The Strength to Keep our Hearts Open
By Sara Veltkamp, teacher-in-training
In October, this year’s yoga teachers training (YTT) group met—some online, some in physically distanced person—to kick off our first weekend together.
On Sunday, we started to talk through the most common yoga postures, starting with the Sun A series. When we reached Chaturanga Dandasana—the pose between a plank and upward facing dog that many people dread or skip altogether—the trainees struggled to decide what type of pose it is. Unlike the previous postures, chaturanga doesn’t fall into a standard category like “standing poses” or “inversions.” We eventually settled on calling it a “transitional pose.” But then teacher trainer and studio owner Jess Pierno jumped in to say something that is still sitting with me, one month later: “It may be a transition, but it’s still a pose.”
Sara Veltkamp in Chaturanga
Chaturanga is a challenging and often sped-through pose. It isn’t glamorous like dancer pose or satisfying like an arm balance can be, but it is more necessary in many ways.
It builds strength for what comes after. It moves us from the surrender of forward fold to the beautiful and heart-opening posture of upward facing dog in a Sun A series.
For many of us, 2020 has felt like a long transition. Things are changing all around us, and we are holding our breath and waiting to see how our country and the world will come out on the other side. Many people just want to wake up and have the year be over or find out it was all a terrible dream. To this, I say, “It may be a transition, but it’s still a pose.” In chaturanga, we strengthen the muscles supporting our spine and our upper body so that when it’s time, we can push down with all our might to turn our faces to the sun, fully support our arching spine, and crack open our chests to meet the life that is here.
I can’t think of a more beautiful metaphor for 2020. Despite being a brutal, transitional year, I hope that instead of rushing through it, we take from it what we need to keep going.
May we realize our strength and our intrinsic ability to adjust to change. May we see the abundance of support around us in our friend networks, mutual aid circles, and families. May we let kind acts and loving expressions give us hope for the future and remind us that we are all in this together. The next time you’re holding chaturanga in class and your arms are shaking, or you’ve forgotten to breathe, exhale and then smile. It’s not easy or glamorous, but it’s necessary to build strength for what’s next.
Ready to give it a try?
Start in a table-top position, then step your feet back to plank. Your shoulders should be stacked directly over your wrists, heels pushing back, and the crown of your head energetically reaching forward. Rock forward by moving onto your tip-toes so that your shoulders are further than your wrists. At this point, adjust your Drishti slightly forward, somewhere between the top of your mat and a foot in front of it. You don’t want to bend your neck to look forward; just move the gaze, as where the gaze goes, the energy flows.
Bend your elbows 90 degrees, keeping them tight to the sides of the body. This is easiest if your energy moves forward and you are as zipped up as possible through the core. You’ll want to avoid scrunching the shoulders up around the ears and over-relying on the trapezius muscles. They’ll try to take over because they’re often more robust than many of the small muscles in the upper back. Hold this pose for as long as you’d like to be challenged.
If this is too tough or you have an injury, you can still find challenges in a modified transition and work up to the full pose. I recently recuperated from a shoulder injury and often held plank for an extended period, pushing back into a down dog with other yogis. If you’d like to do a modified version of the pose and start building strength, bend your knees and place them on the mat and proceed through the pose this way, being careful to maintain core stability and not dump any weight into the lower back.