Featured Pose: Triangle Pose (Trikonasana)

by Baxter and Nina

Triangle pose strengthens and stretches both your upper and lower body, and strengthens the core muscles at the sides of your torso. So it’s good pose to use for warming up for backbends, seated forward bends or twists, or inverted poses. Because of the way you move into and out of the pose, it helps improve balance. And overall this pose creates a wonderful feeling of openness. Without being overly demanding, this pose can be energizing when you’re lethargic or uplifting when you’re feeling blue. The four variations make it accessible to most people.

Baxter prescribes this for:

• stiffness and tightness in legs and shoulders
• general muscular weakness
• improving core strength
• improving balance
• mild fatigue
• depression 

Timing: In general, we recommend holding this pose for 90 seconds to 2 minutes. People who are newer to yoga or who are feeling tired or weak should start with shorter holds of 30 seconds.  

Cautions: For people with low back pain or sacroiliac problems, Triangle pose may aggravate your condition, so monitor your symptoms. Come out if you experience pain, and if it hurts consistently, skip the pose entirely. Because looking up toward the top arm can harm your neck bones, we recommend looking forward or down.  

1. Classic Version 

From Mountain pose step your feet 4-5 feet apart (depending on your leg length), spin your right foot and leg out 90 degrees, pivot your back heel to the left a few inches, and allow your hips to rotate slightly to the right. With your chest facing the long edge of your mat, inhale and raise your arms parallel with the floor, and exhale and lengthen your torso out over your right leg, tipping your pelvis over your front leg. Keeping both sides of your waist long, bring your bottom hand to the floor just outside your front foot under your right shoulder and your left arm directly above the left shoulder. Lengthen from your tailbone to the crown of your head, and either look straight forward or down at your front foot. 

When you are aligned, maintain the energy in your limbs, bring some awareness to your breath, and focus on staying steady and balanced on the feet.

To come out of the pose, keep your legs strong and your arms out to your sides as you inhale and lift your torso and head back to the upright starting position. Then exhale, release your arms by your sides, and turn your feet to parallel. Make sure your feet are even side to side before repeating on the second side. When you’ve finished both sides, step your feet back to Mountain pose and stay for a few moments before moving on.

2. Top Hand on Waist

(sorry, no photo)

This version is good for people who have pain or restricted mobility in the shoulder, and for people with balance problems as it’s a bit easier to balance in this version. (If you have trouble balancing in this version, try version 4.)

To come into the pose, start out as you would for the classic version, but rather than bringing both arms out to your sides, place your left hand on your left hip with your elbow pointing out to the side. Then, when you enter the full pose, keep your arm in the same position, so your elbow now points directly up. Follow the instructions for the classic pose for aligning the rest of your body. If you can’t keep both sides of your waist long in the pose, use a block as in version 3. When you are aligned, follow the instructions for the classic pose for finding a focus in the pose.

To come out of the pose, follow the instructions for the classic pose, leaving your hand on your hip until you come to the upright position, and then releasing both arms.  

3. Bottom Hand on Block

Because most people are not flexible in the hips or spine enough to place their hand on the floor in this pose without significantly side-bending their spines, the prop for your hand allows you to maintain the length of your torso in the pose. You will need to experiment to find the height of the block that works best for you and allows both sides of your waist and your spine to stay parallel in pose. We recommend starting with the highest side and working down.

Set up for the pose by placing the block to the right side of your mat so it will be just behind your right heel when you step your legs wide apart (it’s okay to move it if it isn’t in the right place when you come into the pose). Then follow the instructions for coming into the classic version of pose, bringing your palm or fingertips firmly onto the block. Follow the instructions for the classic pose for aligning yourself and finding a focus in the pose.

To come out of the pose, follow the instructions for the classic pose, moving the block to your left side before repeating the pose.

4. Bottom Hand on Chair Seat 

(sorry, no photo)

This variation is for anyone who can’t bring the bottom hand to a block without side bending their spine, and provides a gentler alternative for people who have back pain, weakness, or balance problems.

