What Does Your Side Angle Pose Look Like?

Utthita Parsva Konasana or Extended Side Angle Pose

The Bhagavad Gita gives us two definitions of yoga: Yoga is skill in action (B.G. 2-50) and Yoga is equanimity of mind (B.G. 2-48).

One of the best ways to learn more about your yoga poses is by either practicing in front of a mirror, having someone take a picture of you in a pose, or looking at yourself on the screen in a zoom class.  This is often very humbling.  We are often not as advanced as we think we are!  I know I have often been surprised by the fact that what I look like in my mind and how I look on screen are very different. Seeing yourself is a great way to learn and and develop skill. Awareness is always the first step in growth.  

Side Angle Pose is a building block towards other advanced poses so it is important to work on and understand Parsva Konasana.

Take a picture of yourself in Side Angle pose from the front and from your head side. Then compare your pose to an example of a well done posture.  Be wary of some of the poses you find online on Facebook or Instagram.  While you may find some very correctly executed postures, there are many more not so well executed.  Like these examples:

Here my front thigh is lower than horizontal and my back leg is collapsing.

Here I have collapsed my neck and shoulder on the lower side and I am not a straight line from my outer back foot up to my top fingers.

For skillfully executed postures, I recommend looking in Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar. Or, for an online source click here to see a three-dimensional view of Parsva Konasana.

Mr. Iyengar demonstrating the alignment of Parsva Konasana

How does your pose measure up?  Can you look at yourself critically but lovingly?   Don’t beat yourself up by how bad you might think your pose looks.  Instead, look at what you are doing that is good and work to build on that.  Look at where you need to move to.  Knowing where you are helps you move towards where you want to be. Remember the definitions of yoga refer to skillful action and equanimity of mind, not perfection in asana.

Sometimes students look at a pose and see certain things that they attach importance to, such as the hand on the floor in Side Angle Pose.  While the hand on the floor is a goal, you have to first look at the skill of that action.

The full version of Side Angle Pose is with the front knee bent 90 degrees, the knee is over the ankle and the front thigh is parallel to the floor.  The upper side of the body should be a straight line from the outer edge of the back foot up to the tips of the fingers of the top hand.

Side view

But, you also have to look at the pose from the front.  The body should be very 2 dimensional from the front.  That means that the outer buttock of the front leg should be in line with the outer knee, which is in line with the outer heel.  The buttocks should not be winging out.

In this view, I have the outer buttock of my front leg in line with the outer knee and my chest is facing sideways. This is skillful action

In this view, you can see that my buttocks are winging out and my chest is facing slightly downward rather than shining out to the side.  This usually happens when a student prioritizes getting the hand to the floor over the form of the pose.

If I didn’t have the flexibility to get my hand to the floor, I would be better off placing my hand on a block, or my elbow on my knee if I didn’t have a block, and turning my chest open and then gradually, over time, I would be able to lower my hand to the floor.

A beautiful, modified pose.

One interesting way to do Side Angle Pose is lying down on the floor. The floor will serve as a guide as to align your shoulders, buttocks and hips in the same plane. If you take classes with me you will often hear me say that there are only 12 yoga poses and they are done in different relationships to gravity. When you are doing Side Angle while standing, gravity helps you bend deeply into your front leg. When you do it lying down on the floor, gravity will help turn your chest open. Doing poses lying down on the floor can also show you what you do and don’t know about where to place your body.

Can we learn to be skillful in practice? Can I find equanimity in backing off from grasping for the full pose until I develop the skill to enter the pose gracefully?

Anatomy of the Spirit – Introduction

Introduction to Anatomy of the Spirit

Caroline Myss describes a couple of lessons she learned early in life that helped her to understand how energy works in the body.

The first was an assignment she had in a journalism class in college where the instructor was trying to emphasize the importance of objectivity in accurate newspaper reporting.  Objectivity was defined as being emotionally detached from the subject on which you were reporting and seeking out only the “facts” that describe a situation.  The professor asked the students to imagine that a building was on fire and that four reporters, each standing on a different corner,  were covering the story.  Each reporter would have a different view of the same event.  Each would interview the people on his or her own corner.  The question the teacher posed to the class was: Which reporter had the real facts and accurate viewpoint?  That is, which reporter saw the truth?

The other one involved an encounter with a Native American woman in Alaska. This woman, Rachel, told Caroline that “Life is simple.  You are born into life to care for each other and for the earth.  And then you receive word that your time is coming to an end and you must make the proper arrangements to depart, leaving behind no ‘unfinished business’.  You must make your apologies, pass on your tribal responsibilities and accept from the tribe its gratitude and love for your time with them.”

Rachel then told Caroline that she was going to a ceremony the next night.  A man is preparing to leave the earth and he will give to the tribe all of his belongings.  He will lay his tools and clothes in a long dish.  The tribe will symbolically accept his belongings, meaning that he will be released from any tribal responsibilities so that he can complete the work of his spirit.  Then he will leave us.

Caroline asked Rachel how the man knew he was going to die. Rachel answered that the medicine man told him.  Caroline wanted to know how  the medicine man knew these things. Rachel said, “How is it that you do not know such things?  How can you live without knowing what your spirit is doing and what your spirit is saying to you?”

These events helped Caroline to understand that “truth” and “reality” are only matters of perception.  She eventually came to understand that we weave our spirits into everything we do and everyone we meet.  She also came to realize that our life choices express our spirit and affect our health.

Caroline began to use her gifts of intuition and symbolic sight to help people see why they have become ill.  She eventually made the connection between disease, healing and personal power.  She now says that power is the foundation of health.

She describes her journey and her apprenticeship as a medical intuitive and she uses this book to teach people how to discover their own intuitive abilities.  She claims that everyone is born with intuition and that it is less a gift than it is a skill that can be cultivated.  She teaches us the stages in this book.

Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss - From the Foreward

Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss

The single most important question that people have asked throughout history has been “What is my purpose in life.”  Caroline answers this question simply and profoundly.  One’s purpose is to live in a manner that is consistent with one’s spiritual ideals, to live the Golden Rule every moment of one’s life and to live every thought as a sacred prayer.

In this book Caroline Myss invites you to learn to pay attention the subtle energy shifts that you feel when you enter a room filled with people.  She will attempt to teach you how to read the energy and health of every individual in the room.  Even more importantly, she shows you the tools you need to discover how to discern in detail  your own energy and every factor that is draining your intellectual, physical and emotional power.

Quantum physicists have confirmed the reality of the basic vibratory essence of human life, which is what intuitives sense.  Human DNA vibrates at a rate of 52 to 78 gigahertz (billions of cycles per second).  Life energy is not static and intuitives such as Caroline can evaluate it.

This book will give yocu detailed information on the seven power centers of your body.  These centers are critical regulators of the flow of life energy.  They represent the major biological batteries of your emotional biography.  “Your biography becomes your biology” – this forms the center of what Caroline teaches.

This book presents how the major religions understood that the Divine is “locked into our biological system in seven stages of power that lead us to become more refined and transcendent in our personal power.”   Caroline ties together the metaphysical meaning of the Christian sacraments, the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah and the seven chakras of Hindu and Buddhist teachings.  Since knowledge is power, the knowledge presented in this book is the key to personal power.