Namaste Everyone,

I hope this email finds you well. I’m finally on my way home after three months away. It has been an amazing trip and I’m so grateful for what I get to do and share. I thought I would continue the thread from last months newsletter and briefly discuss the muscle I would most associate with uddhiyana bandha.

If you know of a common injury you’d like me to weigh in on, send me an email and I’ll work it in to the next newsletter.

Finding your Anatomical Uddhiyana by David Keil 2010

In the last piece about mulha bandha and its relationship to the pelvic floor muscles I eluded to the muscle that might be most associated with uddhiyana bandha. Well, here we are continuing down the path to try and bridge the subtle and gross of our bodies as best we can.

I should mention that although this is one of those places where anatomy and energy seem to overlap, I wholeheartedly believe bandhas to be energetic with an anatomical component. After all, I consider myself a yogi first, anatomist second. However, There are physical parts that can help us understand and relate to these more subtle aspects of our anatomy. For mulha bandha it was the pelvic floor, for uddhiyana… well, let’s talk about this for a minute.

I often ask the question, how would you know if someone was engaging or using their bandhas? The answer in some form or fashion is that you see the results. You see the qualities created by mulha and uddhiyana in the individual as they move and practice. What are the qualities? mulha is the root lock, which means one would observe a grounded quality to the asana being performed. Uddhiyana on the other hand means upward flying and is often observed as an overall ease and particularly a lightness in the practice. The very famous, floating aspect in advanced practitioners is a sign of bandha use and control.

This is not to say that there is no muscular effort, there most definitely is. One must also have strength to make these movements happen but to look effortless seems to require the use of the subtle aspects of our being.

I know I’ve been keeping some of you in suspense about what physical part of the body is related to uddhiyana, but some of you have probably guessed already (especially if you recognize the image to the right). If you haven’t, it’s the psoas muscle. I’ve already written a short article on the psoas posted on the website. For our purposes today I want to tie the workings of mulha and uddhiyana together.

There are three muscles that one could associate with the word psoas. First is the very small psoas minor muscle. Second, is the psoas major. Third is the Iliacus muscle which when combined with the psoas major is known as the Iliopsoas. The psoas minor is somewhat disregarded as it a small muscle with a long tendon, meaning it’s not very powerful. In addition it’s said to be absent in approximately half the population.

It is the function of the iliopsoas (the combination of iliacus and psoas major) as the strongest hip flexor of the body that brings everyone’s attention to it. This movement of hip flexion is essential to us as humans as it is what takes us forward in our daily life. It is the primary muscle for walking. Although you could simplify walking as flexing the femur so that one foot goes in front of the other, it’s certainly much more complex than that, and requires many other muscles to carry out this complicated and coordinated action.

What we’re essentially doing is both controlling and moving our center of gravity forward in space and we’re balancing it on those two long sticks we call legs. Our physical center of gravity is near the top of our sacrum. It’s only slightly different for men or women, but not so much that we need to go into it in this article. As we transition into other types of movements, especially if you think of graceful dancers, or powerful changes in direction like football players, what we essentially do is control the center of gravity in our body.

The psoas is perfectly positioned to make this happen. It is a two-sided muscle, each side a more or less tapering tube-shaped piece of muscle falling on either side of our center of gravity. What this means, is that it is going to be intrinsically linked with the control of this area of the body.

When one jumps back, forward, or lifts up into a handstand they are essentially controlling their center of gravity over, or in relation to, their foundation (in this case hands). I hate to over-simplify it, but it’s having a connection to ones center physically and energetically. Awareness of the psoas, and attempted use of it, seems to trigger the resultant effect of uddhiyana bandha, flying upward with control and lightness. If you add this to mulha bandha as we discussed in last months newsletter, we are using mulha to control from below and uddhiyana to control from either side of the center of gravity. We are in a sense surrounding both our energetic center as well as our physical center.

There are many exercises that can encourage a connection to these areas of the body and you’ve probably done a few if you’ve been practicing yoga for any length of time. At first, it does take self-inquiry to understand the relationship of both of these bandhas to each other as well as to the practice of yoga. What I’ve offered is simply a physical anchor for your mind which may help you discover your center of gravity. This is a great place to focus on in your practice. In every anatomy workshop that I do, when I cover the psoas we do simple sun salutations with a focus on that muscle or area of the body. The effect for the students is almost always obvious.

There is of course one more element that should be discussed if you’re talking about bandha… and that is breath, without it, there is no prana to control. Perhaps next time we’ll discuss that.

If you can find your psoas and move from it and with it, you should find, strength, stability as well as control and lightness. I’ve put together a couple of resources for you here. Included is a videoclip of me leading students through some suryanamaskara with a psoas focus. It’s from a recent Yoga Anatomy workshop at Still Point Yoga London. On the same page is a great psoas article by Liz Koch, known for looking at so many of the aspects and effects of having awareness of this muscle. And, if you’d like more from me… you can download just the psoas section of my YogAnatomy Volume 2 to the right or at the shop here.

Om Shanti,

David