standing & balancingwith the long edge of the mat.
To get your thigh parallel to the floor,
hang a sandbag on a yoga strap from your
front hip crease (figure 2). Want to go
further? Inhale and raise your arms out
to the sides, palms down. Press into the
back heel and reach actively through the
back arm, as if your left arm is trying to
pull your front knee straight. You can gaze
over the front arm, but if you have neck
issues, simply look straight forward. Hold
for 30 seconds to a minute, inhale and
straighten your front knee, release your
arms, and turn your feet forward. Never
come out of this posture by shifting your
weight forward onto the front leg. After
a few breaths, repeat on the left.
This pose looks like the mighty war-
rior Virabhadra emerging fearlessly
from the earth and should be a big part
of your practice. It increases flexibility
and builds strength, physical endurance,
and willpower—which will serve you well
throughout your practice and your life. ✤Richard Rosen lives and teaches in California.back (left) foot to the right 30 degrees, and
your right foot to the right 90 degrees.
Align your front heel and your back arch.
Don’t push the left hip back, away from
the long edge of your mat.
Many teachers have you square your
pelvis toward the wall your chest is facing;
I teach the pose slightly differently to cre-
ate more width and ease in the lower back.
As you bend your front knee, roll the back
hip forward a fair amount and rotate the
front knee out, toward the pinky-toe side.
Once the knee is thus aligned, you can
take the back hip back a bit, but be sure
your front knee doesn’t buckle in toward
the big-toe side of your foot.
Inhale, consciously grounding your
back heel; on an exhalation, bend your
front knee over your heel. Aim the inner
knee toward the pinky-toe side of the foot
to avoid swiveling your knee inward as you
bend it. Now sit your right femur head on
the imaginary chair. Then lift your right
hip point away from your thigh, tuck your
tailbone, and position your shoulders over
your pelvis. Align the inner right thighfrom your hips. On the chair, avoid lean-
ing forward or back. Burrow the base
of your right palm into the hip crease
between your front thigh and pelvis and
push down against the head of your thigh-
bone. Push into the crease, not farther
down the thigh. Ideally, you’ll feel the
back of your thigh press firmly against the
seat and, in response, your spine effort-
lessly lengthen upward. Draw your right
hip point away from your thigh, lengthen
your tailbone down, and shift your shoul-
ders so they line up over your hips. After
a minute or so, release your hand yet stay
here, sitting heavily on your thigh. Bend
your left knee, swing the leg back to where
it started, turn the chair 180 degrees, and
repeat on the other side.
In the full pose, many beginners depend
on their muscles to sustain the position,
and quiver uncontrollably after a few sec-
onds. Then things go downhill. Try to re-
create your chair-supported experience,
so that some of the support is shifted to
your bones, and your muscles can release.
Then you can sustain the posture almost
indefinitely, needing to come out only for
meals and to attend yoga class.
Like other split-leg standing poses,
Virabhadrasana II is anchored and stabi-
lized by rooting the outer back heel into
the ground. Many beginners have tight
groins, so bending the front knee buckles
the back knee, which pulls the outer back
heel off the floor. Think: What would
happen to a tree deprived of its roots?
Before you bend your front knee, “dig”
your outer back heel into the floor. As
you bend your front (right) knee, have an
imaginary friend resist that movement by
pulling on a strap on your left groin. Your
left leg will move physically through space
closer to the floor; however, energetically
it opposes the movement and keeps your
outer back heel rooted.
GET HIP
Stand sideways in the middle of your
sticky mat, facing a long edge, and step
your feet apart. Ideally, your feet are
spread wide enough that when you bend
the front knee and position it over the
heel, the front thigh is parallel to the floor.
With your hands on your hips, turn your
war? what is it good for?
One of yoga’s primary behavioral injunc-
tions is ahimsa, literally “nonviolence.”
Vyasa, an early commentator on the Yoga
Sutra, defines ahimsa as refraining “from
injuring any being, at any time and in any
manner” (Yoga Sutra, II.30).
Doesn’t it seem odd that such an
exceedingly violent character as Vira-
bhadra is celebrated in a yoga posture?
What’s up with that?
One possible explanation can be
found in the Encyclopedia of Traditional
Asanas, published by India’s Lonavla
Yoga Institute. We know that many
asanas are imitations of, and are named
after, what the yogis see in the world,
whether living—like humans, animals,
and plants—or inanimate like the moon
or a boat. The encyclopedia includes
Pratyalidhasana (“extended to the left”),
which mimics the ready stance of an
archer: left leg forward, knee bent, right
leg back (like a lunge), arms held up as
if holding a drawn bow. It looks like a
rough-cut version of Warrior II. Could
Virabhadrasana II be some modernyogi’s refined version of what started
out as the heroic posture of a battling
warrior many centuries ago?
If so, what better name for it than
that of the archetypal warrior? Although
yoga esteems non violence, images of
war and warriors aren’t unusual in its
literature. The most obvious example
is in the Bhagavad Gita, the glorious
“song” (gita), or yoga instruction, deliv-
ered by the god-incarnate Krishna to
the fearsome warrior Arjuna on the eve
of a civil war’s 18-day bloodbath. This
setting and its two main characters
suggest that the “warrior” is actually
the average yogi—you and me—strug-
gling mightily against the enemy
forces of self-ignorance (avidya) on the
“battlefield” of life. Krishna is our higher
Self (atman), always present behind
the scenes to offer aid and comfort
as he leads us to self-realization.
And so the name Virabhadra is a sub-
tle acknowledgment and a reminder,
embodied in a trio of powerful postures,
of our commitment to fight the good fight.YOGA TODAY YOGAJOURNAL.COM 49