How to do Marichyasana C | Sage Pose in Ashtanga Yoga

Transcript

foreign [Music] Welcome to our tutorial on Mari chastana C and this is Connie oh yeah he's just doesn't really care yeah Connie doesn't practice Ashtanga Yoga but he is in yoga all the time the state of yoga or the yoga studio both both I don't know maybe he should be teaching these tutorials nope he definitely shouldn't but if you like Connie or you like us make sure to give us a heart on this video uh and maybe comment and let us know what else we can do or what did you think about the video you are watching okay Mary Johnson I see was a sage um so it's the it's a sage pose called The Sage twist sounds like a dance um and this is the C version so there's an A and A B and there's a d actually there's e f g whatever but much much later so in primary series we do a b c and d and it's not the first twist uh that we do in our practice but it's the first Twist of the primary series we we do the twists in the fundamental lessons twisting is uh well it can be uh quite tricky yeah yeah I think so um it's not it's not a range of motion that we we sort of develop right uh naturally um so usually when people are coming to yoga twisting is a little bit difficult right it goes beyond the range that we use in our everyday life because if something was that far back you just turn your body turn your body not try to maintain David get it for me or that yes um yeah and and then also this is kind of related where where we come up against difficult movements that we we come into a lot of compensatory compensatory movements that uh like ways that we can make it easier right that that's where often we we run into problems in terms of alignment and over time um you know bad patterns that develop pain and then just like any other um movement that we do in our practice our body will influence also um how we move so body proportions play a kind of like a very obvious role the most obvious being the length of your limbs so if you have limbs that are not short as mine twisting is a little bit easier for you in fact we have so many um students that we've met over time where they can bind in merichasana C with their torso and their heads still facing forward because the length of their arms allows them to kind of wrap around the knee and bring the arm back without having to initiate the movement from their spine which sounds great especially for those of us that have struggled and have hard time twisting but in the long term it doesn't actually work out well until they learn the proper patterns and movements because remember what we learned now as we kind of move through our practice we just keep adding other layers so we want to learn this as soon as it's kind of fundamental possible yeah okay so uh let's let's look at what Merit test and the sea is first we won't bother with the Vinyasa it's the same as most of them in the first half of the primary series which is sapta or tutorial inhale jump through or panchita inhale jump through get into position to Twitter well no oh wait actually you're right no you're right sorry this is where um the pattern or the count pattern changes a little bit from all of the other seated stuff that we've done so usually if we were doing um just even the pose before uh Mary chass and a c so if you were doing marichasana B we would SEPTA inhale jumps through and set up so get into the setup of the pose and then Ash style exhale into the pose but in Mary chasana the right side now changes where that sapta is all of it so sapta inhale jump through catch that's one yeah it's supposed to be by the end of that breath you're in the state of the Asana so it speeds up it gets actually harder yeah we talk about that and why that might be in some of our other tutorials but uh if you want to see the count in the in that context check if you haven't already we have a half primary and a full primary on this channel you should check it out um you can see a b c and d and and people doing the Vinyasa and Yelena um but can we do just the C in so we will do it so from here Yellen is going to go SEPTA inhale jump through and then ideally go all the way into the state of the Asana exhale and then that would be one two three four five inhale hands down to pick up and now if I exhale whatever go back okay Dashi inhale inhale jump through okay so uh let's let's just look basically at the action of twisting first so whatever what are our rules here what are our patterns um well think of everything that's come before in the primary series we've um we've got a lot of you know we're changing the legs one leg is extended the sides you know we're still working with sides so this was this would be something very similar to Like A or B or C you know like the the hips are even the leg is out to the side art about a Padma pashima tanasana with the leg and half Lotus and bound or even titiang mukiga so you know we've got that one leg changing the one leg extended and hips uh stay in the same line so let's try to carry that pattern forward now into my Chestnut C so remember I was talking about uh compensatory movements that we we kind of naturally do to make things easier that sounds good right um well I would say the first one that we're going to run up against here is pulling the hip back and so taking the hips out of alignment and um what the reason that we probably don't want to do that is that when Elena pulls her hip back like that then she changes the angle of the pelvis by pulling the the hip behind her but also it's lifting up and so she's actually shortening maybe can you just