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Enter 1,000-hour teacher trainings, which are cropping up at yoga schools across the country. “We know yoga teaching as a profession is still evolving, and we want to do our part in helping to elevate the standards for teaching,” says Micah Mortali, director of the Kripalu Schools, which now offers a 1,000-hour track that exposes students to a wide range of teachers and lineages. Tiffany Cruikshank, founder of Yoga Medicine, also offers a 1,000-hour training. “I want to raise the bar for yoga teachers, enabling them to have both better credentials and more confidence in their interactions with students,” says Cruikshank. Sounds like the best summer school ever!
“Certain essential oils, such as bergamot, lavender, and linalool, have properties similar to opioid pain medications," says researcher Shaheen Lahkan, MD, PhD, the chief of pain management at Carillion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia. “These aromatherapy chemicals can modulate neurotransmitters in your brain to produce a state of reduced pain perception." Talk to your physician or a certified aromatherapist for advice on what scents and uses would be best for your ailments.
If you find Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose) to be the most awkward part of your Sun Salutation, you’re not alone. Many people flop and strain through it, hoping their alignment will improve with time and grim determination. Unfortunately, that’s wishful thinking. This popular pose requires meticulous alignment and robust muscular engagement. Until you master the actions of the pose, a trouble-free Chaturanga Dandasana will remain out of reach.
To clean up your Chaturanga Dandasana, you have to pull it out of the flow of the traditional rhythmic Sun Salutation, where this dynamic pose can easily devolve into collapsed hips, a flopped belly, and splayed elbows. A sloppy Chaturanga Dandasana is not only awkward, it invites injury to the lower back, shoulders, elbows, and wrists.
In this series of poses, you’ll focus on Chaturanga Dandasana by supporting your body’s weight with props. The support will give you a sense of what the pose is supposed to feel like and also help establish a template for practicing it safely and correctly once the support is removed. Consider the props training wheels for your Chaturanga Dandasana. When you’re ready, reintroduce the traditional pose into your practice gracefully and with confidence.
Action Plan: Here you’ll focus on engaging two complementary muscle groups that surround the scapulae: the rhomboids and the middle fibers of the trapezius, and the serratus anterior and pectoralis minor. The former pull the scapulae toward the spine; the latter pull the scapulae away from your spine. The pectoralis major, the deltoids, the rotator cuff muscles and the latissimus dorsi offer additional upper-body support.
The End Game: Supporting your body’s weight with props allows you to focus on alignment and muscular engagement. Over time, this sequence will reinforce good habits and strengthen your body, leading to a safer and more skillful pose.
Before You Begin: Practicing Chaturanga Dandasana requires some preparatory work to heat the body. Either stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) or sit in Virasana(Hero Pose) and warm up your shoulders with Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose), Garudasana (Eagle Pose), and Viparita Namaskar (Reversed Prayer Pose). To prep the abdominals and hip flexors, take Paripurna Navasana (Full Boat Pose) 3 or 4 times. Finally, prepare your midback (paraspinal muscles) with 2 or 3 rounds of Salabhasana (Locust Pose).
Step 1: Support Your Chest and Abdomen
Let the bolster do the heavy lifting so you can align your hands, arms, and shoulders while you engage your scapulae, or shoulder blades.
To begin, place a bolster lengthwise in the middle of your mat. Lie prone on the bolster so that the top is an inch or two lower than your collarbones. The bolster should feel comfortable and it should support the majority of your weight. Press the balls of your feet into the floor and straighten your legs.
Place your hands alongside your bottom ribs. You’ll know your hands are in the right place when your forearms are vertical. Raise the front of your shoulders so that your upper arms are parallel to the floor and your elbows are at 90 degrees. Look slightly forward to support the lift of your shoulders and chest.
Press your hands firmly into the floor (without lifting off the bolster), and feel the front of your shoulders and chest engage along with the back of your arms. Press your hands down and create a pulling action, as if you were pulling the mat toward your heels. This action engages your side body (the latissimus dorsi muscles) as well as the muscles that connect the inner and bottom borders of your scapulae to your spine.
Squeeze your upper arms toward your ribs. Imagine you have a pocket full of change between your arms and your ribs and you’re loath to drop it. This will help you fire up the muscles that connect the scapulae to the ribs, most notably the serratus anterior.
Finish by firming your quadriceps and your abdominals. Feel the overall composition and alignment of Chaturanga Dandasana, and take 5 to 10 cycles of breath before bringing your knees to the floor and releasing the pose.
