Uttanasan

• Feet hip-width, and pointing straight forward.
• Clasp the elbows, stretch up and exhaling, fold down from the hips, with the knees slightly bent.
• Look at the feet; spread the toes open. Be aware of the four corners of each foot; evenly grounded on earth.

THINK – When you bend over, what is happening? We are all born of earth but we seldom bow down to it in respect and humility. In this action of bending down and focusing on grounding points, we are attuning to the fundamental energy of earth.

• Let your mind systematically scan your body, integrating awareness with the skin, muscles and bones along the feet, calves, thighs, hips, torso, etc.
• Try to let go at the hips, and elongate the sternum towards earth. Consciously and deliberately, surrender.
• Be totally aware of the even foundation at your feet. Now slowly start to straighten the legs. What happens? Your mind will be attracted only towards that goal of straightening the legs, and this will shake and disturb the energy at the foot and the buttocks.
• So while you use energy to express itself in the outer action of straightening the legs, use intelligence and energy  to prevent the buttocks from moving backward and don’t allow weight distribution at the feet to fall only onto the heels.
• When you straighten the legs strongly, the front thigh muscles strongly contract; because of this, energy rises up the front leg and into the bone. But you should practise what we call sama darshanam or equal vision, to attain the state of samatwa or equalness. So shift your awareness to the inner thighs. Pull energy up there too, and suck the area to the bone with equal intensity as that exerted at the front of the thigh. Do the same with the upper outer thigh as well.
• Now release the hands, and using the hands on the mat, work the whole hip and lumbar spine area towards getting the pelvic tilt of the knee-chest-chin position of  the Sivananda sun salute – buttocks strongly pressed upward with the lumbar spine well drawn in and chest cavity vertically lengthening.
• Maintaining that action, slowly flatten the palms if possible.
• Then again, scan and rescan the body.

THINK – Is the sensation at the inner ankles the same as outer ankles? How about left inner thigh and right inner thigh? Create sameness; integrate the parts with the whole, and the whole with the parts.

THINK - Now while you are observing and doing all this, think about who is observing, who is doing. What is the source of both this observer and doer? What is the link between your thought of doing and the consequential action? Where is the hidden intelligence behind this neuro muscular network?

Hidden intelligence is pervading each and every cell in us. Let us surrender to it through our effort.

May our effort awaken the inner energy, may our self-study make us aware of the inner presence, and may our humble devotion attune us fully to it.

Namaste and shanthi