Above the Surface: The 3 Must-Do’s

1) You must work on keeping your right hip underneath you the best you can at all times.

2) In order to help keep the right hip in place, you want your right arm and right leg in contact with one another at all times, ideally pushing against one another.  Not only will this help keep your hip underneath you but it greatly contribute to your balance.

3) If possible, create a 45 degree angle with the ground.  Think of it this way, your spine is just an extension of the back leg and your top arm is just an extension of your spine.

Under the Surface

In general, there are tons and tons of variations of this pose. However, I am not going to cover them all here.  The goal here is develop a great understanding of the classic version of the pose and build from that.

Front Foot

So, the ideal alignment of your feet is having the front heel lined up with the back arch.  Heel-to-arch alignment.  This alignment with the feet also happens to be true in all externally rotated standing poses.

As I’ve stated a couple of times on this blog (link), you must work on grounding through your foot equally.  This means pressing down with all four corners of your foot (the rectangular portion) and simultaneously lifting your arches (the triangular portion).

Watch out for this: Your Knee Collapsing In

If you feel your right knee is collapsing in or buckling and you feel a little bit of pain, chances are it starts with how you are pressing your foot down into the ground.  Check to make sure you aren’t putting too much weight on the right inner foot.

Back Foot

Your back foot should be turned in just a tad, 10 degrees or slightly more.

You must be able to learn and distinguish the difference between pressing down through the edge of your foot and driving weight back through your ankle bone.  If a majority of your body weight goes though the ankle, you can roll it here.

Front Leg

The trick to this entire pose is to sink as deeply as you can into the front leg.  Eventually your upper leg and lower leg will create a 90 degree angle with one another and your knee will be stacked directly over the ankle.

Watch out for this: Your Leg Causing the Knee to Move Unnaturally 

It’s okay for you to not be able to get the leg at 90 degrees.  However, you do not want your leg to cause your knee to move from side to side, you must make sure the knee stays in the same plane as the ankle.

For those of you even more curious, the plane where the knee and ankle rest is called the sagittal plane. More info on that later.

Try This: Master the Feel

Another subtle point here to consider, if you feel a couple of things happening in this pose, either your knee collapsing in or your hip poking out to the right, try this:

Focus on your inner thing.  Try to lift your inner thigh up and rotate it out slightly, what do you feel?  Hopefully, with just this slight tweak you can feel an enormous difference.

Now even further, consider this the implied motion of the front leg muscles.

What is Implied Motion?

Implied motion simply means the direction the muscles should move in to help stabilize yourself without actually moving.  It’s a subtle subtle thing, don’t get hung up on it.

Back Leg

Imagine your legs bones moving back.  In order to counter the forward motion created by bending in the front leg, you want to add a counter force by pulling the bones here in the opposite direction.

Doing this should stop a majority of your body weight from collecting in the front leg.

Try and lift your inner thigh slightly toward the ceiling (or sky if you’re lucky enough!).  This should help you ground more naturally through the edge of the back foot rather than the ankle and also prevent the arch from collapsing.

Essentially, lifting the inner thigh is a way to protect your back knee.

Hips

As I stated above, the positioning of the hips is crucially important.  In fact, without being able to draw the hip underneath you, you’ll find the upper body is constantly going to want to collapse.

Focus on constantly drawing the right hip underneath you and lifting the left hip up and over the right.

Torso

In this pose, you want to the torso to follow the lead of the spine.

I’ll state this again here because this is the crux of the entire pose, assuming you can get your right hip underneath you, what creates the 45 degree angle with the floor is seeing your spine as an extension of your back leg and your left arm as an extension of your spine.

One thing to pay close attention to is to not allow the right side of your torso to scrunch up like an accordion.  Even if you are super flexible and can easily create the 45 degree angle try to lift the right side of your torso up so that it does not just rest heavily on your right thigh.  We want to keep as many parts of the body as active as possible.

Now let’s look at the rib cage.  Imagine we have some pushing and pulling going on here.  You are actively trying to pull your top rib cage back while at the same time push your bottom rib cage forward.  This pushing and pulling creates stability in the torso.

Another thing to note is your back, especially if you have a flexible spine.  The shoulder blades should never squeeze together like you are doing a backbend.  None of the standing poses involve back bends at all.

You should be doing the opposite and spreading the back muscles in a way that supports the arms.  This is a tricky one to grasp, but think of how your shoulder blades and back muscles operate in plank pose.

Shoulders & Arms

There are a couple of things you can reliably do with your right arm.  You can, if possible, place the flat of your hand outside the leg somewhere around your ankle, you can place your hand on a block, you can prop yourself up on fingertips, or you can rest your forearm on top of the thigh.

Your top arm is just an extension of your spine.

Both of your shoulder are as relaxed as possible to facilitate length in the neck.

Try This: Master the Feel

You can soften your left shoulder by rotating your left bicep out.

Head & Neck

Like all standing poses, you don’t want your neck to collapse into a “U” shape.  Try your best to lengthen equally from both sides of your neck in a direction that lines it up with the rest of your spine.

Think about it this way, don’t allow your right ear to ever touch your right shoulder.

Your gaze can be to the side or right up into your left hand.

Master the Feel: Homework Questions

1) What starts to engage strongly if you greatly overstretch the front arm?

2) How does pressing the arm and the leg together change the pose and do you feel more stable this way?

3) Can you lift the right side of your torso off of your thigh (or just a little higher) without allowing the shoulder blades to squee together? (This takes some serious oblique strength)