Ustrasana - Camel Pose - For Beginners

If it´s more comfortable for your knees to be a little farther apart, that´s okey. But keep your feet only six inches apart.

Bending backwards is sometimes tough for beginners. But those hands are on the backs of the hips for a reason - for support. So use them. And drop the head back completely.

The first day you will probably not be able to go any farther than gripping both heels. But it' s a good beginning done correctly, so be patient with yourself

One Good thing about triangle of pig iron you will resemble is that you can' t get any worse.

And so.. concentrate on the area from the top of your thighs to your waistline. Push it up and forward with everything you got! Exhale and push harder. That mid-section will eventually begin to seem like an accordion, stretching with each exhalation.

When you have pushed forward as far as you can go that day, then change your focus of attention to the small of the back and try to release those tensed muscles. I say "try" because everyone is so convinced that he or she is going to break, that all the muscles fight the relaxation which must happen in that spot to enable the upper body to arch backward fully.

The day you finally gather your nerve and let the back release, the elation of feeling your body gracefully over will more than compensate for any discomfort.

Once you begin to get a good forward push, take care not to "cheat" by letting your hands creep upward off the heels. Keep your fingers well down into the insteps, grasping the heels fully and firmly.

Benefits

The Camel stretches the abdominal organs to the maximum and cures constipation. It also stretches the throat, thyroid gland and parathyroids. Like the Bow Pose, it opens a narrow rib cage to give more space to the lungs. And because it produces maximum compression of the spine, it improves the flexibility of the neck and spine and relieves backache. It also firms and slims the abdomen and the waistline.

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

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

Ardha-Kurmasana - Half Tortoise Pose - For Beginners

Those of you who had difficulty doing this in the Fixed Firm will have the same problem with the Half Tortoise - a gap between buttocks and heels. As suggested before, take every opportunity that presents itself to get down on your knees and bounce gently to stretch out your atrophied muscles, joints, and tendons. For the moment, however, sit down as far as you can and concentrate on keeping a downward pressure on your buttocks throughout the posture.

Half the benefit of this stretch comes from keeping your arms locked and touching ears as you bend forward  in the next step. So, make sure you don´t drop your steeple.

The Half Tortoise feels like pure Heaven after the Purgatory of the Fixed Firm. Not that the Half Tortoise is simple, which fact you will grasp the moment you find that no way will your buttocks stay touching your feels as you bend forward. In all likelihood, the gap will be just as large once you get your forehead on the floor. Even Jeff still has an inch to go.

Next, you'll discover that you probably don´t have enough spine strength to go all the way down with a perfectly straight spine. Resurrecting those crocodiles you met in the Balancing Stick in Chapter will help; they´re just where your face and hands will touch the towel. So it behooves you to go down slo-o-o-o-wly and to keep your face and hands off the towel till they absolutely must touch.

Not only will this slow stretch rapidly strengthen your back muscles and keep your spine as straight as possible at your particular point of development, but it will also keep your buttocks in contact with your heels longer. You'll learn that exact point to gauge your progress with each passing day.

To get the best stretch with your steeple, as the sides of your hands touch the towel, slide them forward. When they won´t slide any more, then walk them forward with side-to-side, rocking-crawling movements, until your arms and shoulders are stretched to what seems the breaking point. Then lower your forehead to the towel - and relax. Because relaxation is the aim of the posture,  it works magic on tense neck and shoulders.

It is east to have buttock-to-heel contact by buckling in the middle as you lift up. It is not easy to keep that contact when you come up like one solid chunk of steel from fingertips to tailbone - but that is the correct method. And the only way you are going to do it is as slowly as a pregnant snail.You must generate a tremendous amount of lift in your hands and arms and back muscles and keep that lift going all the way or the arms will sad and you will buckle. When done properly your whole spine, from top to bottom, will be working and strengthening. You´ll feel it every step of the way, and it will be very satisfying.

