Balancing in Standing Bow.

Hello BL

Another great question and more of your very astute observations.

What you have here is a classic problem. The ‘dialog’ that is being quoted to you is not describing what you should actually do to get into the pose. In fact I must congratulate you for working it out yourself:

…if I consciously start by kicking up and back my held leg my extended arm remains higher more easily.

Basically when you are asked to drop your body down, or charge your body forward you are coming unstuck. As you have worked out, and as the pose name actually indicates, you are trying to create a BACKBEND.

If you look around the studio, you will probably see that when students follow the directions in the dialog you are more likely to see yogis with their legs at varying heights, their arm almost out directly in front of them and their belly down, making their back straight. In fact it pretty much looks like Balancing Stick with a leg up in the air. 😉

What you have to do first and foremost is work on the biggest deepest backbend you can muster.

1) After holding your leg in your hand bring your knees back together. Your shoulder will drift a little behind you
2) Bring up the other arm straight and strong, palm facing forward
3) Your hips are square and your shoulders are already starting to orient themselves one behind the other
4) Inhale stretch up as high and as strongly as you can, and on the exhale…
5) Kick the foot back into your hand, kick your knee up to the ceiling AND
6) DO NOT move your arm or body one little bit. They will move by themselves as you kick. But let the kick drive the pose. Let the shoulder get pulled back by the force of the kicking leg.
7) The whole time try to touch the ceiling with your front arm. You won’t be able to of course, but the action of this will help you create a better backbend.
8) Your back stays up. As you kick up your belly will come down all by itself. But try to keep the chest up as high as possible. After all how else are you going to be balancing in a standing back bend if your chest and abdomen are parallel to the floor?

PS: Many teachers talk about bringing the hand down to eyebrow or eye level. This is sort of what happens when you are close to standing splits. So although it is correct, it is not at all right for an inflexible student or someone who cannot yet move deeply into this pose. It makes no sense to do this if you can hardly see the toes over the top of your head. Think of ALWAYS trying to get your hand to the ceiling and your chest up high. Just as going into stage 2 of Head to Knee you create the balance, the same thing is happening here, if you have to think about balance, you are probably doing it the wrong way. This pose is absolutely wonderful for demonstrating that. Reach up as high as you can, kick up and back as high as you can and BREATHE, and there you have it!

As for you other questions.
Your hips should ideally stay square. One of your constant adjustments is to keep dropping that hip. When you do you will feel a very satisfying compression in the lower spine and you will see the foot and leg move back into alignment.

The other thing about the arms: The ‘hiding’ of the rear shoulder really occurs as you learn to surrender your arm to the kick. Let the kick drive the pose: the position of the body and the traction in the arms, let your arm be pulled backward so that only the grip is holding your arm there – not arms strength. The way I check in to that is to kick harder again with my leg backward. It is intense (phew) as I feel my quadriceps burning, but it feels great.

You exhibit good body awareness and intuition when it comes to your poses. I think when you go with that intuition and follow the steps above (that you have pretty much worked out yourself) then I am sure that you will find that you no longer need to shift your foot to stop you from falling over.

Thanks for the questions. Can’t wait to hear how it goes
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Thank you again Emily

Have fun in discovery

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello kinks

For me I find the most stable way to find my balance is to direct the weight through the center of the foot. The geometry of this pose will mean that your weight will not fall into the heel. If anything it will favor the ball of the foot – thanks to the position of the body and the forward arm. It is best to move the weight away from the toes and ground yourself more.

And having said that when you are very deep into the pose (that is with a very high kicking leg) you can try bringing the weight into the toes for a moment then settle back again at the same time as opening up the space between the 2 knees – you can feel a lovely lengthening. It is subtle but those who are ready for it can try it and will know what I mean.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Gabrielle,

I have trouble keeping my balance in any poses that require balancing on one leg. I think the problem originates in that I turn out from my hips….

….. after 13+ years of ballet, standing with my hips turned out and my toes slightly pointing to either side instead of forward has become my body’s default posture. I look like a duck 😆 LOL, I spent years forcing my body to act this way, and now I want a do-over.

I have GREAT balance with my hips/feet turned out — and to be honest, there are quite a few poses (e.g. Balancing Stick) where I “fudge” by letting my foot point slightly to the side — but as soon as I try to rotate my hips/feet inward, I fall right out of whatever I’m doing. Of all the poses, I’ve made almost zero progress with Standing Bow: more often than not I fall out of the setup way before I get to the kicking part.

Any thoughts on how to fix this?

Thanks.

Nynn!

Haven’t been on this board in ages, but I still get these little alerts on threads that I’ve written on, so this thread popped up in my inbox and I couldn’t stay away… 🙂

I have the same background. I came to Bikram after 15 years of ballet. I’ve been doing Bikram 5-7 times a week for the last 3 years now and couldn’t be happier with it.

