asana: johns sequence

yogabuch / asanas / johns sequence

Johns Folge

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last update: 30.12.2018
Trivial name: John’s sequence
Level: A

Classification

classic: standing pose sequence

Contraindication

In the case of herniated discs in the lumbar spine, the known complaints can flare up again in the transitions between the poses in situations where the lumbar spine rounds. This is all the more true the less flexible the hamstrings are. The only absolute contraindication is resting the upper body on the leg at the end of this cycle.

Effects

Preparation

Follow-up

Derived asanas:

Similar asanas:

Diagnostics (No.)

Variants:

with block

backwards

Instructions

  1. Take trikonasana (trunk to the right).
  2. Bend the right knee and place the right hand on the floor right to the right foot. Pull the left foot in 30-40 cm and put it down again. Now shift your body weight further onto the right leg. Move the right hand even further away (parallel to the outer foot). Shift your entire body weight onto the right leg so that the left foot can be lifted off the floor slowly, without momentum and reversibly. When the left leg is fully raised, slowly straighten the right standing leg completely, turn the upper body away from the standing leg again and stretch the left arm upwards in the shoulder line for ardha chandrasana.
  3. Slowly turn out the left arm, pointing upwards, into a horizontal overhead pose parallel to the spine. Rotate the pelvis with the rib cage down to the horizontal. In a quiet moment, take the right hand off the floor and raise the right arm horizontally parallel to the left for warrior 3 pose.
  4. Turn the chest further to the right until the left hand can be placed on the right outer foot area approx. 40 – 60 cm from the heel, depending on your height. Put only little weight on the left hand, just enough to provide enough friction to support the following rotation of the upper body to the right. Stretch the right arm upwards for parivrtta ardha chandrasana.
  5. Slowly bend the standing leg, keeping the left leg as high as possible and maintaining the rotation of the upper body to the right as far as possible. When the right leg is bent to the maximum, bring the left foot back to the floor at an angle (heel down to the right). Adjust the position of the left hand (push backwards), straighten the right leg again, turn the upper body to the right again as far as possible and stretch the right arm upwards as far as possible in the shoulder line for parivrtta trikonasana.
  6. Release the rotation of the upper body and, if possible, rest the upper body on the right thigh with the arms moving forwards along the floor.
  7. Come back into tadasana.

