Transitions for Upper Cross Syndrome & Tonglen Meditation

Combat the Slump: Cow, Cobra, and Updog for Upper Cross Syndrome 

Written by LJ

You know that feeling—shoulders creeping up, back rounding forward, neck straining from hours at your desk (or a wee doom scroll). Welcome to the world of Upper Cross Syndrome (UCS)—a fancy name for the all-too-familiar hunch we develop from the less optimal patterns of modern life. We’re taking a close look at UCS in the Funky Buddha Yoga studios this quarter and playfully inviting in support! How can we support Upper Cross Syndrome’s affects? Heart Openers! 

Join us in studio this February as we look at how to add variety to three postures we transition with often! Cow, Cobra, and Upward Facing Dog poses are here to help open your heart, strengthen your back, and support combating that hunch. To keep things Funky fresh, let’s explore some variations to switch up these classics for offerings that support your body. 

How the Funk Do Chest Openers Support UCS? 

Looking specifically at Cow, Cobra, and Upward Facing Dog, these three postures (and their many variations): 

• Open the Chest: Tight pectoralis major & minor contribute to forward shoulder posture, which can result in undue aches! When we open the heart space, we well, create space to relieve that tightness. 

• Strengthens the Upper Back: Often, Upper Cross Syndrome can be supported through strengthening, as weakened muscles contribute to UCS patterns. Engaging rhomboids, lower traps, and rear delts can counteract this! 

• Encourages Spinal Extension: When we’re a bit hunched over, our spines are stuck in a shortened position, so adding postures that help combat excessive kyphosis (upper back rounding) support us immensely (and provide sooo much relief!). 

• Promotes Active Shoulder Stability: We’re looking for longevity, so the more stability we can offer our shoulders, back, and chest, the more support we’ll have to combat patterns of UCS. Strengthening serratus anterior and rotator cuff muscles, can support posture and reduce strain on the neck. 

Cow Pose (Bitilasana) – Warming into Moooovement 

Cow Pose is more than just an arch of the back, it’s a wonderful way to wake the spine, activate shoulder blades, and open the chest. There are a few ways we can add some flair to our practice, creating movement that best supports individual bodies.  

1. Seated Cow Pose: Not on your mat? No problem. Find a comfortable seat, place your hands on your knees, and as you inhale, arch your back, lift your chest, and gaze upward. It’s a great desk-friendly option to reset throughout the day, cause personally, the Computer-Goblin-Hunch creeps for too long! 
2. Cow Wiggles: Add some lateral mooovement by looking over one shoulder as you arch (Cow), then the other as you round (Cat). This simple twist adds an extra stretch to your spine, neck, and side-body. This dynamic movement creates space in the chest while pulling shoulders back, allowing for deeper activation- strong backs = more support! 
3. Halfway Lift Cow: Spice up your Sun Salutation by adding a Cow stretch to your Halfway Lift. Not only does this help draw shoulder blades back and down, but it can also be a great low back reset. You might even try incorporating this into a Forward Fold by extending all the way down with a Cat-back! 

Cobra Pose (Bhujangasana) – Building Strength and Adding Ease 

Cobra Pose is all about activating the upper back while keeping the front body open and expansive. Strengthening our upper backs can support posture in our daily activities, and there are so many ways to add variety to Cobra! 

1. Sphinx Pose: Activate without the height! Rest on your forearms, keeping your elbows under your shoulders, and let your chest rise with ease. Try this out instead of Cobra or Updog in your Chaturanga Vinyasa! The gentler backbend offers a deep stretch with a bit more support and can be great for that first Chaturanga of the flow. 
2. Cobra with Lifted Hands: Want to turn up the heat a little? From a standard Cobra, hover your hands off the mat. This encourages your back muscles to do most of the work, making this a fantastic way to strengthen without over-relying on your arms. 

Upward Facing Dog (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana) – Opening Up & Pressing Tall 

Updog is your ultimate front-body opener and is just a step more active than Cobra due to the downward press through our hands. Upward Facing Dog is a powerhouse for lengthening the front body from chest to quads, while strengthening our scapular stabilizers– hello! 

1. One-Legged Upward Facing Dog: You may know 3-legged Down Dog, why not try it in Up Dog? Press firmly into your Up Dog and lift one leg off the mat, this engages your glutes and adds an element of balance. Switch sides for an even stretch. 
2. Updog with Blocks: Place yoga blocks under your hands for extra lift, allowing a deeper chest expansion while reducing strain on the lower back. This is a game-changer if your shoulders tend to feel tight. 
3. Up-The-Wall-Dog: Accessing the benefits of Upward Facing Dog doesn’t have to require a fully weight-bearing posture. Try placing your hands against the wall, with elbows slightly bent, and lean forward as if rising through Up Dog. This accessible posture variation is wonderful for an on-the-go posture check! 

Adding variety in Cow, Cobra, and Up Dog can offer your individual body so much support in creating more optimal movement patterns. We invite you to try things out, listen to your body, and go from there!  

