Magic Four Patch

[Miss Ruhnke]

Thisspinal release opens more space for the intervertebral discs and delicate nerve roots that coordinate every muscle, bone, artery, organ, and gland in your body. This opening also lifts mechanical compression off the internal organs, improving their functioning immediately. With less tension throughout the body, your vital systems find their natural balance. Your breathing also opens up easily and immediately with the first pose.

The inner spaciousness opened by the Magic Four is a genuine physical reality, but it is more than that. In the full sequence of Svaroopa Yoga, the inner opening goes much deeper as your life energy (prana) starts moving through the central channel of your spine unimpeded. The poses prepare your physical and subtle body for the more powerful opening that yoga promises. You gradually learn to surrender into a grace that is ever-present, though the tendency is to hold yourself tight and resist that flow. The outer practice of these asanas leads you to recognize that the source of grace is deep within your own being.

The Magic Four can be done in as little as 20 minutes or can be extended to a full hour to facilitate deeper opening. These four poses include all five directions of movement (forward bend, backward bend, side bend, inversion, and twist), are suitable for all ages, and are accessible to everyone from newcomers to experienced practitioners. Careful attention to alignment and simple props (a firm chair and two yoga blocks) are used to pinpoint and gently release the tensions deep within your body.

As a sequence, the Magic Four opens the entire length of your spine, beginning with the muscles around your tailbone. The second pose extends the release that was started in the base of your spine through the muscles of your sacrum. The third carries these changes through the waist area, and the fourth extends them through the rib cage, shoulders, neck, and head. The sequence should always be done in the same order without skipping any pose.

Scoot all the way back in a chair, knees wide. Turn your toes slightly inward. Move your feet closer together until your heels are directly under your knees and the shinbones are vertical and parallel to each other. Make sure your toes are still turned inward, with the outer edges of your feet parallel or turned inward farther.

Stage 1: Tip your torso forward, elbows on your knees, with your hands hanging softly between your knees. Let your head hang forward so the back of your neck lengthens. Soften through your shoulders so the vertebrae between your shoulder blades soften and sink inward gently. Stay in Stage 1 for a minimum of 45 seconds or up to 3 minutes, breathing easily.

You might feel a softening or tingling in the base of your pelvis as the tension in the seven coccygeus muscles begins to unravel. Or you may feel nothing. Those layers of muscle have been tight for a long time and may be completely numb. This pose engenders a deep opening whether you can feel it or not.

This vertical alignment of the shins is one of the hardest things for new students to find, and hard to see from the angle your head is at, so you may want to do this in front of a mirror. Make sure your toes are turned inward.

Stage 2: Slide your arms down in the space between your knees and allow your torso to sink slowly forward. Your back will round as you let your head and arms hang. Your arms may end up pushing your knees wider, but keep your big toes firmly on the floor with your toes still turned inward. Stay in Stage 2 for a minimum of 45 seconds or up to 3 minutes. Continue with easy breathing.

To come out of the pose, place your elbows on your knees and use your arms to prop yourself up in Stage 1, with your head still hanging forward. Remain here for 2 to 3 breaths. Then place your hands on your knees and push your torso upward. Bring your head up last.

Stage 1: Lean into the back of the chair. Keep your shoulders softly back, while you lower your chin toward your chest. Soften into the pose and remain for at least 45 seconds or up to 3 minutes.

Stage 2: Inhale as you lift your lowest front ribs upward, and exhale as you lead with those ribs to move your chest forward. Allow your back to round and your head and arms to hang. Your arms can hang in front of your legs or out along the sides. If you feel a pull in your left knee, return to Stage 1.

To come out, place your hands on your right knee, and push slowly with your hands and arms to tip your torso upward, leaving your back muscles soft. Bring your head up last. Lower your bent leg and sit with both feet on the floor for a few breaths. Repeat on the other side.

Kneel on the floor with your hands on yoga blocks. Move your left foot forward through the space between your hands, placing it ahead of your hands so that your left leg is almost straight. If you find you are lifting your hands (even a little) in order to do this, make the blocks under your hands taller.

