Vrishasena

Hi, I'm here with Ilana and Betsy, my good friends, so far. And we're going to demonstrate what's called the bull pose. It's called, in Sanskrit, vrishasana. You have to be very careful that you don't confuse it with vrishasana, the tree pose. So as always, I'll ask Betsy to do the full pose.

And I'll ask Ilana to do a slight modification. What you do now is I'll ask Betsy to stretch her legs out in front of her torso, and then pull her right leg back into what we can call half hero, half vrishasana. And then bend her left knee and bring the heel up into the groin and drop the thigh off to the side. And that's it. This is bull pose.

And she's, again, as always, making this look a little bit easier than it actually is. Typically, what you'll find when you do this exercise is that you'll be tilted over to the side leg side a little bit. So I'll ask Ilana to stretch her legs forward, and then pull the right leg back into vrishasana, half hero. And then bring the left heel into the perineum and drop the leg off to the side as Betsy has done. Now, Ilana is not exactly needing the blanket, but we'll have it under her left buttock.

You'll tend to tilt over, as I said, to the leg that's off to the side. And so to compensate for that tilting, you'll want to bring something underneath, just underneath the side buttock. And this is actually quite an interesting. It doesn't look like a very exciting position, but it's actually quite interesting. And it does provide some good opening in the groins and hips.

Now, when you come out of the bull, there's really two ways to do this. Let's have Betsy do the first way over here. So take the left leg, which is a side leg, and just lift up the knee. And then stretch the leg straight forward. That's the first leg.

Now, the second leg is a little bit different and a little bit more important to be very careful with. Lean to the left. Grab onto the right ankle with your right hand. And without disturbing the knee, pick the whole leg up and put the foot on the floor, just like that. Now, don't stretch the knee out quite yet.

Now, take this leg and just drop it straight out to the side. And now, just stretch out through the heel. No, don't pick the knee up. Just stretch straight out. And then back to center.

So again, you want to make sure that when you come out of a pose like this, there's no rotary movement in the hinge joint. So you need to be very careful with your knees on this one. Now, the other way to do this is you stretch this leg forward, please. You can move the blanket out of the way. Now, watch, please.

You push your hands against the floor. Inhale, lift your pelvis up. Slide the foot underneath. Keep going around. That's it.

And straight out, just like that. Very nicely done. Let's try the other side. So that means the left leg back into the Virasana position. Yes, is that right?

Yeah. And the right leg into the Balakonasana. Now again, Ilana doesn't really need the blanket, but she's showing a less flexible version of it. And remember, the blanket just goes underneath the side knee buttock, not under both buttocks. So you sort of want the blanket on the edge of the buttock so that you can sort of slide off the front edge of the blanket, get a little bit more of a forward rotation of the pelvis.

Yes, that brings you into a more upright position. Pretty good. Now, a lot of times, it's kind of funny where they want you to have the heel. In the old books, oftentimes, they use the heel to sort of plug up the bottom of the torso. The torso, in the old days, was visualized as a pot.

In the old days, it was called the gata or the kumbha. And of course, there's two openings to the pot, to the throat and at the anus. And when they practiced breathing, they wanted to restrain the inhaled prana in the pot. And so they had to close off the two openings to the pot. And so they often used the heel to press up against the perineum to close off the bottom end of the pot.

So in a pose like this, you want to be sure that the heel is really pulled into the perineum. Very good. Let's have you do the first way this time. So grab on and stretch this leg forward. And just pick up the leg and put the foot on the floor.

And then drop the knee off to the side. Very good. Nicely done. And let's have you do the second way this time. Stretch that leg forward first.

Now, lift up with an inhalation and slide the foot underneath the pelvis. And then just keep swinging around. Yes, yes. Oh, that was really well done. Beautiful.

Thank you. You can stretch the leg out. This is called vrishasana. Remember, not vrishasana, but vrishasana. And that's the bull pose.

Thank you.