Downward Facing Dog
This is primarily a Tarot blog, but I do like to share other things from time to time, if I think they are interesting or may be beneficial to others. I’ve been practicing Yoga for a few years. I thought I’d share a pose that has really helped me when I get into my dark moods.
Like many people, I battle with depression most days. It’s something I’ve had to manage, in various stages of intensity, since childhood. I’ve tried the drugs, and talked to the shrinks, and changed my diet and all that. Some things help and some things don’t. But these days, when the depression demons come to visit me, I just sic my Dog on them.
Adho Mukha Svanasana, also known as Downward Facing Dog, is one of the poses in the traditional Yoga Sun Salutation sequence. But it is also practiced as an asana on it’s own. I think it may be my favorite pose right now. It certainly has helped alleviate my dark moods.
According to Yoga Journal magazine, Downward Facing Dog,
- Calms the brain and helps relieve stress and mild depression
- Energizes the body
- Stretches the shoulders, hamstrings, calves, arches, and hands
- Strengthens the arms and legs
- Helps relieve the symptoms of menopause
- Helps prevent osteoporosis
- Improves digestion
- Relieves headache, insomnia, back pain, and fatigue
- Therapeutic for high blood pressure, asthma, flat feet, sciatica, sinusitis
Notice the very first thing they mention is calming the brain and helping to relieve stress and depression. It’s really uncanny. I don’t know how it works, but it does. Yoga for Women says,
With regular practice, Downward Facing Dog rejuvenates your whole body. An inverted pose, it allows for the reversed flow of gravity and increases the flow of blood to the head and heart.
Perhaps the increased flow of blood to the heart and head has something to do with it. However it works, it is certainly helping me. After coming out of this asana, I feel a tremendous sense of peace that stays with me for the rest of the day.
Child Pose is the recommended counter-pose for Downward Facing Dog. I actually use Child Pose a couple of times in my practice. It really stretches out my back, which is also a source of trouble for me. It’s the perfect compliment to the Dog. But the Dog still rules. It’s the highlight of my daily practice.
Balance Point
In an effort to address my thoughts on where to take my Tarot practice, including this blog, I drew one card for a nudge in whatever direction would be best. I chose my Hudes Deck, because I was feeling very stressed out at the time. Mentally, I had climbed the high-dive ladder at the pool, and I was finding it difficult to take that last step into the air, anticipating the plunge into the shock of cold water. I have not turned to the Tarot for my own needs in quite a while. It was a bit like going to an old friend and adviser for help, after a long period of not speaking to them at all.
Tarot can have a quirky sense of humor of it’s own sometimes. Seeking a card to focus my actions, I drew a card that is hardly an ‘action card’. And yet, upon reflection, there is the ghost of action here. As actions can occur in the imagination, there is action to be found in the Six of Pentacles from the Hudes Deck.
The first thing this card said to me was, ‘balance’. This image is one of symmetry. The perfectly balanced pentacles, both on the scales and in the air around the gentleman’s head. The center post of the scales, pointing perfectly at the chin, through the center of the face and on into the infinity above, divide the image neatly in two. After all, what else is necessary to move forward than to be perfectly balanced? Indeed, while riding a bicycle you will get nowhere without a good sense of balance.
There is an element of choice here as well. Which one is better, or are they the same? Items are weighed on a scale to determine which is heavier. In the mind, things are weighed to determine which is wiser, saner, more desirable, or less likely to fail in some manner. Sometimes the choice is one of ‘a lesser of two evils’. It is still a choice, and choice is an action. A mental action, but an action nonetheless.
He certainly looks bored, doesn’t he? Hesitation in life can lead to ennui, to endless stalling. Once that malaise sets in it can be difficult to shake it off, and accomplish the simplest tasks. One would rather sleep on, than arise and greet the day. Depression can be a deep pit that is very difficult to escape.
The pentacles deal with material, corporeal things. The body, possessions, money and practical considerations relating to these things. One of my motives for asking where I need to take my practice, is a need to discover a means to earn my keep in this world, to be of some benefit in this life, using my Tarot cards. I believe the card is telling me that I need to put things in order first. I need to seek a balance within, as well as in my daily life, as a foundation from which to act. It seems ‘getting my act’ together seems to be the first step that I must take, before I can travel any further.
Unfortunately, this is not one of my strong points. But it’s likely that is the very reason why I am being directed to do so.
