the shoulders and arms.

Hold the belt with the top hand over the shoulder and reach for the end with the bottom hand, allowing the bottom arm to exert appropriate downward force, extending the overhead reach and range of motion of the top arm shoulder joint.

This is also really great preparation to come into the full variation of Natarajasana.

There’s a version of Natarajasana where one arm externally rotates and extends back to hold the same side foot from the inner side. Students can then tilt forward from the standing leg hip and use the connection of the hand and foot to stretch the chest, shoulder and hip flexors. When you are comfortable with this variation of the standing balance, and are ready to deepen the pose, using a belt can help to get you there.

It’s best to buckle your belt making a loop to slip over your foot, then take the free end in the same side hand and extend overhead adding the other arm when you are steady (it’s helpful to let the standing leg rest against a wall if you feel at all unsteady). Once both hands are holding the belt overhead you can work your alignment instructions and creep hand over hand closer to the foot.

You will certainly feel the benefit of this deep shoulder, heart and hip-flexor opening pose without compromising on safety.

The symmetrical, seated forward fold Paschimottanasana is a fantastic stretch for the whole back of the body. However, for a simple pose it can have some pitfalls for a new, or very stiff, student.

Often we get so caught up in getting the hands to the feet and the forward-folding element of the pose, without paying attention to the delicious stretch for the whole spine and back of the legs that is possible when performed with care.

Use a belt here to connect the hands to the feet whilst keeping the shoulders relaxed, so that you can encourage your pelvis to tilt forward to its full range of motion. Then, each vertebra of the spine bends sequentially forward from that anteriorly tilted pelvic position (forward tilt), making your Paschimottanasana the perfect stretch for legs and spine. regardless of how close your face is to your shins!

As with Supta Padangusthasana above, instead of bending the elbows as you come forward, walk your hands along the belt, keeping your shoulders relaxed, and you’ll achieve a better sense of the pose rather than grabbing straight for the toes and pulling the body forward, which just tends to aggravate the lower back.

For years in yoga class, when it came to practising Salamba Sarvangasana the teacher would invariably adjust my elbows closer together to give me a better lift in my thoracic spine and a better foundation for the inversion. A great way of giving yourself this adjustment is to loop a buckled belt just above your elbows so that the elbows are no more than shoulder width apart.

Hang the correctly sized loop around just one arm and come into Halasana, Plough Pose. Then manoeuver the second arm into the loop, externally rotate your arm bones, bend your elbows, place your hands on your upper back and lift you legs into Salamba Sarvangasana.

Make sure not to let your arms press out into the belt but rather draw the arms inward away from the belt to decrease your dependency on it for the correct alignment over time.

Hope you find these interesting and can put them to use in your practice. Keep an eye out for our next prop guide - blankets!

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AISLING CONN
Aisling teaches yoga on Tuesdays, 9.45am in The Yoga Room, Sundays, 10am & 11.30 in My Yoga Body, and pilates on Mondays & Wednesdays, 9.30am in My Yoga Body. She is also available for private and small group classes by arrangement. To contact Aisling email at aisling.conn@gmail.com or send a message on Facebook