Svastikasana

Hi, I'm here with my friends Betsy and Alana, and we are going to demonstrate what's called in English the auspicious pose. In Sanskrit it's called Swastikasana. Now, first of all, you'll notice that the word Swastika is spelled S-V-A to start. And the interesting thing about that is that in Sanskrit, in pronunciation, the V when it follows a consonant is pronounced more like a W. You'll see that in the word Swami, for example. In English, you'll see it spelled S-W-A-M-I. But the proper spelling for the word Swami is S-V-A-M-I. And what we've done is called Anglicization. In other words, we've made something that is difficult for us to pronounce normally easier by changing the spelling from S-V-A to S-W-A. So this is called Swastikasana, the auspicious pose. And I'm going to have both of my good friends bend their knees, put their feet on the floor in front of their pelvis. And then both can take the left heel to the underside of the right knee and swing it to the outside of the hip. And then cross the right ankle to the outside of the left knee. Now, this is very important that you have the ankle outside the knee. You don't want to have the sole. Could you take the foot in a little bit and sickle the foot up toward the ceiling? This is not so good for that knee in particular. So you want to make sure the ankle is outside the knee so the sole is perpendicular to the floor. Now, I'm going to have Ilana, she's going to represent the less flexible hips. So I'm going to ask her to keep her left heel just to the outside of her right hip. But I want her to take her right thumb and burrow it into the right groin. And then you want to grab onto the thigh and turn the thigh laterally. In other words, from the inner thigh to the outer. There you go. And you have to do that very, very strongly. It's not enough just to turn the skin and the flesh of the leg. You've got to turn the bone. Yeah, that's right. Now, Betsy is going to represent the more flexible hip person. And what I would like her to do is to take the bottom leg, which is the left leg and slide the shin forward until the shins are parallel to each other. And again, we'll have her take her thumb into her hip crease. Turn the leg. Now, if you put your thumb in that mid crease and bop the knee up and down a few times, you'll feel the muscle that crosses that joint. And what you do is you take the thumb just in front of that muscle in the pubic bone side and sort of hook it and spin it to the outer thigh. Yeah. And then lean the torso forward a little bit with an exhalation. There you go. And you are you happy with that there? Yes. Okay. This is Swastikasana, the auspicious pose. And it's a very good stretch for the outer hips. If you have a little bit of tightness in the outer hips, this is an excellent pose to use. It's a pose that you need to do every day though. It's not something that you will do much difference, make much difference once a week. But be sure that if you're tighter in the hips that you do what Ilana is demonstrating that is to keep that bottom heel by the opposite side hip and be sure to sit up on something.

Now we have her sitting fairly low on a single blanket. And if you're a little bit tighter than this in the hip, then you might, you're going to need to sit up on something quite a bit higher, two or three or four or five blankets or a bolster, something like that. Good. And then lift up the knees, top knees, and then stretch the legs forward. And we'll do the other side. Very nice. And then bend the knees and bring the feet on the floor as before. And now take the right heel to the outside of the left hip, please. And then cross over. And then you can bring that leg forward. Some of you who may recognize this pose from a different, with a different name called Agni Stambasana, which means the fire log pose, which is an okay name for the pose, I suppose. It's a modern made up name. But always be sure, never to push on the knee. When you have a pose like this, you don't ever, ever, ever want to push on the knee. If you want the knee to go down, you want to push on the groin and the knee will follow eventually. Now I just want to mention that some students have a little bit of trouble with the name swastika for obvious reasons. We won't have to go into it too deeply. But I want you to be sure that you understand that this is a very, very old symbol that goes back quite a long ways. Hundreds and hundreds of years. And it really at one time was a symbol of good fortune and happiness. It was a symbol that was taken from the idea of the sun. And so at one time it was a highly worshiped symbol. So I had a little bit of concern about calling it this. And some of my students still don't really care for the name. But I think that in this sequence I was trying to keep as much of the tradition going as possible. And this name is, this pose approximates the original pose called swastika, swastikasana. So let's come out, just lift the knee, the top knee up and stretch it forward. And then the bottom leg as well please. And come and sit with your legs extended forward. And that is swastikasana, the auspicious pose. Thank you.