Visvamitrasana (pronounced “vish”) I recently taught myself how to contort my way into this posture (it looks so pretty in all the yoga journals). It took a long time to learn and several attempts resulted in falling back on my butt, and nearly yanking my shoulder out of it’s socket, ouch. You can not muscle your way into these strange shapes. I think it’s extremely liberating to finally, let go of trying, open up and expand fully into new space. I like how yoga teaches us never to know whether we can or can’t do something. It seems the minute we let go of the attachment of how things might or should turn out, or the way things “ought” to be, we can fall into these really beautifully places, both physically and psychologically. Yoga teaches to let go of attachments to end results. Act for the actions sake. I’m still not fully open or at totally at ease in this particular asana but it’s so much fun to explore.
I didn’t realize that camel pose has a deeper meaning until i read this entry, well to be honest I’m one of those who are a bit scared to bend during the camel pose.
Ah… Someone else who is interested in the background of yoga poses. So many of my students simply jump into the poses but I always like to recommend they study the background a little bit as well.
Part of my teaching practice is to explain more than just trying to show them the poses.
Ben Ashanti
I’ve been practicing Bikram for two months and I must say that Ustrasana is my favourite pose – it’s quite hard to describe the emotions that go through you following the pose but I can feel the benefits. I was terrified of this pose when I first started yoga – now I look forward to this pose from the beginning of class.
I have always loved this pose. I feel like a mushroom pushing up out of the earth–as you say–here I am!