Inspiration

Virabhadra—the fierce spiritual warrior. When Shiva’s consort Shakti was killed by the chief of the gods, Daksha, Shiva tore out his hair in grief and anger, creating the fierce warrior Virabhadra from his locks. With a thousand arms, three burning eyes, and fiery hair, Virabhadra wore a garland of skulls and carried many terrifying weapons. Bowing at Shiva’s feet and asking his will, Virabhadra was directed by Shiva to lead his army against Daksha to avenge Shakti’s death, which he did with immediate success.

Like Shiva, Virabhadra’s aim in destruction is not revenge but to destroy the real enemy, which is the ego standing in the way of humility. Approaching the asanas named for Virabhadra—Virabhadrasana I, II, and III—we can encourage students to cultivate the mind of the spiritual warrior, aware of all sides, unattached to attainment, centered in one’s being.

Staying focused in the practice, holding on in the midst of fear and intensity, the spirit of Virabhadra helps students discover the strength and humility to explore challenges in their practice and life with greater courage and determination.

With twenty-six bones that form twenty-five joints, twenty muscles, and a variety of tendons and ligaments, the feet are certainly complex. This complexity is related to their role, which is to support the entire body with a dynamic foundation that allows us to stand, walk, run, and have stability and mobility in life. In yoga they are the principal foundation for all the standing poses and active in all inversions and arm balances, most back-bends and forward bends, and many twists and hip openers. Meanwhile they are also subjected to almost constant stress, ironically one of the greatest stresses today coming from a simple tool originally designed to protect them: shoes. Giving close attention to our feet—getting them strong, flexible, balanced, aligned, rooted, and resilient—is a basic starting point for building or guiding practically any yoga practice, including seated meditation.

In order to support the weight of the body, the tarsal and metatarsal bones are constructed into a series of arches. The familiar medial arch is one of two longitudinal arches (the other is called the lateral arch). Due to its height and the large number of small joints between its component parts, the medial arch is relatively more elastic than the other arches, gaining additional support from the tibialis posterior and peroneus longus muscles from above. The lateral arch possesses a special locking mechanism, allowing much more limited movement. In addition to the longitudinal arches, there are a series of transverse arches. At the posterior part of the metatarsals and the anterior part of the tarsus these arches are complete, but in the middle of the tarsus they present more the characters of half-domes, the concavities of which are directed inferiorly and medially, so that when the inner edges of the feet are placed together and the feet firmly rooted down, a complete tarsal dome is formed. When this action is combined with the awakening of the longitudinal arches, we create pada bandha, which is a key to stability in all standing poses (and a key source of mula bandha).

However, the feet do not stand alone, even in Tadasana, nor do they independently support movement. Activation of the feet begins in the legs as we run lines of energy from the top of our femur bones down through our feet. This creates a “rebounding effect.” Imagine the feeling of being heavier when riding up in an elevator, or lighter when riding down. The pressure of the elevator floor up against your feet not only makes you feel heavier, it has the effect of causing the muscles in your legs to engage more strongly. Similarly, when you intentionally root down from the tops of your thighbones down into your feet, the muscles in your calves and thighs engage. This not only creates the upward pull on the arches of pada bandha (primarily from the stirrup-like effect of activating the tibialis posterior and peroneus longus muscles) but creates expansion through the joints and a sense of being more firmly grounded yet resilient in your feet while longer and lighter up through your body.

Teaching Pada Bandha

•    Bring the class to standing with their feet together at the front of their mat.

•    Ask them to look down at their feet and lift and spread their toes wide apart.

•    Keeping the toes lifted, guide your students to feel the inner edges of the balls of their feet (about an inch in from the space between the big toe and the fourth toe) and to press that point more firmly down into the floor.

•    Now ask students to repeatedly release the toes down and lift them up while keeping the inner edges of the balls of their feet rooting down, noticing how, with the toes lifted, the inner ankles and ankles automatically lift.

•    Encourage the class to try to keep their inner arches and ankles lifted and to feel how this creates a sense of lifting the center of each foot like a pyramid, awakening pada bandha. The challenge arises in trying to maintain this awakening of the feet while allowing the toes to release softly down and spread into the floor.

•    With pada bandha active, draw their attention to the rebounding effect, feeling the stronger activation of their leg muscles, awakening of their inner thighs, and lengthening up through their entire body.

