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 Question 2: Standing H to KModerators: Moderators Jump to page : 1 2 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
| Yoga -> Bikram Yoga | Message format |
delania |
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| Cyndi |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 5098   Location: Somewhere in the Mountains of Western NC | Well, I don't lock my knee and I can do this posture. Try doing it on a straight leg instead,  | ||
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| Duffy Pratt |
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| delania |
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Thanks for all of your advice. I have already learned the proper way to "lock the knee" it just seems harder in this position. Patience is a virtue, and one I struggle to master.  | |||
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| Rant |
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| lifeisgood |
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Member Posts: 25 | Yeah, I agree with everyone else that Standing head to knee is really hard! For the first three months of yoga, I struggled mightily in this posture because I could never get my leg up parallel to the floor. Then, one day it was like boom my leg was parallel! It was so exciting  anyways, I can get my leg parallel and my elbows down, and I can touch my head to my shin fine. But the knee... bam I fall out. Oh well... it'll come...... | ||
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| salsa girl |
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lifeisgood - 2008-05-09 9:25 AM anyways, I can get my leg parallel and my elbows down, and I can touch my head to my shin fine. But the knee... bam I fall out. Oh well... it'll come...... It sounds like you are saying that you kick out without your standing leg locked, is that right? If it is, that alarms me, as you should not be kicking out unless your standing leg is "a concrete lamp post". If I have misunderstood your post, I apologise Lisa | |||
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| hnia |
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| lifeisgood |
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Member Posts: 25 | salsa girl - 2008-05-08 3:13 AM lifeisgood - 2008-05-09 9:25 AM anyways, I can get my leg parallel and my elbows down, and I can touch my head to my shin fine. But the knee... bam I fall out. Oh well... it'll come...... It sounds like you are saying that you kick out without your standing leg locked, is that right? If it is, that alarms me, as you should not be kicking out unless your standing leg is "a concrete lamp post". If I have misunderstood your post, I apologise Lisa My post was probably slightly ambiguous. When I referred to "the knee...fall out" was, when I put my forehead to my knee in the very last step, I often lose my balance and fall out. In my practice, both the standing and the parallel leg are locked. I am now mainly working on being able to still keep everything strong and balanced even when I change my gaze and tuck my forehead onto my knee. | ||
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| Lifeisgood: I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. The good news is that it's just a phase. (Yay!!) I was actually thinking a lot this week about the balance in the final stage of head to knee (both holding the position, which I've pretty much got under control, and coming out SLOWLY with total control, which I can only do sometimes. Getting much better tho!!) For me, it was really useful to recognize that this last step is a TOTAL mind game. Think about your body position in the third stage compared to the final stage - it's basically the same. All you have to do is bring your head down and round your spine a little bit more. So physically there is NO reason that you can't finish the posture. It's just an exercise in concentration to hold your position while you move your eyes and your head. Usually when you fall out of this part it's because you get a little freaked out or distracted by moving your head and you forget to KICK KICK KICK. The KICK is definitely the key. Don't think "oh sh*t here we go I'm gonna fall again", just think "KICK KICK KICK." It will make you SO stable that eventually you can stay there for as long as you want. There are also a lot of technical details that get more important as you get more advanced in the posture. I'm sure you know most of these but they're always good to check in on. So make sure your weight is forward on your toes and your hip is forward (this is why you KICK KICK KICK), make sure your elbows are hugging tight to your leg, your stomach is pulled in HARD, your wrists are straight, your kicking leg is right in front of your hip (that is my big one - my leg always drifts to the side when i loose focus and then I fall), your extended foot is perfectly vertical and not tilted off to the side (another big one for me)... and obviously you are LOCKING BOTH KNEES. Oh - and make sure you have a point to look at when you move your eyes. Eventually you want to look at your belly button, but until then, the big toe of your standing foot makes an excellent focus point. As you can see, it's not a very complicated posture. So in summary - there are a lot of technical details, but the main thing is to remember that it's just an exercise in concentration, and that a good thing to concentrate on is the KICK.  | |||
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| Andre |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 399  Location: Oregon | |||
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| Roy Batty |
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Regular Posts: 73 Location: The City of Brotherly Love | Dancing, great post! I'm sure you have heard your teachers say in class that Triangle is the "main-event" and the master pose to the standing series, but I personally think that H2K merits consideration. It is the one pose in the series that Bikram himself considers "advanced" (in fact it used to be that kicking out was the only requierment to gain entry into the "advanced Series" that has changed in recent years) and the posture is placed in the begining series more for mental reasons than physical. You really can tell the practitioner that has focus by how he/she approaches this pose and by that I don't mean whether they kick or not. A person holding the first position can be burning a hole through the mirror with their gaze and I've seen other practitioners gifted with a natural abiltity in this pose kick out but get virtually nothing from it by not really working the contractions in the pose (standing leg, STOMACH, kicking leg). I had injured myslef numerous times by not really squeezing my belly in. I reached a point where I swore that I would never kick again as I would (every two months or so) would kick my right leg out and slip my sacrum out--very painful and requiered lots of ice and chiropractic treatments (lucky we have a good one who has his office right below us and practices as well  ) not to mention setbacks in my daily life. Anyway, one day I got it through my thick skull that maybe I have to create a tighter belly lock and not kick but really, really, really suck that gut in. I did 73 straight practices without kicking. Then I began to kick in the second set and now am kicking both sets and feeling that one posture permeate through my entire practice. I am fond of saying, "Don't expect the yoga to get easier for you. Instead you get at ease in your yoga." I was not taking my own advice and blaming that posture for my woes. A different shift in attitude yielded postive results and I rejoice in th fact that there is a posture that is just so freakin' hard for me to do It truly is a posture that can help you deal with the aggravation that life sometimes throws our way. | ||
