by Inez Baranay
17. Tadasana: Five
Stand in Tadasana.
Notice the natural and automatic adjustments you make. Now you make not only adjustments of particular and separate parts, you are working to a single configuration, in which you perceive each part in relation to each other part.
As you adjust for balance, for expansion, for sensitising, note the refinements you bring to your adjustments.
The Tadasana you do at the start of a practice is not the Tadasana you do at the end.
Just as Tadasana has taught you how to rotate the thighs, move the sacrum, extend the trunk, open the groin, align the body in Sirsasana (head-stand), so has the practice of Sirsasana taught you how to do Tadasana. You stand in Tadasana to learn how to work your spine in headstand, and your headstand has shown you more about standing in Tadasana.
The Tadasana you do before Trikonasana (triangle pose) is not the same Tadasana you do at the end of Trikonasana.
The Tadasana contains all the other poses that contain Tadasana. The chest from Trikonasana, the spine from Sarvangasana, the legs from Urdhva Dandasana and so on.
Each and every one of the asana leaves its traces and its influence in Tadasana, just as Tadasana leaves its traces and its influence on each and every other asana.
This pose of beginning contains the cycle of poses, changes them and is changed by them.
And still, in every beginning, you start here. Stand. Stand evenly, straight and still. This is where you begin.