Balancing “turned in” will be tough at first. In ballet, you’ve learned to balance by engaging your inner thighs. Here, you have to balance engaging the TOP of your thighs, the quads. So the mechanics of balancing are totally different. You just have to learn this new technique. Eventually it will feel completely natural. (It is a much more natural position than standing 180 degrees turned out!)

Best advice I can give you for balance in standing bow is to work on your balance in standing head to knee. Best advice for balance in standing head to knee is to work on eagle pose. See where I’m going? The postures are all cumulative. So don’t let yourself cheat. Set yourself up for success. Starting from the VERY FIRST breathing exercise, make sure you are standing with your feet pointed STRAIGHT ahead, rooting your feet into the ground, and engaging the quads. (Yes, this feels really weird because it’s the opposite of how you’ve been trained. Do it anyway!!) You can work on this alignment in every single posture. Standing head to knee is the hardest and the best: you are standing on one leg, concentrating on NOTHING but that standing leg. (That’s obviously the bit that you need to work on, since you said that you fall out before you even start kicking.) By the time you get around to standing bow, you’ve already practiced standing that way for 30+ minutes, so that should help.

Remember that it took you 13+ years to master balance on a turned out leg, so you won’t reverse that overnight. But you CAN reverse it in less than 13 years. Be patient!! You’ll get your do-over. It just takes a little time.

From one ex-dancer to another… enjoy!

Juliana 🙂

Today I had my best balance in standing bows ever, and I felt joyous. I was trying to figure out why on the way home, because my balance was worse than usual in standing head to knee. I realized that, normally in standing bow I am thinking so much about balancing and making sure my big toe is in contact with the floor. Today I was just thinking about flexibility and really trying to lift my chin, and I forgot to think about balance, and somehow it just happened! Not sure if it would help anyone else, but yeah, letting go mentally of thoughts of balance, and completely focus on some other technical aspect?

Hi Bonnie

Yes in this case it would really help to see you, or ask you a whole lot more questions. 😉

I wondered when reading your words whether you might need to slow your entry more and not think of the pose as having an endpoint. As you kick your leg backward and upward just go incrementally and slowly and as often as you can, bring your awareness to keep the hips in alignment. On the first side, you drop the right hip back down so that you avoid turning it outward.

“Comfy” spot! That’s interesting. Is it that you are looking for comfort or a place that your body is used to getting to? Maybe you just have to be content that each time you go in, and from side to side and day to day, that spot could be a different one.

To keep the awareness off the perception of time passing slowly, try slowing your breath down and following your breath as you keep your awareness on the right things (arm reaching up, back arm relaxing, hip dropping into alignment and so on). It really works for me (the slower I breathe, the calmer my nervous system, the less I am concerned with what’s going on – ie equanimous – and the faster the time goes, and of course, no struggle).

It really is very common to have one side go higher than the other, even one side in better alignment than the other. Just slow it down and keep the pose active and precise and stop at the ‘edge’ of your ability on that day.

Does that work for you? Come back and let me know if I need to go in a different direction.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Bonnie

I think I see now. The way you move into the pose should reflect balance at every moment. So only use your energy to move your leg back and up at the same time as the arm stays up high. It is possible that you are consciously bringing your body down as you kick. See if that has crept into your practice. You should be able to stop anywhere along your ‘travel’ and feel the balance and not just find it at the end.

Did that make sense to you?

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Woo hoo Rose!!! That’s terrific news. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Jeff

It is simply that your body is not perfectly symmetrical in ability, flexibility, strength and orientation. It is possible that a tightness in one of your hips (or indeed a slight rotation of your pelvis on one side relative to the other) means that on one side the orientation favors (moves to its favorite position) a better (or should I say, deeper) bow.

Can you tell me what you mean when you say your toes are spread? Are you talking about the foot on the ground?

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hi Jeff

Please tell me where you hold your left leg. Around the ankle or around the foot? If it’s around the foot, where exactly?

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

I’m 3 weeks into my Bikram Yoga practice, and my alignment is definitely not what it should be. During standing bow, I found that when my right leg is up, it cocks out to the side…definitely not where it should be. For some reason, this doesn’t happen on the other side. Yesterday, my instructor helped me adjust. She told me to start out with just a very slight turn as in spine twisting pose away from the standing leg. That helped. It got the shoulder of the arm holding my leg rounded more back and my lifted leg was actually vertical instead of at a 45 degree angle. So…I start slightly twisted, then I think I kind of naturally come back facing more forward as I go down.
Is this right? Honestly, I got adjusted so many times yesterday that I’m not sure I remember everything correctly.

I also find my standing knee just naturally bending a tiny bit during this pose. It actually seems to make it easier to balance. When I push it back, I wobble and fall out of the pose.