Yogis are always claiming one pose or another is the most important in a practice. Savasana, sirsasana, sarvangasana… balasana. I can’t make claim that any one posture is more important for a vital practice, just as I can’t claim that an asana yoga practice is more beneficial for everyone than another form of physical exercise. I wouldn’t say that since blue is a calming color, everyone should paint their bedrooms robin’s egg to get the most out of their sleep… We’re all individual bodies expressing various elements of the universe and our own consciousness at our own very unique places along the journey. We each have our most important posture.

That said, I do love to explore the impact and importance of all of the asana postures to see how they inform my own unique journey. They all trigger these very specific reactions in not only the physical body, but in the emotional and intellectual bodies as well. If we’re looking, they connect us to a deep and true aspect of our internal worlds – allowing the most honest elements of ourselves to shine forward with grace and joy. Depending on where we are in our lives, postures float in and out of this deep connectedness. Honoring this approach to asana, I find that recently, my deepest truth has and continues to bring me back to Tadasana- Mountain Pose. This posture with my feet on the ground, rooting down into the earth, brings me a deep connection to my own history. It brings me into my body and allows me to really and truly assess how I’m feeling every time I place my feet firmly beneath me.

Not only that – this mountain energy keeps coming up in every day life. I recently connected with beautiful people at Yogascapes, and I’m now helping put together a yoga retreat in the Colorado Rockies. Snow, Hot Springs, Yoga, Rolling Hills, Community.. as a Colorado native, to say this research is nostalgic and exciting is an understatement. Colorado has been calling my name loudly for the past few months. To be invited into the Yogascapes family and start looking deeply at my native state with fresh yogi eyes is a crazy awesome honor. Since my journey on the mat started in California, I’m now looking at Colorado from a different perspective from when I left her. Digging around in the mountain towns of Winter Park and the like is generating a much deeper connection to the ideas and influences of tadasana and helps drum up the inspiration and support I need to dive into this new work. Channelling and connecting with ideas like strength, beauty, and earth, I have come full circle and back to Colorado, back to the mountains, back to tadasana.

I now find myself channeling that energy everyday by structuring asana classes around this one pose that taps into that true mountain girl in me. Right now, this is a key posture of my own truth. It represents standing strong and tall in my own history, to feel secure in all my curves, my emotional valleys and peaks and to understand that at times, the snow does fall and to find quiet and peace with the cold winds that blow instead of fighting them. Tadasana, for this reason alone, has become among the most important postures to me. Not only to we get to explore the optimal blue print of the body, placing each individual joint and bone on top of the other in beautiful alignment and harmony, we also get to explore the ideas that surround mountains. Because of my own story, I connect it back to Colorado. To explore the various options for this Yogascapes retreat, I’m blissed and blessed to keep coming back to tadasana both in mind and in body – connecting the truth of my history with the truth of my present.

The most important asana posture is the one that becomes far more than a pose. They are the ones that connect deeply with the life of the yogi – bringing them into the deepest truth of their being. So whether you connect deepest with a Warrior variation, being upside down in Sirsasana (head stand) or flying high in Eka Pada Galavasana, come back to YOUR posture. Come back to YOUR truth. Explore the posture that is the most important to you and honor the connections it represents.

Keep an eye out for this very sweet Colorado Yogascapes Retreat – it’s on it’s way! In the meantime, enjoy exploring your truth both on and off the mat.

| namaste |