Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose) Tutorial | Encyclopedia of Yoga with Kino MacGregor

Transcript

[Music] Hey everyone, it's Kino here. Thanks for tuning in to the Encyclopedia of Yoga. This volume is about bada konasana, the bound angle pose that's sometimes known as the cobblers's pose. Let's start off with the traditional Sanskrit pronunciation. So repeat after me. Bada konosana. Bada konasana. And one more time, bada konasana. Now, some benefits of the pose include toning up the inner organ. So, you might not think that you're actually targeting like strength, but what I mean by toning up is kind of like energizing and giving blood circulation and life vitality into the inner organs. The pose actually works on the kidney meridian, which when that's energized, can help you relax and relieve stress and burdens that are often placed on the kidney meridian. For example, if your adrenal glands are really kind of overactive and you live a stressed out, fast-paced life, one of the first organs that begins to suffer is your kidneys. So, the kidneys need a lot of hydration and also a lot of time to recuperate. Poses like buttera work in a tangential way by stimulating the meridians or the energy lines, the lines of prana which come into the body and really just help the whole abdominal region relax and regain its kind of energized calm center. Now the other thing that happens is you're stretching the hips. So your hips give you access into the pelvic bowl. Unfortunately there's often a lot of tightness in the hips, the low back and the whole area that will get you into the posture. So we approach flexibility from a place of calm, ease, patience, and kindness. Let's take a look at the basics of the pose. Bakonasana is an external rotation. So if you start off by bending your knees and pull them into your chest, bring your feet relatively close to your hips. Then you want to find the bone called the greater trocanter bone. So it's on both sides, your right and your left hips. Then this is your thigh bone, which sticks out to the side. You want to find these bones and just drop them out to the side which is giving you an external rotation. Think about pointing your knees out to the side. Now there may be a gap in between your feet. So you want to grab hold of your feet and just place them together. So the first thing that happens in buttera is that as the feet come together the knees may elevate and your back may round under and you may actually feel like you want to hold your feet together but that's actually the exact opposite motion that you want to do to enter the pose. So, if you're sitting like this and you're feeling a lot of pain um in your knees, the first thing to do is to grab some bolsters or some pillows and elevate your knees until the pain goes completely away. Never in this pose do you want to feel any pain in your knees. However, if you're feeling bands of tension through the inner thigh, then this actually is part of what the pose is aiming to help you find release from. So you want to be very conscious about which parts of the body are talking to you. And again, any pain in the knee, keep elevating the hips until that pain goes away with blocks and bolsters. However, if that pain that you may feel is like a stretching discomfort in the belly of the inner thigh, then this is acceptable. Now to enter the posture, the first thing you want to do is activate your legs. This is not a passive pose. So we have to take a look down at the feet. Again, the feet almost want to be attracted to each other and close. So you have to think about activating the soles of the feet. Root down to the base of your little toe and start to spread the feet open. You should feel your ankles starting to activate. So as you spread the feet open, you're pressing the bases of the big toes, the outer edge of your heels into each other, and the soles of the feet open like a book. And this is the activation that will help protect your knees and help you get into the posture. Second thing to watch out for is that as you begin to press into the feet, your feet actually kind of want to move away from your pubic bone. But barakonasana should have the feet as close to the pubic bone as possible. All right. You want to feel some activation through the ankles. Your knees are moving out to the side as much as possible. And then the last thing that we really want to do as a prepare is you want to get rid of any rounded back under tilt of your pelvis. So grab hold of the pelvic floor. to talk. So the space between your sitting bones, all that activation down in the base of the pelvis, and then lift it up until you come up onto the very top of your sitting bones. Let's start off with what's called badonasana C or the straight spine position, butter. Take your thumbs and press them on the mound of your big toes. Curl the fingers under and lift the center of the chest up. Send your pubic bone back as you send your chest ever so slightly forward, rolling forward to the very front of your sitting bones. Then drop the shoulders down the back and straighten the arms. We'll hold that for a few moments. Don't do all the work with the hands. Remember, your feet are doing the work of spreading themselves apart. And your hands are like placeholders. Get really comfortable here. I don't recommend that you grab hold of your knees and try