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| There is always a lot of information about jumping back through your hands to sitting in the linking vinyasas....but not a lot mentioned about the initial 'breathe in, lift up......breathe out, jump back'. I can't seem to get the correct technique and strength to do this action even though I practise it over and over and seem to be able to do other postures which require core strength etc.....any tips? At the moment I don't seem to be able to curl up enough to get my feet through my hands/lift my hips high enough. Thanks |
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| It's definately technique. It took me ages and ages and ages....just keep trying. Not very helpful i know but you are the best teacher.
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| IT took me 2 weeks to do it and everyone was so impressed. my jumps throughs were harder to make but not much. I feel I have more control of my body on my jump backs. other than that my yoga basically sucks when it comes to making perfect poses. my hips are to tight. |
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| I'm somewhere between a scoot-back and a jump-back at the moment.
Techinque? 1) cross-legs and pull in tight; 2) place hands; 3) juice up bandhas; 4) lift up; 5) pendulum swing back to chatwari; 6) wake up from dream 
Some will recommend using blocks until you can fully lift up, but I've also read that David Swenson recommends against blocks because it builds arm strength rather than core strength.
As usual, the answer is: practice, practice, practice!
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| Thanks - I guess I'll just keep at it!! |
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| I think that if your going from a staff position, then try to lift your feet directly up (and stiff as in the staff pose)before you attempt to cross your feet and as you cross your feet you can then easily engage the bundhas and there seems to be more space at that time for your legs to pass by themselves. As you engage your bundhas you might try to lift your buttocks up a little higher. This also gives you the extra space for the passing. Try that it may be helpful. Oh..how wide are your hands? Maybe they should be wider... |
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| People with long arms tend to find those very easy. If you have tight shoulders or shorter arms it's much harder. Different bodies different things. Not a lot of attention is paid to jumping through anyway, when Nancy Gilgoff started ashtanga they didn't have jump throughs. I would concentrate more on asana. Jumping through will come and so will jumping back, I promise!
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Location: London, England | Hi Sunny,
I did a post a while ago (go to page two of Astanga yoga, vinyasa thread) which i think looked at what you are asking-perhaps you might find something useful there.
Take care
Nick |
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| Techinque? 1) cross-legs and pull in tight; 2) place hands; 3) juice up bandhas; 4) lift up; 5) pendulum swing back to chatwari; 6) wake up from dream
SERIOUSLY!!!
I can't lift my freaking butt AND feet off the ground at the same time...doesn't happen for me. In the "lif up" between navasanas I'll lift one foot off the ground but the other one just won't make it up. That said this is what I've learned to do to build strength:
Curl into a ball.
Arms by the butt
Lift what I can, and HOLD FOR 5 BREATHS
Then, when I've collapapsed I lean forward and, propel my feet back...which makes me feel like I can jump back, even though I totally cheated.
Like everyone said, just keep trying. The block idea is good to get a feel for what it should feel like, but don't get too attached to it. Its best to just work on getting the lift up. And don't sweat, I see people in thier second series still not able to jump though/back. Just like I see little newbies blowing through it.
Work with whatcha got.
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| I seem to recall David Swenson suggesting using two equal sized phone books under each hand and tearing a page out each day.
It takes a lot of core strength to lift yourself up, but you can do it. I definitely recommend blocks or phone books and practice lifting yourself up and holding for as long as possible. Once you are able to hold yourself up for a minute on blocks, then start practicing jumping back. Inhale lift. Rock forward. Exhale jump back. Use that little bit of momentum to help you.
Find a good teacher to help you. Usually, it's poor strength, poor technique or a combination of both. Either way, it can be fixed with some practice.
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| How can you tell the difference between poor strength or poor techinque??
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| The idea that the vinyasa is not as important as the pose is a system oriented view point. Some schools feel the vinyasa is as important or more important than the pose. And I agree. I mean a chopped up class beguiles a chopped up life style. We reflect our actions and our actions reflect our mind set. As the vinyasas become more fluid like our daily life reflects that fluid and graceful movement . I find I generate more energy like tai-chi movements when I have a graceful link from one pose to the next and I can generate more poses as well. And the whole routine becomes really beautiful. And you can feel the prana travel through your body more easily. Isn't that what yoga's all about? |
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Location: London, England | Hi Yoga Guy,
"I seem to recall David Swenson suggesting using two equal sized phone books under each hand and tearing a page out each day. "
Supposing one of my arms is longer than the other-can i use the London phone directory under the short arm, and the oxford directory under the long one?
Take care
Nick |
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Location: London, England | Hi Ann Marie,
"How can you tell the difference between poor strength or poor techinque??"
That is such a good question that I think anybody would find it difficult to supply a good enough answer. Part of the reason it's difficult to answer is that poor technique does not strengthen the right muscles-if, for instance(as has been discussed) you bend your arms and then straighten them to give you the height from the ground, then the triceps will hypertrophy (get bigger). But the other muscular and connective tissue links in the chain don't get accessed-then you fall into a cycle of over-using the arms.
On the other hand, poor strength means that you may not be able to use the best possible technique of which you are capable-you may not be able to generate sufficient forcces to play out the the movement.
I would imagine that in reality, most people could do with improving both strength and technique, and as they get stronger, or more flexible, to be able to adapt mentally as well as physically. It is all too easy to develop bad habits which require great strength of character to extinguish.
