Above the Surface: The 3 Must-Do’s

1.) The primary focus of the pose is to make sure your right hip can draw underneath you as much as possible.  This sets the wheels in motion.

2.) Push the right big toe into the ground to solidify the balance of the entire pose and make sure the front heel is lined up to the back arch.  Heel-to-arch is what that’s called.

3.) Do not allow the right ear to collapse down by the shoulder so that your neck stays in line with the rest of your spine.

Under the Surface

With all the standing poses the points you really want to master are what goes on under the surface.

A General Thing on Feet:  Read This Before You Dive Into the Standing Poses

Your feet are the base of every standing pose and as I always say you must build the poses from the ground up.  The feet are the only contact points with the ground in all standing poses and that makes what you do with them crucially important.

I like to teach students to imagine your feet as two geometric shapes, a rectangle and a triangle.  The rectangular portion is made up by your inner heel, outer heel, pinky toe, and big toe.  The triangular portion is created by the arches in your feet.  Essentially, the triangle runs from the center of your heel to the left side of the ball of your foot, the center heel to the right side of the ball of your feet, and finally, from the left side of the ball of your foot to the right side of the ball of your foot, lots of words for such a short description, I know.

In order to maintain stability and balance in the pose, and all other standing poses, generally you are pressing the rectangular portion of the foot down and lifting the triangular portion of the foot up (especially if you are flat footed).

By simply being aware and pushing with your feet in this way, you will greatly protect the knees.  Remember, yoga should make you walk better, not prevent you from walking at all.

Front Foot

You are with the front foot just as I tell you to do with the feet generally when standing.  Pushing the rectangular portion of the foot down and lifting the triangular portion of the foot up.

However, if you do feel your whole pose sliding off to the right, focus a little more on pushing the big toe down to draw the weight of your body back toward the center.

Back Foot

In triangle pose your back foot should be turned in very very slightly, 10 degrees at most.

Master the Triangle Back Foot

It’s easy to put the foot into the proper position, but it’s much harder to get the feeling correct.

A couple of important questions to ask yourself?

Where do you feel a majority of the weight in the back foot?

If you feel too much weight on the inside of your foot, you could be collapsing your arch and putting your inner knee at risk.  Make sure the back edge of the foot is pressing down decisively.

Can you feel and understand the difference between pushing weight into the edge of the foot versus pushing weight into your ankle bone?

It’s pretty common for students to accidentally push through the ankle and sprain it!

Front Leg

Assuming the foot is correct, imagine your shin bone drawing back slightly.  Then see if by drawing the shin bone back you can feel the calf muscles expanding up and down to support the back of the knee and the achilles tendon.

Try and master the feel of lifting your quadriceps up toward your hip to support it, but, prevent the thigh bone from rotating in (this will collapse the hips).  This can also be called in some cases firming the leg.

Back Leg

The main focus of the back leg is to make sure you are pushing the weight of the body down into that back foot correctly.  Generally here, you want to feel the upper and lower leg bones moving back and the leg muscles squeezing or gripping the bones to support them.

Watch out for this: Hyper-extension

Remember the starting triangle of yoga (link)?  Well, if you are the naturally flexible type, you must watch out for hyper-extending your knees.  Straight is fine, but over straightening or “locking” the knees can be dangerous.  You must train yourself to stop doing that as soon as possible.

How to Prevent Hyper-extension in the Knee

Work on using your hamstrings more.  In general, pulling muscles prevent hyper-extension.  Imagine at all times, even when your legs are straight, trying to curl your hamstring just like you would a bicep, this will go a long way in preventing hyper-extension in the knee.

How to Train Yourself to Never Hyper-extend Again Using Triangle

If it’s the front knee that hyper-extends in triangle, simply turn a block at a 45 degree angle with the ground and prop up your calf, this will temporarily teach you the necessary feeling in the hamstring while simultaneously preventing the knee from locking out.

Hips

The placement of the hips is pretty straight forward, getting the correct feel is what we are going for here.  First, and as stated above, the goal is to focus on working that right hip underneath you.

After you can accomplish that or get close to it, let’s focus on what you should be feeling.

1) You want to feel your right hip (bottom hip) not just resting stagnant when it is underneath you but once it is underneath you, you want to start actively trying to draw it back toward your left inner thigh.  This will create more length across the right side of your torso originating from the waist.

2) Take the top hip, lift it up and then back as much as you can.  Try not to ever allow the top hip to become inactive and “roll” off the side.  Further, even when your hips are stacked, you never want to feel them compressing together but rather spreading away from one another.

Torso

Your primary goal for the torso is to extend it forward as much as possible and, specifically, create as much space in the lower back as is humanly possible for you.

A couple of other things happen here to help keep you in good alignment.  Focus on pulling the left rib cage up and over the right, and in general try to keep your ribs as stacked as your hips.

Also, the right rib cage has a tendency to want to curl down and back toward the right knee or hip. Keep lifting the the rib cage up and pushing it forward, this combined with pulling the right hip back will create maximum space across the right side of the torso.

Arms

The arms are spread as wide as possible.

Although it is important to note, that under no circumstance do you have to feel obligated to put the right hand completely flat on the floor.  Let it drop and rest wherever it naturally would, onto your shin, your ankle, maybe onto the floor, or onto a block, even higher up on the leg if necessary.  They all work.

However, you want the left arm to stack directly on top of the right.

Also, you want all of your arm muscles to engage so that the shoulders don’t exclusively bare the weight of the arms.  By engage, I mean primarily squeeze the biceps and triceps around the upper arm bones and to a lesser extent try to squeeze all of your forearm muscles around your forearm bones.

Head and Neck

Your primary goal is, as I stated above, to make the neck as long as you can.  Under no circumstance do you want the neck to collapse.

You can take your gazing point, a drishti, in whichever direction is comfortable.