Tadasana: Mountain Pose: joining heaven and earth
Long before I ever taught yoga a friend of my mother’s, a yoga teacher herself, told me that the reason she practised was not to learn to stand on her head (even though she was adept!) but to learn to stand on her own two feet.
This has always stuck with me throughout the intervening years. Standing on my own two feet. The strength to step into the unknown future. The ability to ground myself in the present moment. The acceptance and letting go of the past.
Yoga (and Pilates and other movement practices) can provide the tools to help you work with these things.
But it’s a constant work in progress.
Patience and present-moment living are particularly difficult ones for me. I have dreams and hopes and aspirations for the future. I want them to all be happening right now. Sometimes I don’t have the patience to put in the work right now to get the good stuff later on. This happens to all of us at some point or other I’m sure.
And as we pole-vault into the future, into this fictional better time when all will be well (ha!), we blinker ourselves to all the good stuff we have in the present.
Because there nearly always is good stuff.
All of the standing poses in yoga help us to ground in the present moment but I think Tadasana is the most powerful. So here’s a little practice for when times are tough and the future looks brighter than the present or the past is dragging you down.
- Come to standing with the feet a little apart.
- Roll the shoulders back and down. Allow the back of the neck to be long.
- Bring the awareness to the soles of the feet. Imagine the footprints you are leaving behind.
- Shift the weight back and forth between the heels and balls of the feet (keep the toes soft), to find your centre of gravity.
- Lift all ten toes and see if you can put them down one at a time.
- Allow the eyes to close and bring the awareness to the soles of the feet, drawing down equally between heel and ball of the foot.
- Imagine roots growing out of the soles of the feet into the earth, firmly grounding you in the present.
- Breathe.
Here is a little video I recorded ages ago about standing in Tadasana.
And here is a gorgeous blog post from Happy Tree Pose about finding joy in the present.
