Friday Q&A: Leg and Foot Alignment in Tree Pose

We recently resumed doing our Pose of the Week and offered up a pretty comprehensive post on Tree Pose (Vrksasana). One of our readers had this question about that post:

Q: I use all of these modifications in my classes, based on the various abilities of the students in front of me. You don't need to do the classic version to get the benefits of the pose. Even keeping one hand within reach of a wall helps students develop confidence, as I encourage them to take their hand off the wall even for a second or two. Nonetheless, I do have a problem with this instruction: "You can place your right foot anywhere along the inseam of your left leg that works for your hip openness and ability." The one place I advise students NOT to place their foot is on the inside of their knee. That's a recipe for injury if they press too hard with the foot, especially if they also hyperextend their knees. The joint simply isn't designed to take that kind of stress. I advocate bending the knee slightly (just to unlock it), and then contracting the quad as I would in Tadasana or any other straight-legged pose. Thoughts?

A: It is wonderful to learn that these modifications are already benefiting students out there! And I totally agree that even the modified Tree pose is of immense benefit to those who practice it regularly. Regarding the placement of the lifted foot, I would direct our readers to the caution section of my original post that clearly states:

“For everyone, avoid placing the heel of your raised foot against the inside of the knee joint; it should always be either above or below that landmark. If you do not know where the inside of your knee joint is, ask your teacher show you.” 

I have observed that you can usually place your heel just a few inches above the joint and let the arch of your foot cradle the center bulge of knee joint bones of your straight leg, with the ball of your foot below the joint and placed, as with all the variations, along the inseam of the straight leg. As long as the practitioner is clear about pressing the straight leg into the sole of the lifted foot while pressing the lifted foot if you have any concerns about the health of a student’s or your own knee, then have the heel below the joint line, or place the foot well above the joint line with the ball of the foot just above that line. This last option, of course, depends on the openness of the top leg hip.

As for the question about my thoughts on slightly bending the knee just to unlock it, and then contracting the quad as she would in Mountain pose (Tadasana) or any other standing pose, I have the following thoughts:

It depends! I would certainly consider a slight micro-bend to the knee of the straight leg if the practitioner has significant hyperextension of the knee with the presence of pain when doing the pose in the classic way. I might even have the practitioner do it this way if they have a hyperextended knees without pain to teach them an alternative to doing the pose with the bottom knee locked out. However, many students with hyperextension of the knee may never develop problems with the joint, so I am cautious not to imply there is something “wrong” with their unique structure!

For those who I might teach the pose with a micro-bend to the knee, I am assuming that our reader has the student maintain that slight bend as they engage the quads, which would help to stabilize the joint in the new and unfamiliar alignment. 

Finally, in general, when I bring attention to the knee joint of the straight leg in Tree and in most standing poses that involve a straight leg, I have moved away from the idea of “engaging the quads,” as it can actually encourage the tendency to hyperextend a knee that already has that predisposition. Instead, I encourage students to engage the muscles around the entire circumference of the knee joint to bring evenness to the muscular support and stability of the knee (another way to think about this is "to firm the knee joint"). This was a wonderful image and idea that our teacher Donald Moyer used to employ regularly, and I have found to be of great benefit to those I have passed it onto in my classes.

—Baxter

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Featured Pose: Tree Pose (Vrksasana)

by Baxter

Tree pose (Vrksasana) is typically one of the first “balancing” poses a new yoga practitioner encounters, and the pose has staying power! Not only does it continue to be challenging and relevant for more experienced practitioners, but it also happens to be one of the oldest Hatha Yoga poses in recorded history, according to Richard Rosen, author of Original Yoga. In fact, it is one of only two standing poses from the earliest texts on yoga postures; the other one is a form of Powerful Pose (Utkatasana), also called Chair pose in modern yoga. And although Tree pose has shown up on our blog in a bunch of our yoga sequences over the years, it has never received its solo moment—that is, until today. 

Tree pose is a great pose for the obvious purpose of challenging and improving balance, as requires both downward rooting and upward stretching, and commands your full attention, lest your tree topples to the ground! If you have trouble balancing in the classic version of the pose, our three variations will allow you to gradually improve your balance in the pose as you work your way toward the full pose.

