How to Mayurasana
A tricky posture to learn that is found in the Intermediate Series in the Ashtanga yoga system that students can struggle with balance. In this post I’ll give some tips on how to enter this arm balance and to maintain balance.
Mayurasana
Aside from the vinyasa count which has it’s own techniques, I would say the first thing to think about when approaching this arm balance is wrist mobility. If you are struggling with this take a look at the following post:
Assuming the wrists are healthy and strong enough to bare your weight, we need to look at our hand placement. The fingers need to be spread nice and wide and gripping very strongly. Think as if you were trying to crush an orange in your hands, without the knuckles lifting. The hands are together and slightly turned out. More on how to grip here:
What I recommend for students to enter this posture is to first come very far forward so your head is on the floor. This is done so you are far enough forward to place your elbows into the right position. The right position being deep into your navel.
Mayurasana entry
With your forehead on the floor as shown above, round your upper back and squeeze your lower abdomen. Uddiyana Bandha.
Now lower down so your elbows are just below the navel. The most common issue I see for balancing with students is the elbows are too high and now low enough down into the lower belly. The belly is very firm here so your are pressing your belly back into your elbows creating another type of Bandha. More on bandha here:
Mayurasana preperation
Now we are set with our body in a stable and strong position ready to lift up.
The forehead is pressing into the floor
The toes are pressing you forward
The fingers are spread and gripping strongly with the heel of the hands pushing down into the mat
The elbows are deep into the low belly squeezing towards eachother
The transverse abdominis is fully engaged and pressing into the elbows. Bandha
The lats are engaged and the upper back is rounded activating your mid and upper back muscles
transverse abdominis
Lift Off
To lift up ito Mayurasana, we now need to begin lifting the legs. Using our hamstrings and glutes we raise the legs, strongly engaging the lumbar extensor muscles and squeezing the inner thighs keeping everything in the lower half strong and engaged.
Spinal extensors
If you feel you have balance here you can then lift the forehead off of the floor and strongly engage the lumbar muscles.
Mayurasana
Looking slight forward, gripping strongly with your fingers to maintain balance and strongly engaging the postier chain of the body to lift up.
The breath is taken into the back of the ribs.
