Yoga For Beginners - Tree Pose (Vrksasana) - Yoga Pose Breakdown

Transcript

Hello yogis and welcome to Yoga TX. My name is Lauren and today in this pose breakdown, I'm going to walk you through tree pose. Uh give you a few different variations for how to practice it, a few alignment cues. This is a great opportunity for beginners to learn more about a pose as well as for advanced practitioners to maybe take the pose a little deeper or in a different direction than you're currently familiar with. So to get started, go ahead and bring your mat or yourself up kind of by a wall. You won't need too much space, but this is a great it's just a great tool to have, especially when you're learning the pose. So, for starters in tree pose, one of the most important things is just like a tree in nature, you really want to make sure you're rooted. So, we're going to start by bringing the weight into the left leg. Really pressing down in that foot. And from here, lift up through the thigh, through the soaz, through the core. draw the palms in towards the chest. And so tree pose, while it looks simplistic enough, actually engages all the muscles in the leg, all the muscles in the sides of the ankles and up the sides of the legs. And it's really wonderful, especially if you're recovering from any sort of injury, if you need stronger feet or stronger legs. It also serves as a gentle hip opener. So now that we've got our left leg kind of firm, stabilized, rooted, we'll start to draw the hands into the heart center and start to bring the right toes kind of right kind of almost cup that heel that ankle with the arch of your foot, the heel kind of right at the left ankle. And this is the first variation of this pose. So, particularly if you're working on recovering from a foot injury or your balance feels a little off today, I recommend starting here, rolling the heart open, the gaze down at something that's not moving. And from here, you can play with lifting the toes a little bit. Just, you know, just come to the tippy toes. Maybe lift it a little. Work on building that strength. This is a great first step. And from here, if this feels good, if you're feeling great, bring that foot to the ankle. So, this is where the wall can start to come into play. Again, if you're, you know, muscles feel weak, if you have any sort of osteoporosis or anything where you need a little extra support, you can just come over to that wall. or even if you just want to work on improving your balance, come over to the wall and just gently rest your knee against it. It just helps stabilize while you're still doing a lot of the work yourself. So, if you'd like to take advantage of that option, feel free. But either way, really roll that hip open. Oh, there we go. My balance is floating off. Roll that hip open. That's another great thing you can use the wall for is to help feel the hips square, knee against the wall, alignment stacked up. So, this is the second option, whether you're on the wall or off the wall. Again, gaze down at something that's not moving. And from here, you can either stay here, or I might need to move a little further away from the wall for this. You can reach down with your right hand and lift your foot into kind of the crease of your thigh, flat of the foot, pressed against the thigh, pressing gently open, being very mindful that whatever variation you choose, we do not press against the knee as our knee is already getting enough stress. Lifting up, gaze down. Again, this is another opportunity if you're playing with tree pose to use the wall. So, you know, you might have to shift a little bit, play with it a little bit, but you can just bring your knee right against the wall there and use it to stabilize yourself. Maybe play with taking your knee off the wall, putting it against the wall again. Again, this is a great way to stabilize this. I also recommend this if you're kind of a little more advanced in age. If you're feeling a little wobbly, this is great as well. Again, strengthening into the soaz, strengthening into the hip, gently opening the hip. We'll take one more deep breath here and exhale. Release. Shaking out the legs. And then you can practice on the other side as well. Again, take whatever variation you would like. Root down through the right toes. You can use the wall or not. Play with the first variation. Palms lifted at the heart. Chest lifted into the palms. Gaze soft. Play with lifting and lowering the toes. Finding that strength, that balance. Bring the flat of the foot towards the side of the shin. Using that gentle inward pressure with the flat of the foot to externally rotate to open the hip. This serves as a gentle hip stretch. If you'd like to take it a little deeper, reach down for that left foot with the left hand. Maybe wobble for a second. Press that foot into the thigh of the standing leg. Again, opening the heart. Hips facing forward so that we're not swaying off to the side but really rooted, grounded. Palms come to the center of the heart. We'll take one more deep breath here. Maybe playing with balancing against the wall if you'd like. And then exhale, release. Shake out the legs. Shake out the arms. All right. Well, thank you very much yogis for practicing with me today. I hope you learned a new technique, took your tree pose a little bit deeper. And if you like this video, be sure to check out my other po pose breakdowns and the other videos on my playlist as well. And I hope to see you back practicing with me again soon. Thank you. Namaste. [Music]