The Low Down

Learn to hover with grace in this character-building pose.

By Natasha Rizopoulos

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Ready to try the full pose? Come to Plank. Ideally, your body in Chaturanga will look just like your body in Plank, except with bent elbows. Emphasize these qualities, lifting and firming the entire body. Look slightly forward so that your head is not drooping (which tends to drag the shoulders down as you move into Chaturanga). As you exhale, keep your elbows drawn in and your shoulder heads lifted. Slowly lower down. Create 90-degree angles with your arms, with your upper arms parallel to the floor and forearms perpendicular. Your goal is to stay straight and strong; keep pressing your heels back and reaching your heart forward so that your body remains taut.

Avoid common Chaturanga pitfalls: One tendency is to either sink at the center of the torso (creating a backbend), another is to leave the butt up in the air as the shoulders dip toward the floor (creating a pike). The more you can activate the front of your body so that it supports the back of your body, the more success you will have at avoiding these polarities. Engage the belly and quadriceps by lifting the tops of the thighs to the ceiling and drawing your tailbone toward your heels.
Another pitfall is to put so much energy into reaching the chest forward that you forget to press the heels back. When this happens, you come too far forward onto your toes and lose the strength of the legs, forcing the shoulders to work overtime. If the shoulders carry the pose, they often collapse, sacrificing alignment and creating vulnerability. To prevent this, stack your heels over your toes in Plank, and keep pressing them back even as you enthusiastically extend your sternum forward and move into Chaturanga. When your legs come to the party, your shoulders will thank you.

Staff of Life

Practicing Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose) plays a vital role in doing the Sun Salutations that are central to Ashtanga and vinyasa flow yoga. The pose strengthens and tones the entire body, helps teach important alignment, and prepares you for a multitude of positions, including the following:

Arm Balances The upper-body and lower-belly strength that you develop by practicing Chaturanga, combined with the confidence it instills, translates beautifully into the kind of power and core consciousness you need for arm balances such as Bakasana (Crane Pose, often called Crow Pose), Galavasana (Flying Pigeon Pose), and Vasisthasana (Side Plank Pose).

Inversions Chaturanga creates a stability in the shoulders, a sense of compactness at the center, and an alertness in the legs. These are crucial to doing safe inversions. When practiced with attention to alignment, Chaturanga becomes the ideal training for poses like Sirsasana (Headstand), Pincha Mayurasana (Forearm Balance), and Adho Mukha Vrksasana (Handstand).

Backbends The legs feature prominently in a healthy Chaturanga and in healthy backbends (in which the curve of the spine is evenly distributed). Learning to use the legs effectively in Chaturanga imprints this awareness, so that the legs can play an active role in poses such as Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog), Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (Bridge Pose), and Urdhva Dhanurasana (Upward Bow Pose, often called Wheel Pose).

Natasha Rizopoulos lives and teaches yoga in Los Angeles and Boston.

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