Practice to day 14 of David's video course, Extract Strength From Your Practice. This day is devoted to gaining strength by developing your bandha (Energetic Lock) technique.

Ex 1) Bandhas in utthita hasta padangusthasana (Extended Hand to Big Toe Posture)
Ex 2) Bandhas in Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide Legged Forward Bend Posture)
Ex 3) Maha Mudra (The Great Seal)
Ex 4) Bandhas in Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand Posture)

Learning to understand what bandhas are and how to apply them in your practice is a unique way to gain strength, unlike any other technique or practice that you will ever encounter. This class will help you to see that using bandhas in your practice is not only effective and enjoyable but also naturally leads you into experiences of internal states of meditation. By going through a sampling of postures from the main categories of asana’s you learn how to apply bandha techniques to any posture. You’ll explore how to find bandha power in Samasthiti (Equal Standing), Vrkshasana (Tree Posture), Padangusthasana (Big Toes Posture), Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide Legged Standing Forward Bending posture), and Maha Mudra (Great Seal Posture). Also you will learn a meditative and healing way to use Sarvangasana (shoulderstand) with your feet at the wall to do Uddhyana Bandha Kriya (Belly Flying Up Lock).

Strength has to do with learning to use the power of your belly—moving, breathing, standing, sitting from a centered orientation. Finding your center, listening to your center, breathing from your center, moving, standing, and sitting from your center---being engaged in the activities of the mundane world tends to pull you outward and away from center. As a yogi you work fiercely to listen for and heed the inward call to turn inward. The process of turning outward to inward requires the yogi to be like a salmon swimming upstream against the strongest contrary currents in order to return home. The yogi works for a lifetime to attempt to make it so that his centralized bodily orientation becomes second nature—automatic—the immediate response is then to think, feel, perceive, breath and respond from your center.