 FOREARM WHEEL POSE; Dwi Pada Viparita DandasanaI recently decided to do this asana tutorial because Forearm Wheel has been showing up more frequently in my practice lately, as well as being requested by my students as a peak asana to work up to in their private sessions. This tutorial requires some yoga props, but most things are easily substituted with similar household items; however, you will need a yoga wheel for this particular entry into the pose. I have two: the one you see in these photos is a Dharma Yoga Wheel, and I believe it was also the first on the market. {You can learn more about it and purchase one for yourself here. With shipping to Canada, it'll cost around $100-150 CAD.} I actually got this one as a birthday gift a few years ago (thanks mom!) and have used it regularly ever since. I recently bought another yoga wheel from Winners so that I can use this prop more effectively while teaching pairs. I have no idea what brand it is, but it cost $40, feels a little lighter than the Dharma Wheel, but appears to work just as well (I've just had it for a couple of weeks so far). The other props I'm using in this tutorial are a resistance band and a foam roller, but are totally optional. If you don't have a resistance band, you can use any sort of strap/belt/scarf etc. that you can hold wider than your hips and create some tension with. If you don't have a foam roller, I feel sad for you. Just kidding! (But, I have found this to be a very worthwhile investment.) You can skip this step, or maybe grab a tennis ball and roll around on that a little to release tension in your back, neck, shoulders and hips. This is a full-body backbend! It requires quite a bit of opening, and lots of love.  Warming Up The Body For A Deep BackbendThe first two squares show me "shoulder flossing". (Weird name, awesome exercise.) With a resistance band or other strap, sit tall and hold the strap quite a bit wider than the width of your hips (you can try one round and adjust your grip if you haven't gotten it quite right on the first attempt.) With a deep inhale, slowly reach the strap forward and up over your head, keeping wrists straight and shoulders square. Engage your core, and as you exhale, slowly bring the band behind your head and down toward the floor, maintaining proper alignment throughout the range of motion. On the next inhale, reverse the process, bringing the band back up and over your head, and down to your lap with the exhale. {Repeat 4-5x} The next two squares are assisted Cow Face (Gomukhasana) arms. I don't actually need the strap for this, but I like using it to strengthen my chest and shoulders even more by pulling in opposite directions. Start by bringing the strap into one hand and stretching that arm up toward the ceiling on an inhalation. On your exhale, bend at the elbow and reach between your shoulder blades. With another deep breath, swing the other arm out and around your back with palm facing out; grab the strap as close to your top hand as you're comfortable with. Keep your shoulders square, chest lifted, and core engaged. Stretch the strap or reach elbows in opposite directions with fingers clasped to open even more deeply through the chest, upper back and shoulders. Make sure you're maintaining steady breath in and out through your nose! {Hold for 3-5 breaths, each side.} The middle square is a palm press in Hero. I've got a little yoga pad in there for some extra hip/bum support, but you can absolutely do this without, or alternatively with toes tucked for extra foot stretching, or sitting on a block/pillow for added support through the hips and knees. Sit tall with a long spine and interlace your fingers in front of your chest. With an inhale, rotate your palms outward in front of you, and bring your arms up and back toward your ears. If you have a lot of tension in the shoulders, you might soften your arms slightly and bend at the elbows as much as needed. If you're feeling pretty good here, stretch your arms back even further for more front-side opening. {Hold as long as you'd like, or 3-5 deep breaths.} The final four squares show me getting acquainted with the foam roller. (The one I've got here is Gaiam, and I bought it at Rexall for around $30-40. You can get one directly from their site for $20.99 right now, but I'm not sure of shipping costs.) To be honest, I don't really have any pro tips for this one! My best advice is to make sure you're breathing deeply as you move (or stay in one spot) and bring your awareness into the subtle layers of your body to discover where you most need the attention. {Roll about for as long as you please!}  Using a Yoga Wheel to build your Forearm Wheel**Before we go further, I just want to add that this is a fairly advanced backbend and you should feel reasonably ready to bring your body into this position before giving it a go. Don't panic if you don't get lift-off at first! Just keep working on building it up, bit by bit, until eventually you find yourself in the full expression of the pose.** The first two squares show your basic Cat-Cow tilts. You do these from a Table Top position, in synchronization with the breath. Rooting down through the hands and knees, inhale to come into Cow Pose, lifting the hips, relaxing your belly down, drawing the chest forward and looking up. As you exhale, slowly move into Cat Pose, rounding your spine and looking up at the belly. Be mindful to move as fluidly as possible. {Repeat 4-5x} The next square is a supported heart-opener. Grab your yoga wheel and come to a seated position. Press the wheel into your sacrum in line with your spine, and take a deep breath to find as much extension as possible. As you exhale, *lengthen your spine over the wheel, dropping your head back as much as you're comfortable with through the neck. Root down through the sits bones and base of the spine and breathe deeply into the entirety of your lungs, using the breath to expand the front side of the body. Bring your arms where you like them, shoulders relaxed. Stay as long as you feel supported. *I use these words intentionally; it's easy to sort of collapse onto the wheel, but we're trying to create as much space as possible between the spinal discs to avoid compression as we deepen the bend. The next two squares show me giving my spine and back-body some love with the wheel. Just as with the foam roller, move intuitively, using your breath to guide you. (And make sure to keep the wheel along your spine so you don't fall off to the side!) The next four squares are broken down in more detail below:  Climbing the Peak: Getting Into Forearm WheelFollow the basic steps outlined in the above graphic, keeping these things in mind:
 BKS Iyengar demonstrating Dwi Pada Viparita Dandasana Remember to go at your own pace, stay with your breath, and always maintain proper alignment while seeking more depth.
