How To Do Mountain Pose

Mountain Pose (Tadasana) is a foundational yoga pose for all standing poses. It is the foundation for a strong and steady practice. While it may seem quite basic, there are a number of subtle alignment principles that can be applied and carried through to many of the standing poses in yoga. On the outside, Mountain Pose looks simple, but internally the muscles are active, strong, and working hard.

Beginner’s Tips:

For the alignment of Tadasana to translate to the rest of your standing and inverted yoga postures, it’s vital to get this basic pose right. Here are a couple of tips to help you.

Your stance is extremely important. To begin with a balanced Mountain Pose: Place your feet where they naturally fall when you walk forward and leave a few inches between them. Keep your hips and knees facing forward. Try to gently activate your core to keep your stance strong and retain the pose’s integrity and prevent yourself from locking your joints.
If you have difficulty standing with your feet together or feel unstable doing so, place feet hips-width apart until you feel stable.
Beginners can practice the pose backed up against a wall. There will be a slight curve in your lower back, but your heels, buttocks, and shoulders should gently touch the wall. Keep your head away from the wall, keeping your ears in line with your shoulders.
Stand with the backs of your heels, sacrum and shoulder blades touching a wall, and think about stacking your joints on top of one another — your ankles, knees, hips, and shoulders.
To help find a neutral pelvis, imagine the pelvis as a bowl of water, and try not to “tip” any water out.

Pose Benefits:

Mountain Pose improves your posture and body awareness, strengthens your legs, and establishes good alignment. Tadasana may not look like much but keeping your body active and aligned is challenging. You must be aware of each part of your body and the role that it plays in stacking your bones and keeping your spine long.
Mountain pose strengthens the thighs, knees, and ankles, and tones the abdomen and glutes. Practicing Mountain pose can help to reduce flat feet, relieve sciatica, and can also aid in kinesthetic awareness and proprioception.
It improves posture and, when practiced regularly, can help reduce back pain

Tips to improve your practice:

Work the pose from the ground up. Notice and align your feet, heels, arches, and toes. Then, bring your awareness to your ankles. Continue upward to your shins, calves, and thighs. Find alignment in your tailbone, pelvis, and belly, and then in your collarbones, shoulder blades, arms, and neck. Finally, extend the pose through the crown of your head.
Check and correct your alignment every time you come into the pose throughout class.
To learn the lift and inner rotation of the thighs, place a block between your thighs, above the knees. Squeeze the block and roll it slightly backward, engaging and rotating your thighs.
Alignment. You can check your alignment in mountain pose by looking in a mirror if it’s available. Check to see if your shoulders are stacked directly over your hips and that your hips are stacked directly over feet. Think how all your joints are stacked on top of each other from ankles to shoulders.

Safety and Precautions:

Mountain is a safe pose unless you are feeling dizzy or lightheaded. If you are pregnant, you may need a wider stance to feel stable. If you have knee problems, be sure you are not locking your knees but instead keep your knees soft or slightly bent.

Mountain Pose Step-By-Step:

Stand with your big toes touching.
Lift all your toes and fan them out, then drop them back down to create a wide, solid base. You can separate your heels slightly if your ankles are knocking together uncomfortably.
Engage your thighs to lift your kneecaps slightly
Rotate both thighs inward, creating a widening of the sit bones.
Maintain the natural curves of your spine.
Engage your core and draw your belly in.
Widen your collarbones and check that your shoulders are stacked over your pelvis.
Shrug your shoulders up to your ears and then roll them back to release your shoulder blades down your back.
Let your arms hang naturally with the elbows slightly bent and the palms facing forward.
Your neck is long, your chin is neither tucked down nor lifted, and the crown of your head rises toward the ceiling.
Take 5 to 10 breaths while you hold yourself in this position.

You can give yourself a balance challenge by doing Mountain Pose with your eyes closed.