upward facing dog

[Guest guest]

My teacher has a poster in her practice room of

Sharath doing primary & intermediate series. I took a

close look at it the other day, and noticed that

Sharath does a *really* deep backbend in adho mukha

svanasana.

[Guest guest]

yes.<br>In fact it seem that people's

upwardfacingdog reveals so much about their practice.<br><br>AND

it seems also that the upper back is easier to get

flexible once it IS flexible. ANd then the

inverse...<br>the stiffer it is the more darned hard it is to do

something about it. Since the bending then wants to go to

the lower back instead......( to the small sacrum).

So the more flexible the upper back themore one can

elongate and soften the lower back. This is my karma

.....my area of work!!!<br><br>Sometimes i just want

someone to put their heel in my upper back and work my

shoulders up and back.

[Guest guest]

I so completely agree. <br><br>I had really stiff

shoulders and upper back when I started doing yoga, from

years of climbing - all that upper body strength work,

hundreds of chin-ups a week for years in my 20s. It made

backbending amazingly hard - took me over a year to even get

off the ground in urdhva dhanurasana. And a couple of

years more before I really started to be able to get

any movement between my shoulderblades instead of

jsut crunching into my lower back all the time. But

slowly, slowly, all is coming.