Drop and Give Me 10!

To do Chaturanga Dandasana, a.k.a. the dreaded yoga push-up, you need more than brute strength.

By Denise Benitez

Unlike many yoga teachers, I was not particularly athletic as a young girl. I didn't practice gymnastics, dance, or sports. I was a reader and a dreamer and spent most of my time curled in a corner with a good book. When I reached high school, I was faced with the dilemma of gym class. I devised elaborate strategies for avoiding the hideous, navy blue, one-piece bloomers called "gym suits" and steering clear of any situation in which I would have to overly exert myself—climbing those scary ropes, running like a frenzied rabbit around the perimeter of the gym, and above all, my nemesis, doing push-ups. When I began to practice yoga in my early 20s, I was sorely (literally!) disappointed to run into my nemesis again. Even though it had a fancy-schmancy Sanskrit name, Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose), I recognized my old foe. My beloved yoga practice, which was teaching me to inhabit and celebrate my body for the first time in my life, suddenly seemed to have an Achilles' heel.

At a meeting of yoga teachers in Seattle about four years ago, almost all of us had a Chaturanga injury to relate: elbow tendonitis or strained muscles in the upper arm, shoulder, or chest. We sounded like a bunch of NFL linebackers after a game, not a group of "conscious movers." Since then, Chaturanga has become even more common in yoga classes around the country because of the popularity of vinyasa practice (flowing from pose to pose without pause). As a result, many students are "blowing out" their shoulders.

My initial solution to the Chaturanga conundrum was to remove the pose from my repertoire. Eventually, however, I realized that instead of tossing the pose out completely, I could approach it as a strict and loving teacher that could lead me to a deeper understanding of integration and alignment. I set out on a mission to discover a way to safely include Chaturanga Dandasana in my own practice and my teaching. Through trial and error and with the assistance of a few expert teachers, especially John Friend (whose approach, Anusara Yoga, informs much of this article), I found that I could not only avoid injury, but I could also use Chaturanga to learn to practice poses that challenge my body from a place of inner strength and open-hearted surrender. Who would have thought that a yoga pose that looks like the dreaded push-up I hated in high school would eventually teach me about physical and esoteric energies, balancing effort and surrender, the true meaning of alignment, and the ultimate purpose of yoga?

Boot Camp with Heart
Chaturanga demands strength. When faced with such a pose, many of us tend to muscle our way into it. We approach the challenge with a determination to conquer the body through willpower and brute muscular effort.

But ideally yoga is not a practice of domination; it's a process of learning to flow with the dance of prana, of energy. I invite you to open to a new concept of strength in asana. Think of strength as not only muscular, but also as a resource inside yourself, an inner reservoir of power in your heart. When the muscles of your outer body are working in optimal balance with one another, you will have amazing access to this inner strength. As we shall see, when you practice Chaturanga with too much outer body effort, you habitually overuse the front of your body—particularly the front of your shoulders, arms, and chest—in an attempt to muscle the pose.

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