Salabhasana - Locust pose - For Beginners

The undulations, heavings, rollings, and gruntings as you try to maneuver your arms into this new and unusual position are marvelous to see and hear. Try this technique: From your position of relaxation on your stomach, push your right toe into the floor to lift right hip and roll your body slightly to the left. Then slide the right arm directly under you with the palm flat on the floor. Lower your right hip onto the hand and arm. Then push with the left toe, roll your body onto the right arm, lift the left hip, and slide the left arm under you, palm down. Get the little fingers touching and elbows as close to each other as possible. Then lower your left hip onto the left arm.

You will thus have both arms nicely pinned, and you will suddenly feel like a trussed goose. Your head will be bobbing around trying to look casual, and your elbows will most likely begin to protest the position in which they find themselves. Put your chin solidly on the floor and wait for what follows.

Yoga Catch 23: the raising leg of a beginner is always followed by an attached hip. Why? Because raising the hip makes it easy to lift the leg. However, Yoga isn´t interested in what is easy. So keep both hipbones touching your forearms.

As with the Standing Bow Pulling and Balancing stick, this is a straight up-and-down, forward-and-back pose, no ballet turnouts. The bottom of the raised foot and the back of the leg and knee move straight up toward the ceiling, while the leg remaining on the floor stays totally relaxed.

At the same time, feel as though someone has hooked your big toe to wild horses and they are pulling it through the back wall. In the other words, stretch, not height, is the important thing.You may feel cramps at first. Flex and wiggle the foot to relieve them.

If you aim or a slightly pigeon-toed feeling you will produce the perfect "straight-up-and-down." A pigeon-toed feeling will also allow you to keep both hips on the arms more comfortably.

The third part of Locust is usually voted " Pet Hate Number One". Eventually it will be as easy as falling off a log. Until then, if you have been fussing about your aching elbows, lifting both legs and your hips off the floor will give you something new to complain about.

It is, of course, entirely possible that you won't be able to lift the legs off the floor at all. It is possible you won't even be able to figure out how to lift them. Don't give up hope. It's a simply a matter of patience. Almost like a person recovering the use of limbs after paralysis or illness, you must keep at it until the brain muscle linkage is reestablished and you can send messages to the correct muscles at will. The ideal way for those legs to go up is for the muscles of the lower back and abdomen to pick them up. So talk to tour belly as well as to your spine and lower back.

Try pressing the floor hard with palms and arms, use the grimace of your face, mighty grunts - anything to lift your legs. Try lifting on exhalation instead of inhalation. Getting them totally off the towel by hook or by crook and holding them there for ten honest counts is the name of the game

Despite the temptation, don't drop your legs to the floor. Also, collapsing out of this one could put a dent in the floor.

There is some GOOD NEWS!! First off your elbows won´t hurt after about a week, and neither will your tennis elbow, if you happen to have had on. Second, your legs are always much higher in actuality than they feel to you. After a few weeks of practice, sneak a peek sideways into the mirror. You will be pleasantly surprised - and spurred on to even greater accomplishments.

Benefits

The Locust Pose has the same benefits as the Cobra, but it is even more potent in the cure of any back or spinal problem, such as gout, slipped disc, and sciatica. It cures tennis elbow and it also excellent for firming buttocks and hips!

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Bhujangasana - Cobra Pose - For beginners

As soon as you tighten your muscles, you may be attached by cramps in legs and feet, the cramps continuing throughout the floor poses. If it should happen to you, grin and bear it. Flex and wiggle the affected parts, then renew your efforts. The cramps subside as the days go by.

You probably won't be able to find a spinal muscle in that disused maze back there, much less mobilize one. As a hint, the muscles you use to arch backward when you have a backache are the very ones that lift the torso in the Cobra.

Now, just for the fun of it, try lifting the torso without putting any weight at all on your hands. You might even raise the palms slightly to prevent cheating. This will enable you to feel the muscles of the lower back and understand not only how weak or strong they are but recognize the "contact" that must be made to eventually go all the way up with spine strenght alone.

Whether you can lift five inches or no inches without weight on the hands, you do have your hands and arms to fall back upon. As a beginner you will make good use of them!

