4/26/2017 Ashtanga Practice Journal

Am I Doing Adho Mukha Svanasana Right?

I continued to work on the ARM & ELBOW today with awareness to "correct" my bad habit of collapsing in Downward Facing Dog. What I meant by collapsing was to do the Downward Facing Dog with slacked forearms and hyperextended elbows. Either my teacher's assistant could read my mind or we had some sort of connection, he had been adjusting my arms and elbows more than usual this week.

I uploaded a video I took last week on Facebook. It was interesting to see how I went into Collapsing Dog from Urdhva Mukha Svanasana first and corrected myself in the next second with consciousness. I wanted to get rid of such bad habit even though I felt like getting a good shoulder stretch in Collapsing Dog. With awareness and focus, I was able to avoid myself from collapsing in Downward Facing Dog today. I just need to continue working on it.  

Besides Adho Mukha Svanasana, I also back offed from locking elbows in various poses; however, I still hyperextended my elbows in two poses, Prasarita Padottanasana C and Halasana. In both poses, I had my fingers interlaced behind me. I tried to leverage locked elbows to draw my hands (interlaced fingers) overhead toward the ground. I felt I didn't have enough shoulder flexibility. If I kept the elbow soft, I would be further away from touching the ground. I had the eager to achieve the end goal, hands touched the ground, so I "cheated" to bring myself closer to it. Instead of doing so, I should focus on opening my shoulders, which would be beneficial to the back bend as well. Speaking of back bend, I was able to do the drop back without any prop today. I did four rounds of drop back without moving my feet. I was so proud of myself!!!