The Intelligence of the Bind
Early in my experience with Ashtanga, one of my teachers (Kathy McNames at Yoga Vermont) would talk about how much of the practice is rooted to the ground: low, compressed, structured around our relationship to gravity.
This comes back to me a lot when I’m thinking about the binds we see throughout the practice.
Almost every posture involves a connection or bind. We catch a wrist, bind the foot in lotus, touch the hands in Virabhadrasana. It’s very rare that the hands or feet are free. We are always connecting to another body part or to the earth.
This has an attentional aspect–keeping our mind focused by knowing what the hands and feet are doing all the time–but it’s also energetic.
Every place we connect and direct our focus, we rewire our internal circuitry–the channels of energy called nadis. Every bind is an occasion to re-engage, compress, then open and redirect our internal wiring.
When I studied with Mysore teachers in New York, there were students who arrived (very) early to get in the coveted front row and get more attention from the teacher. He would stop the class during sun salutations if students didn’t have their feet together when returning to the top of the mat, or if they didn’t connect their hands overhead in Uttkatasana. “Close your feet!” he would yell over and over. Terrified–they would freeze. (What does ‘close your feet!’ mean??). “Close your hands!” Even in the opening parts of the practice he wanted to see connections.
As teachers we often see a version of this with new students or when attention wanders: they don’t come to a symmetrical, regular stance at the top of the mat. It shows us they aren’t paying attention, can’t remember where they are in the sequence, or don’t know where they are in space.
The binds also allow a more active relationship to the pose. When I bind the toe in the standing balance Utthita Hasta, the hand is working on the foot, the foot is pressed forward in opposition so there’s a stable circulation of effort at that point of connection. There’s a push-and-pull that’s alive.
Binds work in relationship to the pattern of breath we establish. As we enter a pose– typically on an exhale–we make a connection: bind the foot, catch in lotus, find the wrist in Marichiasana. After that connection is made, we inhale (in the context of this closed bind) to establish length and extension, then with the exhale fully enter the pose. With the next inhale the count in the posture begins. At the end of the count, we inhale against the bind to lift. Exhale, hands down. Inhale up. Exhale back to Chaturanga. And repeat. (Check Didi’s detailed post for a deeper dive into the specifics of the breath count.)
So what we think of as the postures in the series are just an occasion to create length and extension after making a bind. In Janu Sirsasana A, if I was keeping length in my back and not fully folded, the teacher would come to adjust me and push my head down to my knee. “You touch!” he said. So it wasn’t enough that I had foot-to-thigh, catching the wrist around my extended foot–the forehead to shin was essential.
It mattered less what it looked like or what the alignment was, connection was primary.
In the kid’s game Operation, when your hand isn’t steady and the metal tweezers graze the edge of the board, it completes a circuit, electricity moves through the game and the board lights up. I can’t tell you when, after many years, I was first able to bind both feet in Padmasana. But I can tell you it felt electric in a way I was barely prepared for. Like in Operation, everything lit up. I thought my head was going to rocket off my spinal column. I can still remember it and I think we all have a similar experience of internal re-wiring when a posture works.