Bhadarasana

Hi, I'm here with Ilana and Betsy, and we are going to demonstrate what in the tradition is called Bhadrasana, B-H-A-D-R-A, which nowadays you may recognize as opposed to called Bhadakonasana, the bound angle. And Bhadra has a number of different interpretations, one I'm using is the fortunate pose. And I have Betsy, I'm sorry, I have Ilana sitting up on a support which is useful for people who are a little bit less flexible in the groins to sit up on something. Now also the less flexible groin person can have the heels a little bit away from the pelvis, there's no need to pull the heels right in toward the perineum. So what I'd like to do to start is work with the inner foot channel.

And so what I'll ask them to do is open their feet a little bit up so the soles look up toward the ceiling and bring their thumbs onto the mounds of the big toes and start to massage their inner feet and work the thumbs back toward the inner heels. Do that a few times, not forward, but you have to go back from the base of the big toes to the inner heel back, always go back, that's right. And then once you have that softened up on the inner arch, then I want you to bring the inner feet firmly together so the inner heels and the bases of the big toes are pressed in. And I also want you to imagine if you can that the pubic bone, now the pubic bone is not one bone, you may know this, it's two bones that come together and they meet what's called the pubic symphysis. And you also want to feel across the front of your pelvis how the pubis, the two arms of the bone press into each other.

So you've got these soles and the pubis pressing in, you've got this feeling of squeezing into the middle of the pose. And from there, with that feeling of contracting in the middle, I want you to push the knees straight out to the sides, remember never to push the knees down toward the floor. You press the feet together here and here, you bring the two arms of the pubis together and you take the knees and you do this, widen them out to the sides. And then you also take your thumbs onto your inner groins, put your thumbs, turn the fingers to the outer hips like that, turn the fingers around so the fingers out, now push down and pull back a little bit. So there is a way to work with a partner with this exercise that makes it a little bit more interesting.

What you do is you come and you can sit in front of the person who's doing like this and take your hands and push in, in other words, in toward the heads of the femur bones. And from here, then you want the person doing the pose to push out into the resistance. Let's see if you can get a little bit of push into my hands, yeah, very good. And this often helps the groins open up a little bit more. And when you have this feeling, then you can do it on your own.

What you feel, what you want to try to do then is draw the heads of the femur bones into the pelvis and then from that depth, push out into the knees. Now let's have you come forward a little bit and you can come down a little bit too. Now when you come down into the fold, you want to be sure that you're moving from the groins and not from the belly. Very good, very nice. You can stop right here, very good, now you put your hands just right in front of you.

Very nice. Inner thighs dropping down and back and now you're drawing the belly out of the depth of the pelvis, very good. Very nicely done. Now can you lengthen the front of your torso out a little bit more please? Yes, very good, very nice.

Really done. And then come up with an inhalation. Now there is one more point I want to make about this. Would you take hold of your toes with your hands please? Be sure that when you do this, that you leave the little toes on the floor, you'll often see people with their hands pulling up on the toes like this and you don't really want to do that.

You want to keep the whole outer edge of the foot down firmly on the floor and then sort of pull the feet back towards your pelvis to get that feeling of the outer foot channel scrubbing towards the little toe. And this is called in the old days, badrasana, the fortunate pose. Very nicely done. Inhale, come up. And thank you very much.