How to do Baddha Konasana | Bound Angle Pose in Ashtanga Yoga | Tips for Beginner Hip Opening

Transcript

[Music] hi i'm jelena and i'm david and in this tutorial we're going to look at barakanasana it's one tutorial that's been requested quite a lot and if you haven't already make sure to give us a heart and comment by letting us know what you'd like to see us do next so badakanasana bound angle pose butter is bound kona is angle and it's also known as cobbler's pose which is interesting a little story about it from india the cobblers when they uh work and they still do it in um some of the little corner shops then they sit like this with uh kind of a little stump thing between their feet and they'll work there in front so it's uh the same shape in the hips gives you really good we say open hips you know because you're externally rotated and uh adducted all day um long so this is a a great way to prepare the hips for deeper uh postures like um padmasana lotus posture or even like leg behind the head and we'll talk a little bit more about that soon but barakanasana is from primary series of ashtanga yoga in the second half of it and there's two stages of it uh so the first one is kind of the the classic where the idea is we want to bring the heels as close as possible to uh the pelvic floor eventually even touching which is actually very difficult to do it requires so much flexibility but it you know that can be your target and the heels come together and the feet open so you see i i know in some different traditions maybe the the feet stay closed in ashtanga the prescription is that the soles of the feet come away from each other but the outer edges of the feet are touching and we also use the hands to kind of accentuate that movement and then we're also going to use the arms to draw ourselves into the posture so the setup all on on septa from downward dog you inhale jump through and get into this position with the knees bent heels touching soles of the feet open and you're holding the feet like that and then ashtau as you exhale you're going to fold into the state of the asana that's the vinyasa that you hold ashtau drishti is the nose and you would be here for five breaths you're trying to get the chin to the floor with the back kind of flat and then nava inhale you come all the way up and then there's a second position in ashtanga b or whatever so we would say dasha exhale fold and the idea is you want to bring your forehead to your toes so now you're really rounding your back okay five breaths there gazes on the nose nasa and then inhale you come all the way up ee karesha exhale there no count no movement and then you would do the regular jump back vinyasa you know uh dua to shy inhale pick up etc etc so um as usual yelling makes it look pretty easy but for a lot of people this is a challenging posture um tightness in the hips restricts the movement of the thigh you know it doesn't sort of drop freely and so you'll often see when people are first doing this pose or even after many years they might still have the knees way up off the floor [Music] this is kind of it you know there's a funny thing we have in ashtanga uh part of the the technique of learning the asanas is that you have to get one before you move on to the next in the sequence so this posture comes in the second half a primary series i mentioned but we have like what seemed like um more complicated postures earlier in the practice like um like say my chest and a d which is half lotus and a twist and requires so much flexibility yeah and that there's conditions right so the condition in maritas and d is that you have to do the full expression of the pose before you move on the condition for this pose is before you're supposed to move on is actually that you can do it with the knees down on the floor so it's very easy in some ways to get into some you know version of this posture with the knees up and this might be where you stay and work for a while but the full expression of this pose is supposed to be here with the knees down and then your ability to go forward and touch the chin to the floor and you wouldn't really move on before you could do that two things that we commonly correct in this pose is that you know we're told to use our hands to open the feet and we are pressing the heels together and bringing our toes apart which if you're sitting here with us and trying it as soon as you do that you're going to feel a lot of sensation right here in your hip which is what you wanted but you got to make sure not to overdo it with your hands where we start to see people really lifting their feet off the floor which isn't good for your knees so while you are using the hands to open your feet make sure that the other edge of the foot or the feet always stays on the floor and then two as you're folding forward just watch what your arms are doing so don't let the elbows kind of come out and encourage this collapse in your upper um in your upper body and particularly around your clavicles so as you go forward you want the hands to stay nicely against the body elbows might be touching the legs or in my case or anyone else with short arms elbows are probably away from your legs so just pay attention to those two things as you do this and you can actually use the the work of the legs to help draw you deeper into the pose so the legs aren't completely passive or don't need to be completely passive when you're doing it um you can like yelena was saying you know when you start to get the right position here with the feet you're going to feel more engagement in the inner hip we're going to try to use the inner and the back hip to help us fold into deeper flexion okay so we're catching the outer edge of the foot on the mat by pressing down through the outside edge of the foot and pressing the heels together but it feels like we're drawing the heels or the feet away from each other do you know what i mean it's a it's a funny thing to describe but when your heels are together it's almost in your hips and your inner hip as though you're trying to pull your legs away and that's gonna start to pull the the legs out of the hip a little bit and it gives your pelvis more room to start to come forward whereas if you're just passively sitting in it you can feel your thighs kind of sink back into the hips and that'll actually block you so you're trying to pull the femurs out of the hip to give yourself room for the hips to start to come forward here and so it's quite active and then once you get into a sort of about a 45 degree angle with your torso then you can really feel the piriformis kick in as well and you can use them to help push you into a deeper it's like a rotation almost right because what's happening is your torso is coming forward so it's the same as if you were pulling your leg back that's the shape that you're coming into so you can use the hip to assist you in that work that's so i always look for that kind of clutching sensation in the back of the hip i always look for soft jaw so when we're working with our hips the tendency is we're working often with some difficult emotions that get stored in the body and particularly hips and with hip opening we get to often not always encounter anger and frustration so it is important to watch as you're going forward and you're getting into that part of the body and the sensations are becoming strong that you're not holding on to all the tension in your jaw and clenching the jaw because that will also tighten the hips there's a connection straight from your jaw all the way down to this part of the body so make sure as you're going forward to really keep relaxing the jaw letting there be this natural space between your upper teeth and your lower teeth and that your tongue isn't pressing against the top of the mouth or whatever it is that you tend to do and you also want to be very um engaged in the pelvic floor while you do this pose so we call that mulabanda rootlock which basically just means that you're trying to squeeze the muscles of the pelvic floor like a kegel and drawing in through woody and abunda through your lower belly as you go forward so these are really important parts of the posture that are emphasized in yogamala patabhi joyce's book on this pose he says it's all about it so you want to feel before you come forward like ellen is doing like you're hollowing your belly and lifting through the pelvic floor and then you try to hold on to that sensation as you go forward so that's going to stop you from kind of dumping down and letting the sits bones lift the more you pull back through the lower belly and engage the pelvic floor the more you'll feel the sits bones stay connected on the floor coming forward and then lastly this is a great pose to do if you are dealing with tight hips so david and i always get our students at the end of their practice after they've taken rest to come back and just sit on their mat or against the wall to provide the support for the back and just sit like this without pushing down if you feel any discomfort it's okay to put pillows or blankets under and just sitting like this very passively for about five minutes begins to really uh create change in the body and open up the hips or you could fix some shoes like that too maybe that's a whole other skill all right so i hope you found that helpful and a little download on badakanasana bound angle pose from ashtanga's primary series we have lots of other tutorials so scroll down check them out and let us know if there's nothing there that you want to see what you do want to see we want to know we'll make a video for you and hit the like button and also to us because there's more videos coming out next week bye