Why This Works: By supporting the weight of your body, the bolster shifts your focus to the alignment of your upper body and the muscular actions of the posture.
Step 2: Align Your Arms and Shoulders
Make a loop of approximately shoulder width. Wrap the loop around your arms just above your elbows. Shift your body into Plank Pose with your hands slightly in front of your shoulders. Having your hands in this position (instead of directly below the shoulders) will fire up muscles throughout your body, setting the stage for a healthier pose. Press down into the floor through the base of your fingers and the balls of your feet. Support your posture by engaging the thigh and abdominal muscles. Now you’re ready for the transition into Chaturanga Dandasana.
Shift from the balls of your feet to the tips of your toes. Bend your elbows and lower yourself until the strap supports your bottom ribs. As you do so, continue to shift your upper body forward. Imagine that the movement of the body is like an airplane landing instead of an elevator descending. The strap will help you stop when your elbows are at 90 degrees.
Revisit the actions you worked on in the previous pose. Press firmly into the floor with your hands and lift the front of your shoulders so they’re in line with the elbows. Create a pulling action with your hands as if you’re trying to draw your body forward. Feel how this engages the muscles that line the inner border and bottom tip of your scapulae. These actions will pull your scapulae slightly down and toward your spine. Balance this movement by squeezing your upper arms toward the side of your ribs, engaging the muscles that line the outer border of your scapulae. These actions will strongly tether your scapulae to the back of the rib cage and support a stable, aligned pose.
Keep your thighs firm and your abdominals engaged. Chaturanga Dandasana is not a comfortable pose in which to breathe, nor is it easy to sustain. Do your best to hold the pose for 3 to 5 breaths before lowering down and settling into the embrace of Balasana (Child’s Pose).
Why This Works: The strap indicates how far to lower yourself from Plank Pose and promotes proper alignment in your upper body.
Step 3: Lean In and Fine-Tune Your Pose
In this version of the pose, your body is at a 45-degree angle to the floor instead of parallel to it, which gives you greater leverage to move into the pose and sustain it.
To begin, place the seat of a sturdy chair against a wall. Hold on to the back of the chair with your hands shoulder-width apart, straighten your arms, and step back until your body is angled at approximately 45 degrees. At this point, you will be leaning into the chair and your arms will be perpendicular to your ribs. Another way to think of this is that your shoulders will be at 90 degrees. Before you begin your supported descent into Chaturanga Dandasana, lengthen your tailbone toward your heels, engage the front of your thighs, and draw your navel toward your spine.
Initiate the movement to Chaturanga Dandasana by shifting further forward onto the balls of your feet (don’t try to go all the way to your tiptoes as you did in the previous version) and slowly bending your elbows. Imagine the strap is still wrapped around your arms. Hug your elbows in as you lower toward the chair. Remember that you’re not just lowering straight down—you’re also moving your chest forward so that your elbows stay aligned with your wrists. Stop when your elbows are bent at 90 degrees and your arms are parallel with your torso. As you did in the previous versions, look slightly forward, lift the fronts of your shoulders, and draw your shoulder blades onto the back of your ribs.
To release the pose, slowly straighten your arms and return to Plank. Repeat the transition from Plank to Chaturanga Dandasana and back to Plank several times. If you dream of a graceful, unsupported Chaturanga Dandasana,incorporate all three versions into your home practice until your body gets the alignment, strength, and rhythm to sail through the pose.
Why This Works: The chair takes some of your body weight, allowing you to fine-tune your technique.
Jason Crandell teaches alignment-based vinyasa yoga workshops and teacher trainings around the world.
Kathryn Budig’s Yoga Superhero for Smooth Digestion
Even yogis need a little help in the digestion department from time to time. Fortunately, Kathryn Budig says calling on the right pose at the right time can help.
Even yogis need a little help in the digestion department from time to time. Fortunately, Kathryn Budig says calling on the right pose at the right time can help.
I like to think of The Squatty Potty as the lazy person’s Malasana (Gina Caputo was the first person to suggest pulling your feet up onto the toilet seat like Malasana in times of need). This low squat is the digestive system’s hero. It puts everything into perfect alignment for easy elimination. Try holding this pose for a minute (or longer) first thing in the morning—or whenever you need some help—getting your system going.
