Adho Mukha Swanasana
Downward Facing Dog
Drishti: Back through the legs or the naval
I started out my yoga practice with relatively tight hamstrings, at least for a seventeen year old. I could touch my toes, but little more than that was possible.
For years I felt like I wasn’t making any progress, either. After about three years of practice, I had gained a little flexibility, but poses like Utthita Hasta Padangustasana and Supta Padangustasana were still torture.
Then I discovered downward dog. In Astanga we are constantly in this pose. Between every pose, even between sides, during the seated practice, we get a chance to work with it. I had learned early on how to use it as a chance to rest.
"Ah," I would say to myself, "finally a chance to breathe, if only for a moment."
Then Sheshadri came over and started pushing my head to the floor. My shoulders screamed. My hamstrings protested, "wait, this was our chance to stop!"
A month later I was going into Hanumanasana with ease. A little lesson that’s payed dividends in the years since – the simpler poses are often the most effective. Downward dog is a great place to work on your hamstring while keeping your back straight, and you can take that understanding into your forward bends. You can use it to work the movement in your shoulders that you need to do headstand and handstand. You can develop the stretch in your shoulders that you need for things like urdva dhanurasana. It seems like a simple pose – I put beginners into it all the time. But if you work with this one, if you discover how to move in to it correctly and control what you’re doing here, many advanced asanas will become easy. And this is true not just of downward dog but of many simple poses as well.
How to
The hands should be approximately four-five feet in front of the feet. Take the body into an inverted "V" shape, with the hips and bum high. The SITS bones tilt up toward the sky, even if this causes the heels to come off the floor.
The drishti (gazing point) is back through the legs, or toward the naval. As you gaze back, feel your body slightly projecting in that direction. This can give a nice shoulder stretch as well as working deeper into the hamstrings.
Focus on trying to bring length into the spine in this pose as you find support in the shoulders. It's important to keep the hands well grounded. What this means is notice the first knuckle of the thumb, forefinger and middle finger pressing into the floor. Feel the fingertips connecting to the earth as well. Use this to keep weight off the wrists.
If you still feel pressure on the wrists, one thing that can help is if you let the heel of your hand be on your mat, but take the knuckles off. This helps to transfer weight forward in the hand and take if off the wrists.
Modifications
Let the heels lift high up and bend the knees. It's important not to fight this happening. Better to keep the back straight and work from there than to worry about trying to straighten the legs or push the heels to the floor.
Take the elbows to the floor. While this is more difficult, it takes pressure off the wrists.
Let the knees come to the floor, sink the hips to the heels and let the forehead rest on the floor for balasana. This a nice resting pose that gives you the release in the lower back that we sometimes use downward dog to find. In fact, balasana tends to be more effective at finding that release.
Transitional Poses