Funky Focus | Planks & The Yamas

Stabilizing & Strengthening with Plank Poses

Written by LJ

Is there anything better than flowing into August? This month we’re focusing not only on the beautiful sunny weather, but on Plank Poses! Plank, or Phalakasana, is a cornerstone posture for practicing this quarter’s theme of Stability. By enhancing balance and building endurance, we can use Plank poses to build a stable foundation for so many facets of our yoga practice. 

Why The Funk Do We Want to Plank? 

• Deep Core Strength: By engaging that wonderful core container, Plank poses build strength to support sooo many other postures we take on the mat. Our core containers (encompassing the pelvic floor, diaphragm, obliques, and abs) is responsible for supporting the upper half of our bodies. Strengthening these muscles can reduce the risk of injury, ease back pain, improve posture, and support balance.  
• Upper Body Power: Horizontal planks tend to be quite demanding of the upper-body muscles. By practicing various plank poses, we call on the muscles of our upper back, shoulders and arms, offering the opportunity to strengthen those muscle groups, that aren’t utilized in the day to day, like our lower half. 

• Mental Clarity, Focus, and Stability: A stable foundation is a piece of both our physical and mental practices on the mat. Holding a plank pose, of all variations, encourages concentration to activate, load, and protect the muscles we’re targeting. Mind to muscle, baby!! 

At Funky Buddha Yoga, one of our Core Values is accessibility and we encourage all who practice with us to make their yoga practice accessible to them. How can you do that? Variations! Props! Careful listening to your body! We all know High and Low Plank as part of our chaturanga vinyasa; did you know there are an abundance of modifications you can blend into your practice to make it, well, yours?!  

So many Funkin’ Variations: 

• Low Back Sensitivity? Try taking a knee, or two! Pulling hip points to ribs engages your core so your lower back is also supported. 

• Wrist Injuries? Forearm plank may be your go-to, eliminating the load on the wrist and lighting up those shoulders! By decreasing the incline, we can transfer load from our larger leg muscle groups toward smaller chest and shoulder muscles (save the wrists and build strength? win win!) 

• Shoulder Troubles? Try hands on blocks! This time, we’re increasing that incline, which transfers the weight further into those large muscle groups and giving our upper body a bit more support. 

• Looking to dial it up? There are so many ways to further activate your plank! Add some fun movement, like knee to elbow taps, try on some leg lifts, or test your balance with shoulder taps- the world, or plank, is your oyster. 

With Stability in mind, we’re exploring the endless ways we can get Plank-y on the mat this month. By incorporating postures you may not always consider a Plank, like Stargazer, we’ll blend activation with openness to create strong, diverse building blocks for our yoga practices.

Wonderfully, we can always find depth with our Asana practice by considering these same principles off the mat for our daily life as well. Plank Poses of all varieties can teach us about our own resilience, strength, and stability in allll the hullabaloo outside the studio.  

Here are a few resources to support this Funky Focus!

Plank Variations for Larger Bodies – Youtube 

Side Planks for Larger Bodies – YouTube 

Contraindications, Counter Postures, and Variations for Injury – Blog Post 

The 8 Limbs of Yoga

What are the 8 Limbs, and why are they important? 

The 8 Limbs can be broken into 3 broad categories: 

How to navigate the world, inner and outer- Yamas and Niyamas: Limbs 1 & 2 

How to take care of your body and energy- Asana (to sit, to pose), Pranayama (breath work, life force expansion), Pratyahara (sense withdrawal/enhancement): Limbs 3, 4, & 5

How to take care of your mind and spirit- Dharana (pointed concentration), Dhyana (open awareness), Samadhi (freedom, bliss, wholeness): Limbs 6, 7, & 8. These 3 together are sometimes called the “Innermost Quest.”

The purpose of the Limbs are to give us concepts to ponder and understand through practice, practical tools to apply to life, and are a whole system meant to move us toward the ultimate goal of yoga: Freedom (Jivanmukti, liberation while still in the body).

It’s said that a Jivanmukta, a person who’s reached this state through the practice of yoga, has perfect equanimity and contentment, unwavering peace, deep abiding joy, bliss, and mercy, exquisite gentleness, and is free from doubt, ego, greed, and fear. Sounds freaking sweet, right?? This doesn’t mean there are no more issues in life, just that a Jivanmukta is no longer swayed by every external event. Your ability to hold both suffering and immense joy increases, so you are no longer bound by trying to cling to joy or avoid suffering; you are simply and fully living. 

The Yamas; 5 practices for treating the world around us.

Written by Larissa

This month, we’ll begin our journey through the 8 Limbs of Yoga in our morning meditations. We’ll take this journey slowly, beginning in August with the Yamas, and ending in December with Samadhi. 

What are the 8 Limbs, and why are they important? 

The 8 Limbs are drawn from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and it’s often taught that these steps lead you into the ultimate heart of yoga: freedom and liberation from the constructs of the mind, society, and anything that is not expressly for you.

This doesn’t always happen quickly, it requires gentle focus, and refocus, and cannot be attained by finding the perfect pair of yoga pants, nor the perfect posture (although both do make your body feel good!). The importance of the Yamas is found in how they start to show you the path to becoming your Truest, most whole, Self. 