Start standing with your feet slightly wider than your hips. Turn your heels in and toes out, pointing your knees point in the same direction as your toes. Drop down into a full squat. (If this is too intense on your knees, you can place a block under your hips.) Either place your hands on the floor for support or snuggle your triceps to the inside of your thighs and join your palms together in front of your heart. Press your palms together to fire your arms, which will give you a bonus hip opener.
If you mindlessly breeze through Up Dog countless times per class, protect yourself from injury by taking some time to practice this advanced approach to the basic backbend.
Even if you could sail through Surya Namaskar in your sleep, we invite you to join us in revisiting the keystones of asana. Unlearn what you know, break your bad habits, and see if you can’t makeover your entire flow by re-focusing on a few foundational poses. Try an advanced approach to basic asana with SmartFLOW teacher trainer Tiffany Russo. Get #backtobasics with us all month on Facebook and Instagram.
Backbends—love them or leave them? Many people feel strongly one way or the other. Maybe that’s why Urdhva Mukha Svanasana is a pose that many yogis tend to breeze right through in a vinyasa class—often with very little instruction or attention. The less mindful we are of what is happening in the moment, though, the more room we make for opportunities to injure ourselves. In Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, the most vulnerable body parts are the low back and the wrists. But by practicing this posture with more awareness and attention to your approach, you can actually find more space, length, and integrity in the body. That lends itself to increasing the longevity of your practice—and the enjoyment you get out of every single vinyasa.
When it comes to backbends, however, often less really is more and better. Listen to your body. If moving into a bigger backbend, like Upward-Facing Dog, is too much too soon, then warm up the shoulders and upper back in Baby Cobra first. In Baby Cobra, you can work most of these same actions to prepare yourself for a safer Up Dog. Feel ready for a bigger backbend? Let’s break it down.
5 Steps to Your Most Mindful Urdhva Mukha Svanasana
1. Aim to extend more than backbend.
Go for length in the lower back, lumbar spine, and a bend in the upper back, thoracic spine, by engaging your abs, as you move into the backbend. This helps create space in the part of the low back that has the most mobility and helps prevent any feeling of compression or pain there.
Join Senior Iyengar Yoga teacher Carrie Owerko for our new online course Iyengar 201—a mindful and fun journey into a more advanced practice. You’ll learn different pose modifications and creative uses for props, all designed to help you work with physical and mental challenges. And you’ll walk away with the skills you need to adapt to whatever life throws at you, on and off the mat. Sign up now.
BKS Iyengar often used metaphors and analogies in his teaching. I remember in one class, we were doing Parivrtta Trikonasana (Revolved Triangle Pose) and he told us to “move the back side ribs down like a waterfall—shoot the top arm up like a flame!" I remember how that image brought life to the pose, imparting a sense of direction and igniting what felt like the spirit or essence of the pose.
Water metaphors come up again and again in the teachings of Mr. Iyengar, his daughter Geeta, and son Prashant. They often use the metaphor of a river and its banks: the body (which is mostly water), along with the fluid nature of our breath and intelligence, can flow like a river as we move into and out of a pose. The skin of the body might form the banks of the river, and/or the sense of direction of the pose might also provide the banks.
For instance, in Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana (Revolved Head-to-Knee Pose), the sides of the trunk are like the banks of a river. Sometimes, we might feel quite congested or dammed up along one of our “banks." This often manifests as an excessive shortening on the side of the trunk closest to the straight leg.
Like metaphors, props can also help give a pose a sense of direction, making room for process, variation, and imagination, as well as a moment-by-moment, continuous unfolding within the pose. In Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana, for example, a folding chair can help the tops of our thighs root toward the floor, which can feel very grounding. The chair legs also provide a type of traction to both sides of the trunk, especially the underneath side, which tends to shorten. The width of the chair legs can help create a feeling of spaciousness in the top of the chest and shoulder regions. The chair (and a block) also provide wonderful support for the head, so the brain and sense of perception can relax and rest in the pose.
How to Practice Parivrtta Janu Sirsasana With a Chair and a Block
Step 1
Place a blanket on the floor over your sticky mat. From Dandasana (Staff Pose), externally rotate your left leg at the hip, bend the knee and bring the foot in toward your groin. Place another blanket over the top of your right leg. Have a block nearby. Position the top of the folding chair into the very top of your right thigh near the hip. The weight of the chair will help the top of your right leg to settle toward the floor. Hold the legs of chair with both hands, then externally rotate the right arm and bring the right arm forward to hold the front leg of the chair. Reach your left arm overhead to hold the back leg of the chair.
India is home to an estimated 60 million dogs, the fourth highest in the world.