turn that way for a second so I can show him the camera really well so pull this foot back again she's actually shortening here can you see it and so if she was to twist like that it's actually kind of drawing the rib and the hip together and down so it's not it's not terrible but she's not going to um get stretching there and for some people it will feel like compression pain what I think we're missing there is potentially the stretch through the hip that it seems to be this area that gets targeted in the first half of um of primary right so much that it we're gonna need in a second for um for the the deeper movements of like leg behind the head and butter padmasana right so we don't want to shorten around the top of the sacrum between the sacrum and the rib cage we want to try to keep that long and we do that by keeping the hip in line not pulling it back and also keeping the hip down right this is one of the important cues that we have contacts that the primary Series where we have these four merichasana's a b c and d c is the only merichasana where we want the both of our hips to be down on the floor or our sits bones to be more specifically you want to feel them grounding down we don't lift one as we go into the pose yeah so uh let's look at how we can keep it there the easiest thing is not to draw your right foot back as far right if you pull it back too far you're not going to have an option except to open the knee out to the side and bring the hip back but it doesn't have to come back like that make the hips your priority keeping them down even if the hip lifts a little bit off the floor that doesn't matter but try not to let it draw back and just pull the foot back to where you can keeping the hips in line one okay and then the foot should not be against the thigh so you want space between the the foot and the thigh so the heel is more or less in line with the outer edge of your sit bone don't bring the foot too wide because that is going to also disrupt your hip and it puts your shin out of alignment with your thigh and I'll don't bring the foot Too Close don't bring the foot too wide it should be just right just to the outside of the sit bone and that's also going to help you keep your hips in line okay so once we've established that the other leg is extended the toes are pointing up now Elena is going to try to isolate the twist so that it's not if it's not coming from the hip and putting um pressure torque kind of pressure in the sacrum then it's going to have to come from the rib cage so she's going to try to keep the hips static contained stable however you want to say it and then Twist from her upper body can you see that so that in a way by pinning this hip down towards the floor then she's creating the stretch here around the waist if that hip came back she wouldn't be creating that stretch it'll be well at least a different kind of a stretch so pinning the hip down and then isolating The Twist this is where you're going to find feel like a lot of resistance your body is going to uh for most of us it's going to make it tough would you say absolutely yeah I do not enjoy this pose yeah and then this is this is always my pose of regret right I always regret what I had for dinner the night before because I can always feel it in the way you know which is exactly what's supposed to happen as well you're supposed to regret No Maybe sit sit with the feeling sit with the feeling name the feeling uh but you are gonna feel a lot of pressure in your abdominal area and that's that is kind of the intent behind the pose because it creates this pressure so it's like internally massaging your organs ringing them out ringing them out um and it's good for the digestive yeah purposes your fire so if we're um the first thing now we're gonna do is once we've got the hips is Twist we're eventually trying to get that that opposite arm around the leg right so you're probably going to want to lean back a little ways to get clearance for the chest to come around the leg right if you're too close in when you twist it's hard hard to there's no space so you're gonna have to lean back so again you don't want to change the hips this is where I want you to try to go into a posterior tilt do you know anterior and posterior tilt so you're rolling towards the back edge of your sit bone and creating like a little bit of roundness in the lower back and that's going to help create some space there for your torso to turn okay and once you get the Torso the chest to twist enough to the side you're going to bring your arm to the outside of the leg now if this can be super tough this might be where you are working so in this case you're going to keep now resisting pressure back through the arm see how yelling his thumb is up like that so she's pushing back and trying to get opening across the the front of the chest where it meets the shoulder here and then she can really work that that strength to create more twists another common compensation here is to let the leg kind of collapse towards the center line because it allows them it feels like it's so much more freeing and it's okay to do a little bit of that if it's going to help you find a Twist but then again as David was saying we push our extended arm into the knee and we want to push that knee back into our arm and that's going to encourage the twist to come from our spine versus US thinking that we're twisting because we've collapsed and let go of the work in that bent leg and get your whole body to work together as well and then the other compensation here is if you're having trouble getting