Tadasana - Mountain Pose

Tadasana is also known as ‘Mountain Pose’.  While in this posture you stand firm and erect – just like a mountain. The word ‘Tada’ means mountain.

The Mountain Pose teaches you how to stand correctly and will increase your awareness of your body. Most people don’t have good balance and long term this can lead to many ailments.

The benefits of Tadasana are:

• Straightens the spine and corrects bad posture
• Improves the body’s alignment
• Helps to counteract the degenerative effect of ageing on the spine, legs and feet
• Tones the muscles in the buttocks.

Steps for Tadasana:

1. Stand with your feet together with big toes and heels touching.  Balance your weight on the centres of the arches of your feet.  Stretch your toes out and keep them relaxed.
2. With your feet firmly pressed against the floor stretch your legs upwards.  Keep your ankles in line with each other.  Tighten your kneecaps and pull them upward.  Draw in your hips and your buttocks.
3. Let your arms hang down beside your body with your palms facing your thighs and fingers pointing down.  Keep your head and your spine in a straight line. Without tensing the muscles in your neck, stretch it upward.  Pull in your abdomen and lift your sternum and broaden your chest.
4. Press your heals and mounds of your toes into the floor.  Make sure you are balanced equally on the back and front of your feet.  Now, move most of your weight onto your heels.
5. Hold the pose for 20 to 30 seconds.

Tadasana is the foundation to many other yoga poses so it is a good one to get to know before proceeding further.  This pose will help you to get a sense of strengh, stillness, firmness and steadiness.

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Here are some of the yoga poses that are commonly used:

Standing Poses

First up lets take a look at standing poses.  These are actually very important poses as they help to align your body and your spine, helping to improve your balance and your posture.  By practising standing poses regularly you can help to maintain your balance and posture which will help to improve your overall health.   You would be amazed at the number of people with bad posture and they don’t even realise it, and bad posture can cause quite a number of health related problems.  Yoga will help to gently stretch and strengthen your spine and your legs and improve that posture.  

Seated poses

Seated yoga poses will help to increase the flexibility in your lower back and hips, which helps to strengthen your back and can be very beneficial for people with back problems.  As with any exercise however, if you do have a current medical condition it is best to check with your doctor before beginning any new type of exercise.  Seated poses will also help you to develop good breathing practises, enabling you to breath deeply which will give you a sense of peace and calmness.  

Forward Bends

Forward bends help to stretch your lower back and your hamstrings helping to strengthen them and increase flexibility.  The increased flexibility in your spine helps to relieve tension in your neck, shoulders and back.  Forward bends are great for releasing tension and relieving stress.

Back Bends

Back bends will open up your rib cage, chest and hips and relieve tension in the front of your body.  Back bends also increase spinal ability and strenghten arms and shoulders.  These poses are important to help care for and benefit the spine to improve and maintain health.

Balance Poses

When first starting balance poses you may find them challenging and be amazed at how hard they are.  Balance really is important to maintain good posture and a healthy spine so it is definately worth practising these poses regularly.  The more that you practise the balance poses, you will find them easier and actually quite fun.  Many older people have a lot of trouble with balance and often receive injuries as a result from falling over, this is very common as you get older and practising yoga balance poses will help to keep good balance and prevent this happening as you get older.

Conclusion

It is important to practise a range of yoga poses to receive all the benefits.  Each individual pose under each category will also have it’s own benefits.  It really is amazing the number of health benefits that yoga will give you.

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