If you have any questions, send them to me here! And if you haven't yet, check out the Heart Opening sequence in my Online Studio, where you can always practice for free. I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial!
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 Taking a step back isn’t the same thing as going backwards; sometimes we’re too close to what’s right in front of us and just need to gain a clearer perspective, a broader view of what lies ahead. Sometimes we forget ourselves, getting lost in the idea of a different kind of life, moving too quickly toward an ambition that doesn’t fit quite right, like a well-laid plan to move into a new camp that instead takes us deep into the wilderness.
I’ve always had a compulsion to continue moving forward and I often find myself fumbling over my own two feet; I accelerate too quickly and have to slam on the brakes to avoid getting myself into a massive wreck. But the thing is, I’m trusting myself more and more these days, getting clearer messages from the heart and using that direction to follow my internal compass. Losing something is not the same as total failure. A setback is also an opportunity to reorient yourself. And no matter how many steps backward you need to take to get back on track, the things and people you meet along the path will always make the journey worthwhile. I’m keeping my heart open, my mind clear and my spine strong, trusting that every step is the right one, not getting lost in the disappointment of what is versus what could have been. And with this unwavering faith in the universe to set me right, I know I’ll always end up where I need to be; the adventure is never over unless we decide to stop travelling, and it’s not so much about where we’re headed but how we choose to get there.  I had to adjust the language I was using around my current circumstances.
* “My life is falling apart” - things that were not working for me have slipped away so that I can keep moving toward my higher self. * “It can’t get much worse” - it could, if I lost my health, my pets, friends or family. It would be much worse if I had no place to stay and no money to feed myself. And it would also be worse if I let myself slip into pessimism and despair. * “I have nothing left” - this is probably the greatest lie. I have SO MUCH to be grateful for, and to be honest, I’m feeling that now more than ever. * The way we choose our language while healing is critically important. You are developing a narrative, a healing blueprint for future suffering, and the path you take will largely depend on the way you’ve been speaking to yourself. Make the language kind, and accurate. All is not lost. All is never lost. #heal (July 19, 2019)  This is not the life I envisioned for myself when I was younger, but I’m so happy I’ve had the courage to deviate from the plan and from the expectations of myself and others; had I not leaned into this knowing and deep trust, perhaps I would have gotten the life I envisioned but was not actually meant to live... As a child, I understood what it meant to listen to my heart. As an adult, I quickly began to lose that connection. I wrote off intuition as simply fear, proof of my own inadequacy. I hushed that voice over and over until it became a whisper and eventually faded away completely. And as that voice softened into oblivion my own light began to dim as well.
I’ve spent a lot of time wading through muddy waters, just trying to find my way back to heart centre. But this connection is never lost - it’s as though your radio is tuned to the wrong frequency and only static is getting through, until you turn the dial precisely to where it needs to be to make that connection and receive the broadcast with clarity. And until you do, you get these fuzzy messages with missing pieces, coming in and out of being in a clunky, uncomfortable way. This process of dialling in is what connects us to our higher purpose. We’re not meant to simply get through each day; we’re here to live fully and experience all that life has to offer, and for each of us, that looks and feels a bit different. All is not lost when the things you’ve built start to crumble; maybe it was time to build on more solid ground, anyway. When things shift, especially when it feels confronting and difficult, try to remind yourself that you might just be turning that dial, finding a way back to the truest message that comes directly from the heart - the one that reminds you who you really are. ♡ (July 13, 2019)  how do you ride the downswings?
