Eight-Angle Pose

Hi, welcome to Yoga & You. My name is Yoga & You Teaching Faculty and in today's episode we are going to watch how to do Ashtavakrasana, Eight-Angle Pose. Ashtavakrasana is an unbalancing posture. It can be a little challenging. So make sure you warm up your wrist, you warm up your shoulders, you warm up your core before you actually attempt this posture. It is also a little bit tricky in terms of the technique. So if you clearly watch and observe how it is done, it's an actually easy posture but it all depends on your strength in your shoulders and arms and also how much you learn the technique right. So let's begin without further ado.

So you're going to sit. I'm going to show you one way of doing the posture first. So you're going to sit with your legs crossed. So let's say your right ankle is on top of your left and I'm going to swing this whole to the right side. So I'm going to push my heel to the right side. So I can keep my right heel down but make sure I point my toe up. So from here I'm going to try to lock my legs here and I'm going to take my right hand and place it so that my right tricep will be under my right thigh. So you're going to go, you're going to have a nice forward bending movement and you're going to take your hands under and place your palms on the floor. And what about my left palm? So my left palm will be in line with my right palm slightly away from my left thigh and I'm going to just stay here and see how I feel in this posture. So this is like the technique for placing the arms. So if you get the arm positioning right lifting your hips up is the most easiest. So let's try this on the other side.

You keep your, you can do either this way where your leg is supported by the leg which is below. So you can take your left arm under, press it nicely and move the right palm out and you will lean forward. So you don't be here, try to bend your elbows like you do Chaturanga Dandasana. So if you keep your arms straight you can't really lift your hips up. Your arms should bend enough and so that you can lean forward and you can lift your hips slightly up. So from there you can straighten your legs and slowly look at the leg which is on the other side. Now from here you're going to sit down and relax.

So I'm going to show this one more time on the right hand side. First get your leg positioning right. So either you keep your right leg down and keep the left leg to lock it or the other way. See which works for you. So for me this is a little easier. So I have a little bit more connection to the leg and I'm going to take my right elbow. So when I go down I draw the belly in. I go all the way in. So my, almost my shoulder is closer to my knee. If I'm so far away you will slip and fall. You won't really get the balance. So try and go deeper, dig deep and keep your hands up and first lift your hips up and slowly stretch your leg out. Keep bending your elbows and look at the leg and slowly bend your knees. Come back down. So that's Ashtavakrasana.

So when you see this asana you have a lot of pressure on your wrist. You'll have a lot of pressure on your shoulders. So you have to strengthen your wrist and shoulders before even attempting this posture. So how do I know I'm ready for Ashtavakrasana? So you should try your Chaturanga Dandasana first. So make sure you can go down without any discomfort in your wrist and you can do upward facing dog without any discomfort and downward facing dog. Do this a couple of times to see how flexible your wrist is. So you have to be able to hang in here for a few seconds. If that's possible then your Ashtavakrasana is a simple practice. If you can't do Chaturanga Dandasana don't push yourself to do Ashtavakrasana. Take your time. Each asana at its own pace and a lot of warm up and techniques involved. So do it as slow as you can and enjoy the practice. Thank you very much for watching.