YOGA TODAY YOGAJOURNAL.COM 37
standing & balancingUtthita Hasta
Padangusthasana
(Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose), variation
Stand in Tadasana. Spread your toes and broaden both feet on the
floor. Shift your weight onto your left foot; lift your right foot and shift
your hips farther to the left. Reaching your right arm to the inside of
your right knee, grasp the right big toe with your index and middle
fingers. (If you are less flexible, hold a strap looped around the ball of
your foot.) Lift your right knee as high as possible without lifting the
hip. Simultaneously perform the following three actions, carefully
balancing them across the plumb line of your body and working to
constantly equalize the weight on the inner and outer sides of your
standing foot: (1) Lower your right hip as close as possible to the
level of the left hip, (2) lift and straighten your right leg diagonally up
and to the right, and (3) place your left hand on your left hip. Strongly
grip the muscles of your outer left hip to stabilize your pelvis. Without
moving either hip forward or back, strongly contract your right but-
tock muscles and pull your right foot back to bring a stretch to your
right inner thigh. Lift your spine and stand tall. Feeling how your calf
and shin muscles frequently contract to correct your balance, fine-
tune your position so it requires the fewest possible muscular cor-
rections. Hold the pose for 30 to 60 seconds (or even longer as you
grow stronger and more stable).
t
wo muscles do most of the work in keeping us from
falling over in any balancing posture: the gluteus medius
and the gluteus minimus. The gluteus medius connects
the outer rim of the pelvis to the upper thighbone; the gluteus
minimus lies underneath the medius. The best way to strengthen
these cru cial muscles is—you guessed it—to practice lots and
lots of one-legged standing poses! All the poses discussed in
this article will help; each will work the muscles in a somewhat
different way. Try holding each posture with the support of a
wall or ledge so you can hold it for a long time without losing
your balance. Hold it until muscle fatigue causes you to lose
proper positioning of your limbs or trunk. Then come down
and practice on the other side. You’ll get even better results if
you repeat this pro cess several times.Smaller muscles are also important in helping you balance
in pos es like Vrksasana and Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana
(Extended Hand-to-Big-Toe Pose). When you stand in them,
you’ll probably find your foot and ankle making frequent side-to-
side adjustments. The inner foot presses down (pronation), then
the outer foot (supination), then the inner foot again, and so on.
If you pay attention to this involuntary small dance, you’ll see
that pressing down the outer edge of the foot shifts the body’s
center of gravity toward the inner foot, and vice versa.
Being narrow, the foot has very poor leverage for shifting the
entire mass of the body left and right. The muscles that press
the inner and outer foot down must therefore be quite strong
to move the center of gravity far enough—and fast enough—to
maintain balance. The primary muscles involved are the tibialis
ante rior (on the outer front shin) for supination, and the peroneus
longus and bre vis (on the outer calf) for pro nation. The supina-
tors are strengthened by almost ev ery standing pose, one-leg ged
and two-legged alike. The pronators are strengthened more by
one-legged standing poses, especially Vrksasana, in which they
help offset the tendency to overbalance toward the inner foot.
The better you get at balance poses, the less muscular effort
you need to maintain them. This is because you become more
skilled at using your bone structure to support your weight,
rather than wasting muscle energy to do so. You also waver
less, so you need to make fewer and smaller muscular cor-
rections. Such finesse often depends on practicing other
pos es to gain adequate flexibility, which allows you to place your
center of gravity in the most favorable position. If you find yourself
clenching the floor with your toes, white-knuckled, there’s a good
chance you’re using too much brawn and not enough brain.Strength
the power to balance