Title
Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog)
Description

 

  • Urdhva Mukha Svanasana is an intense and powerful awakening backbending asana.
  • Always consider the option of Salabasana B or “Easy Cobra” as an alternative in the following conditions: low back pain or insufficient arm, shoulder or leg strength to suspend their body on the hands and feet.
  • Urdhva Mukha Svanasana is “set up” with proper alignment in Chataranga Dandasana.
  • In first learning the asana, it is helpful to first learn Salabasana and/or Bhujangasana.
  • Emphasize active legs. Along with alignment principles, this is the key to reducing the risk of low back strain on this asana.
  • Press the tops of your feet firmly down and create a sense of extending your toes straight back.
  • In rooting the feet down, the legs can become more active. Try to rotate your inner thighs up, thereby creating space in the SI joint and greater ease in drawing the tailbone toward the heels.
  • Most students tend to squeeze their buttocks in this pose, which has the effect of externally rotating the thighs and compressing the low back. Let go of your buttocks!
  • Rooting firmly into the knuckles of the index fingers helps to ensure balanced pressure across the hands and wrist joints, thereby reducing the likelihood of strain in the wrists. Strong and balanced rooting of the hands also leads to greater extension of the arms and lifting and spreading of the chest, which is essential in creating the length in the spine required for deepening the backbend.
  • Try to consciously draw the curve of the backbend up your spine and create a sense of pulling the lower tips of your shoulder blades down and forward as if into your heart center while spreading your collarbones.
  • Students with weak shoulders (specifically rhomboids, traps and serratus anterior muscles) will tend to hang in their shoulders, which tends to strain the neck, close the heart center, compromise the breath and exacerbate the tendency to dump into the low back. Encourage these students to more actively press into their hands (wrists allowing) in order to better activate the drawing of the shoulders down away from the ears, pulling their shoulder blades down and spreading their side ribs forward.
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