Sunday, July 27, 2008

Tadasana (Mountain Pose): Choose Your Own Foot Position

I have been thinking a lot about this pose since my yoga group “The Muses” and I spent April studying it. (Read more about our discoveries here.) I realize I have learned at least a dozen different ways to have the feet in the pose. In fact, I rarely hear the same direction from two different teachers! So, what is the “right” way? In answering that question, I am reminded of something Barbara Benagh said to me years ago. She said that whatever a teacher teaches you is only her opinion about a pose based on how it feels in her body.

What a sage observation! So, it is then our responsibility to take the information we are given and decide how we want to use it or even to discard it altogether if it doesn’t fit our body’s needs. I realized that I needed to find the foot position that gives me the grounded feeling I love in Tadasana (which, by the way, is feet hip width apart. I have a torque in my pelvis so if I put my feet close together I feel like I am twisting.) What foot position works for you? What helps you feel grounded and open in the body? Play with it. What you have always been told might not be what you need in your body.

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