Suki Dalury in Tarasana; by Zoe Zimmerman for Sundara Studios 2013
Life is distracting. Phones ringing, emails binging, children asking questions, laundry to do, drama to sort out, always something to pull us out of center. Yoga is a practice that serves to bring us back.
Seated postures of all sorts are an excellent tool for centering. Tarasana, star pose, is a deep hip-opening seated posture that instantaneously drops a wondering and distracted mind back into the clear glass ocean of calm centered ease.
Begin seated with your legs extended wide. Inhale to extend your spine long and exhale to bend your knees somewhere between a 45- and 60-degree angle, soles of the feet not quite touching. Inhale, taking your ankles into their respective same hand, and spread your toes, feeling the outer edges of your feet pressing strongly into the mat.
Exhale and settle into your seat. Inhale to stretch your spine long and forward, extending your heart out over your feet, and exhale to bow your forehead toward the floor.
Deep hip openers like Tarasana invite us to not fight the distractions but rather to settle into the quite that lies beneath. The noise of the hip opener is like the ringing of the phone, and the binging of the emails, while the breath is the current that brings you home. To take the practice deeper, settle into your breath as you settle into the pose. The practice of focusing on breathing, to re-center one’s awareness in the ocean of calm and peace that is always present, translates off of the mat as well.
Stay as long as you like and enjoy.