Urdhva mukha svanasana is also known as, upward facing dog. Urdhva means upward, mukha means face and svana means dog. This pose is considered to be a backbend.
Elements of the pose:
Lay face down on the floor and place your hands next to your rib cage. Spreading your fingertips out evenly, make sure your middle fingers are parallel with each other. Flexing your quadriceps and gastrocnemius (thigh and calf muscles), lift your hips off the floor on a exhalation, as you push your chest up as if it were to touch your chin. Be sure to have strong, straight arms for a lot of your weight will be held by your arms.
In this pose, make sure that you push your shoulders away from your ears and inner part of your feet should be parallel. For a more advanced version of this pose, balance on the flats of your feet and open up your chest more by arching your back farther. Keep in mind, shoulders away from your ears! Another variation, is to put blocks under your hands, this will give you more lift on the pose. It's also very important to protect your lower back. After 5 - 10 relaxed, calm breaths you can either move into child's pose or relax face down on the floor.
Benefits:
Tones the abdominal organs and buttox area. It strengthens the spine, shoulders, arms, lungs and abdomen. Spine flexibility is increased causing fresh blood supply. This pose also stretches your lower back, shoulders, core and chest. Therapeutically, this is best for sciatica, which is pain due to pressure on the sciatic nerve.
My awareness:
Since I'm quite flexible, when I do this pose I like to do the variation where I support myself on the flats of my feet getting my hips, thighs and calves off the floor so I can get a full extension. I feel a great stretch in my quadriceps and calves. I try to get my chest open and my back arched as much as I can without causing pain in my lower back. I always remind myself to keep breathing because sometimes I find that since there's stress on the core I forget to breathe! To get a better stretch out of this pose, I think about pulling my butt away from the chest. And always shoulders away from the ears! Since I play softball, I'm trying to get stronger so I like to hold this pose for a while and I flex my triceps the whole time.
Photo - http://www.syoga.com/pose_upwardfacingdog.html
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Information - http://en.mimi.hu/yoga/urdhva_mukha_svanasana.html
http://www.yoga.com/ydc/enlighten/enlighten_document.asp?ID=361§ion=9&cat=144
http://www.yogawiz.com/yoga-poses/yoga-asanas/upward-facing-dog.html#continued
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