Natarajasana: Shiva’s Celebratory Dance
It’s June, time to kick off your shoes and shed your extra layers. The Roman poet Ovid named June after juniores, or youth, following as it does, the month of May (named for maiores, or elders). With its long hours of daylight, June celebrates the carefree fullness of summer and the plethora of outdoor festivities it brings—festivals, weddings, outdoor concerts and farmer’s markets. Kinda’ makes you want to dance.
In Indian mythology, the shape-shifting god Shiva famously assumes the form of a dancer at times. Being a god, however, Shiva is not just any dancer. He is, in fact, the literal Lord of the Dance, Nataraj, from the Sanskrit natar-rajan, or “dance king.” In this rollicking form, Shiva is often depicted encircled in flames, four arms flung in all directions, one foot crushing a small, misshapen figure that represents ignorance, while the other kicks out in enlightened joy. Shiva dances to destroy, and he destroys in order to create. In Shiva’s dance, sublimating the veil of ignorance brings about the infinite clarity of awareness.
This month’s pose, Natarajasana, celebrates Shiva’s dance, and the joy of June’s youthful exuberance. Begin by standing on a solid surface with your feet hip width apart. No mat is needed for Natarajasana. Check in with your feet. How is your weight distributed between them? Do you feel more weight on the insides or the outsides? Are your heels or balls of your feet bearing more weight than the other?
Feel how you are relating to gravity. Is your body collapsing into your feet, bringing a tired or sluggish feeling? Or are you tightening the muscles around your bones, propping yourself up away from the earth? Try the middle way, what New Zealand yoga teacher Donna Farhi calls “active yield.”
Here’s how: Standing on both feet, yield your weight into your feet. Now instead of collapsing or pushing the floor away, feed your feet into the floor, as if you are growing roots. When you practice active yield, rooting your foundation into whatever surface you’re on, you will feel a gentle rebound that lifts the rest of the body up away from the floor.
Now shift your weight onto your right leg, actively yielding into the right foot. Bend your left knee and take hold of the top of your left foot with your left hand or with a strap, holding your foot behind you. Let your tailbone descend toward the floor as you raise your right arm up toward the sky. This is the first variation of Natarajasana. In this variation, there’s no need to bend forward as in the photo; stand upright, grounding your right foot and holding your left foot with your left hand. You may want to stand with your back close to a wall and allow the toes of your left foot to touch the wall for extra stability. Stay five to ten deep breaths. Gently release your left foot and return to standing.
If you’d like to explore a more challenging variation, from the first version, begin lifting your left foot up behind you, toward your head. As you do this, let your torso begin extending forward and outward until your torso, right arm and left thigh are approximately parallel to the ground (as in the photo). Reach back through the left knee as you reach forward through the right arm, lengthening everything in between. Meanwhile, continue to root the right leg into the ground. Remember, it is Shiva’s bottom leg that stamps out ignorance, the condition necessary for spacious enlightenment, so give the grounded leg ample attention. Stay for five to ten deep breaths. Tilt the body back up to vertical, release your left foot and return to standing.
What do you feel? How has your body changed? How has your consciousness changed? Take a few natural breaths and allow the effects of the pose to settle. Close your eyes if that helps you to feel your subtle energies more clearly. Now repeat the process on your second side.
Whichever version of the pose you choose, remember that Natarajasana is about intelligent action. It is Shiva’s stationery leg that sustains his multi-limbed abandon. For one person, the most intelligent pose may be the second variation, balancing on one leg with the rest of the body in full, horizontal extension. For another, the most intelligent pose may be practicing the vertical variation, touching the wall for stability. Remember that yoga is not about what your body can or cannot do; it’s about finding the perfect balance between challenge and comfort. No two people will ever express any asana exactly the same way.
Balancing poses challenge your concentration, and therefore cultivate concentration. Balancing develops steadiness of mind and a quality of calm that can keep you clear-headed even as your life presents its inevitable daily challenges. Practice Natarajasana when your mind feels agitated or scattered, or when you need clarity for making an important decision. Or practice it when you feel like dancing—in your home practice; at the top of a mountain after a long, uphill hike; or at one of June’s many celebrations.
Charlotte Bell is a writer, musician and yoga and meditation teacher who has taught yoga along the Wasatch Front and beyond since 1986. She is the author of “Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life.” www.charlottebellyoga.com.