i have this tendency to get lost in the shadows, to sink down with the setbacks and panic when life balances out all of the beauty and sweetness with long nights and darker days. i forget about balance. i forget that yin can be heavy and sticky and while sometimes terrifying, still safe. still okay. still necessary. i lose my grip on gratitude and feel stuck when the truth is that i’m just merging through a slow spot. (‘keep your eyes on the road’) • and there is much to learn from these trying times-- the most profound lessons are always found in the darkness. i have to tell my heart: we won’t be on this road forever. day will break again soon (it always does). and then, i’ll see through the tall trees and realize that i’m always held in love. everything will be okay. everything is already perfect.  And so it is. Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 - December 22, 2019) passed away peacefully in his Hawaii home yesterday, surrounded by his loved ones. I never had the good fortune of personally meeting him, though his teachings influenced my life in a way that will forever impact the nature of my heart in this lifetime. When asked who my teachers are, Ram Dass is the first person I mention: my "love guru"; he was a Bhakti yogi who taught me innumerable lessons about truly living a path of love. He taught me how to see people as souls. My heart is bursting with gratitude for being blessed by his divine love and yet I can't stop the tears from flowing; between gasping for breath and clenching my chest there is laughter, because one of his greatest lessons was on how to live blissfully in the temporality of existence: As long as you identify with that which dies, there is always fear of death, because it's the fear of cessation of existence." And he will never really be gone because he lives in the hearts of so many others who will continue to pass on his teachings to those around them. If you've been to one of my yoga classes or guided meditations in recent years, it's very likely that you've heard me speak about him, directly quote him, or play one of the songs he collaborated on with East Forest. I will forever love him and share this love with anyone who will listen. Beginning his life as Richard Alpert and finding great success in academia, Ram Dass went through his own transformation in the 60s, having pursued power and prestige in the earlier years of his life and then coming to understand (originally through the potency of a profound first psilocybin experience) that the radiant and incomparable power of love lived inside of him. He subsequently travelled to India and met his guru, Maharaji, who gave him the name Ram Dass and ushered in his next great spiritual awakening. It was the unconditional love of his guru that set him on the path of Bhakti yoga, himself becoming the embodiment of pure love and undertaking a total devotion to sharing these lessons for the remainder of his beautiful life. Ram Dass has taught thousands of us how to free our hearts from the anxieties of living and the trap of eternal seeking. He taught me how to uplift my own heart and elevate my consciousness through simple mantras and reminders of the gift of life - I am loving awareness / love everyone and tell the truth / be here now. From the ego, death is a stopping point - it's the end of the ego. Death is a ceremony. The ego sees death as suffering, and the soul sees death as the awakening of a new world, a new perspective." Welcome to a new world, dear one. You will never be forgotten.   Sarasponda Yoga has gone quiet in recent months as I’ve moved through some major changes in my life. I’ve been focused on making this transition with patience and grace and have been sharing my experience primarily through my personal page on Instagram.
It’s been a time of massive growth and transformation, and I wanted to wait until I felt solid ground under my feet before sharing more on the yoga side of things. I started this business over three years ago in a hopeless time in my life and it grew into something so much more dynamic and fulfilling than I ever could’ve imagined. Sarasponda Yoga was born of love and hope and a deep trust in the universe, and I’ve always been conscious of honouring and respecting this business that has become such a beautiful blessing in my life. But, I've been neglecting this blog and I feel now like this is the perfect time to return to it. ❁ I left my home in Southern Alberta about a month ago to begin a new chapter in my life, having accepted an incredible offer to join the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise as their yoga instructor. I’m living steps away from Lake Louise and the energy here is so palpable - this stunning landscape has breathed new life into my soul; this feels like a total rebirth, in the best possible way. After having some difficult experiences working with small businesses over the past year or so, I was seeking a mutually supportive work placement that would encourage me in continued personal and professional growth. And the Fairmont has definitely delivered on this; I feel fully supported by my team and really the entire hotel staff. There is so much opportunity here, and I'm just getting started. I’ve been truly blown away by the kindness and heartfelt generosity of the community within the hotel; the people here seem so uplifted by this experience and opportunity that there’s just a general sense of joy and liveliness everywhere you go. This is such an incredible group of humans and I often find myself asking how I got so lucky to become a part of it. Coming to Lake Louise has felt like being adopted into a big, beautiful, loving family; I have so many new brothers and sisters, and I love them with all of my heart. |
