Thursday, October 29, 2009

Standing Head to Knee

When I started my sixty day challenge I was hoping for improvement in Standing Head to Knee more than any other posture. I can, on a very good day, touch my head to my knee. But getting my elbows below my calf muscles, and keeping them there, eludes me.

The posture begins with feet together. With weight on the left foot, bend down and grab the right foot just below the toes ten fingers interlocked.

LOCK YOUR KNEE!

This is where we try to get students to start learning to balance on a locked out leg. Bikram talks quite a lot about how important this element is. Straighten out the standing leg and tighten up the thigh muscles completely. The quadricep muscles should remain tight and contracted throughout the posture.

This weekend I attended the New England regional asana championships. The first place women, Michelle, was a great example of how to lock your knee. Michelle's stance was solid as a rock all the way up to her hip, including the gluteal muscles. Very impressive, very difficult!


Michelle making it look easy.

There exists a relationship amongst muscle groups called an agonist/antagonist relationship. From an anatomical perspective, the purpose of muscle is to move bones. Muscles are attached to the bones in a way that for movement to happen, as one muscle or group of muscles contract, a muscle or muscles must relax.

When you lock your knee and tighten up your thigh muscles, the muscles in the back of the legs loosen making it easier to bend forward, which is what you are about to do. But not until you kick out.

Slowly, gently, right leg lifts up and stretches forward toward the mirror. Keeping the standing leg locked becomes a little more challenging and more important. When the kicking leg is exactly parallel to the floor, kick your heel forward and turn your toes back to your face. When you kick you heel forward, kick from the hip. Get your hips square to the front wall. As you pull and turn your toes back you should feel a nice deep stretch on the underside of the leg.

Now, bend your elbows down toward the calf muscles. Here, sucking your stomach in will engage that agonist/antagonist relationship I wrote about above allowing you to round your spine more. The tight thighs loosen up the back of the leg and tight stomach helps opens the lower back.

Elbow should graze the outside of the calf muscles.

Now here is the yet to achieve part of my practice: elbows below the calf muscle.

Bikram says one should bring the upper body down, tuck your chin to your chest and touch your forehead to your knee only when your elbows are below the calf muscles. I have had other teachers suggest that I try to touch my forehead to my knee when elbow are close to being below the knee. And that got me into a bad habit.

My good friend Terri, another contestant in this week's New England championships, gave me coaching at the beginning of my sixty day challenge.

"Do first things first" said Terri. She convinced me that I had to get my elbows below the leg and keep them there first. What has happened is I fall out less frequently because I am not going ahead of my ability.

Guess what?

My elbows are getting lower. When all else fails RFD: read the freakin directions.

Thanks Terri!

18 comments:

  1. They were doing standing head to knee in posture clinics in Vegas today.... (I am trying to follow along at home.) So this is good timing!! And I appreciate how closely you are following the dialogue with your descriptions! Good stuff. Had a whole chat with someone this morning about "kick your RIGHT LEG HEEL forward." Right leg heel.

    Read the freaking directions. HAH. Love.

    Now, question... is that really true, that the elbows ALWAYS need to go all the way below the calf muscles before you move on? That's what I've ALWAYS seen written (and it's what I do, cause it's easy for me), but I KNOW I've HEARD that it's sometimes fine if they're level with the bottom of the calf muscle. Now WHERE did I hear that?! I'd swear that it was at the judge's clinic this summer, but I can't remember whether Bikram had come in yet at that point and I didn't put anything about it in my notes. :(

    However, that's just academic. In practice, we do what WORKS. :)

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  2. I've been falling out of that alot lately. Like you, I'm not quite there yet with the elbows below the calf muscles. Some teachers encourage me to try to get my body down, tuck my chin in and get my forehead to knee. After reading this post, I think perhaps I should NOT try that part yet, as I'm clearly not ready. When in doubt, listen to the dialog, right? :)

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  3. Hi,
    In teacher training Craig Villani would say that even if you can't get your elbow below your knee, try to touch your forehead to your knee anyway. Well, that got me started in what became a bad habit for me.

    Last month Terri Fry changed my approach, waiting until I could get my elbows below the calf muscles.

    What is different is I do not fall out as much allowing me to achieve a little more depth. My shoulder are moving a little.

    There is a guy who practices at HQ. I think his name is Peter. He's about 65. He has a perfect head to knee.

    I'm using him as a role model; I am going to get this.

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  4. Hi Yogachick,

    Yeah, it's working for me. I wanted to keep trying. But I am getting better results doing it first things first.

    And, you can look in the mirror and smile at yourself:)

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  5. A teacher at our studio can't get his elbows below the calf. In fact, he barely gets them to the calf. But he can put his forehead on his knee, and the rest of the pose is good. He says that the goal is to go for the benefit. He always tries to go as low as he can with his elbows, but he doesn't see that part as a real sticking point. (After all, in the final head to knee pose, you put the head on the knee even if you can't lock the knee, much less get the elbows on the floor.)

