Asana technique- Marichyasana A
- Sit in Dandasana
- Flex your right hip and knee and bring leg closer to your body. Heel should be placed about fist away from your left leg, foot is facing forward and knee is up
- Breath in and raise your right arm, stretch tall
- As you exhale fold yourself down and stretch as far as you can, activating Uddiyana Bandha to allow you to go deeper
- Use your right arm to wrap around your right shin bone
- Left arm internal rotation in shoulder to reach back and grab hold of the wrist and bind together, then externally rotate both shoulders, protract scapulas and straighten elbow as you are trying to get deeper in to a forward bend allowing your nose to touch your shin
- Make sure both hips and shoulders are square, both sitting bones on the floor
- Left leg is activated all the time, foot in Dorsi flexion
- Right leg is not moving at all to either side
- Dristi- toes
- Hold for 5 breaths and repeat on the other side
In order to achieve this asana some work needs to be done on following
- Work on forward bending to stretch hamstrings muscles and lower back muscles
- Strengthening of hip Flexor muscles to gain strength in being able to pull deeper in the bend
- Core work to help forward bending
- Some work on quadriceps muscles to have strength keeping the extended leg activated all the time
- Shoulder/chest opening exercises to help with the binding such as back bending and twisting
- Scapula retraction- to be able to pull back with arms using rhomboids and teres major
- Uddiyana Bandha practice
Limitations
- Inflexible shoulders and chest
- Body proportions such as short arms
- Short hamstrings and lower back muscles
- Week core muscles
If a person having some of these difficulties we can provide some variations to the pose such as-
- Bind only fingers instead of holding wrist or start with a strap or a towel
- Stay upright and work on opening of chest and shoulders before bending by pulling on your arms