PARIVRTTA TRIKONASANA (par-ee-vrit-tah trik-cone-AHS-anna)
parivrtta = to turn around, revolve (from pari, “around,” + vrt, “to turn round”)
trikona = three angle or triangle (from tri, “three,” + kona, “angle”)
Revolved Triangle Pose
Revolved Triangle isn’t a traditional pose, which to me is a pose that existed before the turn of the twentieth century. I’ve managed to trace this pose back to a book written by T. Krishnamacharya, who’s generally regarded as the “father” of modern yoga, the guru of four of the twentieth century’s most revered teachers, the first teacher of modern Ashtanga Yoga, K. Pattabhi Jois his son, T.K.V. Desikachar, his first female student, Indra Devi (nee Eugenie Peterson), his brother-in-law, B.K.S. Iyengar. Titled Yoga Rahasya (Secret of Yoga), it was written around 1937 but not published until 1998. We can assume then that the pose was conceived slightly earlier, though probably not prior to about 1920. There’s a very interesting story regarding the YR, if you want to read it, scroll to the end of the asana breakdown.
Just an aside on the spelling of parivrtta. For English speakers unstudied in Sanskrit, it looks like there should be a vowel–maybe an “i”–between the “v” and the following “t,” something like this: parivritta. You may in fact see this spelling in popular books and magazines. But in fact the “r” of vrtta is a vowel (there should be a dot under the “r” to indicate that, but this word processor doesn’t have that capability), called for obvious reasons, an r-vowel. Sanskrit has two r-vowels, long and short, and a very rarely used l-vowel. Now on to the breakdown.
There are several ways to enter the pose. The way I was taught more than 40 years ago was to begin with parshvottanasna, Intense Side Pose, or more precisely from half that pose with the hands and arms free.
1. Step or hop your feet about a yard apart, slightly less than that makes the pose slightly easier, farther apart makes it slightly more challenging. If you’re tighter in the hips and legs, it’s advisable to position some kind of a lift under your back heel, a thickly folded blanket, say, or an inch thick foam block, or ideally a sand bag. Put your left foot back, heel elevated on the support if you’re using one, angled fairly sharply in, right foot forward, turned so your toes point directly at the front edge of your mat. If you feel somewhat unstable, widen your stance side-to-side. Bring your hands to your hips. Have a block on the inside of your right foot, standing at its tallest height.
2. Exhale and turn your torso to the right, squaring the front of your pelvis with the front of your mat. If you’re not using a support under your left heel, you may feel that in squaring the pelvis the left heel lightens on or lifts slightly off the floor. Since the back heel is the anchor in all wide-leg, two-sided standing poses, there are two things you might try to anchor it more firmly. First, draw your pubis to your navel to elevate the front of your pelvis, then press firmly back on the very top of the left thigh. Second, if this helps but doesn’t solve the issue, consider that support recommended above. Once in the ready position, inhale, lean back on your shoulder blades, lift actively through the top of the sternum, and press firmly down on the left heel. Keeping 50 percent of your awareness in that heel, and maintaining the length of the front torso, descend the torso half way to the floor. Be sure you angle forward from the groins, not the lower belly.
3. Ideally, most of your weight is on the left heel, and hasn’t shifted onto the ball of your right foot. If it has shifted, lift your torso slightly, re-affirm the left heel, and return to half way. Imagine that your legs are being pulled straight back to whatever’s behind you, and keep drawing the front of your torso out of the depths of your pelvis in the opposite direction, toward whatever’s in front of you. You may find that your outer right hip has a deep-seated dislike of letting go, and to make it obvious it curls up toward your right shoulder, shortening the right side of your torso, maybe even swinging slightly out to the right, shortening the right side of your torso, and more to the point, your spine. Remember that for a successful twist, the is ideally evenly lengthened front to back and side to side. The solution is to slightly bend your right knee, burrow your right thumb deep into the hip crease, and with your hand spread across the outer hip, push slightly in and slightly back. As you do this, be sure to keep the base of the right big toe firmly pressing the floor. Then in your imagination, draw energetically up along the inner right leg from the ankle to deep inside the right groin.