Lean solidly into your right hand with your palm flat on the block. Place your left hand on the left side of your belly, below your waist, and push your fingers slowly and deeply into your belly, toward your spine. Use your hand to move your belly and spine sideways onto your thigh. Now slide your left hand upward to your lowest ribs, and use your hand to move these ribs forward toward your knee. This lengthens and aligns your spine. Place both hands on the floor (continue to use the blocks only if needed). Lower your head alongside your front knee.

Distribute your weight evenly on both hands (palms or fists). Allow your head to hang and tuck your chin in a little. Continue with easy breathing and remain in this pose for at least 45 seconds or up to 3 minutes.

Allow your left shoulder blade to come up off the floor if needed, so you can get your right leg and foot fully on the floor. If your top knee does not land on your lower knee, place a small pillow in the space between them.

Slide your legs toward your right arm and move your arm toward your legs until the kneecap of your right leg touches your right wristbone. This will decompress your spine through your waist and farther down. Slide your left arm down into a similar angle, so your arms form an A-frame with your palms facing the ceiling.

Move your feet outward to get a 90-degree angle at your knees, and rest your top foot on your lower foot. Turn your neck and head toward your knees for a lengthening through the left side of your neck and into your jaw, as well as through the front of your left shoulder and across your collarbone.

This neck-and-head position concentrates the twist in the vertebrae behind your heart, which need extra help in getting the deep release. Allow your whole body to soften while you rest in this pose and stay here for a minimum of 45 seconds or up to 5 minutes.

When you are ready to get moving, rest on your side for a few breaths so you can take the inner openness with you. This is called vyutthana, savoring the inner experience and allowing it to permeate your mind as you expand your awareness into the external world again. You do not have to lose the inner openness and depth that your practice has provided as you move into the world. Instead, allow your awareness to expand from the inside outward, to base yourself in the deeper inner essence that yoga calls Self, while you engage with the world in a state of openness and ease.

This whole mess started when I loudly declared, in the middle of the R&D Pit, that if I lead another Commander design team, I would make four-color legendary creatures. Someone threw a stapler at my head and said, "You're crazy!"

We assembled a team of intelligent, attractive, and charming designers who all happened to be avid Commander players. For all of the details about these amazing folks, I recommend checking out Mark Rosewater's article today.

In our first couple of meetings, I reassured everyone that I wasn't actually bound and determined to do four-color Commander decks and that we should discuss it as a group and explore all of the options. We talked about all of the different options and angles we could think of. Still, I felt it in my bones that 2016 was the right year to do four-color decks, and presented a compelling case.

I talked about where the Commander product line had been (we'd done three-color wedge decks, three-color shard decks, monocolor decks, and enemy color decks) and where I imagined it would go (we're going to REDACTED, REDACTED, and perhaps even REDACTED). I talked about how four-color legendary creatures were one of the things most frequently requested by our fans, and that a Commander product was the best venue to print such cards. We decided that four-color decks were the way to go.

I had been working on a list of potential four-color deck themes for years, so I felt like we had a good head start on building some decks. These themes were very mechanically inspired, and based on what sorts of things we'd done in Magic's past. For example, there were a lot of Zombies in Grixis and in Golgari. We could have blue-black-red-green (UBRG) be a Zombie tribal deck!

This seemed like a fine way to go, so we built decks along these lines, and started working on making commanders for them. I knew we wanted to make some "Nephilim-style" commanders, which were regular multicolor cards. These were named after the only four-color cards in Magic thus far, the Nephilim from Guildpact. These were the most straightforward executions of four-color commanders.

One of the quirks of the Commander rules is that if a mana symbol appears in the casting cost or in the text box of a card, the color of that mana symbol contributes to the card's "color identity." So if you used Ishkanah, Grafwidow as your commander, you could include green or black cards in your deck. Or if you used Alesha, Who Smiles at Death as your commander, you could include red, white, or black cards in your deck. And even though Memnarch is a colorless artifact creature, his color identity is blue because of his blue activated abilities.

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