Yoga 101 Library: Pose Focus: Staff

Transcript

foreign thanks so much for joining me in this video we're going to cover staff pose dandasana it is a foundational seated posture it's where you learn a lot about um what props you might find Handy for all other or many other seated poses it looks from the outside um deceptively easy but you are working hard or at least that's how I experience it we're working a ton okay so for now I'm not going to show this with any props but I will talk about how you you might find it handy to have use a blanket to use some blocks so just try to incorporate that into the discussion here so we're just going to scooch back to the mat legs out in front trying to sit tall again this is where we figure out do we need you know can we sit tall or do we need to sit on the edge of a firm blanket okay can you easily get your hands back behind you okay once you have support if you're using it and if not you might find it handy to have some Thin blocks okay so you can just kind of work with that all right so we want to make sure you know that you feel comfortable enough to be able to ground the thigh bones so you can do any kind of warm-up you know knees side to side um but just you want to feel that you can ground those thigh bones otherwise we're totally cutting off um the energy flow from the lower half of the body to the upper half imagining that the feet are at a wall or because this position leads into some others I I sort of go from here with my feet flexed to hear either way you want to feel as though you're rooting across the width of your feet evenly and across the inner and outer edges of the feet evenly so you don't want any sort of ruling at the ankles okay so start there with that Mountain awareness the mountain pose awareness okay so I've got my feet I'm ready to be active okay I'm trying to line everything up so the ankles are have that Center Line center line on the foot continues at the center line of the ankle up the knee up to the hip you might manually assist okay so that the legs stay neutral there's a slight internal rotation okay of those thigh bones in towards the midline so that they can descend and be snug in Hip joints and then the thigh muscles and the be in the glutes okay can then assist with the continuous lengthening of the spine of the pose for the sake of the breath okay to be able to expand and flow with ease the hands okay the fingers are pointing forward toward your toes and the head of the arm bones are in a slight internal rotation again turning in towards the midline so that you can pull them back and they're snug in the shoulder joints without feeling pinched so you'll decide here are you going to be on fingertips Palms blocks either way you're going to be very active if you're not already okay again this looks like it should be zero effort minimal effort there's a ton of effort okay so I want to ground from the thigh Bones the arm bones I want to be active Okay smooth deep breaths trying to eliminate my bias toward back bends and every pose because this is a neutral um pose for this spine so I pull my back ribs back a little bit and I can just feel it because I want a sense of smoothness for the breath so again as though I'm pressing um some part of my foot into a wall rooting lengthening bringing that energy up centering and lifting those knees toward the hips lengthening and lifting the low belly low back the sides without the shoulders creeping up and I do very I'll start here with my fingertips maybe Place The Palms and breathe and just find all of this length this pose and we'll cover it in different videos but it goes into a lift of the seat okay and um Provo tanasana um think of it as a reverse plank pose it goes into some variations forward fold just a straight forward fold here but it is our um our base pose it's what mountain is for every pose and now and for certain is for standing poses dandasana staff pose is our reference for every seated pose a ton of work I it's again it looks like it would be so easy it is not I don't think it is a lot of awareness a lot of effort I hope that this was helpful and I'd love to hear from you have a wonderful day namaste thank you