4. Now with an exhale, begin to rotate your torso to the right, bring the left hand to the block (right hand on the right hip), pressing it firmly with the palm. It’s essential when doing this, that you allow your left hip to release slightly to the floor, so that your pelvis is tilted to the left. The pelvis should always rotate with the rest of the torso in a twist. Come to what you judge to be about three-quarters into the twist and stop. Imagine what happens when you twist a dish towel. It will thicken and so shorten. This same thing often happens to your belly, obstructing the twist. In response, inhale, de-rotate slightly, actively press back on the top of the right thigh, lengthen your belly, and then exhale and rotate again. Do this every few seconds for the first 15 seconds or so in the pose. Then hold as stably as possible for 15 to 45 seconds more.
5. If you feel relatively comfortable, you can lower the block, but only to a height on which you can press your left palm firmly. You always want to be sure you’re pressing your palm to some surface, whether a block or the floor, and not your fingertips. With pressure of the palm on some surface, re-create that same feeling with your left shoulder blade against your back, then lean back slightly.
6. If you’re feeling unstable, it’s probably best to keep your right hand on the hip. Alternatively, you might perform the pose with one side against a wall, right side with the right leg forward, left side left leg. As you twist, lean your hip against the wall to stabilize yourself. However, if you feel safely anchored, you can raise your right arm straight up. Usually students bring their arms perpendicular to the floor, but this should done only when the torso is parallel to the floor. The arms are always arranged perpendicular to the shoulders, not the floor (this is also true for Trikonasana). Inhale to reach the arm up. Then imagine you’re facing a wall (you can actually do this facing a wall) and press the right hand imaginatively into imaginary resistance. Just as you did with the press of the left hand and its shoulder blade, press the right shoulder blade firmly to your back. Then with both shoulder blades pressing your torso, lean back for an upper torso back bend. Be sure not to lean from the lower back, imagine the tail bone lengthening away from the pelvis to keep the lumbar long.
7. This pose is often pictured with the head turned to look up at the top hand. First of all, if you have ANY issues with your cervical spine, look straight forward, DO NOT turn your head. If your cervical is healthy and want to turn your head to the right, you first must be able to elongate the cervical spine evenly, side to side, front to back. DO NOT turn your head if you’re unable to do this; rather, look straight forward and work on proper neck alignment. If and when you rotate your head, your chin should ideally be close to the top shoulder. After all this, if you’re fairly comfortable and anchored, you can lower the block’s height, keeping it high enough so the palm can press it. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even move the block to the outside of the right foot. After 30 seconds to a minute, to leave the pose, first de-rotate the torso to the starting position and lift up with an inhale. If your back heel is supported, turn both feet forward, and step or hop them together, DO NOT shift forward onto the front foot. If you’re back heel is unsupported, simply reverse the feet. Repeat with the left leg forward for the same length of time.
BEGINNER’S TIP
Sometimes it’s not possible to easily use a block to support the bottom hand. If this is the case for you, position a chair outside your right hip with the front edge of the seat facing toward you (be sure that at least the two front chair feet are on your sticky mat, to prevent the chair from sliding). Exhale and twist toward the chair, but keep your torso fairly upright and bring just your left hand to the seat (you could also brace your right hand against the top of the chair back). Wait for a few breaths, and if comfortable, lay your left forearm across the seat. If your chair seat has the right proportion, and has an open space between the seat and bottom of the chair back, grasp the back edge of the seat and pull the chair to you, bracing the front edge of the seat against your outer leg.
Now if you have trouble with your neck in the pose, and if you have a yoga chair, position it in front of you, with the back of the chair closest. Pad the top edge of the chair back with one or more blankets, and when you move into the pose, lay the bottom side of your head on the support.
Once upon a time, maybe 1,300 years ago, the Alvars were a group of Vishnu devotees living in southern India. The name alvar means “the one who dives deep into the ocean of the countless attributes of god.” One of these devotees, Nammalvar (“my Alvar”), was born into a princely Indian family and given the name Maran. He was, to say the least, a very strange baby, he wouldn’t eat or make a sound or respond to his parents’ words. Distressed, his parents left him at the feet of the local Vishnu idol, hoping the god would intervene. The child, abandoned, got up, settled into the hollow of a nearby tamarind tree, and entered a state of deep meditation. Because of this behavior, it was thought that baby Maran was born enlightened.
