Yoga Asana Series - #1.5 Urdhva Hastasana

Urdhva Hastasana

(Oord-vah has-tas-anna)

Everyone, I skipped one of the most juicy asanas out there. I went straight from Tadasana to Uttanasana without going through Urdhva Hastasana. Bold Elisa!! So I am taking the time to back track and lets explore this overlooked (even by me) asana.

Urdhva Hastasana, the upward salute, the  is a gorgeous stretch to welcome the day, the sun, the earth and awaken your body. Overlooked by many and practiced by nearly everyone without even realising it.

This posture stretches the abdominals (stomach), obliques (side of stomach), shoulders, armpits. It lengthens your spine and neck. Sends blood flow to the opposite direction (my favourite. The fuzzy yummy feeling of the blood flowing back in to your arms after having them raised in the air!!!

It is also known to improve digestion, decrease fatigue, reduce asthma, relieve anxiety symptoms and back ache. 

Think about it, we are stretching and giving room to all our organs, stretching our muscles that protect our spine and as we lengthen our whole body to the sky giving room for breathe, we stretch before releasing into Uttanasana (forward fold).

The Anatomy:

Lets introduce some skeletal joints shall we? 😊

We begin in our Tadasana positioning standing tall.

As we inhale we lift our arms up towards the sky. Not only are we stretching our muscles here but we are also beginning to activate/wake up/lubricate our shoulder girdle/joint. Not to mention work our shoulder muscles if held for a few breathes to build strength.

As our shoulder joint isn't a big ball and socket, it is known to become injured a lot quicker than say your hip joint. There is a bigger range of movement in the shoulder a bit too easily hence the injuries!

It is important to stabilise our shoulder blades (scapula) before we bring our arms up. This is why in yoga class or with Adriene we will always work on drawing our shoulders back and down before we begin. Insert - Tadasana 😊 

It keeps our shoulder joint safe when we elevate it out and up.

As seen in the above picture taken from Ray Long's book - The Key Muscles of Yoga, step 1 to 4 show how the joint moves along with the muscles that activated.

1. This shows the stabilising of our shoulder blade (scapula)

2. Then our supraspinatus muscle (attached to our shoulder blade) helps us lift our arm outwards.

3. Our deltoid muscles take over here and help our arms reach to the sky

4. Where our traps (muscles at the bottom of your neck and top of back) complete the reach up towards the sky.

This can be why we find it difficult to completely reach up due to tight shoulders. You could have tight upper back muscles or deltoids (shoulder muscles). Regular practice will help alleviate some of the problem.

So.....

Still with me??? It's a lot to take in especially if you are new to anatomy but pretty cool right? 😍

Let's move on to our muscles:

As we inhale we stretch our:

• Abdominals  
• Back muscles
• Armpits
• Hands (if we really reach our fingertips to the sky)

While here we work/contract our:

• Deltoids (Shoulder muscles)
• Abdominals (once we engage our belly button to spine)

Making sure we keep our shoulder blades down at the same time so we don't scrunch our traps up by our ears.

Let's run through our checklist:

Feet, Legs & Pelvis:

Quick recap because we already went through this in Tadasana

• Feet grounded through all 4 corners

• Finding our balance

• Lift up through the knee caps and contract our quads (thighs) by squeezing them

• Slight internal rotation of the femurs (thigh bones) to allow for space in the pelvis

• Lengthening down through our tailbone allowing it to become heavy as we lift up through our torso

💡Tucking your tailbone is not correct terminology anymore. People have difference pelvic tilts generally and we must be mindful that tucking your tailbone even further with a posterior pelvic tilt would not be good.

• Keep your pelvis neutral as you inhale, people tend to tilt anteriorly so we want to ensure our pelvis stays aligned while softening our ribs in

Spine & Torso:

• Lightly engage your torso (pull navel in and up)

Our upper body will lift and our back will begin to straighten more. This is a really great practice for anyone with a pelvic tilt to begin to bring awareness to the area of what a neutral pelvis may feel like.

Upper Body:

• As we inhale reach arms up we want to continue to keep the lower body steady, pelvis neutral and shoulder blades drawing down so we don't get shrugged shoulders causing unnecessary tension.

• When we are in the full expression of the posture we want to lengthen through the finger tips as we ground through the feet. You will feel your whole body stretch. Its a beautiful movement.

• Chest proud. Heart forward. 

• Biceps by the ears if your shoulders allow. With tightness you may not be able to bring them in towards your ears so you can keep them wide.

Neck & Head:

We always want to protect our neck, in every pose. Within this posture we can:

• Keep our neck and spine neutral by looking forward

or

• We can look up towards our hands, specifically our thumbs (this is called our drishti - our gaze) giving us neck extension.

But be careful, if you have any tightness in your traps, back or neck, keep at a nice neutral angle as it may feel very uncomfortable 😊

And we then exhale fall forward in to our Uttanasana! Heaven 😍

So now we have the first 3 poses down. Only a million to go 😉

Stayed tuned for a new pose every Monday 💖

I am always open to talk about all things life, yoga and fitness so you can find me on social media:

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or email me at contactelisal@gmail.com

Let me know your thoughts everywhere and anywhere!

Anatomy Love & Light,

Elisa x

References:

Mark Stephens - Teaching yoga

Ray Long - The Key Muscles of yoga

http://www.dailybandha.com/2011/05/shoulder-kinematics-in-yoga-part-ii.html

http://www.bandhayoga.com/keys_adduct.html

http://bandha2.rssing.com/chan-9028304/all_p1.html
https://www.smartdraw.com/muscular-system/examples/flexion-and-extension-of-the-neck/