LOL!

This is how most of the classes are at my studio. When you and other ashtangis (and Bikramites) all talk about doing the same standard set of poses in each class, I was completely dumbfounded. Not that I thought that could get boring (because every time you practice, the body is different, as is the mind, of course), but just that I didn't know it was ever done WITHOUT variations and new asana concoctions (concontasanas?) to stress the point of a particular "body feel". Interesting, indeed.

As to your particular question about pada hastanasa, no thoughts there, sorry. Well, except maybe to say we shouldn't be so dogmatic about the "right" way to do any pose?

Heh, I'm still chuckling from your first line, that made my day!

OM

slowpie6 - 2007-02-04 10:31 PM It always perplexes me when my teachers are telling me to breath in my back, or breath in my kidneys. This little voice in my head keeps answering "I don't have lungs there, silly!! ", but I know I'll find them someday!

What you said here, even in jest, got me thinking. I looked at some pictures of the lungs and kidneys, just to get an idea of how breathing into one set of organs could affect the other. I saw the diaphragm illustrated in one image, and then I remembered that when you inhale, the diaphragm moves down. Could it be that the instruction to breathe into your mid-back and kidneys is to encourage more of the diaphragm to lower down, allowing room for a fuller inhale? I looked at the breathing chapter in David Coulter's book (which I've read about 3-4 times already and still have some trouble with). I know it also has to do with using the intercostal muscles more fully, or at least trying to access expanding them more, also with the intent of a fuller breath. But I really don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here, based on the limited reading and studying I've done so far (limited in that I'm no where near being an anatomy expert!). I do know I breathe more deeply and pervasively throughout my body when I think about breathing into my kidneys. It also fixes my posture automatically, just by virtue of intention.

In looking at both your pictures, the one adjustment that immediately comes to mind (because we're currently learning to look for them, not because you're doing anything "wrong") is to pull the lower belly up off the thighs; or put another way, to suck the hip creases up into your body. Both cues accomplish the same thing here, and it's not about fixing a sagging belly, but rather (and this is my personal take on it) muscularly supporting against too much pelvic tilt. So whether you round the upper back or not, the same action of pulling in and up at the hip creases will align the skeleton better, I believe.

I know I'm still not answering your original question about which way is "proper" for this particular asana. Personally, I think it's more interesting to explore why your teacher that day had you do it this way, with the intent of just noticing how it might feel different for you. Hey, could it be exactly what you initially said, "Rounding my back makes it very hard for me to breath, as I don't think I've figured out how to breath in my back yet... "?

Heh, ask a philosopher a question, and you get asked three more .

Silly question, but did you ever just ask your teacher why he/she instructed you to practice the pose that way?

ALSO.... I just went back and reread your original post in this thread, and something you said reminded me of something I've heard from a few of my teachers: every pose in yoga is both a forward bend and a backward bend. Not the shape your body makes in the final expression of the pose, obviously, but the actions typified by forward bends and backward bends are present in every yoga pose (twists included). Again, not something to overthink, just to be aware of when you're not sure if you're going too far in one direction or the other.