Upward forward bending pose: Urdhva paschimottanasana

Mmm, this looks a bit odd, or vulgar I guess. I was wondering whether I should put it on the net at all, with so many perverts surfacing anonymously there.. But well, I am a yoga person and as I finetune my awareness I actually am least conscious about my body, my gender or my age. It is as if the irrelevant aspects of who I am steps back and awareness, beyond the body tho using it,  is all I am building..this may puzzle a lot of people -- why body awareness to build the mind.. only those who try training the mind would know that it can sabotage all attempts to being destroyed (meditation) by attacking you  from the body. Sit for meditation at 4 am and u will realise as much as the mind is willing, it is the body that is weak. Or for an hour in the lotus and how the pain can be distracting. So, for me yes, yoga is about a state of awareness of the body where it can transcend itself.. pain, hunger, sleep, all those things can be left behind once this awareness steps in.

Lately, this sort of thing is becoming even more exciting. I am desperately trying to get that through, in my class, but every month is a revelation how few people can sustain or survive this aspect of yoga . So many want to be entertained passively in a class, and will not engage their minds at all. That is a bore for me, as a teacher. And I am happy when such students go. Like I was telling somebody, yoga is not entertainment -- it is an exhilaration and an engagement. It cannot be sipped passively. You create the champagne swirl, the magic yourself, when you participate. That sort of an attitude is a far cry  in a city like Mumbai which is used to a passive entertainment culture that it can be very trying when u try to  real yoga here:(  But this month on, I am really not bothered about that.  I am ok just where I am  and feel rather detached (50 per cent only, yet) from teaching. When the 100 per cent detachement  happens, I would have swallowed my biting tongue, will tease my students less and permit some of them their mud-holes longer. But just now I am trying vainly to make gazelles out of sloth bears (yes, I love the sloth bear character in Ice Age, though he was quite a let down in the last sequel)..But the day I give up and let sloth bears be sloth bears and stop suffering from the illusion that the type of yoga I teach actually transforms life, then, yes, I would have attained mokhsha:)

Part of this detachment and the exhilaration  that comes from real detachment (which is disinterested and that is different uniterested, for those who wish to know the finer difference)is that I am back revisiting my variations with real fun. Also on some days I do the energy-release poses instead of holding advanced poses for long and feel the maturity of that sort of slowing down.

On top u see the upward forward bending pose which is actually a version of the boat pose. The head should drop between the legs and yes, when I am warmed up, it can actually happen comfortably!

What u need for this pose:

• Steadiness in the boat pose. 
• Strong forward bend. 
• Just a great sense of fun as u topple several times before making it! 

Happy sadhana!