Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana) is a strong intermediate-level standing balancing asana that asks for steady grounding of the standing foot and leg, opening of the standing leg’s hip in external rotation, elongation of the spine, and expansion of the torso and chest. It invites exploration of confidence in balancing through the opportunity to eventually maintain the gaze toward the thumb of the upper hand while transitioning in, refining, and releasing from it.

Explored with patience, steadiness and ease, Half Moon is a sustainable asana with options for more accessible modification and more challenging variation, making it among the most commonly taught standing balancing asanas in Vinyasa Flow and many other styles of classes.

Yet as with many things in life, this potentially beneficial asana is also replete with risks to most students when taught and practiced in ill-informed ways. Let’s look more closely.

Half Moon Pose is most easily and naturally approached from Triangle ...

Excerpted from Teaching Yoga, Chapter 4 sidebar on “MULA BANDHA AND UDDIYANA BANDHA”

Earlier we looked at the cultivation of pada bandha, the energetic awakening of the feet through the stirrup-like effect of contracting the tibialis posterior and peroneus longus muscles on the lower leg. The fascial attachments of these two muscles interweave with those of the hip adductors, which have origins in and around the ischial tuberosities (the sitting bones). The sitting bones are the lateral aspects of the perineum, with the pubic symphysis at the front and the coccyx at the back. The front half of this diamond is the urogenital triangle, a landmark for the urogenital diaphragm, a hammock-like layer that is created by three sets of muscles: transverse perineal (connecting the two sitting bones), bulbospongiosus (surrounding the vagina or bulb of the penis), and ischiocavernosus (connecting the ischium to the clitoris or covering the penile crura) (Aldous 2004, 41). Contracting this se...

With twenty-six bones that form twenty-five joints, twenty muscles, and a variety of tendons and ligaments, the feet are certainly complex. This complexity is related to their role, which is to support the entire body with a dynamic foundation that allows us to stand, walk, run, and have stability and mobility in life. In yoga they are the principal foundation for all the standing poses and active in all inversions and arm balances, most back-bends and forward bends, and many twists and hip openers. Meanwhile they are also subjected to almost constant stress, ironically one of the greatest stresses today coming from a simple tool originally designed to protect them: shoes. Giving close attention to our feet—getting them strong, flexible, balanced, aligned, rooted, and resilient—is a basic starting point for building or guiding practically any yoga practice, including seated meditation.

In order to support the weight of the body, the tarsal and metatarsal bones are constructed into a...

This is excerpted from Chapter 9 of Yoga Therapy, "Kinesiology and the Biomechanics of Movement."

The trouble with the fast lane is that all the movement is horizontal. And I like to go vertical sometimes.

—TOM ROBBINS

YOGA ASANAS ARE TYPICALLY DEPICTED in the yoga anatomy literature in the same static form that we find presentations of human anatomy more generally. We are given idealized perfect forms showing the precise position of the bones (and occasionally ligaments) in various asanas, with muscles added to show how the skeleton is held in that position. These portrayals help us understand the basic form of the asana and which muscles are doing what in support of it, sometimes including identification of the role played by each muscle. Many of the best of these published works on yoga anatomy are written by teachers with a primary background in Iyengar-style yoga, which emphasizes, in the words of B. K. S. Iyengar, the “perfect pose.”

The American yoga teacher Erich Schi...

People across the world from ancient times to the present have turned to the just before dawn and bowed, praying or chanting or otherwise asking for the mysterious sun to return. In India and with yoga, we find a particular  mythology.

The Sun Salutations that initiate many yoga classes are rich in symbolism. Surya is the chief solar deity who drives his chariot across the sky each day as the most visible form of God that one can see. It is also the ancient Sanskrit term for “sun,” which in most ancient mythology is revered, as Richard Rosen (2003) says, “as both the physical and spiritual heart of the world.” Namaskara is from the root namas, “to bow” (as in “namaste”). In the myths of the Vedas, the gods use the sun’s heat for many purposes, especially creation. Our “inner sun,” the spiritual heart center, is seen as the source of light and truth along the life’s path. In Surya Namaskara, we are bowing to the truth of who we are in our essence, releasing the head lower than the he...

