105 – Physical Alignment – Personal check

Every body is different, and your practice should be targeted based on personal current state.

What is your current state?

Back

• Stand with your back against the wall, feet roughly 2-3 feet away from the wall (approx 1 foot distance between parallel feet; it’s like you are leaning against the wall with your feet ahead of you).
  • Ensure your back is against the wall, and try to make it flat. This includes the back of your shoulders, down to your lower back.
  • If not flat, then try increasing the distance of the feet from the wall appropriately.

Analysis:

Ideally, you should be able to flatten your back even when the feet are very close to the wall. This might take time, so definitely do NOT push yourself if the pose is not immediately accessible.

This could indicate tightness in the hips, shoulders and spine if you are unable to do flatten your back.

Hips

• Sit in Dandasana (Staff Pose); sit on your sit bones¹, feet stretched out forward, active and toes pointed up.
  • Confirm if you are sitting on your sit bones. If you don’t understand what that means, you probably have tight hamstrings. I was 42 when I realized this, and 44 when I was able to do it! See the video at this link on sit bones to better understand.
  • If you cannot sit on your sit bones, try placing block(s) under your hip. Initially I had to use 4 blocks, my hamstrings were that tight. As of writing this article, I now use 2 blocks which took ~1 year practice (this will depend person to person, and based on routines). Update: as of August I have been using one block for about a month. The main change has been Upavishta Konasana for 20 to 60 mins a day.
• Do a forward bend, but ensure your back is concave, i.e. bend with active legs until the point that your back starts loosing the concave curve.
  • Look with a mirror (or use a phone/camera to record yourself), and see at what point this occurs. If this occurs prior to 90 degrees, you need to work on your hips.

Analysis:

If your hips are tight, a lot of the asanas/postures will seem weird, uncomfortable. The way to proceed would be to use props, and pay close attention to the alignment.

Shoulders

• Sitting in a comfortable asana (Sukhasana, Swastikasana …) , raise your hands above your head and join the palms.
  • The palms should be completely touching, the fingers should be closed and pointed up.
  • the shoulders should be relaxed.
  • If possible the elbows should be straight.
    • NOTE: if you tense your shoulders to straighten your elbows, you have gone too far. Your shoulders need to be relaxed.
  • Ideally your hands should be straight up, with no tensing in the shoulders/arms, else you need to work on loosening your shoulders.
• Similar to what was done for the back, stand with back flat against the wall, and also ensure that both the shoulders are touching (try rolling your shoulders back)
  • raise your hands from the sides along the wall, and join them in Namaskar Mudra.
  • keeping the elbows on the wall, start straightening them.

Analysis:

If you are unable to straighten your elbows following the above instructions, you probably have tight shoulders.

Note that there are multiple movements/motions possible, and tightness can indicate one or all of them

Feet

When placing load on the soles of your feet, the pressure should be equally spread out between the toes, balls of the feet, outer edge of the sole and the heels.

Additional Information, really helpful!

Link to a blog that has additional details with pictures. This is for the overall body, I would highly recommend reading it.

¹sit bones:

Are the bones under the flesh of the butt that you sit on. Please see video at this link for additional details.