The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › The Hot Yoga Poses › Kapalbhati Breathing in Vajrasana › Kapalbhati Breathing setup
The Hot Yoga Doctor – Free Bikram and Hot Yoga Resources › Hot Yoga Doctor Forum › The Hot Yoga Poses › Kapalbhati Breathing in Vajrasana › Kapalbhati Breathing setup
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Hi everyone!
I’ve got two questions:
1. Is it more important to keep my spine straight, square to the floor, or do I have to reach my knees with my hands? Does it depend on the length of my arms?
2. Do I need to keep my shoulders relaxed even if they tend to round, or should I keep my chest up and my shoulder muscles engaged all the time?
Thank you
Martina
Hi Martina
In short, your spine should be straight and your arms relaxed. Asking for hands on knees or straight arms just creates stress and you can see students focusing hard on this part of the pose which usually makes the exercise itself harder. You can see the strain in the shoulders and arms.
As for the shoulders, just think ‘elbows in the back pockets’ and you will eliminate rounding and automatically keep your chest up. You are definitely trying to remove stress from your shoulders which means they are not engaged, they are positioned down and back away from the ears.
For those who haven’t yet seen it, take a look at this video about optimal arm and shoulder position: A transformational technique for your practice
Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂Ahhhh! Arms relaxed makes so much sense to me! Finally!
The only way I can reach my knees with my hands is if I keep my arms straight, my shoulders tense and my back leaning a bit forward. Which is not good, as you said. And it didn’t feel good because I was all closed up, and the compression of my chest made me feel I never had enough air!
So from now on: spine straight, shoulders down and back, arms relaxed (naturally bent) and hands wherever they end up?
This is great Gabrielle! Thank you very very much!
Martypit and Gabrielle, thank you both for the question and answer! I’ve never thought about the set-up during class but it makes sense to wonder how to reconcile arm length, spine angle, etc. into one good foundation for the Kapalbhati Breathing.
As far as the elbows-in-your-back-pockets video and application goes: I started training myself to do it about 4 days ago. Since the comments at that video were closed due to spam I’ll say this here: I feel more open, I get painless little “popping” along the front of my chest (does the sternum pop? or where the ribs articulate? I’m not sure, but they make tiny noises when I remind myself to open up) and I find my car seat position uncomfortable now. It’s hard to sit properly with proper rotation of shoulders to elbows now. I actually find it easier to just hold myself away from the seat back as I drive. I might try to find a lower back support to help with the yucky seat set up. I hope that eventually I won’t have to remind myself keep my elbows in the back pockets. Gabrielle, your shoulders are amazing and I think it’s funny to see you attempt to mime the slouch! Your fake slouch look better than my fake straight! Haha! You have great posture and the fact that you can’t slouch like a mall teenager at all is pretty rad.
Thanks Gabrielle, Robert and everyone here at the HYDForum. You’re all very kind, engaging, helpful and supportive people.
Rhea
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