your arm to the outside of the leg I guarantee this is what you're going to do you're gonna inwardly rotate like that you're going to try to work from your arm more you know without getting the where the Torso doesn't go the arm will try to compensate so can you see how yellow and his shoulders collapsing forward uh this is going to be problematic later on so it does create like a lot of stretch like stretch we're not looking for in the front of the shoulder because the your your let's say your um sort of muscles that want to hold the arm on the shoulder are going to work very hard to to kind of keep it safe but you're you're kind of going into a pattern that's not super and then you're going to put pressure on it and often that's experiences very localized is discomfort pain like almost needle-like or you might feel like heat yeah coming up or even numbing too can sometimes numbing in the arm can be a result of that so just watch out for that so the the rule then would be thumb up okay keep the arm externally rotated as you get into position you don't want to internally rotate yet and you're going to work that straight those strengths against each other like we said to get as much of a Twist as you can and then still holding your posterior tilt you shift forward as much as you can so now the twisting is done we don't need the space we're going to come back forward and get the shoulder as close as we can here to the knee and you can see yellow and his elbow is way past her leg it she can because it's yellow enough she's good at that but a lot of you are going to be here and your elbow is going to be just in line with your leg we need for this forearm to come around the leg we're going to need the elbow to come past okay so you're gonna have to really reach out and then inwardly rotate spin in so thumb down and she comes around okay and as she comes around she's going to try to keep this downward pressure here the arm is pushing down or the shoulder is pushing down to stay on the knee okay and then should we turn around to show the other side of it or you can switch legs whatever you want yep so again Yellen is pushing with the arms she twists from the the rib cage the hips are going to stay more or less level she comes in as close as she can so look where the back of the shoulder is relative to the knee that's good and the elbows way past now she's going to reach and spin in and then the hand comes around behind the back here she's going to have to bear down through here if you're working here but you can't bind yet this backhand can rest on the floor and keep pushing you forward eventually if you can shift your weight forward enough this hand will be free your back hand where you can bring it around and catch the fingers here might just be like this at first eventually you'll catch your wrist and then it's a the drishti is Harsh badrishti which is side dish do you look over your shoulder okay great foreign that we will often assist people into because it's so hard you get to a limit um and you just you can't get any deeper so it's very normal for us to go around and help people uh bind you know binders to catch yeah and one of the things of course we mention it in other videos but when we help people when we assist people there's a sense of relaxing that happens you let go a little bit of working your muscle and often with your struggle pose there's so much um so much work and tension so that is what allows for the space for us to help someone bind and catch another tip that we always give is to slow down in this pose if this is a pose that you're working on or a pose that you have difficult times just take few extra breaths as you prep don't rush it and kind of end up with um shitty alignment I was I was looking for a little alternative to shitty but it's just what it is because that can also cause a lot of discomfort in the long run so just take your time use your breath notice how your breath can help you notice how as you exhale you can often find a little bit more depth in the Twist and how inhale kind of can Empower that the lengthening that happens um and just take your time yeah it's uh it's a really interesting um action that we're doing in this twist that is really I think one of the the essential secret sort of movements of uh especially the primary series which is posterior tilt and so I like a little bit of Lumbar flexion and then trying to get extension through the upper back you know that's that's the twist you want to hold the sits bones down and try to lift the chest up yeah and you start looking through the all the other poses as well and that's also what's happening too and one of the things that might help you feel that is that even when we just pull our leg back if you think that by kind of arching your back which also causes this hip to come off the floor that you're getting more height and it's going to make the twisting easier it's going to start to hurt your lower back but you're also going to notice that probably your hip flexors are even more engaged and tense and sometimes it can start to hurt whereas in dropping into this rounding of the lower back helps us turn hip flexors off even if ever so slightly and then it allows for more ease ease into that twisting motion all right not so simple no but uh definitely rewarding really frees up a whole sort of New Direction in your body that you're going to need as we go forward um into a deep restness hope you enjoyed this video let us know by hunting liking it and subscribing yeah um I don't know he definitely enjoyed it thanks so much for joining us bye