Pretty much any yoga routine is going to have a standing sequence. This will usually be at the beginning with sun salutations, and will emphasize proper alignment of the body in the frontal plane (when looking at the body from the front) and sagittal plane (looking at the body from the side).

I want to spend more time today talking about the importance of the sagittal alignment, because I see so few people in group classes that perform the salutation with good side alignment.

Modern life is all happening in front of us and often below our ribcage, creating a pattern of posture distortion pulling us forward in relationship to our center of gravity. There is a brain element to this pattern, as our postural righting centers become “numb” to the fact that we are offset too far forward. This creates a constant mechanical overload of both the joint structures of the neck, upper back, down to the heels, as well as the posterior muscle groups. Practicing normal side alignment allows our brains to recognize when we have shifted away into forward stress and move back into a gravity neutral alignment.

The traditional yoga mountain pose is an ideal place to practice this. The photo demonstrates how the hips stack over the heels, the shoulder stack over the hips, and the head stack over the shoulders. In the brief video, we will go over the sequence in which you realign your body one joint at the time, starting at the feet / ankles and ending at the head

Here is the link to the YouTube video going over this alignment: https://youtu.be/vWDng2vm4dA