Our hands are our tools of doing. We use them to perform nearly the entirety we do in our day by day lives. We use them to cut veggies, to sort on our keyboards, to consume, to drink, to lug items from one position to any other, plus many, many extra issues, all day lengthy. We stock this addiction into our yoga follow. We use our hands to enhance our our bodies and to extend depth in our asanas. As an example, in Parvrtta Sukhasana (Revolved Simple Pose), we use our arm to drag us into the twist. In Trikonasana (Triangle Pose), we steadily prolong our most sensible arm again to assist open the chest, and we enhance ourselves in our decrease arm. However the usage of our hands to accentuate our poses can steadily result in shoulder stress. It sounds bizarre, however armless yoga may infrequently be a shoulder-nurturing approach to play together with your follow.

Working towards armless yoga doesn’t imply that you need to lose your hands altogether. We wish to use them for a mess of poses. Suppose Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Dealing with Canine Pose), Phalakasana (Plank Pose), and so on. However there are some asanas, like the 2 discussed above, the place we generally tend to create pressure within the shoulders via overusing our hands. This can be a herbal tendency as a result of “doing” is the position our hands play in our lives. Occasionally it would even really feel as in case you are the usage of your hands to inflict the pose in your frame. Are we able to as a substitute use them as a enhance to our follow somewhat than to accentuate it?

Why Observe Armless Yoga?

Some great benefits of working towards armless yoga transcend merely relieving shoulder pressure. Now not that relieving shoulder pressure is insignificant. Maximum folks lift some measure of pressure in our shoulders and neck. Once I take requests from scholars for what they’d love to follow in a category, the shoulders and neck are nearly all the time first at the checklist.

In status poses specifically, after we overuse our hands, our core and legs can disengage. This decreases the stabilizing qualities of status poses and makes our hands do the paintings that the legs and core will have to be doing.

However there’s extra to it. The bodily advantages of asana follow pass deeper than stretching muscle tissue. Our yoga follow can advertise physiological well being as smartly. Stretching and strengthening are in reality aspect advantages to the principle goal—the fearful device.

Once we follow with aggression, the usage of our hands to power ourselves additional into poses, we will stimulate the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) fearful device. Asana used to be cultivated over centuries to do the other—to suppress the sympathetic fearful device and to permit us to relaxation within the parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) aspect of the autonomic fearful device. This creates the physiological surroundings that highest helps meditation—the guts of yoga.

How one can Observe Revolved Simple Pose sans Palms

I’ll use a easy instance to reveal follow armless yoga. You’ll be able to take this instruction into all turned around poses.

1. Take a seat in Sukhasana (Simple Pose) on a folded Yoga Blanket. Should you to find that your lumbar backbone is rounded again on this place, be happy to follow this pose sitting in a chair.
2. Rotate your torso to the fitting, scooting your proper hip again in order that your pelvis is in settlement with the twist. This assists in keeping your sacroiliac (SI) joint in a impartial place.
3. Position your left hand at the proper knee or thigh. Merely position your hand there, with out pulling your torso additional into the twist.
4. As an alternative of the usage of your arm to “whole” the twist, consider it’s essential to invite your core into the pose. By way of the core, I imply the interior constructions of your frame, basically your belly and thoracic organs. Right here’s the way it works. Believe drawing your proper lung and kidney again into your again frame. Concurrently draw your left lung and kidney, and your center ahead. Then draw your liver (at the proper) again and your abdomen (at the left) ahead. Now invite your ascending and descending colon into the twist. Draw the ascending (simply inside of the fitting aspect of your pelvis) again and the descending colon (simply throughout the left aspect of your pelvis) ahead. Believe the core (organs) and shell (muscle tissue, bones and pores and skin) of your frame rotating in combination.
5. Keep for five to ten breaths, transferring out of your core and retaining your left arm comfy.
6. Go back to heart. Take a couple of breaths to really feel the residue from the pose, after which rotate to the left.

Energize and Stabilize: Armless Yoga in Status Poses

Working towards status poses with out the usage of your hands can display you spaces the place your frame isn’t collaborating up to it would. It’s not unusual to overstretch the shoulder of your most sensible arm in Triangle Pose, and to disengage your legs and lean in your backside hand. I’ll instruct Triangle Pose right here, however you’ll follow different status poses this manner as smartly.

1. Stand on a nonskid Yoga Mat together with your toes parallel and a couple of to a few toes aside.
2. Flip your proper leg out 90 levels and switch your left leg—together with the pelvis—in 30 levels. Don’t attempt to sq. your hips. Learn this newsletter to be informed why it’s vital to not follow this ever-popular alignment cue.
3. Draw your hands into your aspects together with your arms pointing downward.
4. Now start to bend to the fitting into Triangle Pose, preventing at no matter level you are feeling a stretch however can take care of simple respiring. The 2 aspects of your torso will have to each be lengthy and your chest will have to face ahead.
5. Realize your legs. Are they operating just a little tougher than standard? How about your core muscle tissue? If both or each those spaces are operating tougher than you’re used to, it’s most likely since you’ve been disengaging your legs and leaning in your backside hand.
6. Now consider opening the ribcage—no longer the pelvis—towards the entrance the usage of your organs in the similar method as in Revolved Simple Pose. On this case that implies that the fitting lung might be gently drawing ahead, and the left lung and center might be gently drawing again.
7. Take 3 to five deep breaths right here after which go back to an upright place. Rotate your legs in order that your toes are parallel.
8. Take a couple of breaths on this impartial place sooner than working towards the pose at the left aspect.

Working towards Armless Yoga

You don’t must follow your status poses this manner at all times, in fact. However while you do follow with the standard arm place, make sure to’re no longer overusing your hands. Your legs and core will have to be your number one enhance, and the orientation of your ribcage will have to come out of your core additionally, somewhat than your most sensible arm.

And in particular while you twist or ahead bend, take a look at to peer in case your hands are causing the pose in your frame somewhat than just supporting the trajectory of the pose. Chill out your shoulders and make allowance your poses to spread naturally.

About Charlotte Bell

Charlotte Bell came upon yoga in 1982 and started educating in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Existence: A Information for On a regular basis Observe and Yoga for Meditators, each printed via Rodmell Press. Her 3rd e book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Protective the Hips and Warding off SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a per 30 days column for CATALYST Mag and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and folks sextet Pink Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.