Pada bandha, the energetic awakening of the feet through the stirrup-like effect of contracting the tibialis posterior and peroneus longus muscles on the lower leg, can be intimately related to the activation of mula bandha and uddiyana bandha. The fascial attachments of these two muscles interweave with those of the hip adductors, which have origins in and around the ischial tuberosities (the sitting bones). The sitting bones are the lateral aspects of the perineum, with the pubic symphysis at the front and the coccyx at the back. The front half of this diamond is the urogenital triangle, a landmark for the urogenital diaphragm, a hammock-like layer that is created by three sets of muscles: transverse perineal (connecting the two sitting bones), bulbospongiosus (surrounding the vagina or bulb of the penis), and ischiocavernosus (connecting the ischium to the clitoris or covering the penile crura) (Hatley Aldous 2004, 41).Contracting this set of muscles awakens the levator ani muscle, another hammock-like layer composed of the coccygeus, iliococcygeus, and the pubococcygeus muscles. When these muscles contract, they pull the entire pelvic floor up and naturally stimulate the awakening of core abdominal muscles with attachments at the pubis (including the TA and RA). This is the muscular action of mula bandha, which creates a feeling of grounded levity in the asana practice, supports the pelvis organs, creates an upward movement of energy, and stimulates uddiyana bandha. With practice, mula bandha can be accessed directly (i.e., independently of pada bandha) and steadily maintained throughout asana practice.

Uddiyana bandha is among the most misunderstood aspects of practice, owing in part to very different definitions and instructions from different traditions and teachers. In its basic form, uddiyana bandha involves pulling the entire abdominal region strongly back toward the spine and then up toward the breastbone when completely empty of breath. Its engagement is part of specific pranayama and kriya practices, not asana practice, yet many teachers instruct students to engage it while doing asanas. In asana practice we want the breath to flow smoothly, continuously, and fully, which requires the full, natural functioning of the diaphragm. However, uddiyana bandha prevents the diaphragm from expanding naturally, thus severely restricting the inhalation of breath.

The confusion about uddiyana bandha arises from a very different breath-related muscular action in the lower abdomen that we do want to cultivate in asana practice. With each and every complete exhale the major abdominal muscles naturally contract (primarily the TAs but also the obliques and the RA). When this occurs along with mula bandha, the very light, subtle engagement of these abdominal muscles can accentuate, deepen, and give more stability and ease to the body in many (but not all) asanas and asana transitions. Indeed, in some asanas we want the belly to be quite relaxed in order for the spine, pelvis, and breath to move appropriately for those asanas. We can refer to this as “uddiyana bandha light” to distinguish it from the full form of uddiyana bandha done in pranayama.

Mula bandha and uddiyana bandha are tools that can be variously engaged to support different energetic actions in the practice. In no situation do we want to grip the belly as in full uddiyana bandha, which restricts the breath in asana practice. Nor do we want to create tightness in the pelvic floor. Rather, mula bandha and uddiyana bandha are best cultivated as light and steady energetic lifting actions that draw energy up and into the core of the body while allowing that energy to radiate out and fuel the practice. The balance of the qualities comes with practice, and with time is increasingly subtle yet pervasive in its effects.

The primary goal in teaching asanas is to enable students to perceive and understand more clearly what they are doing in developing a sustainable personal practice, whether in a class or independently. But there are many different ways of learning that require a varied approach to teaching. How people learn is closely tied to what educator Howard Gardner (1993) refers to as “qualities of multiple intelligence,” which vary considerably in any given class of yoga students. In yoga classes, where the learning objectives include conceptual, emotional, physical, and metaphysical elements, the full range of multiple intelligences are in play. At the same time, a human being is more than his or her intellectual powers; motivation, personality, emotions, physical health, and personal will are more significant than a particular learning style in shaping how, where, and when one learns. This suggests that effective yoga instruction takes into account these variables in engaging with students while still appreciating the following learning styles:

•     Visual/spatial: Tend to think in pictures and need vivid mental images to retain information, underlining the importance of demonstrating every asana.

•     Verbal/linguistic: Tend to think in words rather than pictures and have highly developed auditory skills, thus needing clearly enunciated verbal descriptions of asanas.

•     Bodily/kinesthetic: Process and remember information through interacting with the space around them and need to directly experience asanas.

•     Musically/rhythmically inclined: Think in sounds, rhythms, and patterns and may be highly sensitive to environmental sounds. Can benefit from being encouraged to tune in more closely the sound and rhythm of their breath. They may also benefit from soft music that syncopates with the rhythm of a class.

•     Interpersonal: Try to see things from other people’s point of view; use both verbal and nonverbal cues to open up and maintain communication channels with others; need to feel a sense of genuine presence from their teacher in the learning process.

•     Intrapersonal: Tend to be absorbed in trying to comprehend their feelings, dreams, relationships, strengths, and weaknesses; benefit from having more time and space to explore what an asana is about for them as they explore their practice.