Marichyasana: A Wise Way to Tonify
May—a time for spring cleaning. Whether it’s attic clutter or closet chaos that’s weighing us down, many of us develop the itch to clear our living space after the long, closed-in, cold season. Spring is also a great time to cleanse our bodies, from the inside out.
According to Chinese medicine, spring supports detoxifying and tonifying the liver and gall bladder, our internal storage sheds for wintertime refuse. Spring is associated with the element of wood, and green is the color of the season—think trees and their burgeoning foliage.
In the Chinese medical model, the liver controls the muscles and tendons of the body, so the squeezing and stretching actions of many yoga poses can help tonify the liver. But for direct action on the liver, nothing beats twists and backbends. Twists and backbends squeeze the liver, releasing toxins into your bloodstream.
This month’s pose is chosen from among many yogic twists because of its name. The Roman epic poet Ovid named May for “maiores,” the Latin word for elders. Elders are often associated with wisdom (especially by those of us who are approaching or fully entrenched in eldership). This month’s pose, Marichyasana, is named for the sage Marichi, who Yoga Journal calls “the great-grandfather of Manu (‘man, thinking, intelligent’), the Vedic Adam, and the ‘father’ of humanity.” Elder, indeed.
Marichyasana has many variations; some involve spinal twisting and others do not. This month’s pose is a variation of Marichyasana III. Begin by sitting on the floor with your legs extended straight out in front of you. Place a few fingers on your lumbar spine. If you feel the spinous process poking out like knobs in your lower back, place a folded blanket under your hips so that your hips are higher than your legs. Again feel your spine. Keep elevating your hips until your low back no longer feels knobby. (When the spinous processes are poking out, your lumbar is in flexion. This is not a healthy position from which to twist your spine.)
Let the weight of your torso release into your sit bones. Ground the back of your right leg and bend your left knee, drawing the foot back toward your left sit bone. Place the sole of your left foot on the floor so that the inside of your foot is about four inches from the inside of your right thigh. Scoot your right sit bone forward and your left sit bone back a bit, so that your sit bones are on a diagonal. (Some yoga methods will tell you to keep the sit bones aligned, but I’ve found that this can, over time, create instability in the sacroiliac joint. Take it from a yoga elder with an unstable sacroiliac joint!)
Ground both sit bones and rotate your torso toward your left knee, sliding your right leg forward even more as you turn. Either hook your right arm around your left knee, or place your right elbow on the outside of the thigh. Place your left hand on the floor behind your left hip. Press the left hand into the floor to help lengthen your spine upward. Relax your shoulders. Make sure you are not using your right arm to force yourself into the twist.
Don’t go to your maximum twist. Breathe deeply, and as you inhale feel how your torso wants to rotate slightly out of the twist. As you exhale, feel how your torso moves back into the twist. Relax into these oscillations. When you suppress these movements, you suppress your breath—not the best way to detoxify your liver and restore your energy. Because the liver is associated with anger and aggression, balancing your liver requires that you approach asana practice with gentleness.
Take five to ten deep, nourishing breaths, letting your torso unwind into the rotation. Feel your abdominal organs, especially your liver, stomach and spleen, and allow them to settle into the twist along with your rib cage, spine and core muscles. After five or ten breaths, rotate back to center and stretch your left leg out onto the floor. Sit for a few breaths and be present with what you feel in your body. Relax. Repeat on the second side.
It is common to feel thirsty after practicing twists (and backbends) because of their liver-squeezing actions. Be sure to drink lots of water after practicing them. Twist wisely, without force or aggression, with the patience of the elders. Let Marichyasana renew your liver and your life.

Charlotte Bell is a yoga teacher, writer and musician who has taught yoga since 1986. She is the author of the book, Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life, published by Rodmell Press.

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