The essential point is to push that belly button through the floor with everything you've got, while arching spine, neck, head backward and releasing the small of the back. And glory in the stretch. Feel what it is doing for your waistline. Abandon worries about low-back pain and double chins. Your friend the Cobra has come to save you!

Do not collapse back onto the towel. Use your spine strength and arms to lower yourself smoothly,

This is not a hard pose requiring great strength or unusual contortions. You're not going to hurt yourself, you're not going to strain anything, there is nothing to fear. What the Cobra takes is will power - a commodity that is usually in shorter supply than strength. Barring medical problems, slow progress in the Cobra means just one thing - L-A-Z-Y!

Benefits

The Cobra is one of the best ways to maintain the body in perfect condition. It increases spinal strength and flexibility helps prevent lower backache, and helps cure lumbago, rheumatism, and arthritis of the spine. It also relieves menstrual problems, cures loss of appetite, helps correct bad posture, and improves the functioning of the liver and spleen. The Cobra strengthens the deltoids, trapezius, and triceps.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Sit up - For beginners

From where you are in Dead Man Pose, raise your arms up over your head simultaneously inhaling, and sit up, keeping legs straight and heels on the floor. Use the force of throwing your arms toward your toes to help you sit up. Just before you reach the upright position, start exhalation and dive forward, reaching for your toes, which are flexed back toward you. Grasp them, laying your whole body and face out flat on your legs or at least touching your forehead to your knees. Touch the floor on either side of your legs with elbows.

Some people at first can find no way in the world, no matter how hard they try, to sit up - as though something big and fat is sitting on their chest. Others can do it, but their feet bounce two feet into the air as they do so (This is all right. You can even lift the feet farther and use their downward thrust to sit you up if you are having a great deal of trouble). Others can sit up keeping the feet firmly on the ground, then can't grasp their toes, much less touch even the forehead to the knees.

Do not let your particular state of unfitness discourage you! Give each sit-up your honest effort and in two months maximum you will do it exactly as we described.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Pavanamuktasana - Wind Removing Pose - For Beginners

As a beginner, you'll find it easier to do is you move the leg a little bit outside of the body before pulling down to the chest. Don't be surprised, of course, if you can get the knee nowhere near the chest at first. Just pull as hard as you can, while concentrating upon relaxing, letting everything go, in the right hip joint. When you really try, there is fast progress in this pose. (If you don't feel the pull in your hip joint, you aren't really trying.)

It is essential to keep the calf of the left leg touching the floor. If it gives you difficulty, flex the toes up toward you; the calf will then touch.

Those of you who can get the leg down to the chest should use a more advanced grip. Instead of interlacing fingers, catch the raised right knee in the crook of the right arm,raise the left arm and grasp the opposite elbows, keeping them square, as though they were holding both knees. With shoulders on the floor, pull straight down toward your chest.

As in many of the other poses, you'll probably find more flexibility in the knee and hip joint on one side than on the other. So, keep urging the less flexible side by pulling harder, but with a slow, steady pressure.

If you are unable to get the legs far enough down toward the chest to grasp opposite elbows, then grasp forearms, wrists, fingers, a skyhook, or anything you can manage.

As you now see that all three sections of this pose are a bit like rubbing your stomach clockwise with one hand, patting your head with the other, while wiggling your ears. You have three separate and opposing things to think about  - pulling down on the knees with all your might, keeping the chin tucked firmly down onto the chest, and either keeping the calf of the leg touching the floor or lowering the tailbone to the floor. While working on one task, you invariably forget the others.

A deceptive pose, indeed. It looks so simple, yet requires concentration and effort. Just keep in mind your two main goals: to open up your stiff hip joints and to push every single vertebra into the floor.You should feel a pull in your hip joints while you are doing the pose. But you may also feel the real effects when you release and lower your legs to the towel. So release slowly.

