Our BYSJ Posture Talks are in-depth discussions and demos that detail the form and intention of each Bikram Yoga posture and help you minimize mistakes. Here, Michele Vennard and Matt and Sarah Newman discuss Eagle pose. Watch the video of their discussion and demo, and read the highlights below.
All right, you guys, we’re going to talk about Eagle posture. I’m Michele, a teacher here, with Sarah and Matt. We’re so happy you’re here with us at Bikram Yoga San Jose, and you guys are invited to our little parlor, because we love being in the yoga room and having a conversation about yoga. So, let’s take apart Eagle posture.
We know it helps to open up the joints. We’ve done Pranayama, Standing Deep Breathing. We’ve done Half Moon. We’ve done Awkward pose. And you can tell there’s a little bit of energy in the room where it’s like, “Oh, man, I gotta get this posture.”
I used to underestimate the power of this posture. I was one of those who was a little bit guilty of, like, “oh, I can do this,” you know. And then I can’t wait to have my water. Over the years, I’ve come to realize how challenging it is for me, possibly because I’m getting older, and I need it for my joints and blood pressure. I find it to be quite a challenge, and I’m so happy that I have it. I pay much more attention to this pose because it has a tourniquet effect on every joint in the body, helping to open them up. Bikram talks about how we’re building that dam effect. All that blood is collecting up, and it’s staying right there, creating so much pressure that by the time we release, oh my god, that high-speed blood flushes right out into the joints. This release carries out junk, like debris and acid, so that you have synovial fluid to help your joints get lubricated.
Sarah: Eagle pose was one of the postures that, as an over-flexible beginner, I could do very easily, with the shoulders pulled out and the wrists all bent. So I could get my fingers and then my foot, no problem, probably more easily than I can now.
Matt: It’s very common to hear people say, “Oh, I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.” You’ve heard that phrase so very many times. I’ve had many, many students say that to me, or people who I’ve talked to about yoga who don’t come to the yoga. This posture is a good example of where people imagine that if they are relatively stiff, it’s not accessible to them. And people who are very flexible think, Oh, this is really easy. It’s one way or the other. But it’s not a posture designed to build flexibility; it’s designed to build health in the joints, and that requires muscular engagement in the joints, not wrapping yourself in a pretzel and just collapsing to the floor. That’s where we’ve got to bring some awareness: to your range of motion. If you’re really stiff, it doesn’t matter, as long as you’re trying to do it the right way.
Michele: Let’s emphasize that point again, because, you guys, when we talk about yoga, there is this stigma that it’s only for people who are flexible. When really, what is it about? It’s about returning to your own natural range of motion. So it’s the way in which you do these postures to help you return this range of motion. Why? So you can have a body full of vitality, that maintains youth, and is immune to diseases. And this is a posture for that, too. We’ve got to get rid of these things that happen in our minds. So maybe we can start then with what’s a common mistake, or something that people naturally do?
Sarah: Let’s start with the grips. What I’d like to start with is that someone may have told you that if you have big muscles or you’re stiff, they’ll say, “Oh, don’t worry about the grip. Just get a hold of the shoulders and give them a good tug.” This approach has its place; Bikram will teach it. It serves as a starting point to get a good squeeze, allowing you to try to bring your hands together. But you grab the shoulders only to put yourself in a position, so then you can squeeze the upper arms and bring their hands closer to each other. They might not go very close. But that’s the reason for this; it’s not to spend a life sentence tugging on your shoulders.
Michele: Grabbing the shoulders was old-school. I recall saying this to someone many years ago, but now I have a better understanding of it. There was always, though, a pull-down; there was never just holding. What I love about this is getting the back of the hands together. You can see people’s faces. It builds confidence. So again, it’s just another way to emphasize that if you have good teachers who show good technique, it’s available to you. Remember, A before B. In Pranayama, Standing Deep Breathing, we’re doing a lot to warm up the scapula shoulder joint, so you need to work your neck and shoulders in that posture. And then, of course, we have Half Moon pose, and then we have the Awkward posture. Eagle pose emphasizes the shoulder blades and deltoids. Guess what we’re going to do next? In Standing Head to Knee and Standing Bow, we’re emphasizing those.
We’re lucky as teachers, because we can see with a bird’s eye perspective. I see less face, more body. You can see people with short necks, necks that are too long, and shoulders that don’t move. You know, you can see where they can overwork a part of their body, and where there’s a part of your body that’s not working. That’s why you have a teacher: to help you correct areas and return to your natural range of motion.
Sarah: There’s another thing, other common grip things. Often, beginners are confused, and that’s normal. It’s a bit of a conundrum. And actually, it’s kind of cool, because the mind is waking up with new synapses as you try to work it out. So other than the problem of which arm is right, which is left, which is always a difficult one – assuming you got past that, then there’s the issue that you don’t get inside the elbows.
And then another one. We say, “Try to get your fingertips below your nose,” and they might not go. What we were demonstrating for quite some time at the beginning was to bring the shoulders down to open them, to open up the scapula, shoulder blades. So we say, “Try to get your fingertips below the nose.” And some people hear this and try to get their nose above their fingertips.
You can interlace the fingers to begin with if you can’t get your palms together. The instruction is to get a grip where you can, to get your palms together.