Tonglen Meditation: Turning Difficulty into Compassion

Written by Larissa

Giving and receiving are not the most common things that come up when discussing meditation, though they are certainly a big part of the practice. We are receiving quite a lot when we sit in stillness, observe our minds, and get to know ourselves on a new level. We are receiving information from our bodies, receiving a new kind of rest, and we are also giving our precious time to ourselves. We eventually give our more grounded self to the world. Giving and receiving, reciprocation, is not only a strong part of our meditation-it is our very nature. 

Before we get into Tonglen specifically, I’ll share our little formula for beginning any meditation practice: 

1. Choose a focal point: We choose one, so our brain doesn’t accidentally get stuck on a not-chosen loop, like anxiety or worry. 
2. Return to it again and again: And again and again. Because our brain will wander, that’s perfectly okay.  
3. Be as kind to yourself in the process as you can: This is perhaps the most important part! 

The Buddha taught generosity and gratitude first; before you sit still with yourself. If it’s difficult to give yourself grace or gentleness, that’s also okay. It becomes part of the process to watch as you judge yourself (and others, 😮‍💨). Then practice giving yourself permission to start fresh.

Remind Yourself: “It’s okay that I’m having a hard time with this. I’m noticing my breath again right now.” And you begin again. And again. And again <3  

You cannot force, coerce, or challenge your mind into stillness. We simply (not always easily) watch as our mind moves, and invite ourselves to notice our breath, our body, our mantra-whatever your focal point is-over and over. 

This beginning is a practice in concentration. Like anything, the more you practice, the more proficient you become. Concentration, your attention, is a VERY precious commodity! Good news, focus and concentration are skills we can work to enhance and grow; they are not simply things you have or do not have. I also want to say that I’m not just talking about the neurotypical focus, like being able to “study well”, like we heard about in school. It’s asking your mind to take a break so you can focus on what you want to, rather than your mind running away with itself. Staying present is a practice. 

             Choose a focal point, return a million times, be kind to yourself in the process. 

Ok, so there’s our basic formula for meditation. And… We are human. Human things are going to happen that break up this little flow, like super velcro-y thoughts that Will. Not. Stop. You’ll be relaxing in a moment of ease, then suddenly your Inner Critic brings up that thing you said that you wish you wouldn’t have said. Or your Unreliable Narrator is SURE that person at work is messing with you on purpose, or at the very least that ‘look’ in the meeting was about you, for SURE.  

You’ll also have those moments where you are here, then suddenly you are at the grocery store planning what you need to get on the way home, or lost in a memory and not sure how you got there… This is where that returning again and again part comes in handy, but most importantly, how you treat yourself in the middle of the mind-time-jumping is key to creating and maintaining a healthy relationship with meditation (or any practice you want to work on). Force only lasts so long. 

This all leads us into our practice of Tonglen.  

The word comes from the Tibetan word tong – giving or sending, and len– receiving or taking. It is a practice of taking or receiving suffering and difficulty and giving back or sending out into the world your goodness, compassion, and love. Or giving your curiosity and holding your judgement.  

Holding suffering and difficulty miiiiight sound counterintuitive, especially in a world where we’ve often been taught that if you are suffering, there’s something wrong and you need to fix it! It’s common humanity to want to escape discomfort and yucky times; it’s a deep survival mechanism, and of course if feels easier to just be happy. The problem is, suffering just exists. You are not doing something wrong, it just is. 

What Tonglen and Buddhism (and Jung, and Etty Hillesum, and so many more) tell us, is we need to learn how to sit with difficulty, so we can then transform it. This way, it doesn’t keep knocking and knocking until we’re too tired to resist anymore (like those super velcro-y thoughts that Will. Not. Go. Away.). 

Tonglen can be for your own pain, but also for the pain of others. It can be so helpful to remember that I’m not the only one suffering! Sitting with the pain of the world can feel awful if our minds are in charge, but if we get our bodies and hearts involved too, it can be powerfully and positively transformative. It gets us out of the doomscrolling (on a device or just in your mind) thing where our brains are stuck on “what to do”, especially when there isn’t much we can do in the moment, when we’re just stuck in anxiety or fear. This is the time to practice staying with ourselves. You need your tenderness the most when you are hurting, just like you would offer a loved one who is suffering. 

Take a moment to: 

1. Sit with the pain of whatever you just read, or imagine the person you love who is hurting, or sit with your own challenges 
2. Then take a breath and imagine you are expanding your being and the world around you to hold this pain 
3. As you exhale, imagine you are breathing back out softness and goodness into the world.  
   1. You might imagine you’re taking in a loved one’s tears as you inhale, and offering your soothing touch as you exhale.  
   2. Create space to hold the tough stuff on the inhale, and offer your relaxing shoulders and open heart on the exhale.  

There are many ways to practice Tonglen, and I’d love to invite you to join our supportive community as we practice this giving and receiving, together. 

If you’d like to dive deeper, we invite you to join us for our monthly meditation circle!

Check out our Youtube for an overview of these concepts or a meditation practice to try them on <3

As always, we hope that you join us M-F at 7:30am for Funky Buddha Yoga’s free, live, virtual meditation to learn more practices, nuances, and dive deeper into a plethora of tools that can bring your practice off your mat and into your daily life <3