Benefits

The Wind Removing Pose cures and prevents flatulence, which is the source of most chronic abdominal discomforts. It also improves the flexibility of the hip joints and firms the abdomen, thighs, and hips.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Savasana - Dead Body Pose - For Beginners

We never fully realize what reservoirs of tension we are until we are given the seemingly simple instruction to completely relax. Your hands will twitch and your feet are full of as much nervous energy as are your hands. And how about the muscles of your legs, buttocks, pelvis and spine - especially your neck and shoulders - not to mention that convoluted gray mass called brain? Suddenly you notice how many parts of you want to be tight because they're used to it.

The object of this pose is to consciously let go of as much tension as you possibly can. But trying to relax each part of you separately is akin to plugging a weakening dike. The minute you get your fingers pacified, the tension will pop up in your toes; if you manage to relax the buttocks, you'll find that your calf muscles have tightened, and so on. You could lie there and chase the tension for hours on end and still not catch and contain it.

It is far better to concentrate on relaxing the body as a whole unit. Let the floor support you. Pretend that all the spark has left your body. You would fall through space like a chunk of a lead if the floor were not there, pressing upward, holding you easily. There's no need to worry, no need to be tense; the floor can do it all. Let it!

Benefits

The Dead Body Pose returns blood circulation to normal. It also teaches complete relaxation.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Padangustasana - Toe stand - For beginners

It is handy that your hands should begin the Toe Stand in a praying position. Because if you've looked at what comes next - first you will pray your knee will not break and then that you won't fall over onto your nose and become disfigured. Believe me, the praying is unnecessary. The Toe Stand is really the Lion Who Could Not Roar. It only looks fierce.

You haven't really been asked to dive fifty feet into a half-filled tea cup, you know. Don't scare. Nothing will break. You have warmed up to this exercise, and gaining balance is probably your biggest problem here.

Once you have conquered your fear and become accustomed to sinking down using your hands for support, try to go all the way down without touching the hands to the floor. Your goal is to keep your hands in the praying position throughout.

The straighter the spine and the more parallel the crossed leg is with the floor, the better your balance will be. Also vital is concentration on that one spot in front of you. Balance in the Toe Stand is really only a matter of patience and concentration. Waving your arms as though you were directing traffic can be helpful in finding balance. Also, learn to use the toes of your balancing foot just like fingers to grip the floor and help you keep your balance.

If the method just described hasn't worked for you after a few weeks, you can still practice the Toe Stand. Squat down, put one foot up on your thigh, and proceed to try for balance, first using both hands and then only one until you feel solidly set

To bolster confidence in the strength of the knees, go back up to the standing position on one leg, foot still on thigh, by putting your hands on the floor, weight well forward, then rear your buttocks up and backward and push the standing leg back, locking the knee. Gradually, you gain confidence, balance, and strength.'

Benefits

The Toe Stand develops psychological and mental powers - especially patience. Physically, it helps to cure gout and rheumatism of the knees, ankles and feet. It also helps cure hemorrhoid problems.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.

Tadasana - Tree pose - For Beginners

As you have just observed, balance can be your first problem here, but now you know how to solve it. You may also find it impossible, as yet, to get the heel up to the hem of your costume. Just do your best. Gradually, the flexibility in your hip and knee joints will increase.

The essential thing here is for that foot to be high and knee forced down as much as possible. And so, as pretty and and dramatic as the praying position looks, as much as you yearn to look like Buddha - ignore the temptation to pray and instead hold the foot securely in place with your left hand until the heel remains touching at least the bottom of your leotard/trunks when you let go of the foot.

Some yogis, after a year, still have to hold the foot up with one hand, putting the other hand to the breastbone in half prayer. This is perfectly okey, as long as you keep trying honestly to keep the foot up there without either hand and are not just being lazy :)

So, up with the heel, down with the knee, in with the buttocks, bear the pain, keep your balance for ten seconds!!!

Since your knee has been forced into unusual activity, treat it with care - shake it and wiggle it around a bit before reversing the pose.

Benefits

The Tree Pose improves posture and balance and increases the flexibility of the ankles, knees, and hip joints. By strengthening the internal oblique muscles, it prevents hernia.

Read more about this poses benefits, pictures, video and tips from HERE

Drawings and info from "Bikram´s Beginning Yoga Class " Book, 1978.