How to perform Mountain Pose
Stand up tall and straight, place your feet close together, with your heels and big toes touching. Imagine as if you are standing with your back against the wall. Extend your whole body from the heels up through the crown of your head.
What is Tadasana?
Tadasana, also known as Samasthiti, is the grandfather of all poses. It is a foundation pose, and it is necessary to master it before you can go into other standing poses. It firms and stabilises your leg muscles, helps you get firmly rooted through your feet, and teaches you to establish the centre of balance within your body.
Tadasana also teaches you to stand ‘correctly’, spreading your weight evenly across your two feet and activating the muscles that you need to support a good posture. As you stand in Tadasana, your abdomen is pulled in and your chest is brought forward. However, your back body maintains a straight line, as though it is pressed against a wall.
When to use Tadasana?
As a foundation pose, Tadasana is incorporated into practically any sequence as a transition between poses. It helps you reconnect to your body, to check for imbalances, and to spread the energy evenly among both sides. This is one of the possible starting postures in a sequence. As you stand with your feet together, imagine as though you are standing with your back against a wall: your heels, buttocks, back ribs, shoulders, and back of the head are all aligned. This requires certain effort and awareness and is a key step towards improving your posture.
Learning to stand this way will bring about agility of the mind and a feeling of lightness in the whole body. It relieves fatigue and strengthens your supporting muscles. In the long run, mastering Tadasana allows for a more effortless sense of being and promotes higher energy levels, both in the body and the mind. If you tend to slouch when you stand, mindfully practicing Tadasana can help you cultivate the necessary awareness to get out of this habit.