There, I told you it was difficult to give a good answer! I think I've mentioned writing a book on Astanga-I think that if anyone wanted, I could send them the chapter on vinyasa, once I've cleaned it up a bit-with the proviso that you tell me what you think.
Obviously the length of our various body segments will either detract from our ability to lift through, or make it easier. In order to be able to tell an individual whether they will ever be able to clear the floor, a teacher would have to be able to measure the lengths of various bones and body segments, work out whether, for instance, the length of the humerus and ulna is greater than the height of the pelvis and spine-you can see we have a bit of a way to go!
Take care
Nick |
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| Thanks for the answer Nick!
It seems that my teachers don't pay much attention to the viniyasa portions. Every now and again I'll get the reminder to breath fully with each movement and not rush, but they don't seem to really comment on my "lean forward, through the feet back" thing I got going on.
The reason I ask is because I have a very similar problem to sunny, the original poster, in that i just can't seem to get my legs and feet gracefully between my arms to for a graceful scooch back. Widening my arms screws the alignment in upward and downward dog. Obviously I just keep practicing, but at the same time I don't really see much improvement and am curious if there is something I am doing wrong. |
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Location: London, England | Hi Ann marie,
Yep, and widening your arms also means they are effectively shorter, so that option probably won't do you any favours.
A posture that really help you to feel the bandha is bhujapidasana, the posture after the boat pose. It only helps to to train the bandha if you do the opposite of what most people do-most people will not bring the hips forwards through the arms, but will lift the pelvis up and back a little bit. If you bring the pelvis forwards (as though you were swinging through in the vinyasa), you should find that the bandha engage automatically-then you ask "what am I doing differently in my vinyasa?" and try to modify your vinyasa accordingly-in a sense, most of the postures of astanga yoga should follow the same path, but I think bhujapidasana is very good because of the similiarities between it and vinyasa. Tolasana is an exstremely good one to try this in-because the legs are in lotus, it may be a bit easier to get the hips forwards, and you can use the legs to activate the abs. If you were to put fine wire electrodes in the abdominals, I think that if your hips hang back, you wouldn't see to much electrical activity going on in the abdominal muscles-as soon as the hips come forwards, the electical activity would sharply increase, and you would probably see 100% activation of the abdominal muscles. And what about moola bandha?-theoretically, these should be activated at the spinal cord level, at the same time as the abs-no need for you to concentrate on the contraction-in fact, if you follow this train of instructions, you are watching the contractions of bandha take place in reaction to your intended movement or posture-in this way the bandha to not distract you from your task, but actually reinforce the execution of the task. Phew! sorry for the stream of consciousness-hopefully not a stream of typos, just checking...no all good!
I think that the sound that you make by uusing ujjayi breathing is important, try contracting the vocal cords to create a greater resistance to inhaling and exhaling-you use the resistance to activate the abs and pelvic floor, so that they stabilize the lower torso which contains your centre of gravity.
Take care
Nick |
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| Thanks everyone. Great info Nick....I'm going to spend at bit more time in bhujapidasana and tolasana and practice some more then get back to ya! (might take a while - but I'll get back to ya!) |
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Location: London, England | Hi Sunny,
I remember when I first started Astanga yoga, there were no teachers in England, but Danny Paradise would come for two weeks in the summer to give a workshop-no one was interested in Astanga at the time, so there might just be 8-10 people in the class-great for us!! i spent a whole year trying to figure out how to bring my legs through to no avail. In the fisrt class, I said to Danny"what am I doing wrong? and he said "do one and let me see if I can help." I did it, and for the first time, my feet didnt touch the ground. he said"that looks fine to me" and walked off. Trouble is, that didnt happen again for some time. There's al esson there somewhere, but I havent figured it out yet!
Nick |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
 
|  Nick - that is such a common occurence, they must have a name for it somewhere! I have had many students ask about this or that and when they do it to show me, it works perfectly or doesn';t hurt or whatever. Too funny! Even back when I worked with newborns and their mothers, similar things would happen. I think we often know what we are *supposed* to do to make a pose work, but unless someone is standing right over us, we revert to what we usually do.
Two ways to deal with this: 1) the way Danny P did with you. It was clear you knew how to make it work on some level so he left it with you to struggle through and find your own way to get back to it - a typical yoga teacher way to do it, for sure! 2) to watch 3 or 4 or more times until you go back to your usual way then show the difference. I have seen teachers work this way when the problem was either creating (significant physical) pain for the student or when it seemed an injury would occur if they were left to their own devices to figure it out. I like method 2 better but I appreciate method 1 for giving the student the opportunity to struggle and find their way by trial and error or by going to the deep source of knowledge that is already there. |
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Location: London, England | Hi Tourist,
I think he just thought "what's he complaining about?"
The lift is a funny one-it's a combination of so many different attributes, that it's impossible to predict whether anyone can do it. For a while I was noticing that people that seemed most at home with it were those who had spent time on boats-I think the balance challenge got to their bandhas and anti-gravity muscles. I guess tightrope walkers would be enhanced by their experiences on the rope!
Take care
Nick |
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| I've just started a blog devoted entirely to the jump back and jump through. I'm getting there but still struggling. My hope is that people will come with advice and suggestions and that this will benefit not just me but anyone else finding it difficult. Here's the link
http://grimmly2007.blogspot.com/
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| Go Grimmly go!
You are getting close. |
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