Hip-opening has been the primary theme of the DK class in recent weeks. We took a kind of scenic tour into Padmasana by spending significant time in each of the postures immediately preceding Lotus pose in the text (Gomukhasana, Virasana, Bhekasana, etc.). While the work we have been doing is basic in nature (i.e. foundational and preliminarily necessary), it has not been easy or quick. What it has been, as far as I can tell from what I see and hear, is worthwhile and motivating.
Hip-opening postures have a way of being particularly provocative. So many yoga poses are focused specifically on either creating or utilizing hip flexibility. It is understandable that one would feel frustrated or intimidated if the range of motion in their hips was especially limited; it might seem as though a whole world of experience is inaccessible, off the map. Padmasana in particular is, for many yogis, the epitome of yogasana; the Lotus form is often viewed as the embodied definition of yoga. And it is common to have strong feelings of desire toward attaining it as well as strong feelings of insecurity or self-criticism when it is not achievable. Of course, no single yoga pose defines a practice or a practitioner. But a student, who is otherwise fully capable of reminding themselves of that when their steadiness waivers in a one-legged balance or when their back bend is a little more hexagonal than it is circular, is suddenly barreling toward an existential crisis when their legs resist the quintessential pretzel-y-ness of Lotus pose.
It is also a commonly held belief that all kinds of emotions and stresses (positive and negative, conscious and repressed) are bottled up and preserved in energetic states within our hips and pelvis. It’s like a rush hour traffic jam on the I-405 down there. Because of that, working with hip-opening postures often leads to big feelings, and not always ones that we welcome: frustration, fear, doubt, hesitation, impatience. Sometimes they result in an emotional release. Something which was jammed up or impinged suddenly breaks wide open and the force of the flow is unstoppable. You are suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to laugh out loud or cry or shout.
Those with sufficient hip mobility aren’t necessarily in the clear, however. There is often times an inverse relationship between mobility and stability wherein too much openness coincides with lack of strength. That tends to place the burden of stability on some other part of the body, and, in this case, that is typically the spine which stays overly tense and is easily fatigued. A person with ample range of motion in the hips likely faces a task as challenging as that of the too-tight person: toning the legs and hips in order to create appropriate boundaries against which the upper-body finds freedom. So the next time you’re enviously eying the person on the mat next to you whose Gumby-like legs appear to seamlessly fold and unfold, remember that it’s not that they have something you don’t have or are in some way better—that’s not a whole or accurate picture—rather their challenges are different than yours, and your strengths lay in different areas.
Yoga pose insecurities, emotive reactions which occur while on the mat, and the body’s way of compensating for tightness versus openness are each entire conversations in and of themselves, and I’ll resist elaborating on them any further here. For now, what I want to share is the set of poses which will be our focus in the upcoming weeks. They are still primarily hip-openers. However, whereas our recent work has seen a lot of attention on knee flexion, adduction and internal rotation of the legs, and spinal extension, now there will be more forward folding while one leg is straight and the other is maneuvered through a range of hip movements. We are being introduced to the first group of seated forward bends and twists. Of course, along the way, I’ll point out forms and functions, we will look at relationships and repetition of shape, and we’ll work through various stages of experience.
I am going to present the poses here in the order in which they appear in the Course 1 syllabus in the back of the book. That is certainly not the only way they can be sequenced and practiced. It is possible that any or all of them would need specific preparations and warm-ups beforehand. And, for any number of reasons, one or more of them may be inaccessible to you. I’m also including some of the poses from recent weeks as a reminder that this work is absolutely related, and should be a fluid continuation of where we have recently been. Moving forward toward new poses should be in addition to, not in replacement of, what has already taken place.
I recommend experimenting with the poses in between class times: try rearranging their order; try practicing all the lefts sides before the rights sides, and vice versa; try them raw without any warm up for your spine or legs; compare that to how it feels to add a few rounds of Sun Salutations, standing poses, or a series of reclining leg stretches and hip openers (like Supta Padangusthasana variations, Succirandhrasana, or Garuda’s twist) before the seated work; try them with lots of props and with no props. And feel free to add or remove anything that makes it an enjoyable experience for you. I might suggest closing with a Bridge pose or two, maybe Shoulderstand variations, and then a prop-supported Savasana. It’s your practice; make it work for you.
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