PŪRVOTTĀNĀSANA (Intense Stretch of the East)
pūrva = being before or in fore front; eastern, to the east of
uttāna = stretched out, spread out; ud = a prefix implying power, tān = to extend
āsana = seat (for a breakdown of this Sanskrit word, go to the end of this blog)1
Pūrvottānāsana has two things in common with last month’s pose (śiva natarajāsana): neither is traditional (i.e., extant prior to about 1900), and both are first illustrated but not described in T. Krishnamacharya’s Yoga Rahasya (Secret of Yoga, YR). For detailed instruction we need to turn once again to Light on Yoga (LoY), by B.K.S. Iyengar, Mr. Krishnamacharya’s brother-in-law and longtime student.
For Mr. I, the East represents the front of the body, while West (paścima) refers to the back, and so names the counter-pose to Intense East, Intense Stretch of the West (paścimottanāsana). I’ve tried for a long time to find out if there is any traditional precedence for comparing East and West to the front and back body, but without success (if we want to finish assigning compass points to the to the body, then North, uttara, is the head and South, dakshina, the feet). As I mentioned last month, every pose in LoY (except śavāsana) has a “difficulty rating” (my phrase) on a scale from 1 to 60, 1 being the easiest, like Mountain Pose (tādāsana), 60 being the most challenging, to say the least. To be honest, many of these ratings are rather unreasonably low for the average Western student. For example, Lotus (padmāsana) is rated 4, the same as Side Angle Stretch (pārśvakonāsana), which is obviously much too low, or at least overly optimistic. I bring this up because pūrvottānāsana is rated 1, the same as Mountain Pose (tādāsana). This is for most of us way, way too low. East Stretch isn’t especially difficult, but it’s certainly not a 1.
PREPARATION
The pose this month requires you to have a chair, a folding, metal “yoga” is preferable, but any STURDY chair will do. I advise you not to use any family heirlooms.
THE CHAIR. Brace the chair back against your yoga wall. Oftentimes, if your wall has a baseboard, the top edge of the chair’s back won’t press against the wall, which could make the chair a bit wobbly. In this case, lap a blanket over the chair back to close the gap and stabilize the chair. Also, if your chair has plastic feet, the kind that slip on a bare floor, it might be wise to set the chair on a sticky mat (this isn’t necessary with rubber feet), just in case ...
1. STEP 1. Sit on the chair and grip the back edge of the seat, right thumb pointing right, left thumb left. Position you feet directly below your knees. Inhale, press your hands against the seat and lift your pelvis up, knees stay bent. Ideally your head will rest easily against the wall. Don’t go to maximum stretch right away, take it to the point where you feel a comfortable stretch across your chest and shoulders. You may need to step your feet slightly forward to re-align your heels beneath your knees. You want to make a fairly straight, diagonal line from your knees to the top of your chest. Your thighs can be slightly apart and parallel to each other.
2. You may, however, find that your pelvis and chest sag a bit, creating a kind of shallow U shape with your torso. You can remedy this in one of two ways: 1. By actively drawing your pubis to the navel and “lengthening” through your tail bone, and firming the sholder blades against the back; or 2. if that doesn’t work wedge a block between your sacrum and the front edge of the seat, usually at its middle width. Try to slide your sacrum up the block an inch or two, which should draw the tail bone down to give you a feel for remedy 1. Stay for 30 seconds or so and release back to the seat with an exhale. Shake out your shoulders and arms.
This pose, by the way, is again pictured but not described for the first time in YR. It’s named catush pada pītham (chuh-toosh-PA-duh-PEE-tham), the four-foot seat. Pītham here means “seat,” it’s a word occasionally used instead of āsana, which also literally means the same.
3. Repeat step 1, but now go to full stretch. Even though your arms are in extension, which tends to squeeze the shoulder blades together, try to maintain some space between them. To get a feel for this, before lifting off the seat, with an exhale, round your torso, stretching the blades widely to the sides. Then inhale, lift to vertical, maintaining as much of that width as possible through the exercise. Hold again for 30 seconds and release. Shake.
4. Now you’re ready for step 2, the chair supported pose. There’s a trick to this pose that you’ll need to apply in the floor pose if you hope to press your feet firmly on the floor. Repeat the full stretch of step 1, and with an inhale, reach out your right leg. Pause with the foot slightly off the floor and internally rotate your leg so your toes point left, then press your foot to the floor maintaining the inward turn. Repeat with your left leg, except of course turn your leg so the toes point right. Your toes then should be slightly pigeon-toed.
