Reply to "Excellent animated diagrams of yoga techniques! HathaYogaLesson.com"

After an actual "aural" conversation with Teo, I'd add to the above remarks that for someone who is familiar with a posture, I really like the animations. In fact they are so good that a kid or an out of shape adult could be inspired to try them without any instructions.

For someone who knows the postures they are pretty cool, indeed. Again forgive my critical tendencies. The good news is that there are more good yoga teachers out there than ever now. They'll tell you how to breathe, especially in the particular parts of some postures Teo and I talked about in our live conversation. (I should say that my comment wasn't why he called).

The agreement we had when I brought it up that I just was on the site, is that how you breathe isn't alway agreed upon by everyone you talk to, but there are various thoughts about what works best.

As a general rule if a motion sqeezes air out of you, you breathe out with it, and vice versa going the other way. in the in betweens you pause, or take shallow breaths.

(Now use the animations, but move slowly and meditatively).

If it is natural to breathe out when going into a forward bend where you let your upper body hang towards your legs you'll breathe out as you go down but then what do you do when you are all the way down? Do you hold your breath until you come back up? If you want to hang for a while and let gravity add to the stretch is it o.k. to take shallow breaths? Should your knees be bent at all?

When you come up from hanging down, do you want to come up with your face clost to your legs, or do you want to swing up flat backed like in the Camel posture (one of the ones you'd do from a kneeling position along with your cat stretches)? In a forward bend you are standing and your upper body about the fulcrum of your hips is what Archimedes calls a third degree lever, better for achieving speed than power. Watch your spinal cartilege coming up flat backed if you don't know what you are doing!

For a novice you'd probably want your face close to your legs and to roll up one vertabrae at a time breathing in coming out of a forward bend (sometimes called Caterpillar Pose). The breathing in as you go up part all teachers I have known, would be unanimous, but they'd all have different ideas about how long to hang and the shallow breaths or even doing a little stomach lift or churning (uddiyana bandhas) while you're down there. My Ballet Mistress who also taught yoga, said you should not bend your knees but rather give up hanging down so far to begin (until gravity and relaxing and stretching allow for you to go further) but with the knees locked straight. This is true for forward bending whether as part of a Sun Salutation, or in the plough posture.

In the latter they say it is better to go from shoulder stand to plough with your knees straight as yo let your legs over your head toward the floor, and not to reach the floor, than to reach the floor with your knees bent.

There is a posture "the ear knee pose" where your knees are brought to either side of your ears (a bandha of sorts for the ears) but that should be attempted after your back is limber enough to get you toes to the floor with your legs straight.

To start learning Plough posture it is best to not reach the floor at first but to just suspend the straight legs parallel. This is another place for those shallow breaths. You'd breath in again raising back from the plough into the shoulder stand. The shoulder stand is followed by Fish posture according to some teachers. It is a good idea to do something backward bending after doing something forward bending and to punctuate those postures with ones that twist.

The Sun Salutation incorporates a combination of all the above.

No Pain No Gain has no place in yoga. This doesn't mean that there can be no further exploration of what comprises going further. Don't hurt yourself. That's the best advice, but do strive, and I'm with the shallow breaths crowd for what you do at the extreme of a forward bend when you're down there looking between your knees.

From the interest in these chats, I know there are a few among us who are at least familiar if not pretty advanced in terms of exposure to the aforementioned spiritual supermarket and to hatha (sun-moon) yoga in particular.

As a second thought, I do add my qualified approval of the very well done animations. I'm just a conservative guy wearing a hippy suit if the truth were known. Caution is good. Be kind to yourselves.

Do lots of yoga!