Chair Pose/Uttkatasana: Cultivating Resilience

Chair Pose - Thunderbolt. Uttkatasana models for me the felt experience needed to avoid turning to sugar or alcohol when life get uncomfortable, as it does every day.

This pose gives me the physical blueprint to stay present to those feelings, breathing, knowing that release is just on the other side.

Here’s how it works: as I move through the big flowing postures of sun salutations, I progressively wake up to what’s going on right now, to being present in today’s body, to breathing consciously. We move from posture to posture, flowing forward, with each return to downward-facing dog an opportunity to reset and reground ourselves. After that series is complete, we meet at the tops of our mats, bending deep in Uttkatasana. Chair Pose. Suddenly, we are facing forward, eyes open, without movement. Feet come together, bend at the knees to sink closer to the floor, feel the weight in your heels and let your hips descend deeper. Gaze is set, arms by your ears. The leg work ignites the breath, which in turn builds inner heat. Here we are, in a pose that purposely creates physical stress and tension.

When a teacher calls this pose, and the students respond, she can learn something about them. Do they sit deep, so deep that they pump their breath and focus their eyes fiercely in order to stay? Do they bend their knees just a little to avoid intensity this early in their practice? As always, we are looking for the middle - the goldilocks of poses. There’s a big inner fire being built here, especially if we stay for 5 or 10 or 15 breaths. And we have to find a way to be and feel balanced between intense and ease-ful. This pose is also an opportunity to practice non-reaction. If you get reactive on your mat, you get annoyed with the teacher, annoyed with yourself, and you often stop breathing, gritting your teeth and clenching the muscles to stay. Is there a way, I keep telling myself in this fiery grounding pose to feel and create a sense of flow, a sense of air, a sense of water. To feel and create energy that is circulating, rather than static.

Life off the mat calls, at times, for grit and resilience. Uttkatasana taps into, tests, and reaffirms that skill. It creates physical leg strength but also a muscle memory of grit available to be accessed. Uttkatasana, for me, is work. Work that I love, but work nonetheless. The payoff is the sweetness of the forward-fold that follows, and the return to flowing movement. We appreciate that vinyasa even more. Yet the work of Uttkatasana is an opportunity in and of itself: a chance to up your game, to turn breath into energy, to cultivate heat without striving, to find the eye at the center of the storm.