TADASANA
tada = mountain
1. Stand with your feet slightly apart, inner feet parallel or big toes slightly turned in. The latter will impart a slight inward rotation to your upper thighs, which is something you want. Lift your toes away from the floor (but keep your fingers relaxed) and spread the balls of your feet, then lay the toes lightly down. Press the bases or mounds of the big toes firm to the floor, then draw imaginatively back from there to the inner ankles.
2. Next draw up imaginatively up from the inner ankles along the inner legs to the inner groins, where the inner thighs join the base of the pelvis. Firm the front thigh muscles (quadriceps) so that the knee caps are pulled up toward the hips. Make sure as well that the center of the caps are looking straight forward. If they’re slightly turned in, it’s likely you’re hyper-extending and so locking your knees to some extent. If such is the case, bend your knees slightly and turn the outer knees back as much as needed to bring the kneecaps forward.
3. If you need to do this, however, you might find the upper thighs turning out as well. In this case, you’ll hae to play back and forth between the external rotation of the knees and the internal rotation of the upper thighs. As you turn the thighs inward, the sacrum will widen across the back of the pelvis, and the hip points will narrow toward the navel. The inner rotation though pushes the tail bone out and deepens the lumbar lordosis, not an ideal condition. So to counter the “duck tail,” think of lengthening the tail bone down toward your heels. Understand though this isn’t a “tail tuck,” which will flatten the low back, another undesirable situation. Simply stretch your tail imaginatively straight down to the heels and then let it “lengthen” out behind your body like a long kangaroo tail. Imagine the back heels reaching down into the floor to the center of the Earth, 3900 miles away.
4. Now join the two imaginary lines rising along the inner legs and watch that line continue up through the core of your torso, from the middle of your perineum to the very top of your head and out. The line of imaginary energy terminates at the “end of 12” (dvadashanta), an imaginary point about a foot above your head. Lift the base of your skull lightly away from the nape, then release the nape down the back torso and through the tail.
5. Release your shoulders away from your ears and let the arms dangle, keep the fingers relaxed.
Open equally across the upper back and chest, don’t squeeze the shoulder blades to spread the collar bones. Then press the lower tips of the scapulas up and into the torso, angling diagonally up to the top of the sternum. Be sure not to push the lower front ribs forward to encourage this. Always think of lifting the back ribs faster than the front.
6. Finally close your eyes and allow yourself to sway, feeling how your weight shifts on the soles, side to side, front to back. Gradually slow the swaying almost or completely to a stop, and bring a bit more pressure to the bases of the big toes and inner heels without collapsing the arches. Stay for a minute or two, feeling the distribution of your weight on your soles. As the tail descends, lift the manubrium straight up and let your head float lightly atop the spine. Breathe slowly and smoothly. Then open your eyes and continue on with your practice.
INTERMEDIATE PRACTICE
Bring your feet together to narrow your base of support. Touch the bases of the big toes but keep the heels slightly apart. You can also sweep your arms out to the sides and up over head. This is called Urdhva Hastasana, Raised Hands Pose. Reach through the little fingers to the ceiling, being careful as always not to push the front ribs forward. Think of reaching up from the back ribs. Hold for 15-30 seconds and release the arms in wide arcs out to the sides. To increase the challenge even further, with your arms raised, lift off your heels onto the balls of your feet. One old text calls this the Camel Pose (ushtrasana). Again hold for 15-30 seconds, then lower the heels back to the floor.