TAH-DAHsana

The act of standing seems so basic that almost everyone can do it without much thought or effort. The basic standing pose in most styles of yoga is "Tadasana" which translates from the Sanskrit as "Mountain Pose." In tadasana, it is revealed to us that standing is actually a complex series of repelling actions of our muscles against gravity to keep our skeletons and thus our bodies in an upright position.

Recently, I attended a workshop given by Adam Poock of The Ranks Academy called Flexibility in Older Adults. While I won't go into the details of the workshop here (although it is an excellent series that he is re-running and I encourage all of you to attend), one concept that Adam teaches about developing or regaining strength and flexibility is that muscles need to be engaged and work dynamically against another object. For example, in weight training, the object that is being dynamically acted upon is the dumbbell or barbell or Nautilus machine or can of tomatoes or whatever. If we take this concept of dynamism and apply it to yoga, what object are we acting upon? Gravity and most commonly the floor!

During a yoga class, the teacher may cue the class in tadasana to, "imagine that there is a string of energy that starts at your feet and moves up your legs through your pelvis and spine out through the top of your head. Imagine that someone is pulling on the string and elongating your spine." Another cue you may hear is to, "engage your quadriceps and lift your knee caps," and to simultaneously, "ground your feet to the floor as if you are pressing the floor away from you."

What we have in this example of cuing illustrates the yogic fundamental of contradiction. As we ground our feet onto the floor while simultaneously draw upward through our core and crown of the head we are engaging in dynamism! Sure, the pose looks static because we aren't flowing or moving (at least we aren't moving very much) but there is still the presence of movement against gravity. This is one way that the pose is dynamic.

How else is tadasana dynamic? Imagine actually lifting your kneecaps a few centimeters above where they naturally sit when you're standing. If you engage your quads, do your knee caps lift? How about if you drive your feet into the floor? Maybe they lift a little. Really, your kneecaps may not raise up but the idea is that you are acting against gravity and pushing against the floor.

Let's consider our feet for a moment. In tadasana, the big toes are together while the heels are slightly apart, toes spread, all the edges of the feet (the back of the heel, outer edge of the sole, baby toe and big toe) are all equally grounded and equally supporting your weight. Try this... it is actually very difficult for someone unpracticed to ground all the edges of the feet equally. I have a tendency to roll in on my ankles which causes my arches to be pushed toward the ground. We can be dynamic with the feet in a different way try squeezing the heels together. Since tadasana is slightly pigeon-toed, we can act dynamically on the heels trying to pull them together.

Over the last few practices, I have tried keeping my feet grounded and squeezing my heels together but I always lose this when I start moving. Today, tadasana became tah-dahasana! I set my practice intention to work on my feet in standing poses keeping my heels squeezing toward each other. As I did this, I actually felt my quads engage more fully which caused my pelvis to tilt and my spine to alight which caused that nasty tension that I've been experiencing in my trapezium to relax. Wow.

What is happening physiologically? Why does my trapezium relax when I squeeze my heels together? Essentially what is happening is a correction in alignment. Squeezing of the heels, engages the quads and lifts the kneecaps which also causes the external rotators, hip adductors and psoas to engage. These muscles allow the pelvis to subtly tilt which realigns the spine and subsequently the muscles that act upon the shoulder.

Not only does grounding the feet and squeezing the heels together fully activate tadasana, this subtle dynamism is also effective in utkatasana, as it assists in squeezing the knees and thighs together. With more points of contact in between the legs in utkatasana, the squeezing is a little easier.

I continued to apply this principle of dynamism to each pose from Down dog (try grounding all corners of your hands and squeezing the mat together while doing the same with your feet) and low/runner's lunge. What I noticed was a release in my shoulders and hips and an engagement of more subtle muscle groups such as the deep muscles of the abdominals and also the hip flexors.

To sum up, I'll borrow from Susi Hately Aldous from her book, Anatomy & Asana: Preventing Yoga Injuries (p.51):

"[standing poses] are simple when completed well, but to move into them safely and strongly requires us to unearth some of the interactions between muscle, fascia and bone. The interactions will become clearer as we further explore our movement into other standing positions..."