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| Duffy Pratt |
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| Roy Batty |
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Regular Posts: 73 Location: The City of Brotherly Love | |||
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| Andre |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 399 Location: Oregon | |||
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| Chatoyancy |
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| Duffy Pratt |
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| Nick |
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  Location: London, England | Hi there, I don't understand 'kicking' either-what does this involve in this posture-remember I'm an outsider Nick | ||
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| Cyndi |
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Expert Yogi Posts: 5098 Location: Somewhere in the Mountains of Western NC | |||
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| Roy Batty |
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Regular Posts: 73 Location: The City of Brotherly Love | Hi Nick, the kicking refers to extension of the heel toward the mirror from a chambered position. First the practitioner engages the abdominals, "locks" the standing leg and then picks the foot up. This is the first position of Standing Head to Knee pose. This first place is a great place to hang out as long as neccessary. Eventually when the practitioner can maintain the locked standing leg and a good tight belly, you then slowly and gently extend the lifted leg toward the mirror while flexing the toes toward the face so that the kicking leg heel is the closest thing to the mirror. The practitioner should never snap or jerk the leg forward and that I suppose is misleading about the action to "kick" since it suggests a ballistic movement. This should never be so. From my experience, in addition to keeping the standing leg locked and guts tight, I have to be careful to not let my kicking leg hip swing backward wich contributes to me twisting my sacrum and causing me such aggravation. The second stage of the posture involves keeping the arms straight until the kicking leg is as locked as the standing leg (in other words maximum contraction of both quadriceps muscles). This over time will create an interesting convergence of energy from the locked belly and locked legs. From here, the person can enter stage three which is to bend the arms till the elbows cradle below the calf muscle. It's at this stage that you have to watch letting the pose diffuse so that the lower back does not strain. In my case, left side is no problem but am very, very slowly working the right side to stage three on a limited basis. Stage four is to bring the forhead with rounded spine (creating the first front side compression in the series) to the knee. It's important here to watch that that kicking hip doesn't sway back. Dancing hit the nail on the head when talking about the gaze point for this: the eyes shift from standing knee in the mirror to standing big toe to the navel. Finally, the rarely seen stage five is to release the hands from the kicking leg-foot. This requires supreme engagment of uddiyana though we don't use that term in addition to the locked legs. Stage five is the ultimate ideal although ideals are great to aspire to but not neccessarily achieved . I can expound further Nick if you like although I am certainly not you with the anatomical perspective  Dre, sounds like you are in the same boat with me, an interesting relationship with pose for years. Really take your time coming back to kicking. Sometimes I think we a re ready for breakthroughs after we may have given a pose up for lost. Like I said earlier, I focused on making my belly feel like I could repel bullets before kicking again and I spent quite a while getting there. I also feel that with all this hard work I'm getting to an overtrained feeeling so I'm about ready to take some rest. It's important for me to not journey into obbsession--easier said than done LOL. What other postures hurt your back? Perhaps I have similar experience there as well. Chatoyancy, that's spot on about kicking. Duffy, glad that permeated for you a bit. ~RB | ||
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| Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Roy, Thanks for clearing that up! Nick | ||
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| Ok I have to jump back in on the topic of "kicking" in the second part of H2K... Kicking doesn't just mean extending your leg. It means you should be using your strength to actively push your heel towards the mirror. I like to imagine that if there were a wall 2 or 3 inches in front of the heel of my lifted leg, I would be trying to press my heel forward to touch that wall. And it's not just an abstract idea - when you first do this correctly, your heel probably WILL move closer to the mirror by a few inches. The reason for this has to do with alignment, mainly in the hips. When you kick forward like this with your right leg, your right hip will move forward so that it's even with the left hip. Notice that Bikram doesn't give you ANY instructions on what to do with your hips in this posture, but if you kick the mirror like he tells you to, your hips will automatically fall into the correct position. Your weight will also come forward into the ball of your standing foot, instead of sinking back in the heel. This will ultimately make it a LOT easier to balance in the posture. So that's the setup for parts 3 and 4 (and 5!!). Once I get all that set up, another image I have sometimes is that there is a slot right in front of me that I'm pressing my foot into, so it can't move side to side or up and down but it is always moving forward. That is like the capstone of the posture - if you have that piece locked in, it will keep everything else stable. Imagine doing the posture with a friend holding your kicking foot - it would be no problem! That's the kind of stability that you want to create on your OWN, through the kicking. If you get a cramp on the top of your right thigh when you kick out on the first side, it means you are doing it right! | |||
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| By the way Roy, thanks for the great posts!! And how are YOU doing with stage 5? | |||
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| Andre |
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Extreme Veteran Posts: 399 Location: Oregon | |||
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