Set up for the pose by placing a chair so that when you step your feet apart, it will be right behind your right foot, with the chair seat facing the long edge of your mat. Then follow the instructions for coming into the classic version of pose, bringing your palm or fingertips firmly onto the chair seat instead of the floor. Since you will be higher up than in the classic pose, your bottom arm may angle a bit forward and down, so bring your top arm in line with bottom arm. Then follow the instructions for the classic pose for aligning yourself and for finding a focus in the pose.

To come out of the pose, follow the instructions for the classic pose. Then step your feet together into Mountain pose, move the chair to your left side, and repeat the pose on the second side.

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Featured Pose: Triangle Pose

by Baxter

Triangle pose (Utthita Trikonasana) is one of the most commonly practiced standing poses, and for good reasons! This accessible pose can help build upper and lower body strength, can increase upper and lower body flexibility, and can improve your balance. It is also easy to modify for those, like me, who lack the flexibility to bring the bottom hand to the floor. And if you have trouble with balance, you can do the pose with your back to the wall. Overall this pose creates a wonderful feeling of openness. Without being overly demanding, this pose can be energizing when you’re lethargic or uplifting when you’re feeling blue.

Because the poses stretches your legs and hips, it is a good way to warm up for seated forward bends and supported inverted poses. And because the pose lengthens your spine and is a mild twist, it is a good way to warm up for seated twists.

I prescribe this pose for: 

• general stiffness and tightness in legs and shoulders
• general muscular weakness
• improving core strength 
• improving balance

Even though this pose is commonly taught, there are some minor controversies out there in the yoga-sphere about how to do it “correctly,” so today I’m going to share my favorite way to do the pose. I'll start with instructions for getting into the pose, being in the pose, and getting out of the pose, then list the cautions you should consider before doing the pose at the end.

Instructions:

Moving Into the Pose. Start in Mountain pose (Tadasana) facing the long edge of your mat. 

1. Step your feet wide apart, somewhere between 4 and 5 feet, depending on how tall you are and how long your legs are.

2. Spinning on your right heel pad, turn your right foot AND leg out 90 degrees toward the right short edge of your mat. You can usually tell if you have your leg turned out correctly if your kneecap points in the same direction as your middle toe. (Depending on your particular anatomy, there are exceptions to this alignment, but it works most of the time.)

3. Next, pivoting on the ball of your left foot’s big toe, kick your left heel back an inch or two towards the left short edge of your mat. This will turn your left foot in a bit toward the front foot. (I know there are other ways to adjust the back foot, but I find this way the most efficient and stable for your balance.) Check to make sure that after you adjust both feet both heels still line up with one another relative to the long axis of your mat.

Also, once your legs have taken on the new relationship, your hips should have naturally rotated a bit towards your front foot. This means your left hip point has rotated around towards your inner right leg and your hip points are no longer parallel to the long edge of your mat, as they were when you started. I like this new arrangement, as it is pretty healthy for the front hip joint and the left sacroiliac joint! Now, the chest may have gone along for the ride, but see if you can easily rotate the chest back to the left a little so it squares back up with the long edge of your mat (but don’t take the hips along!).

4. After you’ve established your feet, inhale your arms up and out to your sides, parallel with the floor. Then as you exhale, reach out over your front leg like you have a letter in your right hand that you need to pass over a chasm to your beloved! This will encourage the right side of your waist and chest to stay long, and not shorten and curl towards the ceiling. It will also cause a slight shift of your pelvis initially back to the left bit, and then the right side of the pelvis will tip down a bit.

5. At this point, engage your legs to stay straight and strong as you place your right hand on a chair seat, a block, or the floor, depending on your flexibility. Your propping should allow the right side of your body to stay relatively long and straight—you might need to set up in front of mirror to actually see this alignment.

Keeping your hips in their new location (don’t let them spin up!), allow your upper belly and chest to rotate around the axis of your spine toward the long edge of the mat and possibly a bit more skyward. Stop this action if your feet become ungrounded, if your knees start to bend, or if your pelvis starts to spin up.

