slipper12

hi gabrielle,
i took your advice and tried flatening out my shoulders, and managed to get more of my upper body to press into the floor. it made a HUGE difference. doing the posture this way, i realized how weak my forearms are, and how much they are needed to delve deeper into this pose.

I have recently been diagnosed with having slight carpal tunnel in my left hand, which exlains why my fingers are so stiff and tight. and now, after doing this posture using your instructions, i realize that not only are my fingers weak and inflexible, but so are my wrists and forearms. i have a lot of work to do, but i am so happy I was finally able to pinpoint my weaknesses so i can heal my body. thank you sooooo much.

thank you for all that you do,
susan

thanks gabrielle, I will use your advice when I practice later this afternoon, and will get back you.

susan

hello again,
this posture confuses me. the single legs are fine, but bringing both legs up together has always been a big challenge. I have never been able to lift my legs up off the floor more than probably about a foot or so. I am aware that this posture is meant to strenghten the middle, upper back, but I always feel a tightness in the very top of my hamstrings, rather than feeling any sort of engaging or strengthening of the back muscles. I am not sure I have my hands in the right location either. I am able to bring my hands side by side underneath my body in between my hip bones, but when I slide them closer down to my knees, as the dialouge instructs us to do, this makes the posture even more challenging. I have played around with various hand positions, some work a bit better than the others, but nothing too significant. I would thikn that you would want to put your hands directly underneath your hips. As the legs go above parallel and start to come up toward the head, it appears that the body hinges from the hips, meaning the legs are coming forward from the hips and the rest of the body remains on the floor. In this case, I would think you would want to place your lever (your arms) directly underneath the axis of rotation. does this make any sense?

Hi Gabrielle,
As always, thanks for your insight and your responses. I do realize some of my questions are about very knit-picky details, but they are just some of the wonderments I have had from time to time throughout my own practice. In this pose for example, I noticed than my wrists tend to curve up a lot around my chin. I then wondered if maybe my hands/fingers had anything to do with my shoulders and whether or not I was carrying tension there or maybe hunching them up during the breathing exercise. what i have come to understand, through your response to my quesiton and by paying close attention to my body during this exercise, is that i have very stiff and inflexible fingers, and that seems to be the main cause of my wrists curing around.

anyway, thank you again.

susan