to force them down or anything. Just let them be there. Do the work with the feet and the work with the inner space of the pelvis. Now we'll move into buttera a position. How you enter this pose is very important. The pivot point of your torso, as in all forward bends, happens at the root of the pelvis. So, we're looking at the hip joints and the pubic bone. So, if you can find your pubic bones, do it with the hands. Reach down, find the pubic bone, just the pubic bone. And after you got the pubic bone, then just send it back and see if you can just pivot and think pubic bone moves back. And I really want you to feel that. You should do this so much that your sitting bone starts to send back and come off the ground. In the first version of buttera, you can let the sitting bones come off the ground pivoting forward. But at the same time, keep the pubic bone in proximity to the heel. Don't open that gap. Then after you begin to pivot forward, you should feel an increased kind of burning sensations along the inner thigh. Keeping your back as straight as possible, exhale. As you keep pivoting forward, pivoting forward. Let the movement come from the hip joints, from the pubic bone as you descend forward and down, forward and down, forward and down, forward and down. Doing good. And as far as you want to go, or as far as you can go with a straight spine, you want to go that far. So, if you can only go to here, allow yourself to come here. But if you can eventually reach down, you could place your forehead on the ground, your nose on the ground, or eventually possibly your chin on the ground. Now, it's okay that your sitting bones come off the ground, but at the same time, keep them grounded. So, you don't want to let them fly forward. You want to let them stay ever so slightly grounded, even though they elevate from the ground. Shoulders roll back behind you. Elbows back, no force. Use your feet. You may be feeling tension in the ankles. No problem. You may be feeling tension through the inner thighs. Again, no problem. Inhale. Let's come on up. And then now what happens when you come up is that proximity, the gap between your heels and your pubic bone may have widened. So just take a moment and slide that forward. Now let's go on to buttera B. After you come up with the straight spine, you get a second shot in buttera to round the back which gives you an easier access into the inner thighs. However, you want to be very careful that your feet don't come too far away from your pelvis. So, here we go. Inhale. And now, instead of sending the pubic bone back, send the pubic bone up. So, you round it under. All right. So, here we are rounding it under. Keep the feet. And then exhale. Suck the belly in. Feel like you're moving into the inner body. And nice and easy. Inhale. And exhale. Under, under, under, under. reaching the head towards the toes. Now, see, you can try to do it without the hands, but you may need to hold on with your hands a little bit so you can reach all the way down. Then, let's pop it back up. I like to come through a straight spine on the way back up. All right, pausing in butter C for a moment and holding on to the knees. Bring them into your chest and just shake it out. All right, let's take a look at some common pitfalls for buttera. Now the most common thing to have happen in butter is that when you go forward either you do not try hard enough to keep the spine straight so the back is rounded or you throw the body forward and the sitting bones fly off of the ground. So the sitting bones flying off of the ground. There's too much space between the hips and the ground. So we want to think about the sitting bones are going to come off of the ground but we don't want them to fly. So if you think about sitting bones have a little bit of weightiness as the pubic bone pivots back. They stay in close proximity towards the ground yet they have a freedom to elevate just a little bit. So different than flying off the ground. We're keeping the sitting bones grounded. Now that's that that's that common mistake that the person may be more flexible. If you're a little bit tighter, what you may find is that as you go forward, you just you cannot get that pivot into the hips. I recommend then that you stay for buttera a and focus on pivoting through the hips and just get that pivot rather than trying to fold forward. And this is just sort of rocking the pelvis backward and forward until you can really feel the movement originating down in the base of the pelvis. And this will again bring energy into the abdomen and the organs of the abdomen. energy through the meridians of the legs and help you get a sense of understanding really of how movement mechanics in the body happen to facilitate your entry into biconosa. Now another common mistake that happens in this pose is that the feet are simply too far away from the hips. If your feet are too far away from the hips, your knees are not closed. When the knee joint is not closed, it it is at a potential or has a potential for torque or twist. And then as you go forward, the any tightness in the hips may distribute towards the knees. So I recommend again closing the knees from the beginning to close that joint and protect the joint. Then when you drop the knees out to the side, the knee joint should remain closed. Now, anybody who has a little bit of tightness in the hips