Naked! Instructional Photo: Down Dog Diagnostics

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Today, we're taking a detailed look at Downward Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana in Sanskrit)  to hopefully help make it more comfortable.  I've covered Down Dog before, but I've made these photo collages with some graphics to more easily see adjustments and compare/contrast. Again, this isn't about right or wrong; but your body may thank you a few years down the line for paying attention to some of these anatomical nuances.

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1) This is the Down Dog shape that makes me most comfortable and stable (=yoga asana). I've got a tight upper body and have more flexibility in the legs, so my legs are able to straighten with heels down, but I make some adjustments to my arms to make more space for my neck and protect my wrists.

2) Feel free to try Down Dog using a chair to get a feel for the technique. Stand about an arms-length away from the chair, feet hip width or wider, fold forward and place your hands on the chair. Keep your weight in your feet! You might bend your knees quite a bit here to focus on the upper body: as you reach your hips back , elongate your spine and stretch your chest downward towards the mat.

The tighter you are, the farther away from the floor you might want to lift your chest. For example, you could try adding blocks to the seat of the chair so your hands can be a bit higher. And, you can use a wall: stand an arms-length away with your hands on the wall shoulder-width distance and start to melt your chest downward toward the floor between your arms. As you fold, you'll likely need to step your feet back to give you more room. My legs are straight, but yours could be bent.

The point of using support is to take off the muscular strain of Down Dog on the floor and just work on the flexibility of the shoulders and chest, allowing you to practice finding a long line from wrist through tailbone.

To get into Down Dog on the mat, come up onto all fours (Tabletop), tuck your toes under, and lift your hips toward the ceiling...

3) I first recommend adjusting the shoulders so that any future adjustment we make with the legs doesn't hurt the arms and wrists. This top left photo is what I often see in class: hands are very close together, fingertips facing inward towards each other, and elbows are even bent with elbows out to the side.

You might be more comfortable opening the hands to shoulder-width distance, or slightly wider. Then rotate your hands so that your pointer finger is the one facing forward, giving a bit of an external rotation to help the arms straighten. Wrap your shoulder blades away from your ears. Press the roots of your fingers down. For rotation: instead of the elbows bending our to the sides, try externally rotating  upper arms. It's like the armpits are trying to close off as the biceps spin forward.

If you have neck/shoulder issues or tightness, you can even separate the hands as wide as the mat. I personally like to put the index and thumb "L shape" on the mat and let the other three fingers off the mat. Still press the knuckles down. I find this makes it a lot easier to straighten the arms, wrap the blades down the back, and create some space for the neck. 

4) Now we've got our hands set up to hopefully make other adjustments easier. This top left photo is the shape I see most in class: the weight is more in the hands like a plank and the spine is rounded like Cat pose.  This usually happens when the hamstrings are too tight to do Down Dog with straight legs, so by straightening the legs your weight has to move forward. Then I ask students to bend their knees a lot, and try finding more like a Cow spine, lengthening the tailbone up to the ceiling, and then I see this top right photo. This is better, but there's still more weight in the hands and this can strain the neck and shoulders.

SO, from that top right photo, without moving your hands, try pressing your upper arms forward towards your ears. Your hands won't literally move, but it's like you're trying to slide them forward in space to help lift your tailbone, bringing more weight to the feet and helping find that line between wrist and tailbone.

5) If the instructions from photo 4 are still challenging, you might try separating the feet quite a bit. I typically give instructions from photo 4 and they almost find that line, but while they're reaching the hips up to "bring the arms forward", the hamstrings can still be tight enough to prevent the tailbone from lengthening. This top left photo, you can see that I'm almost there, but my lower back is rounding like Cat. Try opening your feet wider, even as wide as the mat, and bend the knees more to help you lengthen the spine and reach the tailbone up without hyperextending.

6) We don't often talk about the distance between hands and feet, but it can really make a difference. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I see both of these top photos in class all the time. The top left photo shows feet and hands very far apart from each other, the tailbone is over-extending, heels have no chance of reaching the mat, and I'm trying to express with my face that I feel like I'm going to slip out of this shape and crash at any moment.

The opposite extreme is feet and hands very close together. I often see this with the feet together as well. It's not wrong, but it sure makes it difficult to lengthen the spine and it's a lot of strain for my shoulders, arms, and hips.

Feel free to experiment (with small adjustments). Try walking the hands and feet farther away from each other and see how it feels. Notice when you naturally start to feel like you're too wide (I'd wager that you'll know). Then try the same with the opposite extreme. Hopefully that'll help you find the happy medium, where the feet can be hip width and hands set well with a nice long spine. Knees being straight is not important. Asana is meant to be stable and comfortable, so you might need to do some exploring. Not everyone will perfectly transition from a plank to Down Dog smoothly without needing to adjust the feet in some way.

7) Lastly, I wanted to zero-in on the ribcage. This is a bit more of an advanced cue, but I think it's important ESPECIALLY for people with very flexible shoulders. No matter the shoulder situation, everyone splays the ribs out like this top photo, which usually marks over-extension in the tailbone or hypermobile shoulders. Try knitting your ribcage together like a corset in the front to help find a long neutral tailbone.

I personally can't demonstrate this, but some people's shoulders are so flexible that their ribs are very close to their thighs in down down, and instead of a straight line from wrists to tailbone, the shoulders are way overextended and collapsing towards the knees. If this is you, try focusing on closing the ribs, which might send more weight forward into the hands so the shoulders can be in line with the wrists and tailbone instead of making a huge break. If you're double-jointed, your elbows might be hyperextending as well, so you can try giving a tiny bend to the elbows so the arms straighten out (although that might feel bent to you). You can google "hypermobile down dog" to get a feel for what I'm talking about.