TADA-sana // Mountain Pose

So, I always thought that Mountain Pose was called mountain pose because while in the pose it is like you are standing on a mountain. While this is a nice, cooling, calming visualization to have while in the pose, it is not quite right.

Tadasana, or Mountain Pose, is named because the shape your body takes in the pose mirrors the basic structure of a mountain. Your feet like the stable base of the mountain and the tip of your head like the tip of a mountain extended into the sky.

By placing your head over your heart, heart over your hips, and hips over feet, you create a stable center on which to build your mountain. Nothing that is sound was ever built on shaky ground!

Not only is it like a mountain in this very basic way, but I like to picture my body and the energy coming from it making a cone- or triangle-like shape like a mountain. In Mountain Pose, instead of collapsing your chest and hunching your shoulders, lift your heart center up and out, shining forwards.

The other triangle I picture while in Mountain Pose is formed by my arms. Instead of holding your arms smooshed against your body imagine a little hiccup of an air bubble in your armpit that causes you to lift a liiiitle bit and stay active in the pose.

Now even though that is cleared up I still like to picture standing on the top of a beautiful mountain, so tall that my head is in wispy clouds, and I look down into a beautiful valley, or over the edge of the mountain into the ocean...