Day One

Day One

Focus: Mountain Pose, Tadasana

Reading: Chapter One of One Simple Thing

Mouth: The Yoga Bible (pages 46 & 47)

Anatomy: The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book, Pose by Pose (pages 10 &11)

Instructions:

Today, we will focus on mountain pose or tadasana. This was the first yoga pose I ever learned the name of because everytime I returned to it in a class, I thought, "Tada!" as if I'd just finished a yoga magic trick by completing a sequence.

  1. Read Chapter One of One Simple Thing.

  2. Then, color page 11 of The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book Pose by Pose. Practice the pose after coloring and try to name as many of the parts as possible as you stand in tadasana. Specifically let your imagination travel up your spine and feel the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical spine.

  3. Finally, read aloud the cueing for this pose from pages 46 & 47 of The Yoga Bible. Again it is important to read aloud. Get the mouth feel of cueing this pose. And then, practice the pose again.


Bonus: Tear out the flashcard for tadasana from the back of The Yoga Anatomy Coloring Book. Review it a few times during the day.

Extra credit: Take a yoga class today! Even if it is a short one you find online, it is likely to include tadasana. Note in your yoga journal how the instructor cued tadasana.

My Journal Entry from Day One:

From One Simple Thing:

  • Pages 14-17. In thinking about the five basic states of the mind and how they relate to our contemporary cognitive habits, I'm struck by the universality of how the mind can work against itself in restlessness, or in a state of being stupefied or "stuck" in one obsession. To think that these were states common two thousand years ago.

From today's yoga class:

  • Key Word: Effortful

  • I took a Katonah yoga class at Harlem Yoga Studio with Spring. This is my third Katonah yoga class and I enjoy the workshop nature of it. There is a very long warm-up which feels challenging in itself and then only a couple of poses. The yoga blocks are used as feedback to the body to tell yourself if you are maintaining right angles. Instead of focusing on the pelvic tilt in tadasana, there was a lot of discussion of rooting down in the perinium.