Our third picture post!
Just a quick recap on commenting protocol. While sharing your own experience of the pose is certainly welcome, offering unsolicited advice and/or body policing is not. Additionally, these photos remain the property of the individuals pictured in them. Please do not reproduce them without the owner’s explicit consent.
Peekchures!
Jessie says of her ardha uttanasana, “This pose and Dandasana are both very difficult for me, I think because of tightness in my back (but I’m not totally sure.) This is as far down as I can go at the end of a practice – at the beginning it is even more difficult. They are both poses that I am often embarrassed to struggle with since they look so simple, so I thought I’d let it be known, in case there are other folks out there who find them difficult and feel like everyone else can do it so easily.”
Jessie would be okay with receiving respectful advice on ardha uttanasana, if folks have any.
Tori in ardha uttanasana.
I’m also going to stipulate that this is what my half forward fold looks like after I am warmed up. I chose to take the pic in this version because it is the version I take most of the time — but not all of the time.
As it turns out, Laura was thinking ahead of me on this one and sent in a couple of different variations:
Laura in ardha uttanasana, a side view.
Laura in another variation of ardha uttanasana, this time with a front view.
It’s good to see different variations – I struggle with this seemingly simple pose, too.
Jessie, I agree about how frustrating it is for a pose that looks easy to turn out to be really challenging! For myself, I can’t allow myself to think of how ‘far into’ a pose I am or how I look during it. I can only focus on how my body feels in it, and whether that seems to be good for me. This pose can feel really uncomfortable to me sometimes, so I’ll share with you what I’ve done to make it less so.
Ardha uttanasana, dandasana, and viparita karani (legs-up-the-wall pose) are all essentially the same pose, just rotated. When I think of it that way as I’m practicing, I find that each pose has something to teach me about the other versions of it.
When I do viparita karani with this focus, I do it without support under my low back, with my feet flexed, and with my legs active. I focus on how my hips feel against the floor and against the wall, and work on figuring out how to activate the muscles of my thighs and pelvis to support the pose when I do it away from the wall (I don’t know if that version has a name).
So when I’m in ardha uttanasana, the way this translates is that it helps me activate those same muscles, which helps keep my hips more over my ankles (rather than spilling back behind them, which is what I tend to do to when I don’t use my strength to support me). This brings my weight more over the balls of my feet and encourages me to spread my toes and ground.
In dandasana, because my pelvis tends to tilt forward, to bring it into neutral alignment, I have to focus on supporting my torso with the muscles of my lower abdomen, while releasing the muscles of my low back.
The way this translates in ardha uttanasana is that I have to actively lift my lower belly against gravity. It feels like I’m moving a huge distance, but I don’t think it’s really very far. When I do this, it allows my low back to relax, and I actually move further into the fold. It took me a long time to figure out this action, because it was unintuitive to me to lift up when I was trying to go down. I learned how to do this lift in this pose, and I’ve found that it improves all of my forward folds, including child’s pose, which used to be really uncomfortable for me (resting pose? ha! not for me).
I don’t know if any of this resonates with you, but I hope that as you continue your practice, you’re able to find the balance between effort and ease in this pose. Namaste.
I struggle with this pose, Dandasana and Down Dog because every single muscle down the backs of my legs is too tight. I particularly feel it in my calves. I wonder if that might affect Jessie too?
Basically my torso looks like it’s in a deep uttanasana. This says to me it’s my legs’ fault, not so much my lower back and behind. I figure if I do this for a while, I might actually be able to do Dandasana and Down Dog comfortably.
I’ve found that a better way to stretch my calves and my hamstrings is to perch on the edge of a chair, my feet one and a half times my hip width apart, and then fold forward so my hands are resting on my ankles. I’ve found I can get my chest onto my thighs this way and it means the boobs don’t get in the way either
Not a yoga-person, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve for tight back muscles.
Firstly, are they properly warmed up? I find warming them up well to be something where I have to do something specifically for them. One thing I do is sit, put my hands behind my neck, start a side-to-side rotation, and then slowly bend over, vertebra by vertebra, and then come back up again in a similar fashion. I find that’s often enough to cure a stiff lower back.
As for actual stretching, try lying on your back, then put a smallish ball (way larger than a tennis ball, not large enough you can sit on it) underneath your tailbone, and lift your legs so your legs point either up or towards the wall closest to your head. (Think of it sort of as being bent in half at the hip joint, except with a ball keeping your hips off the ground.)
Hopefully someone found that helpful.