How to do Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana | Extended Hand to Big Toe Pose in Ashtanga Yoga

Transcript

foreign [Music] an Welcome to our tutorial on utita hasta parang gustasana mutita extended hasta hand Para foot angusta come extended hand foot dumbbells but instead of foot them we say big toe extended hand big toe pose this is the first pose of primary series little known fact sometimes people think primary Series starts on the floor nope it starts with this utitasana with the foot thumb but before we go any further let us know what you think of these videos comment give us a like and maybe too why maybe oh I don't know it's a free world supposedly I can't see why you wouldn't want to I've already taught you so much sunscript um Okay so let's go over the Vinyasa also interesting we count higher in the Vinyasa now than we have for a lot of the fundamental poses but not as high as soon as Kirby come inhale we lift the right leg up catch the big toe doe exhale fold chin to Shin drishti is the foot the tip of the foot paradre and this is the first state of the Asana you take five breaths here clean the inhale head up to 20 exhale length to the side and there's another drishti parshwadrishti first time we've done that in the sequence and here's another state of the Asana of five breaths here and then inhale bring the leg in punches shots exhale chin to Chin stop the inhale head up catch your waist Point your foot this is the third state of the Asana drishti is back on the big toe five breaths here last exhale leg down and then same thing on the left side ashtao inhale left leg up another exhale fold first state of the Asana one two three four five dashe inhale head up yay exhale leg to the side second state of the Asana and then inhale inhale head up catch your waist Point your foot third state of the Austin on the left side drishti's on the foot again exhale samastipi ta-da okay so that's it a little tricky because it's a balancing pose and then there's a lot of endurance involved because it's a long balance a long hold and you're shifting your weight bringing the leg out to the side bringing it Forward again so one of the things to remember is that even though we are given adrushti towards our toes and then when we're turning the leg to the side we turn the head the other way if that's really difficult just keep the Gaze at first fixed somewhere on the floor because it provides a lot more stability and then over time you can kind of maybe move it towards your toes I still have really hard time looking at my toes I often kind of look past my toes down onto the ground and then same thing when turning the head the turn of the head will challenge your balance no matter what so make sure that you first move the leg and then if that feels okay turn the head don't rush it or try to combine the two and I'd say always make balance your priority start with your balance before you you work on the depth of the pose so if that means that your standing leg is bent or the extended leg isn't fully extending that's fine you maybe you you're here here for a little while just kind of working on being stable over time as you get feel safer with the balance and your flexibility improves you'll be able to extend the leg fully but this is absolutely fine it's more about you know finding the effort the work of it and you need to be balancing to find that worse comes to worse if it's impossible for you to balance you can put your hand on a wall uh if there's one around what uh what I wouldn't recommend is using a strap on your foot with your leg extended that's not going to develop your flexibility in the hamstring and I know a lot of people I've seen a lot of people do this holding the shin instead of the toe if that's absolutely necessary of course it's fine but don't go straight for the shin you know just don't don't take the easy way out reach for the big toe even if it means you keep your your leg then there's so much more work here and it's gonna create more change and then same thing if the catching your foot and extending the leg makes balancing difficult that's okay that's part of it but don't hold your upper body straight thinking that that's better than folding forward we'd much rather see you bend that extended leg and find of a little bit of a fold then try and stay here for those five breaths because here there's a bit of Challenge and the way you work in your body changes so we prefer to see that over just holding the back fully straight and actually the state of the Asana that we talked about so the first state of the Asana there um on dway would be chin on the shin that that's where you're going for eventually that's the the sort of end position and this is the first pose in in um in self-practice setting a Mysore practice setting that you might get assisted in because uh if if we don't see your chin touching your shin will come over to help either you know to bring it closer or sometimes to bring it right on but that is the pose chin on the shin not not straight arm straight up okay um so when you're balancing uh fixing your gaze good lighting um being able to focus so make sure the thing that you're looking at is clear it's not far away it's not moving keep your gaze fixed on that and then fold forward since the drishti is the foot the tip of the foot you might want to look at something that's in line with your foot kind of forward and then you're hinging forward and trying to bring the chest and the thigh closer together good and then slowly come up so one of the things I want you to notice when Elena bends the right arm she's not lifting the arm up in the air away from the floor it's gonna hike the shoulder up and create too much tension at the top of the shoulder so remember to externally rotate as you bend the elbow and get your bicep to work to help pull back also point the foot so you're resisting the big toe into the finger as you pull back with the fingers as well don't let your ankle just dorsiflex like that so we want to push into and you get this nice kind of feedback loop going on here okay when we bring the leg out to the side avoid working from your glute try not to lift the hip up into the air to bring the leg out instead I want you to externally rotate the thigh so the sit bone goes down towards the floor okay and then that's going to keep the front of the hips levels instead of that right hip hiking up and the chest coming forward okay so we're going to externally rotate and drop it and even here we're going to use that right bicep a little bit and still push the the toe out to the side watch this um the other arm too you know that we're holding our waist with because as we put all that energy into holding the foot the other elbow tends to collapse out to the side and get that sort of supermodel thing going on so remember just to slightly uh pull back on the shoulder and try to get the elbow to point more back instead of out to the side which collapses the chest down coming forward it's the same as before we kind of stay in that external rotation as it comes forward hips stay level and we go forward one more time dip down and then inhale come up and you try to hold the height with the hand at first take over the work in the core in the leg and the Hand can come on to the hip try to keep your tailbone slightly tucked under instead of sticking your butt back don't reach your thigh out pull your leg back into the hip so that you feel that you're connecting with all the hip flexors holding the leg up not just using the the thigh muscle I can't hold it that long it's a long time um and then like let me tell you one other good thing to know in terms of your own self practice in the Vinyasa count so there's this rule if you start studying the Vinyasa count that says when we count the first breath of the state of the Asana then that counts as one of the uh as the breath so that's kind of confusing wait so when yelling at comes into the pose uh here at the end of it so she goes uh punche inhale right leg in shut exhale chin to Shin sup dot inhale catch the waist point the foot see that that inhale is the first inhale of five breaths exhale one inhale exhale two three four and then the last exhale we come to summerstiti it's good news because it's such a hard post that means you're only holding it for four whole breaths in one the first inhale you're coming into the position and on the last exhale you're dropping the leg down we also do this on um count the first inhalation anyway just for you Vinyasa nerds you I know you're out there or you're left confused yeah one of the two yeah all right anything else now that would be I just noticed too as I was doing this you might have seen it that my feet turn out a little bit that's okay eventually maybe one day I'll have them perfectly straight but for the balance purposes you know the standing leg tends to go out for me so that's okay just be mindful of it but don't let it of course turn all the way and often when we turn that foot in it actually limits our Mobility we feel more restrictions in our hips so that's why we like to turn it out so go back work with that resistance and just be there comfortably okay never an easy pose good luck hope this helped remember to like let us know what you want to see in the comments we read the comments and uh we'll we'll try to make whatever you want okay bye