What is a Yama? 

We’ll begin with the first 2 limbs, the Yamas and Niyamas; they are the hands and feet of your yoga practice, walking you into your highest sense of self. These 2 concepts are often translated as The Moral Codes of Yoga, or Moral Vows, The Restraints, or most simply, the Do’s and Don’ts of Yoga. This is a good starting place, though understanding the language of yoga, Sanskrit, can clarify these concepts even further. 

In simple language, Yama = restraint or control. The deeper meaning is different than our western concept of restraint/control- which is usually dominate, or power over. The True understanding of Yama is more like disallowing shame, greed, power, and things of this nature to control you. It also means working with your mind to give you choice and freedom- beyond what you ‘should’ do, or what your mind is telling you is wrong. 

The Yamas in a nutshell: 

Ahimsa = non-harming or non-violence; compassion

Satya = Truthfulness; specifically benevolent truthfulness

Asteya = non-stealing; only take what is freely offered 

Bramacharya = moderation; especially in usage of your energy 

Aparigraha = non-attachment or non-possessiveness; generosity 

Ahimsa isn’t just the absence of violence, it is the conscious choice to notice when we are causing harm, no matter how small. This happens in so many subtle ways. We cause ourselves a small ding when we say to ourselves things like, “I’m too ________”, “I’m not enough ________.” Many small dings can lead to great personal harm, just through those tiny little thoughts. The antidote to causing harm is to turn to compassion. If you have any unkind thoughts toward yourself or someone else, how can you flip it to add a little more compassion? How else can you minimize tiny harms in your life?  

Satya is not the same as “brutally honest.” This kind of truth encompasses Ahimsa, compassion, so all truth is tempered with kindness. Satya is also not the same thing as an opinion. Sometimes opinion gets conflated with truth, and this tenant helps us find the difference between the two; the key here is to observe your truth for long enough that it becomes your Being. Sat, the root, means to be- and this concept encompasses the idea that your being is pure truth. Satya is never forceful nor demanding that someone change to match a ‘truth’; it is formed in stillness and in listening to the wisdom that lives in your intuition, rather than your intellect. Satya is benevolent, encompasses compassion for all beings, and allowance for the messy parts of being human.  

Asteya isn’t just turning away from thievery, it’s also paying attention to how you might steal from yourself. Stealing time may come in the form of saying yes to something you don’t want to do, scrolling for too long, or a Netflix binge that left you feeling yucky, rather than rested. Another angle here is from Ghandi; he wrote that “mankind’s greed and craving for artificial needs are also stealing.” Without shaming yourself, just looking through the lens of curiosity, what are some ways you might be stealing from yourself? Then the second question, perhaps even more important, how can I practice abundance instead? Abundance and generosity are the antidotes to stealing, and spending time on how to be abundant with grace for yourself and generous with your kindness, are much more effective change-makers than too much focus on how you may have inadvertently taken from yourself or others. 

Brahmacharya literally means “behavior which leads to Brahman” or behavior which leads to your highest self. In its simplest form, it is looking at wisely using your energy. Rest when your body calls for rest. Act when you have the energy, and save your energy so you can take action when you need to. Move that energy wisely, purposefully, and allow it to settle, so you don’t disturb others with your energy. Another way to look at this concept is ‘everything in moderation’. Are there places in your life you are running yourself ragged? Are you expecting too much from yourself? From others? What does wise use of energy mean to you? 

Aparigraha is usually described as non-attachment or non-possessiveness. This doesn’t mean you are detached or dissociated, nor that you can’t form attachments to your loved ones. It’s a helpful tool to see when our love is conditional, where we are attached to how we want people to act, rather than allowing them their own autonomy. It also certainly applies to ‘stuff’; how many possessions do I need? Do I have more than I need? Is that overwhelming in any way? Another key point here is the antidote of generosity. Am I generous in allowing someone to be themselves, rather than wanting them to be the version I want them to be? Am I generous and abundant in my mind, or do I live in scarcity, clinging to my possessions? 

All of thes questions are meant to be seen through the lens of curiosity, rather than judgement. Get to know yourself and how you interact with the world through this frame of the Yamas, with curiosity and tenderness.

What’s next? 

This is an oooooold reference, older than my generation, but I remember one of uncles laughing about Popeye’s “I yam what I yam.” This is actually a deeply philosophical phrase, coming from “I am what I am, and that is all that I am.” What a great way to look at how to apply the Yamas! My nerdy brain turns this into “I Yama what I Yama” (Sorry, not sorry).

How can we BE the Yamas? How might we live them in such a way that truthfulness and generosity become our way of being? Practice. Practice. And more Practice. These ancient and wise concepts can live on the ground today, no matter how much we’ve changed as humans. Take these concepts with you, lean in, and if it suits you, join us to learn how to practically apply these wise concepts to your day-to-day living.

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 how to integrate these principles into everyday life <3

P.S. If you’ve enjoyed this and want more depth, you can also join us for teacher training starting in October! Teacher training is a great way to take a deep dive into your practice, not just for teachers. We love not just talking about yoga philosophy but learning how to truly live it. I’ll nerd out with you all day long. Click here to learn more.