For Very Flexible People: Hand on the Floor

For Less Flexible People: Hand on a Prop

6. You can line your arms up with each other if your lower hand is on the floor or a low block, but the higher your propping the more variation you might need for your top arm. I see a lot of students jamming their left shoulders or throwing their top arm way back behind their chest. Instead, consider aligning your top arm with the top edge of your shoulders, even if it angles down a bit from vertical.

I prefer to have students keep their heads and necks lining up with the rest of their spine, but there are a lot of other ways this is taught. I won’t go into this here, but for the healthy aging neck, this way is pretty neutral in the joints. You can try to rotate your head to look up or even down (I like to vary my head position while in a longer hold).

Being in the Pose. To keep you grounded and stable in the pose, allow a downward movement of energy from your hips to your feet. At the same time, allow an upward energy starting in your feet, which gains support in your pelvis and then travels up through spine to the crown of the head. At the same time, spread your arms away from your heart toward your hands.

How long to stay in Triangle depends on many factors, but I start with dynamically entering and exiting the pose with the breath a few times, and then stay in the pose statically for just a few breaths or for as long as 2-3 minutes. The longer you are in it, the more stretch takes place in some areas and the more strength is required in others! Take your time advancing how long you stay in.

Leaving the Pose. Keep the strong, grounded feeling in your legs, and then on an inhalation, as if someone has grabbed your top hand and is assisting you up, pivot your hips and torso back to vertical. Then exhale your arms to yours sides and bring your feet back to parallel with each other before repeating the pose on the second side.

Cautions: People with a tendency to hyperextend their front knee should be careful to not to jam the front knee into a locked position. Instead, shift some weight from your front heel to the ball of your front foot and micro-bend your front knee. For people with low back pain or sacroiliac dysfunction, Triangle pose sometimes can aggravate your condition. So if you are experiencing low back or sacroiliac pain in the pose, come out of the Triangle pose immediately. Finally, Nina learned from one of her female teachers, that if done too often, Triangle pose can be risky for women’s hips. So Nina recommends doing this pose only a few times a week, not every single day.

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Friday Q&A: Squarers Beware!

Triangle Pose (Trikonasana) from Yoga: The Poetry of the Body

Q: Here’s a kind of fussy Iyengar question…and your response need not be Iyengar-based! What about that back-leg hip and leg rotation in Triangle pose? Many years ago I learned that, like the front leg, the back leg has an external rotation in triangle and that the hips should be squared up to face toward the front of the room. But I’ve also had teachers instruct to let the back-leg hip roll forward a bit. Does this represent an evolution in the understanding of the pose? Is there an Iyengar orthodoxy that may not be the best way for all of us to practice? What do you all think? How do you teach or practice triangle?

A: When I read your question, I heard my teacher, Donald Moyer, saying, "Squarers beware!" Yes, there definitely has been an evolution in the understanding of the positioning of the back leg in Triangle pose, as well as other related standing poses (Warrior 2, Extended Side Angle) in the Iyengar world. I asked Baxter to elaborate. —Nina

A: As you adjust your feet, turning your right foot out 90 degrees, and kicking your back heel back about an inch or two, your hips will naturally turn a bit toward the front leg. Let this happen! This position keeps the top back of your sacrum wide and relaxed, unlike what happens when you strongly externally rotate your back thigh bone or try to square your hips with the long edge of your mat.

The old school instructions tend to cause narrowing and bunching of the muscles and soft tissues of the left sacroiliac joint, in our present example, which over time I believe can contribute the sacroiliac joint dysfunction and lower back pain.  So, again, let your hips rotate a bit to the right. Once you tip your hips and spine out over the right leg, simply firm the inner edge of your back leg (adductors) toward the outer edge of your back leg (ileo-tibial band), and you will have a nice strong feeling in your back leg to assist in grounding of your back foot.  Maintain the rightward rotation of your pelvis, even as you rotate your upper belly and chest up toward your top arm. On more occasions than I can count, when I have taught this version of Triangle pose, the old schoolers comment on how much better the pose feels in the pelvis and lower back. See what you think! —Baxter

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