or tightness in the low back may not be able to close the knees all the way. I'd like to see that your knee is closed at least at the very least to the middle of your calf. So if you have your feet open to about here, I think that's about as far open as buttera would be safe. Beyond that, I'd recommend you really focus on closing that gap so you can seal off the thighs and the calf muscles. Now some common mistakes that are also made is that you think that you may need to force your knees to the ground. So you see people sometimes pushing the knees down and you don't want to fight with the body. Let gravity take over relaxing the knees while you simply work where is appropriate to work. Think about your feet, your pelvic floor, and elongating the muscles of the back so that when you fold forward, you're supporting the spine and communicating to the center of the body that all is good. This is a long journey. So that full dip down moving forward may take years. So really be patient with yourself. Don't force yourself into the posture and don't flop into the pose either. If you're very flexible, you'll have to keep a conscious awareness of where to work. So you also don't want to just kind of flop down, right? So you want to actually talk to the body and make it be as much an awareness exercise as it is really an inner exploration of flexibility, strength, and everything that goes into the inner journey of yoga. Let's draw the knees up into the chest. You may also notice that the ankles right around here start to get a little fatigued if you really work barakonasana. This is a good thing because this is stretching and strengthening the ankles for long holds in the lotus position, giving you a little bit more flexibility, a little bit more endurance. You can sit comfortably in lotus position for a longer time. Well, I think that after all that badassa, you need at least one venyasa. So, let's just nice and easy step back to the plank pose. Inhale. Hold it there for a moment. Exhale. Chaturanga. Inhale. Upward-f facing. And exhale downward-facing. Let's stay in downward facing for a moment. That feels kind of good for the feet. Give them a little blood circulation through the knees into the hips. And switch your gaze forward and just come on back to seated. One of the things that can really happen in bakonasana is that this is one of these poses that's kind of a trigger of deeply held emotions. In traditional Chinese medicine, it said that the organs actually are reservoirs of deeply held emotion. So, it makes sense if we're working on meridian channels that can bring health and vitality into the inner organs that you may be finding some triggers that kind of get perked up or stimulated. Some things that can often happen for me in varanasana is I often feel kind of an inner shaking, a little bit of vulnerability almost like I notice a sense of softness, a sense of perhaps sadness or even just a sense of kind of weariness. And this is okay. If any emotions arise, give yourself complete permission to feel them all. Don't try to stuff them down. Just observe them with an aquamous mind like clouds rolling through the open fields of the mind that is like the sky. Sooner or later they'll pass away and the sunshine which is the inner light will eventually shine through. In buttera remember we're working on external rotation of the hip joints and you can think of it as a double version of the pose called jeroshasana a. So jan sharers a right has the knee out to the side and that same seal that you find through the thigh and the calf muscle and buttera is two of those. So you multiply that by two, add in your other leg and you've got the foundation of the pose. And we have that same open position of the soles of the feet. So as you're working on one pose, then we eventually work on both, you know, both feet in butter. Now again, do not expect this pose to be easy. Don't expect yourself to snap your fingers and immediately boom, your knees are on the ground. This posture has been something that's been a part of my practice for over 17 years. And I still feel that I have more depth to reach along the inner body. Now, if you try to force yourself too fast, too soon, there are some joints that'll start to talk to you. Your knees, potentially your sacrum, even your spine. If you feel any of those come up in the body, that's a red light. So, you want to back off and don't proceed further. Instead, practice with an attitude of patience and tolerance. Use healthy alignment. So bring in your wisdom mind and work the alignment in the body to make sure that you're safe and on the long journey. Let go of any goal and never judge yourself by what you did yesterday and never set a high expectation for what you might do tomorrow. Don't compare yourself to other yogis otherwise we'll eventually lose that battle because sooner or later you'll find someone that's more flexible than you are, stronger than you are. Just drop the comparison game completely and understand that in the journey of spirit, we are all truly equal. We all shine with the same spark of the eternal, the same spark of the divine. We are all brilliant stars in the sky. Then allow yourself to surrender into the whole journey. Badakonosa is really a lifelong practice. So keep that in your heart. Thank you so much for joining me on this volume of the encyclopedia of yoga. Namaste.