12. Tadasana: Three
Stand in Tadasana. Are you drawn up and ascending or is there collapse? Where? Where do you want to give in? Inner leg as well as outer leg is drawn up, inner leg drawn up into the groin. Roll the upper legs inwards, as you move the sacrum down. Remember, you have learnt effort management: that greater effort does not always yield greater result.
Which asana have you just performed and which asana are you about to perform? Feel that the previous asana and the next asana have their effects on this Tadasana. Tadasana prepares us for other poses.
You need to both stabilise and open your pelvis by lifting your spine. Notice how you must use two apparently contradictory actions to do so. One, grip your tailbone with your buttock muscles; your buttocks tighten and become firm. Notice that your sacrum draws in and down, lengthening your lumbar spine, and that the back of your pelvis narrows, creating a squeezing action that lifts the spine. Release. Now, rotate your thighs inward, so your inner thighs move backward. Your sacrum will broaden and your groins will soften. Again, release. Now do both actions simultaneously, gripping with your buttocks as you internally rotate your thighs. The soft openness of your pelvis frees your spine, while the firmness of your buttocks lifts and supports it. When you do a head-stand – Sirsasansa - these actions in the pelvis and thighs keep your pelvis from sinking into your lumbar spine.
Now, keeping the lift in the spine, the lift in the rib cage, the length in the breastbone, drop the chin into the chin lock – called Jalandhara Bhanda. Notice that the back of the neck is not pulled to do so, and that the shoulders remain the highest point in the back. When you do a shoulder stand – Sarvangasana – you keep this lift and length in the chest,, again without compressing the front of the throat, without protrusion of the seventh cervical, without bearing weight on the neck rather than the shoulders.
And Mr Iyengar says:
I do Tadasana. I observe all parts of the muscles and joints and adjust as if each one is doing Tadasana. For example, when I do Tadasana, I measure the length of my back of the lower legs and front of the lower legs. Similarly, length of the inner side and outer side of the lateral parts of both the legs. While doing Urdhva Dhanurasana I maintain the length of the inner legs as in Tadasana. Whereas when you do Urdhva Dhanurasana, your outer leg may extend longer and inner side may contract and appear shorter... The mind's job is to acquaint one part of the body to the other part of the body. (Iyengar 1999b:17)
There is a lifetime of work contained in the mastery of Tadasana. You follow instruction from your teachers and then you must find the pose yourself, experience its infinite complexity, learn from it how you are today, who you are today, where you have come from and where you are going, how to be entirely in the moment, absorbed in the asana so that you are the asana. The work of this asana shows you that there is no clear boundary between your work and your self; just as you create the asana and you create your work, asana remakes you, your work remakes you. You think your legs are straight, now straighten them.