Benefits

The Half Tortoise provides maximum relaxation. It cures indigestion and stretches the lower part of the lungs, increasing blood circulation to the brain. It firms the abdomen and thighs. And it increases the flexibility of hip joints, scapula, deltoids, triceps, and latissimus dorsi muscles.

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

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

Supta-Vajrasana - Fixed Firm Pose

Many people at first are unable even to sit on their heels. And then to get the buttocks to the floor between the heels can take weeks. But when finally they do, they feel as though they have conquered Everest. And in a way they have. For once people prove to themselves they can do something, which only the day before seemed impossible - there is no stopping them.

To get yourself limbered up and hasten your progress (and ease the inevitable cramps in your knees and feet), you might practice this pose while watching television in the evening. Just get down on the floor Japanese-style, spread your feet apart, and bounce gently but persistently to stretch the muscles and tendons in your knees and feet and accustom them to their doubled-back position.

Some people - especially men - have great difficulty going anywhere in this posture with the knees together. If you find that this is the case with you, sit with the knees a little apart at first, and then force them back together after you have become proficient.

As for putting your hands on your feet, if you cannot even get your buttocks down to your heels as yet, you won´t be able to reach the toes. But try. It will increase the stretch.

Bending down brings out the first wail of protest from your feet. The farther back you go, the louder your little pigs will squeal and the ankles, calves, knees, and thighs will take up the chorus. You have the whole-hearted sympathy of all who have gone before you, and profanities are allowed. Quitting, however, is illegal, immoral, and therefore our of the question.

But you can be confident of one important thing: the discomfort is occasioned by the newness of the position, not because you are injuring yourself. Only if you jerk into or out of the position too quickly is there the possibility of  pulling something. Do everything slowly. That advice can´t be repeated too often.

You may, as a beginner, put your hands flat on the floor behind you, rather than on the toes. This will allow you to get down onto the elbows with more security and to take some of the weight off your poor legs and feet and onto your arms and hands instead.

There are two stages in this posture where almost everything gets stuck. The first is at the point of getting both elbows lowered onto the floor. For a few days, you don´t go ant farther because you are legitimately stretching our all the muscles from chest through abdomen, hips, thighs, calves, and feet. But after that, freezing in this position is just plain fear.

Finally you summon your courage and actually drop your head back to the floor. Yet, there you freeze again, still bearing most of your weight on the elbows, not quite sure what to do next and afraid to try anyway.

The solution to both problems is to relax. Realize that by fighting the act of touching your shoulders to the floor, you are making it triply difficult for yourself! Let go completely. Let those elbows slide out from under you and relax the shoulders and upper back onto the towel. Your legs and feet will complain, but bear it as long as possible and come up slowly.

Now that you are in the final position, begin trying to keep your knees absolutely together and flat on the floor. Then turn your attention to feeling as though your buttocks have turned to lead and are dropping right through the floor. Once you get the knack of that relaxation, you COULD FALL ASLEEP in the Fixed Firm, it´s that comfortable.

But Yoga doesn´t ask for heroes or fools. Do as much as you can each day and then hold it there for the count.

You must come up slowly and in exact reversal of the way you went in!

Despite the discomfort of this pose, it´s wonderful therapy to moan and groan and complain. The noises some people make should be recorded for posterity. And the axiom about misery loving company must first have been said about a class of Yoga students doing Fixed Firm - though everyone always seems to end up laughing instead of crying.

Benefits

Fixed Firm Pose helps cure sciatica, gout, and rheumatism in the legs. It slims thighs, firms calf muscles, and strengthens the abdomen. It also strengthens and improves flexibility of lower spine, knees, and ankle joints.

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

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

Dhanurasana - Bow Pose - For Beginners

Once into this position you sometimes have the uncomfortable feeling that someone is going to come along, stuff an apple into your mouth, and start turning you on a spin. Indeed, the first few days some people can do nothing more for twenty seconds than lie there, clinging to their feet and looking helpless. (Which is at least better than the occasional person who can´t even reach the feet).