Matt: Another common thing is that the arm underneath tends to be bent for stiffer individuals, and for more flexible people, it’s the opposite. So, what you need to do is use the strength in your hand, specifically your fingers and wrists, and then push and even crawl your way up to try to straighten your wrist. Then it’s coming all the way into my shoulders, and now I can pull my elbows down even more, try and get my fingertips to go below my nose. I’m trying, which is all that really matters.
Michele: That you’re trying, exactly! And you guys, we see it. How many times do we say in the dialogue, “Line up your wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles.” Shoulder blades, scapula, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles, and you gotta use your wrists, right? You gotta move the wrists.
Matt: I would say that every finger in this is involved. The whole of it is involved because every single finger and thumb connects to a different piece of your shoulder structure. If you start to put some pressure on one or more fingers, you can feel that a different part of your neck structure is involved. That may not be obvious, but it’s part of the biomechanics.
Michele: Exactly what we’re saying with Half Moon. We tell you to keep your hands palms together.
Matt: It’s like when we say evenly distribute the weight over your foot; it goes all the way up through into the hip structure. It’s the same thing here, palms together, goes all the way.
Michele: Knowing that there’s a universe of stuff going on in that one, isn’t that cool? It comes together. Oh, my God, there’s got to be a million things that are connecting, right?
Matt: You know, it’s like the guru says, “Bring your palms together, come back in 10 years, and I’ll give you the next instruction.”
Sarah: It’s true. If you do it that way, some of those things will emerge in your own body, by feeling. You can find it by yourself.
Michele: You just hit a point, Sarah, like the three of us, right? We learned this because we take the class consistently. You will, too. Just take it consistently, and you will open up to a vast amount of knowledge about yourself, how things work, and nature. It’s going to transcend you truly.
Matt: We talk about the knees, the legs, the lower body, sitting down. This is something that I saw Bikram demonstrate. He said, “Look, you’ve got to lift the leg up; it’s got to come up and over.” If I cross my leg right close to the knee, not in a million years, am I ever going to get this. But if I lift it up and over, suddenly it’s a whole lot easier to do.
Michele: The higher you lift the leg, the more space you create, and it gets better.
Matt: It’s not about the flexibility of the ankle. It’s not all the flexibility I need when I lift up. This is all about building flexibility and stability in my hip and the thighs crossing. Then I may or may not be able to get the wrap, depending on how much flexibility I have in my ankles.
Michele: You’ve got to start somewhere. And remember, you’re warmed up enough to try, and we’re asking you to be on one leg, because guess what’s coming: all those standing, locked-out knee postures. So you’re actually attracting more concentration to try.
Sarah: We don’t talk about concentration in Eagle pose, but you have to concentrate. You have to suck the stomach in. You have to concentrate. And the more you do that, the more you can balance.
Matt: The other one is, which, of course, applies to all of the postures we do everywhere. You should never be sinking or collapsing.
Michele: And the hips are supposed to be in the chair.
Sarah: There are so many things coming up that we need to be aware of. You’re practicing consistently, and if things get worse, please ask a question. It’s your technique. It’s not the posture, it’s not you.
Michele: Exactly. Please do that. How can we go, “Oh, I hurt myself, so I’m going to take a week off.” Maybe you should talk to a teacher about the posture area that hurts, and we can see if there’s something you didn’t do quite the right way.
Matt: It goes back to pain. There are two types of pain. There is the screeching, screaming pain of agony that the body is screaming at you, stop, stop, stop, stop. And then there’s all the other kinds of pain, which is just your body giving you information. And so if it’s hurting, the message isn’t, stop doing it. The message is to pay attention to what you’re doing, become more interested in it, and try to understand what’s contributing to it.
We talked about lifting the leg up. But another thing that’s very common, and again, as related to range of motion, no matter how much you cross the legs, you can get stuck there, and there’s this big gap. You often hear the teacher mention trying to eliminate the gap between the leg and the foot. And they say some other stuff, but usually you don’t hear it, which is also to eliminate the gap underneath the knee, yeah? So, if you push the foot down, the hip moves to accommodate that.
Michele: Let’s talk about that for a second. When I watch Matt do it, he doesn’t put so much stress on his knee. Instead, he focuses more on the upper thighs, keeping them nice and tight. If you didn’t have that, I feel like the pressure’s on your knee. And then there’s another part too: we have to lift the chest.
I feel a flushing here, in the lymphatic and reproductive systems, and the femoral artery, all that. I can hear Emmy Cleaves also saying that we lose our lumbar curve, just by the way that we sit in chairs. And she’s always saying in this posture to lift the chest up and reestablish the lower lumbar curve. You see people go straight down. It’s not straight down; it’s down, but it’s back at the end, lifting up a little bit more.
Remember, this is what’s returning range of motion, which is something we often take for granted. Everybody’s entitled to this. Whether you’re what we call negative 10,000, meaning maybe you’re coming back from never working out, or you’ve had severe injuries, or you have pins in your knees, or whatever. Or you’re somebody who’s been healthy and been an athlete your whole life. You come in here and start from scratch. And the more you do this, the more you’ll maintain what is, what should be your normal health for you to lead the life you want to lead. Everybody has the capacity to do it. Which is why we do it, which is why we love it, right? It doesn’t favor anybody.
Okay, this was such a great conversation about Eagle pose, you guys. And that was the warm-up series. So now we’re gonna leave you to have your party. Party time! Have some water, and we’ll see you soon.