Control and Surrender - The Yoga of Using the Hands

Different types of yoga postures train our bodies yes, they also provide us with a context in which to cultivate mental powers such as concentration, stress management, confidence and conscious relaxation.  In this essay I’ll focus on postures that require the practitioner to bear weight on his or her hands and the way in which doing so relates to their executive functioning and confidence.

In the Katonah Yoga tradition as articulated by its founder Nevine Michaan, one of the fundamental characteristics of the hands is that they relate to our competence and ability to “make our way” in the world.  Builders utilize their hands to construct houses, doctors to heal their patients, artists to paint or sculpt their works, writers to type their essays and so on.  In the field of yoga the art of the hands-on-adjustment is a deeply impactful practice and one that sadly has fallen somewhat out of fashion. The hands, when compared to every other part of the human body with the possible exception of the tongue, are vastly more coordinated, skillful and closely linked with our conscious will to create.  The entire civilization in which we live is made possible with the skilled “handiwork” of generations of engineers, architects and artisans.  I encourage you to reflect on the many ways in which you use the skill of your hands in order to make your living, care for loved ones, organize your home and so on and so forth.  Perhaps the most immediately apparent example of why we need to trust our hands comes up every time we start our car and begin driving such that the difference between life and death is the slight shift of a steering wheel.

Symbolically our hands represent the ability to handle the challenges of the outside world.  The coordination between hand, eye and mind is absolutely crucial in order to achieve almost any manner of survival and flourishing.  Weak or unsure hands represent a lack of confidence in being able to use one’s own wits and intelligence in order to survive and it is precisely in that area where we can work with and strengthen our bodies and minds by doing postures which require bearing weight on the hands.

The first posture that I’d like to mention is downward dog.  I’m mentioning it first because even a practitioner with a weak, stiff or otherwise undeveloped upper body can typically take up downward dog as a starting point.  It is also worth mentioning because as a practitioner becomes stronger, more confident and capable in their downward dog, there are endless degrees of refinement that they can find.  In downward dog it is possible to utilize the hands, arms and shoulders in a limited way and still “hold the pose” reasonably well.  In most cases this “limited way” involves pressing almost completely into the heel of the hand (the base, where the palm connects with the wrist) and sinking the weight of the shoulders into that point of contact.  This problem is fairly easily remedied with some guidance, such that even a weaker practitioner can begin to experience a meaningfully higher degree of control that becomes available with an improved form.  The remedy involves changing the position of the shoulder such that weight is distributed more evenly in the hand, with some of the body’s weight in the base of each finger and some in each finger tip.  Doing so will cause the practitioner to take control of their body to a much higher degree than before.

The second posture I’ll mention is a plank and I’ll specify that this is not “forearm plank” but plank with the arms straight.  The same practitioner who was sinking their weight into the heels of their hands in downward dog will do the same in a plank, however in a plank the result will be even more obvious.  The inability to articulate the shoulders that comes from a “heel of the hand” weight distribution will cause the body to bow, the lordodic curve in the lower back to be exaggerated and for the practitioner to be generally miserable.  Bearing weight primarily in the heels of the hands in a plank is psychologically and emotionally similar to getting one’s foot stuck in the mud while climbing uphill.  Fortunately, as in downward dog, the issue is relatively easily remedied with some guidance.  When I work with students whose planks are such, I encourage them to generate more energy in their lower bodies by straightening their legs and bringing their heels directly above the balls of their feet.  This in turn enables them to shift their shoulders forward, placing weight into the base of the fingers and fingertips and thereby giving them control over their shoulders and consequently entire torso.  Psychologically and emotionally this is akin to stepping out of the mud onto solid and level ground.

The third and last posture I’ll mention is a handstand which to me is the king of the postures in which weight is borne on the hands.  And although the imaginary practitioner who I’ve been describing may not even begin to approach a handstand for some time, let us pretend that they have been putting serious effort into their yoga practice and have had a smart teacher to guide them.  When that practitioner then attempts a handstand, whether that be with the help of a teacher or by kicking their legs up to a wall, they will immediately revert back to their previous bad habit of putting all of their weight into the heel of the hand.  Being stacked over the base of the fingers and fingertips will simply be too frightening and intense now that their entire body weight is now directly above them.  The heel of the hand will feel like the safest place to be.  But just as keeping one foot on the brake is not the safest way to drive, this is not in fact the case.  The process of helping a practitioner shift their weight towards their fingers in a handstand is more complex than I am prepared to attempt to describe here, yet on a psychological and emotional level it involves all of the same characteristics as do downward dog and plank.  It is a process of shifting the structure of the body, energizing the legs and pelvis and helping the practitioner experience the type of control that they are capable of accessing.

To conclude I would like to express what feels to me like a tender thought, the world is an intense and scary place which often causes us to retreat to what feels safe and stable.  However the adventure, joy and success of life comes from shifting forward into the action and chaos of that intensity and to the extent that we learn to make that shift within our bodies when doing yoga, it becomes easier to imagine and ultimately to do in that scary outside world.  I encourage the reader to reflect on his or her own experience of bearing weight on the hands and how it may be mirrored in the way they take control of challenging situations in their own lives.  I also encourage them to come and do yoga with me and experience “first hand” the revelation that learning to intelligently bear weight on the hands can be!