In addition to helping you maintain and improve balance, Tree pose is also a strengthening pose. Standing on one leg helps strengthen your standing leg, ankle and hips, and holding your arms overhead helps strengthen your upper body and arms.

I prescribe this pose for:

• Improving balance
• Building strength (in the ankles, legs, and hips as well as in the upper body)
• Improving mental focus and concentration
• Improving flexibility (in the hip of your lifted leg and shoulders and upper back)
• Recovering from ankle sprains
• Cultivating equanimity with success or failure

Cautions: If you have poor balance, please use practice the second version of the pose with your knee on the wall. If you have an acute ankle sprain, you may need to wait until swelling and pain have resolved to try this one out. For everyone, avoid placing the heel of your raised foot against the inside of the knee joint; it should always be either above or below that landmark. If you do not know where the inside of your knee joint is, ask your teacher show you.

When you loose your balance in this pose—which is almost inevitable at first—simply step your lifted foot back the floor as efficiently as you can, as you lower your arms.

1. Classic Version of Tree Pose

Start by coming into Mountain pose (Tadasana) with your feet just a few inches apart. Then shift your weight onto your left foot and bend your right knee a bit, coming onto the big toe of your right foot. Swing your right knee out to the right about 45 degrees. Then, lift your right foot up and place it against the inside seam of your left thigh, with your heel somewhere between your left groin and your mid-thigh and with your toes pointing straight down the inseam of the left leg.

Place your hands on your hips for and check to make sure your hip points are even with the wall in front of you and that the top edge of your pelvis is parallel with the floor. Don’t try to force your raised leg out to the side a full 90 degrees if that comprises the alignment of your hips; instead, allow your raised leg to turn out to the most comfortable angle you can maintain with even hips, even if that is less than 90 degrees. To keep your raised leg from slipping, press the sole of your right foot firmly into your inner left thigh and firm your left thigh back into your right foot.

When you are settled in the pose, move your gaze straight forward in front of you and chose an item in the room or on the wall to focus on. Then inhale and bring your arms overhead, moving them in line with your ears if your shoulder flexibility permits. Keep your breathing even and your entire body as steady as possible. Create an internal feeling of rooting down into the floor with your left leg and foot, while simultaneously lengthening up from hips to hands towards the sky, like a tree searching for life-giving light!

Stay in the pose for 5-6 breaths the first time, and gradually work your way up to 1-2 minutes. To come out the pose, on an exhalation release your arms and lifted leg back to the starting position. Take a few breaths to notice the effect of the pose, and then repeat on the second side.

2. Knee on the Wall Version 

Standing with your knee against a wall is a great version for beginners and those with generally poor balance, as it eliminates fear of falling and allows you to work on the key leg, arm, and chest actions.

Start by standing perpendicular to a wall with your right hip about one foot or so away from the wall. Now shift your weight onto your left foot and bring your right foot into position as in the classic pose, using your right hand on the wall to stabilize yourself. You can place your right foot anywhere along the inseam of your left leg that works for your hip openness and ability. Don’t feel compelled to get your heel high towards the groin right away, especially if your hips need tip up dramatically to get it into that position.

Now you are ready to place your knee on the wall. Ideally, you will be just a few inches away from the wall when you initially bring your right leg into position, and I usually use my left foot to heel-toe my body a bit closer to the wall until my right knee can press into the wall while I still maintain the hip alignment of the classic pose. This means your right knee will probably be a bit forward of perpendicular to the wall. You might gaze down to make sure your left foot is slightly under your pelvis and not directly under your left hip.

When you knee is on the wall to stabilize you, bring your arms overhead and work on your foot-thigh squeeze and your rooting-lifting action. With the wall support, you may to able to stay up longer, but be reasonable the first time you try it, staying for 6-8 breaths. Then bring your right foot down and your arms to your sides. Turn to the other direction to do the second side.

