Shoulder-Pressing Pose

Hello, welcome to Yoga & You, I am Sanjana Prasad. In today's episode we are going to learn how to prepare for Bhujapidasana, a very powerful and beautiful arm balance. Let's get started.

You want to make sure to warm up and prepare your wrists for this practice. We have done a detailed video on how to prepare your wrists for arm balances, we will be sharing the link for that as well, so definitely follow that.

For preparation for Bhujapidasana, we are going to start off with Pada Hastasana, so you are going to keep your feet shoulder width apart, place your palms on your waist, take a deep inhalation, as you exhale, lengthen forward and go all the way down to the mat and you are going to tuck your fingertips underneath your toes. If this is very comfortable for you, you can go all the way till your wrist, if you are not there, no worries, you can just stay with your fingertips on the mat. Exhale, fold forward and attempt to get your chest as close as you can to the thigh and attempt to get the forehead in between your knee. One, two, three, four, five, inhale and slowly lift the chest up, bring your palms to your waist, inhale and come all the way up to standing.

Step your feet together and now we are going to practice Prasarita Pada Hastasana A, we are going to open out your feet, toes pointing forward, heels in one line. All of these postures allow you to prepare your hips so that you can easily find the movement to bring your shoulder underneath the hips for Bhujapidasana. So inhale and lengthen your spine, as you exhale, fold forward again, place your palms on the mat, lengthen the spine, concave the back, as you exhale once again, start getting your belly closer to your thigh, chest closer to the knee, start walking your hands back if you can, start getting the forehead closer and closer to your knees, top of the head to the floor. One, two, depending on where you are in your practice, you can choose to stay a little longer so you find a little bit deeper opening, four, five, inhale and lengthen your spine, exhale palms to the lower back, inhale and come all the way up as you exhale, you are going to step your feet together.

The next posture we are going to practice is Ardha Tittibhasana. So here we are going to start to get the upper body involved, so we are going step by step into the practice. So inhale, lengthen your spine, exhale, fold forward once again into Prasarita Pada Hastasana. Before you tuck the toes, instead of tucking your fingertips underneath your toes, we are going to take your right arm.

You can slightly bend your knees, try and take the right shoulder, I am lifting my heel to make space for this movement, take the shoulder underneath your thigh and wrap your arm around the thigh close to where your pocket would be. Now from there if you're comfortable, place the heel down, take your left arm back and make a bind, you could just hold the fingertips or you can hold the wrist. Now once you are here, start to straighten your knees and square the shoulders, breathe. One, two, three, four, five, gently release the bind, come back into Prasarita Pada Hastasana, from there lift your left heel up to make space for the left shoulder.

As much as you can lean forward, get the left shoulder underneath the thigh, wrap the hand around, right arm goes back, hold on to the wrist or fingertips, start to straighten the knees, stay there and breathe. Now two, three, four, five, very gently release the hands, continue to stay here, you can open out your toes slightly if you like, as you exhale you are going to squat down into Malasana, instead of your hands forward, you can take the palms at the heart center, here again focus on pushing your thighs out with the help of your elbows and start opening out the knees and lifting the chest up, stay there and breathe. One, two, three, four, five.

Now without changing this contact, so your chest is still low, only change you are going to make is lift your hips up in line with your knees into Druta Utkatasana, so from here just lift your hips up in line with your knees, nothing changes with the upper body. One, two, three, four, keep drawing the navel in, five, slowly you are going to squat down to the floor again, now you can take your hands forward and drop your hips to the floor and stretch the legs forward.

Now is a good time for you to bring in your blocks into the practice, so we are going to place one block on either side and we are going to practice Eka Hasta Bhujasana, which is also a great preparation for Bhujapidasana, because it works both on your arm balance and it also works with your hip mobility, which prepares you to take both legs on the shoulders for Bhujapidasana.

So we start with the right side, so you are going to bend your right knee close to your chest, okay, now you can hold the foot with your left hand, start lifting the leg up, just like we did Tittibhasana, remember you have already warmed up for this practice, you are going to take your right shoulder underneath your knee, okay, so my calf is actually resting on my shoulder, so try and take it as high as you can, now from here you can use the blocks for support, place your palms on the blocks, your arm balance comes here, we will keep the left leg down for now and just focus on lifting the hips up, 1, 2, 3, if you are very comfortable try to lift the left leg up, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, slowly come back down to the mat and you are going to release the right leg.

If you had noticed I made a small correction in this posture, instead of letting my hips sink down, I lifted my hip up to engage the hip flexor, you will require that in your Bhujapidasana as well, so that you don't topple back in the posture. I will show it to you on the left side again, so you are going to bend the left knee, lift the leg up, take the left shoulder underneath the knee as much as you can, place the blocks on either side, first three breaths, we will just lift the hips up, notice my hips are not going down this way, I am lifting it up, 3, 2, 1, when I lift my leg up, my hip is not going to sink to the floor, it is going to stay up, I am using my hip flexor to lift the leg up, 3, 2, 1, slowly come back down to the mat and relax.

Now if this was very comfortable for you, you can practice it again without the blocks, so you don't have the elevation, so you will have to really push up with your shoulders, we will try that on the right side one time, bend the knee, take your leg over the shoulder, place your palms on either side, make sure your calf is squeezing into the shoulder otherwise it will slip out, press into your palms, lift the hips up, draw your knees in as much as you can, lift the leg up, breathe, slowly come back down and you can repeat this again on the left side.

Now for Bhujapidasana, both legs are around the shoulders and you will be balancing on the hands at the same time, so we will work our way slowly with the help of the blocks into the posture, first step is to come into Malasana, so bend your knees, push your hips forward, come into Malasana, second, you are going to lift your hips up into Druta Utkatasana, both these postures we have already practiced. Now you are going to take the blocks, this is just for some elevation for you to access the posture easily, place it right behind your heel, now take your hands underneath your thigh, again you practice the Tittibhasana on one side, now you are going to try and get your shoulders low enough, so both the hands can come underneath the thigh, palms are going to rest on the block, now if you notice my thighs are resting on my triceps, I am going to slightly lean back, bring my feet closer to each other, cross my ankles, and lift up, try and lift your hip up and extend the leg forward, so it becomes a more active posture, stay for a few breaths, keep gazing at a point ahead of you, not down. Slowly release the legs, remove your hands, remove the blocks and squat down into Malasana or to the floor.

So you are going to practice this without the blocks, so again you can move yourself up into Malasana, from Malasana lift your hips up into Druta Utkatasana, move your chest down so that your shoulders can come underneath your thighs, so your palms can comfortably rest on the mat behind your heels, now once you start shifting the weight back, don't sink your hip down, keep lifting it up and backwards more, keep drawing the navel in, start bringing the feet closer to each other, and you can wrap your ankles around one another, and now instead of pushing the hip downwards, move it backwards, engaging your lower abdomen, start moving the feet forward, stay there and breathe. One, we are in Bhujapidasana, two, three, four and five, gently release the legs and you can come back into Malasana.

When you are attempting to practice a slightly complex posture, make sure you break down the posture to understand what are the components that you need to work on before you actually attempt the posture, so preparation and conditioning becomes important here. I hope you enjoyed this video and it was helpful for you.