by Yogi Ananda Viraj (Eugene P. Kelly, Jr.)
Instructions:
- Lie in the savasana, i.e. lie flat on the back, feet shoulder width apart, palms up.
- Turn palms down, bring feet together and raise the legs keeping them straight.
- Exhaling, bring the legs over the head until the toes touch the floor behind the head. Keep the legs straight and palms on the floor.
- Breathe normally.
- Release the posture slowly, opposite the way it was entered.
- Relax in savasana, repeat twice.
Variations:
As you grow more flexible from doing the halasana there are many variations you may employ. You may enter the halasana from the sarvangasana (shoulder stand), or enter the sarvangasana from the halasana. Also, while in the halasana you may place the knees on the floor on the sides of the head and bring the arms back, clasping the hands, resting the arms on the calves. If you prefer keeping the legs straight in order to stretch the rear leg muscles, you may attempt to flatten the feet on the floor by “walking” toward the head. This stretches the muscles of the feet and adds extra stretch to the calves. For another variation you can raise the arms over the head. To stretch the arms, shoulders, and upper back muscles try leaving the arms where they were when you started the hala but clasp the hands while in the asana.
Benefits:
Being an inverted posture gravity works to hold the blood to areas of the body which do not normally hold blood. This is so especially for the neck area which is the home of the thyroid and parathyroid glands. This “holding” of the blood allows these glands the opportunity to draw nutrition without the interference of gravity. Given that the abdominal area is bent over and inverted as well, the glands, muscles, and tissue located there are released from normal gravitational effects and are therefore allowed to release gases, toxins, and tension. This promotes a regularity in digestive activity. In the hala the spine, legs, neck, feet, arm and back muscles are stretched and relieved of tension. As a result, flexibility and well-being are restored to all “life-support” systems.
The body-posture is often a gauge of body-feel. If one lives a pressured, lethargic, and withdrawn life the body-posture usually indicates this. The body-dispositions, the ways one feels life, are our openings to the world. How one feels “bodily” is how one lives. Challenges to our body equilibrium are the challenges we as individuals face. If we are walking on the ways of ease, serenity, and intelligence then bodily life is whole (or healthful). If the body is awakened to its latent potential of full feeling awareness as the movement of life then ease, serenity, and intelligence are born. Ease is change without resistance. Serenity is being openly disposed to change. Intelligence is surrender to the unitary operation of human enterprise. Life is the whole as that whole acts without parts. Death is the compulsion and tension filled withdrawal from this living anonymous totality.