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  6. Hahaha... you SO just threw Craig under the (yoga) bus! What does Diane say? I guess you probably won't see her again for like a month now, unless you're in Boston TOMORROW.

    I'm lookin' at dialogue... weirdly enough, there IS an instruction that the final stage happens "once elbows go down below the calf muscles", but it's a "stage direction" for teachers and NOT in the spoken text. HUH. I'm mildly perplexed now...

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  7. P.S. Blogging!!! Fun, ain't it?!? You get to open up a can of worms for EVERYONE'S benefit! ;-)

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  8. Wait wait wait! I just thought of something!

    (Uh oh. Here goes...)

    Let's talk about "below the calf muscle" versus just "level with the bottom of the calf muscle." It DEPENDS, right? It depends on your ANATOMY.

    I remember that someone was up on stage in July demo-ing head to knee for judge's clinic, and a bunch of people were saying "You should take off a point because the elbows are just in line with the calf muscles instead of below them. Bikram was like - "Why? It's a perfect posture."

    If you've got longer forearms or shorter legs, your elbows are always going to get lower then they would for someone with the opposite proportions. So when both those people do their "perfect" posture, one of them will have elbows way down below the calf and the other one probably will not. Right?

    And Charlie, I'd bet you anything that you're right to keep working your elbows down, because you totally CAN. But I still dunno if you can say it is this way 100% of the time without seeing the body and the individual practice.

    Am I onto something, or am I totally off track?

    At least I'm keeping myself entertained! Done now. :)

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  9. Hi,

    The object of Yoga is you, not the posture. So if one is having results that are deepening their practice they are doing it right. Now that is a subjective statement that one can easily justify anything with. So it's good to have a good teacher, someone who can see your practice from an more objective perspective.

    When Craig said to try to get forehead to knee even if the elbows were not below the calf muscles, he was teaching a room full of teacher trainees. In a different context he may say something else.

    For me, Terri Fry, an experienced teacher told me to try getting my elbow down more and it was helpful.

    In the case of the teacher above who is touching head to knee without the elbows below the knee, it appears he is holding the posture. I was falling out too much. So working on elbows down has allowed me to balance better and deepen the overall posture.

    Then there is a championship perspective. A judge at the championships would shave points if the elbows did not stay below the knee.

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  10. I could never get my elbows below my calves until someone told me to drop/relax my shoulders. It worked for me...maybe try it!

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  11. Yes! Relaxing/lowering shoulder helps a lot. To me it feels like rounding and stretching across the upper back and scapula.

    Another important element is to try and straighten the wrist. To do that one must loosen the grip just a bit. The fingers are still interlaced, but a bit looser to straighen the writst.

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  12. Okay, to throw something else into this discussion: "Michelle's stance was solid as a rock all the way up to her hip, including the gluteal muscles." -- so, does this mean in Standing Head to Knee that we should have our standing leg glute contracted? I concentrate so much on my quads, and sometimes I feel the glute contracting as well, and then I try to release it bc I have been assuming that only the quads should be engaged, not the glutes. Should I let the glute get in there?

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  13. @ Charlie. Ok I think we agree completely. (No big surprise.) That was fun. Happy Halloween. :)

    @ Jennifer - I say YES! Definitely. Glutes are good.

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  14. Hi Jennifer,

    What a great question! When I wrote that statement I was envisioning Michelle and the other participants in the recent New England Championships. The top contestants all appeared as I described it: leg locked up to the gluteal muscles. But appearances are not the whole story.

    A big experience for me when I was new to Yoga was becoming more aware, more sensitive to my physical state. Unlike exercises I have done before Yoga, Yoga has developed my acuity toward the muscles that are relaxed during any given posture. I posted about agonist/antagonist relationships earlier. So I want to be careful about how I answer your question about the glutes.

    Today, in the balancing series, I focused on that part of my anatomy and I do tighten my gluteal muscles when balancing on one leg. But I am going to play with it and try relaxing them as well. I asked several student with good postures and they all agreed with your way of doing it.

    So, I am doing homework and will get back to you with what I find.

    Thank you for asking!

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  15. Oooh, Charlie and DancingJ disagreed. ;) I am going to experiment with it in my next few classes, too. Thanks for getting back to me!

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  16. HAHAHAHAHA... oh shit, I'm gonna get myself in trouble on here pretty soon. ;)

    To put in my 2 cents, I'm a little bit "hyperextended" in my legs, i.e. they bow backwards. (I put that in quotes because "hyperextension" doesn't exist in Bikram yoga!) Whenever I shift my weight farther forward into my toes to get out of the hyper-ness (for lack of a better term), I DEFINITELY can feel it in the glutes of my standing leg. But that's just me!! Maybe this only happens if your legs are shaped this way?

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  17. Hmm, well I have been having a hard time with getting an even balance across my foot in this one lately, so maybe this is the answer. I have been trying to think about the glutes in this one the last couple classes, but I have been falling out of the first stage before I even have enough time to think about it! Will keep working towards it, though, at least for something to experiment with. Thanks for clarifying, dancingj!

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  18. See Charlie's new post for even better clarification. ;-)

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