3. Foot to Calf Version

For those with stiffness and tightness in the hips who cannot easily take the leg position of the lifted leg in the classic pose (this requires combination actions of a combination of hip movements—flexing, abducting and externally rotating—whihc are not possible for everyone). This version can also be a good starting version of the pose, or just a stage in learning as you try to bring the lifted foot a bit higher. Practice this pose the same way as the classic version, pose, except that you will place the foot of your bent leg against the inner calf muscle of your supporting leg (the shape of the bottom of the foot and the calf fit like a hand in glove for many!) instead of your upper thigh.

4. Ball of the Foot on the Floor Version

For people with balance issues, keeping the ball of your foot on the floor is even easier than keeping your foot on your calf, because having your toes and the ball of your foot on the floor help stabilize you. This is also a good version for those with weak or recently sprained ankles.

Start in Mountain pose (Tadasana). Shift your weight to your left leg, turn your right leg out to about 45 degrees and lift your heel so you’re only the ball and toes of your right foot are on the floor. Then slide your right foot up against the inside of your left ankle, placing your right heel just above your left ankle bone but keeping the ball of the foot and toes on the ground. Press your right heel firmly into your left ankle and your left shin back into the right heel. From here, practice the pose the same way as the classic version.

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Aging and Balance: An Interview with Shari Ser

BY NINA

After I took yoga teacher and physical therapist Shari Ser’s therapeutic yoga seminar on “Yoga and the Fear of Falling” a couple of weeks ago, I felt that I just had to interview her for this blog! The workshop was so full of in-depth background information about balance and aging, as well as practical yoga solutions for helping students improve and/or maintain good balance. I soon realized that rather than just reporting back to you, it was better for you to get the scoop straight from the expert. Fortunately, Shari agreed to answer a few of my questions.

Q: Why is the ability to balance so important as we age?

A: The short answer is that if we can’t balance, we fall and break bones or hurt ourselves in different ways. Twenty percent of all Americans have balance issues, and falls are a public health catastrophe. They send people to hospitals and may require costly surgeries and months of pain, suffering, and hard work to try to regain prior levels of functional independence.

In addition, if we are afraid to move because we fear falling, this fear affects every aspect of our lives and starts the spiral of further decline and illness. People who fall are afraid of exercise and movement because of the anticipation of future falls. But if you don’t use your physical body the decline is unrelenting.

Unfortunately decline in ability to balance is part of “normal aging.” Physiological changes inevitably occur in aging; the composition of the muscle fibers changes from fast twitch to slow twitch, which means our reaction times decline. There are changes in peripheral nerve conduction speeds, and we may either overcompensate or under compensate when our balance is challenged. The smooth modulation of our central nervous system is affected as we age. There are intricate feedback systems between our cerebellum, brain stem, cranial nerves, and basal ganglia that need to be working smoothly for us to easily execute our locomotion and peripheral body through space.

Our proprioception (the ability to sense where we are in space) also changes as we age as well as our vestibular system (the balance system that is our inner ear). Some hypothesize that this is due to circulatory changes as we age. There are changes in our auditory and visual systems as we age. We get stiffer in our joints and muscles so we loose the full range of motion these joints may have had previously. Cognitive changes occur in our brain also slowing down the in streaming of information. Balance is a reflexive activity, an unconscious response to a change in stimuli, but to improve balance also requires mental concentration.

Q. How is yoga helpful for maintaining and improving our balance as we age?

A: The maxim  “use it or you loose it” is so true with balance! But if we stand in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) we are integrating every single one of our balance systems. Our eyes orient us to midline and to the horizon, and they tell us where up and down are. Our vestibular system tells us that the surface is stable and there is no spinning or tilting to compensate for. Our proprioceptors in our joints, muscles, and skin send feedback to the resistance of the floor, and our conscious mind sends information to elongate here, relax there, shift to the right/left, etc. Our brain is never quiet in Tadasana, always tweaking a little bit here and there. The act of standing still is a full body isometric activity, and it is work that is making our bodies stronger.

