Toe Stand Pose: There's only one set, so let's make the most of it
How do you know which part of a posture is extra-important?
Look for the part that you love to avoid. (Lock the knee, anyone?)
In Toe Stand Pose, there are two lines of Dialogue that Bikram Yoga students love to pretend don't exist:
Bring your hands to both sides on the floor
Stretch your spine up to the ceiling, hips up, balancing on your fingertips
Why are these instructions are extra-important?
It's all about balance.
Balance as a health issue
As we get older, our sense of balance tends to deteriorate.
Many factors contribute, including muscle loss and reduced capacity to integrate sensory information.
We can see the effects in the horrifying statistics around falls among older people. For example, each year over 3% of the Australian population aged over 65 are hospitalized following a fall. 😱
Maintaining our sense of balance
In Toe Stand Pose, bringing our hands to both sides and stretching up forces our Central Nervous System (CNS) into overdrive.
We have to process and send out millions of bits of information every second, especially to and from the core and spinal muscles, to keep us upright.In other words, we are training our CNS and musculoskeletal system to keep us balanced.
Use it, don't lose it
If we don't reinforce these pathways between the CNS and muscles, they won't be there when we need them in day-to-day life.That's why it's so important to take your time in Toe Stand Pose and follow the Dialogue.
But my fingertips don't reach the floor
If it's hard to balance on your fingertips, it's even harder to balance with your fingertips slightly off the floor, which is what you're faced with if your spine is long relative to your arms. And you might find yourself getting stuck leaning forward.
Don't be sad about your long spine. Learning to balance with your fingertips off the floor is going to supercharge your CNS, preparing you for life's inevitable bumps. (And besides, that long spine will help you in Stretching Pose.)
Yoga is something you try, not something you do
In the end, it's not about what you look like in the posture. It's about doing your best with what you've got.
If you find it super-challenging or scary to bring your hands to both sides and stretch up, next time just take a little baby step. Bring your hands a millimeter more to your sides and stretch your spine up a millimeter. In your head, hear the word balance and banish the word fall.
Do the same thing next class and the class after that.
The point is not to be perfect. The point is to try your honest best. Just like you did when you learned to walk, talk, and ride a bike.
The principle is the same. Only by trying do we improve.
Icing on the cake
Once you learn to "stretch your spine up to the ceiling, hips up, balancing on your fingertips" in Toe Stand, the rest of the posture is icing on the cake because you've already done most of the hard work.