Details

  1. John’s sequence is a rich and not exactly easy sequence of standing poses. In addition to strength endurance and sensitivity in the strength dosage of larger muscle groups, balance work plays an essential role. Therefore, a lot of forbearance is required during the first attempts if balance is lost from time to time or the affected muscles are overstrained. All transitions should not contain any hint of momentum, but should be carried out carefully and sensitively in response to the shift in the centre of gravity. Apart from the fact that this approach requires a little more muscular endurance, it is in any case the easiest way to perform the transitions just as quickly as you can keep up with the perception of the change and your own reaction to it and, if necessary, the perception of the body’s reaction to your own reaction and the like. If you proceed in exactly this way, there should be no chance of falling over. Of course, a certain amount of muscular practice is required if the individual poses are to be held for more than a few seconds.
  2. The transition from trikonasana to ardha chandrasana involves slowly but completely shifting the gravity perpendicular under one foot. The work of the muscles of this leg and the subjectively perceived effort must increase accordingly – the less strong the muscles are, the more. If you miss this by trying to take the pose with as little energy as possible, you can be sure that you will not have sufficient presence in the corresponding muscle groups later on in the pose. As the knee joint bends, the effort in the bent right leg must therefore increase significantly. The work of the front thigh muscle (quadriceps) decreases once the pose is taken, whereas the work of the lower leg muscles does not decrease, it just changes slightly. It is also important to move the gravity perpendicular, which lies between the two feet in trikonasana, exactly on a straight line through the knee joint of the bent leg and its foot midline so that it does not move sideways, which would require strong corrections through pronation and supination in the foot and of course harbours the risk of tipping over, especially often over the outer edge of the foot. If the bending leg is bent far enough, there will be a little contact between the right thigh and the right flank of the upper body. Maintain this contact until the leg to be lifted is fully raised. For the purpose of precise practice, you can invest up to 80% of your attention in the foot of the standing leg to ensure that it does not wobble. At the beginning, it is certainly also very helpful to turn your gaze (and also your head) towards the foot, as visual perception is much faster than sensory perception via the pressure receptors in the sole of the foot or the tension in the lower leg muscles. The rotation of the ribcage is the same in trikonasana and ardha chandrasana and is generally equally powerful. Therefore, try to maintain the rotation in the transition, especially because the change in the rotation of the upper body and pelvis in relation to the leg means a lateral shift in the centre of gravity, which must be compensated for in other ways. Once in ardha chandrasana, build up the usual work of the lower arm: push the hand on the floor diagonally backwards in a direction parallel to the outer foot and away from it, out of the field of vision, to simultaneously support the extension of the upper body and its rotation.
  3. In ardha chandrasana or parivrtta ardha chandrasana, support yourself only lightly on the floor with your right or left hand. Any weight that is too much on the right hand tends to destabilise the pose, among other things by diluting the character of the standing pose and gradually fading into a supporting pose. The right hand should have just enough weight so that the friction on the floor is sufficient to prevent the fingers from slipping when the right arm helps to stretch the chest and turn the upper body. If you hold ardha chandrasana for a longer period of time, you will experience an intense sensation of strength in the lower leg muscles and gluteal muscles, which, once entered, will also be felt in the next two postures: warrior 3 pose and parivrtta ardha chandrasana.
  4. The transition from ardha chandrasana to virabhadrasana 3 involves rotating the pelvis and upper body, which means shifting the centre of gravity of the torso and necessitating a counter movement in the standing leg. So rotate the upper body with a lot of attention and great but relaxed reactivity. Avoid making the necessary corrections resulting from the changes you have made and perceived too sluggishly. In the same way, avoid nervous overreactions that make further corrections (of the corrections) necessary, so that no rocking movement is created in time with perception and action, which usually harbours the seeds of escalation. Once the upper body is turned, pay even more attention to the foot in order to use the calmest possible moment to lift the second arm off the floor. It will be easier to lift the arm off the ground the less support there is and the better the stance from the standing leg has been. For the time being, there is nothing wrong with lifting the leg to be lifted further than horizontal if there is sufficient flexibility and the pelvis remains in the correct position. Whether the lifted leg exceeds the dorsal pelvic plane in a dorsal direction naturally depends mainly on the flexibility of the hip flexors and only secondarily on the strength of the hip extensors. In any case, the movement should only occur in the hip joint and through the strength of the hip extensors, without hyperlordosis of the lumbar spine.
  5. One of the most important aspects of warrior 3 pose is the position of the pelvis: it generally tends to move forwards on the side of the standing leg, which corresponds to a internal rotation of the thigh. However, as the general direction in this pose (especially of the head or sternum) is forwards towards the foot, the upper body is usually brought into a right curve as compensation. As a result, the outer edge and hips of the standing leg usually have to move more backwards and the armpit, which is the same side, more forwards in order to compensate for what has been described. The standard evasive movement for flexion in the right hip joint is usually the lifting of the left hip, which results in the need for the opposite correction. Furthermore, full flexion of the right hip joint is often avoided due to the sensation of stretching that occurs or is even completely inaccessible when the flexibility of the hamstrings muscles is low. If the shoulder area is nevertheless brought down to the level of the pelvis, this inevitably results in a rather rounded back, especially in the area of the thoracic spine. Instead, it would be preferable to lower the upper body only as far as the extension of the pelvis. If, on the other hand, the flexibility of the hamstrings is very good, it is more likely that the pelvis will be moved too far into flexion, but the upper body will not be moved as far, i.e. only to the horizontal, resulting in a hyperlordosis of the lumbar spine. As is usual in warrior 3 pose, care must be taken not to tip over the narrow outer edge of the foot after completely releasing the inner edge of the foot.
  6. The transition to parivrtta ardha chandrasana, like that from ardha chandrasana to warrior 3 pose, involves turning the upper body and this implies the risks that arise due to the shift of the centre of gravity sideways. It is advisable to first place the left hand on the outside of the foot and then turn the upper body vigorously with the support of the left arm (push the hand diagonally towards the heel). The character of the standing pose (as opposed to a supporting pose) should be maintained at all times, which means minimal support without destabilising the calm stance of the standing leg. A typical difficulty of parivrtta ardha chandrasana is certainly to keep the lifted leg as undiminished high as possible. Be careful not to confuse the lifting of the leg (most easily recognised by the back of the thigh) with the easy lifting of the heel or calf. The exact position of the pelvis can be controversial. In general, it is a good idea to lower the hip of the lifted leg as low as possible in favour of easier rotation of the upper body, which benefits the flexibility of the gluteus maximus, among other things. Only at a more advanced stage, when good rotation in the trunk has become a matter of course, can the precise horizontal position of the pelvis be demanded as a new detail. Until then, lowering the hip of the lifted leg guarantees an improvement in the stretching of the gluteal muscles, especially the gluteus maximus. However, if this is very flexible and undeniably too weak, endeavouring to keep the pelvis horizontal may be the better choice early on.
  7. The transition from parivrtta ardha chandrasana to parivrtta trikonasana begins with slowly bending the standing leg as fully as possible, keeping the lifted leg as high up as possible, and is characterised by a slow, subtle change in the forces in the lower leg which, with the left leg lifted as fully as possible, means slowly moving the pelvis and the lifted leg backwards until the centre of gravity slowly moves behind the heel of the standing foot so that the left foot MUST be brought back to the floor. Try to delay the contact of the left foot with the floor for as long as possible by bending the right leg further. The left foot then touches down at the appropriate angle of approx. 30-45° to the front foot for the following parivrtta trikonasana. The rotation of the upper body should not change significantly and must be restored in its entirety in parivrtta trikonasana. Once the foot is in place, it is necessary to draw the left hand closer to the body in the outer foot area in order to extend the right leg.