And if we close our eyes in the pose and the visual centers are absent, our vestibular and somatosensory systems have to work so much harder to maintain our balance. Then add to this any one-legged postures with twisting, and our brain again has to start firing up more neural circuitry, which is stimulating for the brain’s health. The more we access brain centers, the healthier our brains cognitively will be. So not only is Tadasana body centered, but it is brain centered. And walking on a treadmill is not the same flowing through standing poses, smoothly and with coordination.

Q: What is your favorite yoga pose for improving balance?

A: My all-time favorite yoga balance pose is Tree pose. There are countless ways to practice it, and the smiles on my students’ faces when they “get it“ are priceless. Some of the many ways you can practice this pose if you are unable to balance in the middle of the room include:

1. Stand with your straight-leg side next to a wall, and touch the wall with one hand for support.
2. Stand with your bent-leg side close to a wall, and allow your kneecap to rest on the wall for support.
3. Stand with your back to the wall, just for safety and reassurance.
4. Stand with your back to the wall with a chair in front of you, and place both hands on the back of the chair as you shift your weight to one leg.

Even the most minimum version of this pose (shifting your weight from two feet to one foot and bending your other leg slightly, so only the ball of your foot is on the floor) can help you improve your balance and work your way toward doing the full pose.

Shari Ser has over 25 years of orthopedic experience as a physical therapist and has been teaching yoga for a wide range of medical conditions since 1999. She graduated from The Yoga Room Advanced Studies Program in 1999, and was certified as a “Relax and Renew” teacher by Judith Hanson Lasater. She currently  teaches ongoing beginner level and back safe yoga classes, and co-teaches Yoga for Chronic Health Issues at The Yoga Room in Berkeley, California. For information see here.

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Poses for Osteoporosis

by Baxter 

As promised, today’s post will address a few of my recommendations for yoga for osteoporosis. As many of you know, OP is a very common condition that increases in incidence as we age. And before you fellas tune this out with the common misconception that OP is just a woman’s condition, it might surprise you to learn the following statistic from the Mayo Clinic: 1 in 8 men over the age of 50 will suffer an osteopenic fracture! And what are the most common fractures in men and women? The hips, spine and wrists are the areas most commonly affected. 

The easiest lifestyle recommendation to have a positive impact on the progression of the condition is weight-bearing exercise. And although there are other forms of physical activity and exercise that fall in that category, all of yoga’s poses or asana fit the bill, and unlike walking, yoga actually requires that we bear weight on not just the feet, but the wrists and the spine as well, so in my estimation yoga is far superior to walking alone.

Three classic modern poses that are well known to most yogis are good examples of poses that are good for OP:

Warrior 2: I like this one because you are balancing on both feet, which is easier than on one foot, yet it is still a challenge for your balance receptors. And not only are you bearing weight, but if you do the pose for 1-2 minutes, you notice that you are also building strength and endurance in your legs and arms. (Later this week, we’ll talk about this Warrior 2 in detail. See here.)

Warrior 2 Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Downward-Facing Dog: Since all four of your limbs are in contact with the floor, balance is not much of an issue, but you are now bearing weight on your hands, wrists and arms as well as your legs. This will stimulate the bones of the upper extremities and could lead to increase density in these areas. 

Downward-Facing Dog Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Tree Pose: For immediately obvious reasons, Tree pose will challenge your ability to remain balanced on one leg. The supporting leg must really work and be strong and stable to keep you upright, and the other leg’s hip gets a bit of opening from its position. And although this or any yoga pose will not eliminate the chance of a fall at some time in your future, more than one of my students has reported that after taking an unexpected spill, they felt their yoga practice prepared them to fall more gracefully and minimize the injury they sustained.

 Tree Pose from Moving Toward Balance

Keep in mind that if you are young and/or without evidence of OP at this time, a regular practice could be preventative. If you have been diagnosed with osteopenia, the precursor to OP, it is possible that your regular practice could stabilize or even reverse the trend of thinning of the bones, at least according to a recent pilot study by Loren Fishman, MD. The same is true if you already have OP, but have not suffered fracture; but you will need to be a bit more cautious as you practice, and I’d recommend that you take class with an experienced teacher familiar with modifying the poses to fit your individual needs.

Even 10 minutes a day may be enough yoga asana to impact OP, so why not start today with these three poses?

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