In a pan-India online survey, people reported domestic dogs attacking 80 species of Indian wildlife, of which 31 are listed under a threatened category on the IUCN Red List.
Some experts have called for rethinking both dog population management and dog ownership policies in India, and addressing the threat of dogs as a conservation problem for wildlife.
Dogs may be a human’s best friend, but can be a deadly menace to wildlife, including endangered species, according to a survey in India, home to the world’s fourth-biggest population of dogs.
The findings, reported in a new study published in Animal Conservation, highlighted dog attacks on some 80 species, including threatened ones dwindling in numbers, such as the golden langur (Trachypithecus geei), the great Indian bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps) and the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas). Nearly half of these attacks took place in or around protected areas, the survey found.
India is home to about 60 million of the world’s estimated 1 billion dogs. In a bid to understand the impacts of free-ranging dogs on native wildlife in the country, which many experts claim is an “underreported” fact, Chandrima Home of the Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and colleagues zoomed in on dog-wildlife interactions in India through an online survey and scrutinized reports from national print media.
“We found it is largely a problem across India, despite the limitations of an online survey,” Home told Mongabay-India. “Dogs were reported to attack nearly 80 species of wildlife and most of the attacks were on mammals, largely ungulates like cattle and small carnivores. In some places, respondents reported multiple attacks. Majority of these attacks were by free-ranging dogs unaccompanied by humans and in packs. Nearly half of the attacks led to the death of the animal.”
A pack of dogs predating on a hog deer across the highway adjoining Kaziranga National Park. Photo by Arif Hussain and Dipen Nath of Aaranyak.
Wildlife going to the dogs
Of the species that dogs reportedly attacked, 31 are listed under a threatened category on the IUCN Red List, including four critically endangered species. These include the great Indian bustard and the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis), as well as the Chinese pangolin (Manis pentadactyla). Others include the green sea turtle, Himalayan goral (Naemorhedus goral), Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus), red panda (Ailurus fulgens) and the golden langur.
Some 73 percent of the 249 responses to Home’s online survey reported seeing domestic dogs attack wildlife, while nearly 78 percent of the respondents perceived the presence of dogs in and around wilderness areas to be harmful to wildlife.
Globally, cats, dogs and even rodents and pigs are known to disrupt wildlife, endangering about 600 species that are classed as vulnerable to critically endangered in the IUCN Red List. Studies show dogs have contributed to 11 vertebrate extinctionsand imperiled 188 threatened species worldwide.
The high dog density in India is attributed to poor dog ownership rules and a lack of sustained efforts in population control, exacerbated by increased availability of food waste. Home said she believed a combination of all these factors influenced the negative impact of dogs on wildlife.
“Since domestic dogs occur at densities higher than natural predators, the frequency of attacks on prey species is also likely to be high, especially in and around protected areas which are generally small in size in India,” she said. “Large mammals find it difficult to fight back when dogs charge in packs.”
In India, most free-ranging dogs are loosely associated with humans, Home said. Even if they are pets, they are generally off the leash and therefore have a propensity to interact with wildlife in several cases, due to their proximity to buffer zones and protected areas.
Dogs can venture out into these areas even if they are being fed at home. It is important to recognize the fact that a large proportion of these attacks occur without an accompanying human present, indicating that whether they are owned or not, these dogs’ free-ranging nature can have significant impacts on wildlife, Home said.
“The effects of these attacks on populations that are actually in decline could be disastrous,” she said. “It’s almost like the final nail in the coffin. When a species such as the great Indian bustard has shown already serious decline due to numerous reasons, predation by domestic dogs can push the species to extinction.”
However, the researchers cautioned against an “observation bias” in the data accumulated, since larger-sized species tend to get reported more.
Dogs chasing an Indian wild ass in the Little Ran of Kutch, Gujarat. Photo by Kalyan Varma.
Dogs exacerbate edge effects
About 48 percent of the attacks were reported within protected areas and the buffer areas around them, pointing to, as Home says, a “pervasive threat” to biodiversity. This highlights the role of dogs in driving changes at the boundaries of habitats, also called the edge effect, which has important implications for forest fragmentation and conservation.
“When habitats are fragmented, there are several edge impacts,” Home said. “For example when a road passes through a protected area, there are impacts on the species that are at the boundaries. Similarly the movement of dogs within such areas and longer forays can extend the impact of the edge.”
