The first time I experienced this variation of Half Moon Pose, I was in Simon Borg-Olivier’s Yoga Synergy class in Sydney, Australia. Simon likes to make a clicking sound with his mouth to cue his students that it’s time to transition from one pose to to another. I had never experienced this clicking cueing, nor this captured sense of calm as my arms hovered in space while balancing in Unsupported Half Moon. Sure, I had lifted my supporting bottom arm from a block or the floor before, but this was different. I became one of the the Indian deities carved on the stone temple gates that I had meditated on for hours during my pilgrimages to South India. Feel this sense of beauty, balance, and timeless art within your own practice as you add a lunar quality of the arms to the solar activation needed to balance with such strength and grace.
Try it:
1. From Tadasana, turn your right foot clockwise to a 45 degree angle. Bend both knees sending energy down into the earth. Feel the rebounding energy coil back up through your right leg.
2. While shifting more weight into the right foot, keep the center of your knee in line with your middle toe, and above the ankle. Extend your balancing right leg toward straight while lifting your left foot off of the earth.
3. Using your abductors, lift the left leg straight out to the side wall. Lean your torso to the right side wall. Lift your right arm overhead, bend at the elbow (by your right ear), and let the right hand relax as your fingers dangle by your left ear.
4. Extend both the left arm and left leg parallel to the earth’s surface, hovering in space with lightning rod activation from heart to fingertips, pelvis to toe tips.
5. Notice both the lunar and solar qualities of this posture as you hover with ease and steadiness beyond time or space.
6. Repeat on the left side, turning your foot counterclockwise at a 45 degree angle.
See also Iyengar 201: Challenge Your Brain & Body with a New Take on Half Moon