If you’ve ever taken a Vinyasa Flow class or tried Ashtanga Vinyasa, you’ve moved through Warrior I (Virabhadrasana I) pose a lot. Or perhaps you sip from another cup of yoga such as Iyengar or basic Hatha in which you often hold Warrior I longer than the five breath maximum prescribed in Ashtanga. It’s a very common asana, and a very common one for getting hurt. As with any of the 840,000 asanas, we meet and greet Warrior I starting from our immediate condition. There are surely some folks out there– the yogic 1% – who can do pretty much anything physically and only wonder how it might possibly cause strain or injury to someone because they’re condition allows such ease in all human movement and positioning. Then there’s the rest of us.

Why is Warrior I potentially fraught with risk of injury?

Let’s first look at the basic set-up of this asana. With the heel of the back foot turned to the midline around 60-degrees or so and pada bandha awake in both feet, the idea is to interna...

This is excerpted from Yoga Therapy, Foundations, Methods, and Practices for Common Ailments.

(Photos showing asana details are in the book only.)

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The vertebral column (spine) generally consists of 33 vertebrae (rarely 32 or 34) arranged in five regions: cervical (C1–C7), thoracic (T1–T12), lumbar (L1–L5), sacral (S1–5), and coccygeal (four that are not ordinarily numbered). Although vertebrae in the sacral and coccygeal regions are fused, fibrocartilaginous intervertebral discs separate, bind, and provide shock absorption between all but two of the other twenty-four vertebrae—the atypical C1 and C2 (Atlas and Axis, respectively), with C1 resting on the facets of C2. Thus, the most superior disc is between C2 and C3, and the most inferior disc is between L5 and S1.  

The varying shapes of the intervertebral discs give curvature to the spine. All have a common structure: the annulus fibrosus, several thin fibrocartilaginous layers that form an outer...

Flowing with Chataranga

Chataranga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose) is an endangered species, one increasingly lost in the rushed transition from Plank Pose (Phalakasana) to Upward Facing Dog Pose (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana). The result is not only loss of insight arising in the asana itself, but also the effects on the shoulders, neck and low back when flowing into Up Dog. Let’s explore this.

When flowing among asanas in a vinyasa-type yoga class, the asanas ideally make an actual appearance as asanas. This means being in the asana for a moment – specifically, in the natural pauses in breathing, when the lungs are full or empty. When the breath moves, we move; when it pauses, we pause, and it is there that we experience the asana’s full expression.

To best experience a sustainable Chataranga practice, start with steady breathing, making that more interesting and important than the asana. (As with the entire practice, try to sustain a steady flow in your breathing, with the inha...

We often hear the instruction to spread the fingers and thumbs as wide as we can in Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose) and other hand support asanas.

Don't!

The idea behind spreading the fingers and thumbs as wide as possible is to establish a more firm and balanced foundation in the hands. A firm (yet resilient) and balanced foundation in the hands is important in reducing potentially injurious pressure in the wrists, and it's also important for stability in arm balances. 

However, with the thumb stretched as far as one can place it from the index fiinger (abducted), we overstretch the commissural ligament that traverses the traingular thenar space between the thumb  index finger. We can also place undue pressure on the palmar cutaneous branch of the median nerve.

In practicing and teaching hand support poses, we want to emphasize spreading the fingers as wide as one comfortably can, the thumbs not so wide. Reduce the space between the thumbs and index fingers by ab...

Excerpted from Yoga Therapy, Chapter 2.

The source of the world is motiveless and has the unique appearance of consciousness and bliss. It has an eternal Nature [prakriti], like the shadow cast by the sun. Although herself inert, she used the consciousness of the supreme Self [purusha] to create all and everything which is transient, like a piece of theatre.

In the beginning, Nature, the mother of all, gave birth to intellect [mahat], composed of desire [rajas] and vast in appearance [sattva]. Out of that came personal identity [ahamkara]. It was born in three divisions [gunas], according to the qualities of purity [sattva], passion [rajas], and darkness [tamas]. From the unity of purity and passion arose the ten organs [indriyas] and also the mind [manas]. The organs are: the ear, the skin, the eye, the tongue, the nose, the voice, the hands, the feet, the sex organs, and the rectum. Those with detailed understanding say that the first five are the organs of intellect, while th...