Tadasana (Mountain Pose)

Welcome, everyone. We're going to start by looking at Tadasana today with my lovely friend Alana. Thank you. Most of what I like to do with Tadasana is more verbal than hands-on, but we will be looking at a couple of hands-on adjustments as well. All right. We'll start at the foundation in the feet. There are a couple schools of thought with Tadasana. We can have the feet about hips distance or together. I think for today, we'll look at feet hips distance. So most important here is the foundation, is the root, a balancing of weight on all four corners of the feet, which is already happening in Alana's beautiful feet. If you notice the student sort of pronating out or buckling in, you would want to take a look at that and help them correct that. Maybe by just placing a hand on the foot and helping to root it down evenly, or if you see it tilting to either side, you could put added weight wherever it's needed. Then from a firm foundation, we check out the legs and make sure they're engaged without locking out in the knees, but definitely working the quadricep muscles with some aliveness through the foundation. Okay. From there, we're going to look at the low back tailbone-belly relationship. For this, Alana, I'll have you turn just about halfway. Okay. And do me a favor and stick your butt out and let your belly pitch forward. Okay. So sometimes we see this and it's a very simple correction. You can take two or three fingers onto the sacrum and descend them down, simultaneously saying verbally, dropping the tailbone, lifting the deep low belly. All right. And you'll see how that lengthened the back and go ahead and turn forward again, lengthen the spine. All right. So when the tailbone descends and the belly engages, there's this corresponding action all the way up through the spine, lifting through the crown of the head. And you see this incredible line of energy through the whole body. Right. That draws the chin into alignment, essentially parallel with the earth. And if the eyes are open, the gaze is straight ahead. Right. One last thing. If you turn all the way around, right. If you're noticing any rolling forward through the shoulders, very simple correction. Take the hands to the shoulders, thumbs on the shoulder blades and encourage a little back and down. You can also take a couple of fingers to the back of the heart and say, lift through the back of the heart, which encourages the heart to open and the shoulders to release. Okay. Go ahead and turn around for me again. Thank you. So feet are grounded. Legs are engaged. Tailbone is descending and belly is drawing in and up. Spine is tall, lifting all the way through the crown of the head. Gaze is straight ahead. Chin is level. And the heart is open. So gorgeous. Thank you all so much.