5. Try to create that same diagonal line, now from your feet to the top of your chest. Your torso may not have sagged when your knees were bent, but now, with legs straightened, you may experience some drooping. So experiment with the remedies in item 2. Press the bases of your big toes firmly to the floor and draw an imaginary line of energy up along your inner legs, through the center of the torso to the top of your sternum.
6. Now for the trick. When we get to the floor pose, many students, even old timers, have difficulty pressing their toes to the floor. This isn’t a major issue, but feet fully on the floor does help to strengthen to pose. Here’s what you do. Draw your pubis to your navel, as you would for any backbend, and think of lengthening your tail bone along the backs of your thighs to the heels. This should, on the floor, help you press your toes. We’ll see.
7. Hold for 30 seconds to a minute and release. If you found this closer to 60 than 1, you may stay with the chair for the time being, though if you’re feeling adventurous, proceed to the next level.
8. Sit on the floor, knees bent, back torso pressed against the front edge of the seat. Position a block on the seat to support your head in the pose. The position of the hands is variable. Customarily, the fingers point forward (i.e., away from the chair), but many students find this too hard on the shoulders. It’s perfectly acceptable to turn the hands so the fingers point to the sides or even straight back. Experiment with what works best for you. But however you arrange your hands, make sure you don’t weigh down on the bases of the palms.
9. To avoid this, look at one of your palms. You’ll see at the base there are two low mounds, one at the base of the thumb, the other at the base of the little finger. In between these two is a shallow channel. Stroke the index finger of your other hand back and forth across this channel. When you’re in the pose–any pose for that matter that bears weight on the hands–draw this channel away from the floor. This should shift more weight to the bases of the index fingers and relieve some of the pressure on your wrists.
10. Start by repeating step 1 to the full. Hold for 30 seconds. Try to get a feel for the lengthening of your tail, but be sure NOT to tuck. Keep both thighs rotating inward (medially) and imagine a kangaroo tail reaching out from the bottom of your spine to your heels. Make sure your head is resting comfortably on the block. I like to press the bases of my palms against the chair feet, and have the backs of my upper arms press against the front edge of the seat.
11. Now for the full pose. Repeat exactly what you did previously in step 2, but this time be more aware of the tail. As you extend your legs, your tail will tend to sink, which will likely prevent your toes from touching. Again, you’ll probably survive. If your toes don’t touch, and you want to get a feel for toe-touchdown, position something on the floor, like a sand bag or, better yet, a foam wedge where your toes can reach, for a support (the should slope toward you). Remember though, this is a stop gap measure, keep working on the tail bone and pubis. Hold for 30 seconds to a minute and release.
12. If you need a back release, sit on the very front edge of the chair seat with your legs widened to about 90 degrees, knees over heels. Exhale and release your torso through the legs. If you’re tighter in the groins your knees may collapse inward. To counter this press your palms together and brace your elbows against your inner thighs and gently push back. Stay for a minute or so and inhale up by drawing your tail bone toward the seat.
THE NAME PŪRVOTTĀNĀSANA IN DEVANĀGARĪ: Devanāgarī, the most common script for writing Sanskrit, is famous (or maybe infamous for students just learning the language) for its longsentenceswithoutanyspacesbetween the words. I’m pretty sure you can pick out the six English words in that long unbroken string of words in the previous sentence because they all retained their normal spelling. But Sanskrit is different. When words are joined together in long strings of words, there are often changes made at the junctions, called sandhi. For pūrvottānāsana there are three such junctions. The first is between pūrva and uttāna. Can you see what happens? When a final a joins with an initial u, the offspring is an o. The second junction isn’t obvious, but it’s in uttāna. See the double t’s? The first is actually a d which, when it comes into contact with the second t, also becomes a t. The third junction is between uttāna and āsana. When a final a meets up with an initial a, whether they’re short or long (indicated by a macron, ā), the result is always a long ā.
If you’d like to learn how to work with Sanskrit words through an online Sanskrit-English dictionary, please join me on Friday, September 22, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm, for an introductory course. It’s not as mysterious as it seems, and it’s lots of purihāsa (see, if you knew how to use the dictionary, you’d know what this class will be lots of).