| In general the way Bikram series has been taught can lead to imbalances in the knee and neck. The pictures to look at for the knee are, standing forehead to knee, and the standing bow pulling pose. The knee is way to far back. Knee over the ankle is the alignment for this. The guy doing balancing stick is doing a great posture, the standing leg is a little bit angled back and the back of the neck is being held. I would tell him to point the top of the head straight foward so he is looking down and back off on the intensity of the standing leg and lean foward so the hip is over the ankle, he can return to the intensity after he has this alignment. The tree postures are excellent, notice that the weight is on the outside of the foot, so I would tell them to back off on being so vertical and get the femur bone under them more to get the balance in the foot better and then work on getting vertical with balance in the foot. Postures showing neck imbalaces are, Full locust, Locust and Cobra. There are others that are showing it to a lesser degree. But especially Cobra and Full locust. The back of the neck is compressed and over arched. The queue to look up in these is in my opinion terrible and leads to this imbalance. You want to get length through the middle of the neck out the top of the head, not over arch and compress. The Occiput region, where the back of the neck and the skull come together is a very significant area. It is where our sense of space is mostly determined. If it closes then the sense of space closes and struggle is the only option left. The picture showing camel has two people in it. The guy is compressing his lower spine and back of the neck and he is going way beyond his limits. The woman has a very nice camel, her hands can be a further down and the shoulders wider so the shoulder blades are not pinching around C7 and T1. I have minor adjustment after this on the postures, but they can have a huge difference on ones practice and experience. If you read this and have some thing to share, please do. When do you get to have this opportunity with pictures? |
Great demonstration pose website....