Variations

with a block

Instructions

  1. Perform the sequence as described above, but place the fingertips on a block where needed

Details

  1. Trikonasana is usually performed without a block, as the hand rests on the lower leg. A block is often required for the derivations of trikonasana by changing the rotation (around the longitudinal axis of the upper body with consequences for the leg and pelvic posture) of the upper body (parivrtta trikonasana) or rotation of the pose (in the frontal plane) in space (ardha chandrasana) or both at the same time (parivrtta ardha chandrasana). Since in ardha chandrasana the hand on the side is on the floor, the block is placed on the outside of the foot. In parivrtta ardha chandrasana, the other hand is on the outside of the foot, but the flexibility demand on the hamstrings is higher in this pose than in ardha chandrasana or the stretching demand felt with the same level of support (block or similar) is higher, so the block may need to be used differently, i.e. placed on a smaller side for greater height.
  2. During the transition from parivrtta ardha chandrasana to parivrtta trikonasana, any block used must be pulled backwards with the hand, just as it may need to be pushed away parallel to the foot when taking ardha chandrasana so that the hand is approximately under the shoulder.
  3. If necessary, several blocks can be used on top of each other, but all but the top one should be on their largest side! If the lower arm is used to push forcefully, patches may be required between the blocks to prevent them from sliding against each other.
  4. Instead of moving one block between the poses with both feet on the ground and the poses with one foot on the ground, two blocks can of course also be used, each in the correct position so that they do not have to be moved.

backwards

Instructions

  1. Perform John’s sequence backwards, starting with parivrtta trikonasana, then parivrtta ardha chandrasana, then warrior 3 pose, finally ardha chandrasana and finally trikonasana.

Details

  1. Performing the sequence backwards is not fundamentally difficult. Only the part in which the pelvis is turned twice while standing on one leg requires familiarisation.
  2. In cases where trikonasana is known to cause an unpleasant increase in muscle tone in the lumbar spine region, it may be beneficial to perform John sequence backwards.