How to be mindful in Mountain pose on the mountain

I was making my way up Mt. Work this morning –feeling the shoulder season. Winter is still in the air but you can feel spring is just itching to be fully present. You know, cool mornings but afternoon brightness. Standing on the mountain today, I felt the shift. Not quite winter’s stillness and not quite spring’s momentum. Just a gentle invite to be here.

One of my favorite poses is Tadasana or mountain pose. Practicing this pose allows me to regulate my nervous system through grounding, alignment, and breath. This pose, of course, can be done anywhere and I am known to use a tree, focus while in line up at the grocery store, or just hanging out with my guitar peeps. Any time is Mountain time!

How to play with Mountain pose in a few easy steps.

1. Stand with your feet about hip width distance apart (say 10 inches for a suggestion) with your feet straight. Or try to bring your big toes to touch, heels slightly apart. Maybe try feet straight and then big toes touching to see which feels better for your body.
2. Spread all your toes as wide as you can.
3. Lengthen your spine. Imagine your tailbone growing tall, each vertebra one over the other.
4. Open your chest and relax your shoulders.
5. HERE IS THE FUN PART! Lower your gaze or close your eyes and feel your weight shift into your toes. Notice the weight moving into the toes. Now, shift your weight into your heels. Notice what happens as you shift your weight. Then shift the weight into the outer edge of your right foot and inner edge of the left foot. Then shift your weight into the outer edge of the left foot and inner edge of the right foot. Just notice this shifting and how the body responds. Finally, find stillness where your weight feels equally distributed between the toes, heels and inner and outer edges of both feet. There it is–Mountain pose. Ta da!
6. Now, choose to have your eyes closed and focus on what you hear or your eyes open and focus on what you see. Follow this brief sensory mindfulness technique:
   • Find something with your eyes that captures your attention or listen for one sound that captures your attention . Focus on this. As you breath in, label it. As you breath out, label it. For instance, this morning a very chatty raven captured my attention so I inhaled through my nose and said to myself “A chatty raven” and then exhaled (nose or mouth) and said to myself “A black raven”. I did this 5 times. Then I found something else that captured my attention and repeated the mantra. I find that its fun to play with the senses perhaps focusing on something that I hear and then something that I see. If its just rained, sometimes it is something that I smell or I pick up a leaf or rock or something similar and complete this with something that I feel. You can use all of your senses! Maybe be wary of things you might pick up to taste…..

7. Breathe naturally and check in on how you feel now. Just be here.

In a world that asks us to move quickly, we can forget that stability does not come from pushing forward, but from standing fully where we are. The next time you are on a mountain, or staring out a window, or looking at your to do list, or waiting in line, try a little Mountain pose exercise knowing that stillness is not the absence of movement but the presence of awareness.

With gratitude

Michelle