My Struggle with the Half Moon Pose



My mentor, Jill Miller, taught me to address "those poses we hate." Everyone has a certain yoga pose that they resist doing because it's just plain hard and seems impossibly insurmountable. So what we need to do is go after that pose. Doing all of the poses that we're already good at isn't going to provide us with as much benefit as it would to overcome whatever challenges are held in the mastery of that baneful pose.

So my Battlestar Gallactica is ARDHA CHANDRASANA, the half-moon pose.


I can get close to the pose if I turn my head to face the ground, but if I want to follow Iyengar, I should be looking upwards, and that's when I lose it. I tumble, usually backwards.

Working the Yoga Tune Up® way, I first did some preparatory exercises and other poses to open me up and stretch me out in all the right places.






But what really made my Half Moon shine was putting my heel on the fence.
I could then adjust my body in a closed chain instead of flailing around mid-air. Once I established my center and held the position for a while on both sides. I tried it again without using the fence and I found, I could finally hold my best current version of Ardha Chandrasana to date.



Still a work in progress. Enjoying the ride.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I agree, Jason. My boss, Leeann Carey, says the same thing about the importance of addressing the yoga poses that cause us frustration. She has a free yoga video on half moon pose that you & your readers might like: http://planetyoga.com/yoga-blogs/index.php/free-yoga-video-pose-breakdown-of-half-moon-pose/
August 4, 2010 at 11:39 AM
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