Often the healing properties of yoga are emphasized. Yes, yoga can be incredibly therapeutic! But just like any movement modality, if we are not careful we can injure ourselves. Knowing how to do chaturanga dandasana safely can insure the longevity of your yoga practice. That’s what we want right? A safe sustainable practice for the long term. So check out the video above and learn how you can do chaturanga dandasana the right way for your body.
Yoga Basics: Chaturanga Dandasana
In Sanskrit this pose translates to Four Limb Stick Pose. Chatura is the number 4. Anga is a limb, like the branch of a tree, Danda is a stick or a staff and Asana means posture.
This pose is SO often misaligned in vinyasa classes but no one ever corrects their students!
Why is it important to know how to do chaturanga dandasana? Because if you frequently misalign this pose you can create long lasting shoulder injuries. Here’s Lauren Rudick takes you through how to do this pose safely.
Often the healing properties of yoga are emphasized. Yes, yoga can be incredibly therapeutic! But just like any movement modality, if we are not careful we can injure ourselves. Knowing how to do chaturanga dandasana safely can insure the longevity of your yoga practice. That’s what we want right? A safe sustainable practice for the long term. So check out the video above and learn how you can do chaturanga dandasana the right way for your body.
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This is a pose that I see so much misalignment in as an instructor. Chaturanga dandasana is a crucial element of practice for anyone who enjoys vinyasa yoga or wants to eventually achieve arm balances. Misaligned chaturanga can lead to shoulder strain and rotator cuff injuries as well as neck pain and low back pain. So it is important to do this asana properly. follow these 5 steps to master your chaturanga dandasana.
1) Starting in plank pose, make your body parallel to the mat. The shoulders should be stacked right on top of the wrists. The head is an extension of your long spine.
2) Engage the quadriceps by gluing the thigh muscles to their bones. Keep the body actively engaged by pressing the heels back toward an imaginary wall and the chest forward into space in front of you.
3) Push the ground away from you and slightly round the shoulders to turn on the shoulder girdle. The biceps will rotate in toward each other. The eyes of the elbows will face out.
4) Engage the bandhas! Mula bandha: lift your pelvic floor. Imagine there is a shelf between your legs. Lift that shelf toward the belly and the back. Uddiyana bandha: Scoop the belly button in and up in a J motion. Jalandara bandha: keep the back of the neck long. Tuck in the chin slightly. note: if your are having trouble keeping the hips lifted here and the back is starting to banana place the knees on the ground.
5) On an exhale bend the elbows. Keep everything engaged and active. The arms should come to a 90 degree angle. Hug the biceps in toward the body. Make sure the shoulder heads NEVER drop below the elbows this is crucial to ensuring safety and symmetry in the shoulder joint.
See if you can hold this pose for 1 breath, 3 breaths, 5 breaths… Keeping the bandhas working and the shoulders moving away from the ears. Once you can hold this asana for a few breaths comfortably, see if you can push back up to plank.
Can you do chaturanga pushups ??
Tag anyone who can benefit from improving their alignment in chaturanga dandasana! Happy shoulders and happy practice yogis!
Lead teacher and founder of Yoga Academy International, Lauren is a globally celebrated yoga instructor. She has been teaching yoga for nearly a decade and comes from a variety of lineages and traditions. Lauren’s appetite for yoga and travel are insatiable. She continues to study with world-class instructors whenever possible, all the while leading her own yoga retreats and workshops. Lauren has solid roots in Hatha yoga with continued studies in Vinyasa flow, Anusara, Ashtanga, Restorative and Yin Yoga. She is inspired by teachers who tell stories. She has studied under Seane Corn, Chris Chavez, MC Yogi, Susan Cohen, Nancy Goodfellow and many others. Lauren is passionate about sharing yoga from an authentic and soulful point of view. She believes that yoga practice can help uncover the veils that hide us from achieving our full potential.
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Yoga Academy International Faculty:
Lauren Rudick
Lauren Rudick
Lead teacher and founder of Yoga Academy International, Lauren is a globally celebrated yoga instructor. She has been teaching yoga for over a decade and comes from a variety of lineages and traditions. Lauren has lead yoga retreats and workshops in over 2-dozen countries and continues to study with world-class instructors whenever possible. She has been featured in Women's health Magazine, YogiTimes, Optymyz and get out there to name a few as well as on countless podcasts and newspaper articles. Lauren has solid roots in Iyengar based Hatha yoga with continued studies in Vinyasa flow, Anusara, Ashtanga, Restorative, Bhakti and Yin Yoga. She is inspired by teachers who tell stories. She has studied under Seane Corn, Chris Chavez, MC Yogi, Susan Cohen, Mercy Ananda, Nancy Goodfellow and many others. Lauren is passionate about sharing yoga from an authentic and soulful point of view. She believes that yoga practice can help uncover the veils that hide us from achieving our full potential.
Lauren is E-RYT 500 registered with Yoga Alliance.
Will Peters
Will Peters
Making yoga accessible and enjoyable, regardless of who you are and how strong or flexible you are, is his priority. With a passion for all things health and wellbeing, Will’s aim is to inspire anyone and everyone to step on the mat to gain the physical and mental benefits that yoga can provide.Born in the UK, Will is a qualified and registered yoga teacher with over 250 hours of training. Will places an emphasis on alignment and safety. Outside of teaching, Will is an enthusiastic yoga student, constantly pushing his body and mind to new limits. Whether it’s learning to handstand, progressing towards the splits or practicing mindfulness exercises, Will loves to learn new things and grow. This provides continuous evolution to Will’s teaching as he brings new-found energy and knowledge from my personal practice into class.