But not discouraged. You have hordes of company. This is the position that presents the most problems in the most people. It is where everyone´s inflexibility really shows, and where we seem to have the most difficult getting the messages from the brain to the muscles.

It´s a fairly easy to lift the torso - indeed, in this trussed position the torso could hardly be anything but raised. It´s those legs that sometimes refuse to budge off the floor, no matter how you kick backward or try to lift them.

To overcome that problem, first make sure that you have a good firm grip on your feet, then center your attention on the small of the back and your buttocks and forget that you are supposed to lift the torso and legs. Instead, imagine that you are going to push your abdomen, buttocks, and lower back right down trough the floor. To do this you must make the muscles tight like rocks. Now push downward. More. Simultaneously press up and back against your hands with the tops of your feet just as hard as you can. Up. Push. Hard!

Your torso, by now, will be well lifted and you should be feeling the first stirrings of lift in your thighs and will recognize the muscles you need to lift them - not in the legs but in the buttocks, lower back and abdomen.

As an added tip, once you do get the legs up off the towel, become aware of how stiffly you are holding your shoulders. Let the arms putt the shoulder blades backward. You might even have to force the shoulders back the first few times to get the fell of it. But releasing the shoulders - and rolling your body weight forward on the abdomen - will allow everything to get higher, farther, and increase the stretch and benefit.

The Bow Pose combines the difficulties of the Cobra, Locust, Full Locust, Standing Bow Pulling and Balancing Stick. But you are also combining all those wonderful benefits, which should make your rest sweeter.

If you can´t go the full 20 counts the first few days, hold it for ten counts to begin and add 2 counts each day. A raw beginner´s lack of endurance, bad cramping, high blood pressure and real complaints as from a trick knee are, however, the only permissible excuses for quitting short of 20 counts. Besides the Bow Pose is pretty once you get it. Doesn´t that make you feel better?

Benefits

The Bow improves the functioning of the large and small intestines, the liver, kidneys and spleen. In helps straighten rounded spines, relieves backaches, and improves pigeon chest by opening the rib cage, permitting maximum expansion of lungs and increased oxygen intake. The Bow also revitalizes all spinal nerves by increasing circulation to the spine. It improves digestion and strengthens abdominal muscles, upper arms, 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.

Poorna-Salabhasana - Full Locust Pose - For Beginners

Some students are tempted to let their knees and their feet part company when straining during the second step of this pose. But if you keep all your muscles tight and toes sharply pointed from the start, this will be less of a possibility.

Get those arms up and back, hands always on a level with the shoulders. This means for each inch you lift your torso, the hands must lift he same distance.

The Full Locust is a subtle sneak. Remember we mentioned doing Cobra by raising the torso without supporting yourself with hands and arms? Unmask a Full Locust and you will find a snake in the grass.

And what´s this business about raising your legs off the floor till you´re balanced on your belly button? Didn´t we just do that in the Locust, but with hands and arms to help keep us up and balance us? Now we do the same thing without benefit of arm strength, front or back.

There are no shortcuts or easier ways to develop this posture. Mastery takes sweat, strain, and determination. If sacrifices must be made (and as a beginner, the sacrifices are seemingly endless), sacrifice height in the legs in favor of getting the torso and arms arched up, and swept back just  as high as possible. The ultimate will see legs and torso raised equally, but in the beginning stages accept the fact that the legs will lag behind. Just try honestly to get the legs off the floor a speck higher each day.

Other than that - have a GOOD FLIGHT :)

To show you how subtly difficult the Full Locust is, it is the one position where we seldom play games with the 10 seconds. If you are doing honestly, giving it all you´ve got, then seconds is all you can take. But oh! the wonderful things it does to your body.

Benefits

The Full Locust has the same therapeutic value as the Cobra Pose and the same upper body benefits as the Standing Bow Pulling. It also firms abdominal muscles, upper arms, hips, and thighs.

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

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

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.