TheHotYogaDoctor

Hi you all,

I was surfing in the net and found a video of international yoga asana championships. I watched the men’s winner doing standing bow. When starting the pose he very strongly rotates his shoulders before reaching for his foot. Is this right?

I tried it yesterday in the class and it actually helped me.

In our class the teacher says first to grab your uplifted foot and after that the shoulder rotates back due to the foot pulling. What do you think? here is the link if you want to watch it

http://www.yogacup.com/men.html

Feenix

Hi Feenix

The important element that will make the difference for you is to externally rotate your arm - both lower as well as upper arm. This rotation is what you saw in the arm of the first contestant of that video. It is a long video of almost 90 minutes so I only watched the example you referred to. What he did do which in my opinion was overdoing it a bit, was to swing the whole body to the side, along with his arm so that the hip moved significantly. As a result both hips were no longer aligned. So in fact the movement that you saw with the shoulder was an exaggerated movement that you can emulate (but also try to do it without involving a twist of the hips).

Your kicking leg will help that movement. Nothing wrong at all with starting that way - I know we do it at our studio. It is certainly a worthwhile extension of turning your hand out to the side.

Namaste
Gabrielle

Hi Gabrielle,

Yes I also think it was maybe a bit exaggerated (looked kind of funny) but I think I got the idea from your reply. My lower back and/or hips are quite tight and I need to watch out not to rotate my hip bones as well.

Thank you Gabrielle
Feenix