Liv Townsend
Liv townsend
Despite being ‘self-taught’ in the early days, Liv took her 200hr Yoga Teacher Training in London in 2016, an additional 200hr Rocket & Vinyasa Training in 2020 and completed her 500hr training with Jason Crandell in 2021. Liv takes a lot of inspiration for the mechanics and science of movement from other disciplines such as martial arts, gymnastics, calisthenics and resistance training. Her favourite teaching style is a combination of Vinyasa and Hatha yoga which a friend of mine so perfectly suggested it be called VinHatha! There’s not a great deal of chaturanga-updog-downdogs, but instead we challenge the body in more unique ways, manipulating our body weight to find both length and strength in the entire body.
Teresa Edmilao
Teresa Edmilao
Teresa has been practicing massage therapy since 2006. She has a 3000hr diploma in Massage Therapy from the West Coast College of Massage Therapy in Vancouver, BC. Teresa has a passion for helping people connect with their bodies. She lives by example, inspiring people to lead an active and healthy lifestyle. Teresa spent 7 years practicing massage therapy in Canada to people from all walks of life; students, athletes, desk workers, labourers, youth, elderly, dancers, and accident victims. Teresa is also a fire dancer and hula hoop dancer. She has experienced numerous injuries has personally been through the rehabilitation process many times. It was these experiences that have lead her to delve deeply into the study and application of anatomy and movement. Teresa offers anatomy classes at Yoga Academy International. Her teachings are thorough, meticulous but fun, drawing on every day life experience to help yogis understand their bodies better.
Nancy Goodfellow
Nancy Goodfellow
Yoga director and co-owner of Pranamar Villas and Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica, Nancy is extremely well known for her inspiring and creative daily classes, workshops,and retreats, with students both locally and internationally. Her twenty years of committed practice, thousands of hours of trainings, and continual curiosity towards life’s most mysterious aspects are all part of why she has so many devoted students. She began her Yogic studies in the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition under the guidance of her first teachers, Dominic Corigliano, Tim Miller and Pattabhi Jois. Nancy has completed over 500 hours of Yoga Alliance teacher trainings and began teaching in 1998. Nancy dedicated many years of study to the Anusara method with its amazing principles of alignment, Tantric philosophy and Bhakti filled practice. She completed over 500 hours of certified Anusara teachings and traditional non-dualistic Tantra studies.
Perrine Marais
Lauren Rudick
Known in Quebec for her empowering and effective teaching, Perrine has completed over 1400hours of trainings. After her 200hr certification in Costa Rica, she wanted to deepen her knowledge and practice from a more traditional approach. So Perrine travelled to India where she accumulated overr 1000 hours of Hatha yoga training at the Patanjali International Yoga Foundation. Before joining the Yoga Academy International team, Perrine joined her teachers and lead 5 trainings in India. Constantly yearning to expand her education, Perrine has taken 2 yin yoga teacher trainings, a Sup Yoga teacher training, Thai Yoga Massage and Myofacial release. In teaching she hopes to share her love of yoga with others as a way to secure their confidence with exploration and movement of the functional body but also tap in to the deep energetic intelligence within.
She is registered with yoga alliance as E-RYT 500.
Charlotte Mason
Charlotte Mason
Chef Charlotte Mason hails from Boston where she used work in high end restaurant kitchens and then later opened up her own catering company. Burnt out and needing a break, Charlotte went on a surf vacation to Nicaragua and 3 weeks later moved cross continents and has been there ever since. Charlotte's love of sourcing locally, creating exceptional plant-based dishes and combining flavours makes her food loved by everyone. Charlotte is passionate about health and wellness and is also a certified yoga instructor. Giving back not only with flavours, Charlotte frequently teaches yoga classes in Spanish for local women and helps empower local women to follow their dreams and speak their minds. In joining Yoga Academy International, Charlotte has added so much to the experience by creating comfort and family feelings found only when gathering around a table to share delicious meals together. When not on Yoga Academy International's trainings, Charlotte creates gourmet pop up dinners around Nicaragua and chefs at yoga retreats around the world.
Sanne Hofman
Sanne Hofman
Sanne is a ray of sunshine! Before joining the Yoga Academy International team, Sanne was a neuropsychologist in Holland. On her path, she felt that her chosen field was not quite the right fit. So Sanne set off on a journey through Central America to get to know herself better. Along the way she met her partner Toby in Panama. Together they worked and traveled through Central America eventually finding their way to Maderas Beach, Nicaragua. They loved the spot so much that they decided to move there and eventually got jobs managing a boutique hotel. Wanting to expand her offerings at the hotel, Sanne took Yoga Academy International's 200hr teacher training in 2018. She then furthered her studies in the Chakra-Vinyasa Training and went back to Europe to take Thai Yoga Massage training. Sanne is compassionate, loving and kind. She is an example of how to live yoga ethics while still being true to who you are. Sanne offers YAI students endless encouragement and love as well as unwavering support on their journeys. She can always be counted on for a listening ear, a compassionate friend, a glowing smile or a warm hug when you need it most.
This is a pose that I see so much misalignment in as an instructor. Chaturanga dandasana is a crucial element of practice for anyone who enjoys vinyasa yoga or wants to eventually achieve arm balances. Misaligned chaturanga can lead to shoulder strain and rotator cuff injuries as well as neck pain and low back pain. So it is important to do this asana properly. follow these 5 steps to master your chaturanga dandasana.
