Staff Pose: Recommendations on find out how to Observe Dandasana

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Dandasana (Staff Pose) is a foundational seated pose which helps to boost posture and should set the tone for alignment for the rest of your yoga postures.

“Dandasana may seem like a easy pose,” says Yoga Journal contributor Gina Tomaine, “Nevertheless so many of the elements of the rest of your yoga observe are present on this pose: activated once more and shoulders, sturdy posture, reaching up from the crown of your head and down by your seat, activating your ft. Your alignment in Dandasana is slightly like your alignment in Tadasana. It could properly dictate how the rest of your observe will probably be.”

In Staff Pose, take into consideration your spine as a result of the vertical “staff” of your torso, firmly rooted throughout the Earth and the help of all you do. A simple method to check your alignment is to take a seat down alongside along with your once more in opposition to a wall, alongside along with your sacrum and shoulder blades touching the wall—nevertheless not your lower once more or once more of the head. (To help maintain the lower-back distanced, try inserting a rolled-up towel between it and the wall.)

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Sanskrit

Dandasana (dun-DAHS-anna)

danda = staff

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Staff Pose fundamentals

Pose form: Seated pose

Targets: Larger physique

Staff Pose benefits: Together with bettering your postural and physique consciousness, this pose strengthens your core and the doorway your thighs (quadriceps). It moreover permits for elevate and enlargement throughout the prime of your chest.

Totally different Staff Pose perks:

• Strengthens your once more and hip flexors

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Recommendations on find out how to

1. Begin seated alongside along with your legs extended forward.
2. Ship your palms alongside your hips and straighten your arms.
3. Contact your massive toes collectively and maintain a small amount of home between your heels.
4. Flex your ankles, drawing your toes once more.
5. Press forward alongside along with your massive toe mounds. Rotate your inside thighs in and down and press down alongside along with your femurs.
6. Lengthen your sternum away out of your navel and broaden your collarbones.
7. Draw the heads of your greater arms once more whereas softening your entrance ribs.
8. To exit the pose, launch your arms and shake out your legs.

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Beginner ideas

• Lay props or a blanket all through the tops of your thighs on the hip crease to help flooring your thighs.
• To activate your legs on this pose, flex your ankles, pressing out by your heels.

Uncover the pose

On this pose, take into consideration your spine as a result of the vertical “staff” of your torso, firmly rooted throughout the Earth and the help of all you do. Within the occasion you battle to flooring your thighs into your mat, lay one to three 10-pound sandbags or a dumbbell all through the tops of them.

It’s essential to not spherical your once more or stick out your chin in Staff Pose; this could restrict your respiratory and should strain your lower once more. In case your once more is rounding, sit on a folded blanket or pillow, so that your hips are lifted and higher than your knees. In case your palms do not attain the mat, place them on blocks, books, or folded blankets to ship the underside to you.

Bear in mind!

Don’t overarch your once more or push your chest out—this could overwork your hip flexors and put stress in your sacroiliac joint.

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Teacher ideas

These cues will help defend your faculty college students from injury and help them have probably the greatest experience of the pose:

• To elongate your entrance torso perpendicular to the bottom, contemplate vitality streaming upward from the pubis to the sternum, then down the once more out of your shoulders to your tailbone. Then, take into consideration your tail lengthening into the bottom.
• In case your torso is leaning once more, it might be because of tight hamstrings are dragging the sitting bones in direction of your knees and the once more of the pelvis in direction of the bottom. It might be helpful to take a seat down on a blanket or a bolster to boost the pelvis.
• Within the occasion you’ll be able to’t press your palms into the underside, place them on a blanket or blocks as a substitute.

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Variations

Staff Pose with help

To help create a forward tilt in your pelvis and cease slouching, sit on the sting of a lot of folded blankets. If you’ve acquired tight hamstrings or your knees are inclined to hyperextend, place a rolled blanket under your knees.

Staff Pose in opposition to a wall

Attempt sitting alongside along with your once more in opposition to a wall for additional help. It is attainable you will want to sit on a lot of folded blankets.

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Why we love this pose

“In Dandasana, the excellence amongst our our bodies is immediately obvious. Just a few of use have shorter arms and longer torsos; others have longer arms and shorter torsos. People in that first group (myself included) acquired’t be succesful to press their palms into the bottom whereas sitting in Staff Pose. Consequently, now we now have every a risk to see points as they’re and accept what we’re in a position to’t change, and a chance to make buddies with props like blocks.” says Yoga Journal contributor Sage Rountree.

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Preparatory and counter poses

Though a tough pose, Dandasana would not require rather a lot stretching earlier to practising it. Any pose that lengthens your once more physique will set you up properly.

Preparatory poses

Uttanasana (Standing Forward Bend)

Tadasana (Mountain Pose)

Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Coping with Canine)

Counter poses

Purvottanasana (Reverse Plank Pose)

Paschimottanasana (Seated Forward Bend)

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Anatomy

Dandasana is kind of a dwelling place that you just return to between quite a few supine and inclined postures on the bottom, explains Ray Prolonged, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and yoga coach. That’s analogous to the way you make the most of Tadasana (Mountain Pose) to recalibrate in the middle of the standing poses. As with Chaturanga Dandasana, you could as properly observe Dandasana by itself, outdoor of your customary yoga routine, to strengthen the muscle mass that preserve your once more and knees straight and safe, along with individuals who bend your hips in a managed pattern.

Throughout the drawings underneath, pink muscle mass are stretching and blue muscle mass are contracting. The shade of the color represents the facility of the stretch and the facility of contraction. Darker = stronger.

The spine erector (muscle mass alongside the spine) and the sq. loins throughout the lower once more combine with the psoas at your greater thigh to boost and stabilize your lower once more. The triceps straighten your elbows and supply assist to to push your palms into the bottom, extra lifting your once more. The trapezius combines with the rhomboid muscle mass to draw the shoulder blades in direction of the spine and downward, opening your chest.

The psoas, pectineusand straight thigh flex the hips. The adductorspositioned alongside the inside thigh, draw the upper leg bones in direction of the midline. The quadriceps straighten your knees. Considered one of many quadricepsthe straight thighmoreover contributes to flexing the hips.

Muscle teams alongside the sting of the shins (tibial anterior) shorten to make “right-angle ankles.” The pose is finessed as a result of the peroneus longus and brevis muscle mass (alongside the pores and skin of the lower leg) flip the ankles barely outward to open the soles of your ft.

Excerpted with permission from The Key Poses of Yoga by Ray Prolonged.

Put Staff Pose into observe:

Capable of put this seated posture into observe? Proper right here’s a few flows to try:

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About our contributors

Teacher and model Natasha Rizopoulos is a senior coach at Down Under Yoga in Boston, the place she affords classes and leads 200- and 300-hour coach trainings. A loyal Ashtanga practitioner for a couple of years, she turned equally as captivated by the precision of the Iyengar system. These two traditions inform her instructing and her dynamic, anatomy-based vinyasa system Align Your Stream. For further data, go to natasharizopoulos.com.

Ray Prolonged is an orthopedic surgeon and the founding father of Bandha Yoga, a popular assortment of yoga anatomy books, and the Each day Bandha, which provides ideas and strategies for instructing and practising safe alignment. Ray graduated from the Faculty of Michigan Medical School and pursued post-graduate teaching at Cornell Faculty, McGill Faculty, the Faculty of Montreal, and the Florida Orthopedic Institute. He has studied hatha yoga for over 20 years, teaching extensively with B.Okay.S. Iyengar and completely different foremost yoga masters, and teaches anatomy workshops at yoga studios throughout the nation.