As an example, primatologist Parimal Bhattacharjee cites a recorded aggression in a small forest fragment in the northeastern state of Assam, in which a troop of six endangered Phayre’s leaf monkeys (Trachypithecus phayrei) were forced to abandon their regular areas following intense barking by domestic dogs.
“Coupled with the fact that there is large scale destruction of habitat for the procurement of agricultural land and setting up new human settlements, high dependency of locals on fuel wood, the aggression between the Phayre’s leaf monkeys and dogs may result in expulsion of the monkeys from their native area,” Bhattacharjee, who was not associated with the study, told Mongabay-India.
Dogs predating on a hog deer across the highway adjoining Kaziranga National Park. Photo by Arif Hussain and Dipen Nath of Aaranyak.
Similarly, there are reports of golden langurs forced to clamber down from trees to cross roads and move across to the other side of the forest due to habitat fragmentation, and coming under attack from domestic dogs.
“These [golden langurs] are non-urban species and when they enter villages at the edge of forests, they are subjected to aggression by dogs owned by villagers to protect livestock from predators,” Bhattacharjee said. “In certain areas, canopy construction was carried out to protect them from a combination of road kills and dog attacks.”
Conservation biologist Sanjay Gubbi says domestic dogs have both direct and indirect impacts on wildlife, competing for prey with wild carnivores.
“They hunt wild animals from smaller wildlife such as hare, monitor lizards to large mammals such as chital and sambar,” Gubbi of the Nature Conservation Foundation, who was not associated with the study, told Mongabay-India. “We see this regularly in our camera traps where domestic dogs are carrying or chasing wild prey. Hence they compete for prey with wild carnivores. Lowered wild prey density affects species such as leopards and can cause leopards to shift to domestic prey leading to increased human-wildlife conflict.”
The experts also underscored domestic dogs as carriers of diseases that can be transmitted to wild animals such as the dhole, wolf, jackal, fox and other canids and felids.
Dogs feasting on cattle carcasses at the Jorbeer dump in Rajasthan. Photo by Anoop Kumar/Desert National Park, Rajasthan
Whose dog is it anyway?
About 87 percent of the people responding to the online survey felt the need to control dog populations around wilderness areas — an observation that underscores the need to rethink population management and address the threat of dogs as a conservation problem for wildlife, experts say. Some of the population control methods the respondents suggested using included trap-neuter-release, euthanasia, reducing food availability, or translocation of dogs to dog shelters.
“When it comes to dog population management nobody actually wants to look at one of the most important problem in India, that is, dog ownership policies,” Home said. “People like to feed dogs (easy way to show compassion) but do not want to be responsible pet owners. Also sterilisation is considered the only way to curb population.
“Restricting free-ranging behaviour is very important and that can only come with strong laws,” Home added. “In certain cases, hard decisions also have to be taken but in a humane way. One cannot have dogs around sensitive conservation areas. Disowned and feral ones should be removed. Animal welfare should not just be about dogs but also the gamut of wildlife being affected by the dogs themselves.”
Dog feeding on barking deer. Photo by Siddharth Edake/The Energy and Resources Institute.
However, behavioral biologist Anindita Bhadra, of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata, flagged a concern regarding the perception of dogs not being a part of the local biological diversity. “This is a very western view of dogs — dogs being considered only as pets. This is a very myopic view. Would researchers say the same about dholes or dingoes?” Bhadra said.
Andrew Rowan, chief scientific officer for The Humane Society of the U.S. and former president and CEO of Humane Society International, said the issue of stray dogs killing wildlife in India is very similar to complaints in the U.S. by conservation biologists that cats are responsible for a huge proportion of bird mortality.
“The core problem is the encroachment of human communities into protected areas and the humans are then accompanied by dogs who may, or may not, remain close to their human commensals as they explore their environment,” Rowan said.
Citation:
Home, C., Bhatnagar, Y.V., and Vanak, A.T. (2018) Canine Conundrum: domestic dogs as an invasive species and their impacts on wildlife in India. Animal Conservation. DOI: 10.1111/acv.12389
一直以來，專家認為放養犬隻帶來的問題並未獲得足夠的調查和關注。印度邦加羅爾邦（Bangalore）的「阿育王生態與環境研究信託」（Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment，ATREE）博士後研究員香德麗瑪．洪姆（Chandrima Home）與同僚發起線上調查，檢視全國紙媒報導，探究印度犬隻與野生動物的互動關係。
【◎心靈研磨坊 – 曼陀羅藏(Ⅲ)◎】 
【容大千量】