Yoga for Starters — Begin at the Beginning

If you’ve wanted to learn Yoga for a while but never knew how to approach it or where to begin, this is just the article for you.

My experience with yoga has brought me to this understanding:

There is always more to discover.

I have been practicing for more than 15 years, and I still find the “Beginners/ Level 1” yoga class at the Iyengar studio one of the most challenging.

Why is this?

Yoga is a process of unlearning and re-learning.

There are poses that you find in almost any yoga class — downward dog (adho mukha śvānāsana), triangle pose (trikoṇāsana), warrior 1 (vīrabhadrāsana I), etc. What do these poses all have in common? They involve standing on your feet.

“Beginner” poses do not mean less strength or coordination than “advanced” poses. On the contrary, the Iyengar approach designs “Level 1” classes to help build strength, stamina, and self-confidence. So this means, lots of standing poses! — because these ask us to use all the large muscle groups facilitating our arms and legs, and to become aware of the right, left, front, back, up, down, and twisting directions of our body, all at once!

It’s been 2 years since I started working closely with a teacher — and its been quite a humbling experience. Through her corrections — both verbal and with hands-on adjustments — I’ve come to realize I’ve spent my entire life standing incorrectly. (“Incorrect” meaning: not optimally aligned, and thus creating the grounds for injury and pain from wear and tear.)

Standing on two feet with your arms by your sides might sound basic/easy/boring. But recently, I’ve found it to be quite frustrating/profound/surprising.

Iyengar himself once said, If you can stand perfectly in Tadāsana, then you can do any pose perfectly.

Perhaps this is an exaggeration (or is it?). But in essence, if we are able to master our bodies to the point of standing perfectly upright, bones stacked, muscles active but relaxed, attention steady and calm… then we have tapped into our unlimited potential.

So much more than just a half-aware, slouching stance while waiting in line somewhere… this is MOUNTAIN POSE. Sturdy. Grounded. Confident.

Focusing on all the subtle aspects of standing upright will give you a lot to explore, as you’ll discover for yourself:

Learn how to do the Tadasana and stand tall like a mountain.

Tadāsana (Mountain Pose)

1. Stand with your heels lined up beneath your hips. Feel your weight in your heels and the bones of your feet flowing forward.
2. The arches of the feet stay lifted. Feel an activation all the way up the inner leg into the pelvis (the home of the root chakra.)
3. Lift your knee caps. Feel your thighs activate. Create space at the top of your shins.
4. Cut your outer calf inward. Keep weight moving toward the midline of the body.
5. Feel the thigh muscles spiraling inward. The groins move back. The pubic bone points to the floor. (The thighs rolling in helps “compact your hipbones,” making it easier for the spine to lift!)
6. Lift your side ribs up, away from your hips. Let the waist stretch like taffy. Use your breath to create buoyancy in the chest.
7. Keep your chin parallel to the earth. Look straight ahead just above the horizon. Keep the buoyancy in your chest, sternum lifting toward the chin, even as you exhale. Keep the front ribs moving toward the back ribs (keep your diaphragm level.)
8. Let your collarbones and shoulders feel like a coat hanger, with your arms hanging off. Elbows straight, palms facing your sides. Pretend there are weights on your finger tips helping to keep the arms extended, moving down with gravity.
9. Energetically, feel your bicep lifting into the shoulder, and the tricep moving down to your elbow. Feel the front of your armpit become more open, the chest more expanded, collar bones spreading.
10. The skin of the front body flows up. The skin of the back body flows down. Shoulder blades down, in, and spreading.
11. Keep cycling through all of these subtle awarenesses… and then see if you can drop the logical mind and simply inhabit the pose, experiencing the flow of energy and cellular intelligence.

It can be a long (sometimes painful, often joyful) process of unlearning old habits.

Have patience. Be persistent. Stay focused.

Allow your awareness to spread through your body. Approach your practice with a sense of curiosity (“Hmm, that’s interesting…” “I wonder why it feels like this today…?” “Wow, this is harder than it was yesterday, maybe I’ll try it this way instead…”) Experiment. Experience. Keep going.

All will be revealed.

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