The Half Frog

I have a pet frog. His name is Manduka, which is the Sanskrit name for frog. Officially, he belongs to my 19–year old son; as a tadpole, he was given to my son as an 8th birthday present (yes, that makes him 11 years old), but since my son is away at school, and I’ve been the one to clean the frog tank and feed him all these years, he’s really my frog.

In our Yoga classes, we often do a pose called “half-frog” which is a student favorite. It is considered a “bliss pose” because when students are propped and lined up correctly in the pose, they drop easily into a state of bliss. This pose is intended to release tension in the lower spine in the area of the sacrum, just above the tailbone. Most of us store an incredible amount of tension in that area, which leads to all sorts of back pain and other problems. When that tension is released, the feeling of relaxation and well-being is very tangible.

Yoga has a lot of poses named for natural entities, such as “Downward Dog,” “Cobra,” “Stork,” and “Tree”. These names go back thousands of years, and are actually quite grounding in that they help to connect you with the world in a different way. The interesting thing, though, is that no matter what pose you are doing, you are still a human being in a human body. And our human bodies have limitations as to what they can do. Sometimes, I think our crazed culture has made us believe that we should be able to “look” exactly like a dog stretching, or like a stork standing on one leg. If you look at popular literature for Yoga, you will see people contorting their bodies in all sorts of odd ways. And so, they force themselves into these poses thinking that they are doing good things for their bodies, when in reality they may be forcing their bodies into unnatural angles that are not right for their bodies. This is one reason I like half-frog so much. I mean, who has ever seen a half-frog in nature? They simply don’t exist, which allows students to let go of a fixed picture of what the pose is supposed to look like, and gives them permission to be in their own human body in a natural way.

In Svaroopa® yoga, which is the style that I teach, we stress the importance of alignment in the different poses, and use lots of blankets and other props to help students find the angles that give the greatest release of tension. These poses are almost magical in that they work on both the body and the mind at the same time. Ask any student how they feel after a few minutes in half-frog, and they will invariably say “relaxed” or “blissful,” or they might even find what they are feeling is beyond words.

As I watch Manduka swimming around in his tank, I marvel at the beauty of nature, and how there are so many different species of plants and animals out there. And I am grateful to have a human mind that can appreciate them and a human body to live in. As one of my teachers, Phil Milgrom says, “Ultimately,Yoga is not about becoming a pretzel. Yoga is about becoming a human being."