Maran probably would have spent the rest of his life meditating in that tree by himself, but he was discovered by a wandering pilgrim who got the boy to speak for the first time in his life. The poetry that was bottled up inside him all those years came pouring out, more than a thousand hymns to Vishnu, the last word of one hymn serving as the first word of the next, which thus made one continuous poem. Here’s an example:
The Paradigm
We here and that man, this man,
and that other in-between,
and that woman, this woman,
and that other, whoever,
those people, and these,
and these others in-between,
this thing, that thing,
and this other in-between, whichever,
all things dying, these things,
those things, those others in-between,
good things, bad things,
things that were, that will be,
being all of them,
he stands there.
His considerable talent for poetry now unleashed, Maran, now Nammalvar, apparently produced over the years a considerable body of beautiful work, something like a thousand hymns. It was so beautiful though that after his death some people feared it would replace traditional teaching, so they tossed it all it a river where, except for just 10 hymns, it was lost to the world.
Or so it seemed. One day, one Natha Muni (Lord of Silence) heard a band of wandering singers recite the 10 surviving hymns of Nammalvar, and as we would say today, went completely bonkers. He asked one of the singers who the poet was, and was told it was Nammalvar. Then Natha Muni asked where he might find the rest of the poetry, and was advised to go to Nammalvar’s home town where he might possibly find someone who could give him more information. So off he went and once there found an old holy man who instructed Natha Muni to sit under Nammalvar’s tamarind tree and recite a prayer in praise of the poet 12,000 times. It’s hard to say how long this took Natha Muni to finish, probably anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months.
But in the end it worked, and Natha Muni had a vision of Nammalvar, who asked him, “Why are you chanting this prayer again and again?” Nathamuni answered, “I want to know all the hymns you wrote.” As a reward for his devotion Nammalvar taught him not only his own 1000 hymns, but the 3000 hymns written by the other Alvars that had also been lost. He also told Natha Muni that “A great acharya [i.e. teacher] will appear in your line.” After he returned to his own home, Natha Muni became a great teacher in his own right, and authored a book on Hatha Yoga, the Secret of Yoga (Yoga Rahasya), that like Nammalvar’s poetry was eventually lost.
Now jump ahead now nearly a thousand years, to 1888, and the promised birth of that “great teacher” in Natha Muni’s lineage. His name was T. Krishnamacharya, and as an adult he not only changed the course of Hatha Yoga forever. In 1904, at the age of 16, Krishnmacharya made a pilgrimage to the very tamarind tree where Nammalvar recited his poetry and Natha Muni had his vision. There, he too had a vision, this time of his long dead ancestor Natha Muni, who recited to him the lost instruction from the Yoga Rahasya. This book, though not well known today, provided the “seed” for Krishnamacharya’s evolution as a yoga teacher, and though only published recently in English is truly one of the foundation texts of modern Hatha Yoga, along with Iyengar’s Light on Yoga. Want to see a copy of this book? You can order it from the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram at
http://www.kym.org/bookstore/productlisting.php?cid=2
The teenager’s experience was remarkably similar in certain key features to Natha Muni’s: tired and hungry when he reached the temple grounds where the tree grew, TK fell into a swoon and had a “vision” of Natha Muni, who taught him the long lost text of the Yoga Rahasya, the “Secret of Yoga.”
I suspect for many people, the story seems fantastical, and the question immediately comes to mind: did TK really receive this book from Natha Muni? There are plenty of supporters who vigorously insist that he did. A Doctor Varadachari, writing in the YR’s Preface to the first English edition published in 1998, affirms “there is no reason to entertain uncertainty about its authorship,” that it was “God’s will that a descendent of Nathamuni alone should ... discover the work.” But eight years later David Hurwitz, in Yoga Beneath the Surface, a book of interviews he did with one of TK’s longtime students, Srivatsa Ramaswami, presents a different view (presumably with the approval of Mr Ramaswami): “The Yoga Rahasya of Nathamuni is a work by Krishnamacharya inspired by his devotion to the ninth-century yogi Nathamuni.” It seems fairly safe to say that, whatever the back story, ultimately TK authored the YR.