It is always good in yoga asana to start at the base of your pose. Often, this means your feet. Interestingly, as you explore the feet in the standing poses, you'll find that the rooting quality, coupled with the action of the legs leads to freeing up the spine.

 Finding the Four Corners of the Feet

Look at the bottoms of your feet (sit down to do this!). Press into either side of your heel bones. These points could be considered the back corners of your feet. The front corners are below your big toe, on the fleshy big toe mound, and below the baby toes. If you place your fingers on the heel corners and connect the dots up to the toe-mound corners, you'll feel a lengthening in the bottoms of your feet.

Tadasana -- Mountain Pose

Stand with your feet together. Look down at your feet and notice their length. Keep in mind the four corners and root the heel corners of the right foot into the floor. Lift the front of the foot off the floor and lengthen the front corners forward and place that part of your foot on the floor. Did you see the right foot get longer than the left?
Do the same on the left. Now spread your toes.

Draw both sides of your kneecaps up so that your quadraceps muscles ( front thigh muscles) engage. Take the flesh of your buttocks toward the floor. Now bring your awareness back down into your feet and notice how your weight is distributed there. Can you balance it over all four corners?

There won't necessarily be a static place to balance the four corners, but in tadasana we're always seeking it out. Imagine little roots descending through those four corners, keeping you connected to the Earth. Notice as the corners descend what happens to your pelvis, your spine, your chest. Did anything happen to your breath?

These are all things to notice and explore over time and with practice. Also, you can take the awareness of your four corners into the Home Practice and discover what happens to them when you do Trikonasana (Triangle Pose) or Virabadhrasana II (Warrior Two).

The great thing, though, about Mountain Pose is that you can practice it anywhere. Grocery lines, bank lines, your kid's soccer game. This pose doesn't need to be restricted to the mat!

On my recent trip to Quebec, I had the privilege of viewing the Bodies exhibit. This, in case you are unfamiliar with it, is an international exhibit that features real human bodies that have been preserved in order to display various aspects of our anatomy.

I do love anatomy. As a yoga teacher, I work with bodies all the time. I'm fascinated by our construct. And the more I learn, the more I realize that the body is as vast as the universe itself. Discoveries are infinite. From a new anatomical term, to the subtle awareness of skin or breath, the body continues to delight me.

So, I was excited to see this exhibit. To see thick bands of fascia that run down the sides of the thighs. To observe the latissimus dorsi and the way it attaches from the low lumbar to the humerus bone. To investigate the beautiful shape of the sacral bone.

The bodies, though, are dead. And though I knew this going in, it became apparent that this window into the human body was limited. Encased in glass, was someone's brain. I looked down into the grey folds and realized that the person who had operated his/her life with this brain was no longer there. The essence of this person had vanished.

As I wandered the rest of the exhibit, it offered me insights into my own body. The lungs are smaller than I imagined. The nervous system, when isolated and laid flat looks like a deveined shrimp. And the blood vessels are as intricate as coral reefs.

My fascination with the human body, though, was in the component that could not be preserved. It resides in the living tissues. In the intelligence. In the harmonious synchronicity of it all.

http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Latissimus_dorsi_.PNG