|
|
Member
Posts: 6
| I am looking for some advice with this pose. First, a little background - I have been practicing 4-6 times a week for about 10 months now. Salabhasana is one of my most challenging, yet favorite poses. At first I could only get both legs up a few inches, but have progressed quite a bit. In fact, I can get both legs up completely vertical over my head now, and even sometimes past vertical. The feeling afterwords is amazing. However I am kind of 'cheating' to accomplish this. Rather than slowly lifting my legs to get in this position I have a bad habit of popping my legs up quickly to the vertical position. When I try to move them slowly I can only get to about 35 degrees at most and am stuck there. I have spent the last couple weeks comparing the 'popping up' movement to trying the movement slowly. I have determined that when I pop up quickly I am able to shift my weight to my shoulders right away which allows me to keep my legs over my head. When I attempt the pose slowly I cannot seem to shift the weight from my wrists and forearms to my shoulders and I cannot get past about 35 degrees. Is it just a matter of developing more strength in my back muscles, or is there another technique I can try that will allow me to get my legs over my head while moving slowly? One of my instructors said to try it with my feet apart but that didn't seem to help. I would really appreciate your thoughts. |
|
| |
|
| I don't think I know the answer, as this is a pose that I am recently re-struggling with (you know when you struggle with one, and then finally figure it out, but then months later you are struggling with it again - but in a new way?), but I can share the best piece of advice that I've received about this posture. Maybe it will help you. Ida Ripley told our class once to use the first two (one-legged) parts of this pose as the practice for the two-legged part. In the first two parts, you can experiment with weight placement, weight shift, engaging different muscles in your back, etc., and then apply what you learn to the two-legged part. Are you popping your legs up in the first parts of the posture, too? If so, try working on slowing things down here, first. |
|
| |
|
| Yeah... that is the hard part!!
I can't get all the way up but I HAVE figure out how to get the weight onto my shoulders. I like jtho's advice about working on the weight placement in the first part - see if you can really push against the floor with your hands and ROLL forward. "ROLL" is definitely the word for it. Imagine someone coming up behind you, putting their hands on your shoulderblades, and pushing them forward towards the mirror. (Someone did that for me once and BOOM, my shoulders went right on the floor and my legs went up like a foot higher.)
Also - almost EVERYONE who I've seen go "all the way up" has started by popping up the way you described. There are two ways you can build strength from there. One is to do the first set "slow", just going as high as you can, and save the pop-up for the second set. The other is to roll DOWN from the pop-up really, really slowly. Those should both build up your strength.
FUN!  That is such a cool thing to be able to do. I will be so excited when it happens for me!! |
|
| |
|
| Oooh, love the advice to roll down, and the roll shoulders image. Thanks, dancingj! |
|
| |
|
Member
Posts: 6
| Thanks for the advice and feedback! I definitely was half-assing the first part of the pose (one leg up at a time), but have been focusing a lot more on that part the last few days by focusing on the 'rolling' idea. It seems to help. In fact this morning I was able to get both of my legs completely up over my head and hold them there for the entire first set. It was awesome. I was able to bring my legs down slower than normal too (I usually end up quickly dropping my legs down from exhaustion) which I think will be how I will build a lot of strength. Going for a double today and look forward to seeing what happens in class this afternoon. Thanks again for responding.
Edited by bent 2010-04-20 10:36 AM
|
|
| |
salabhasana
