Tree Pose
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Check out what your rooted leg knee is up to: you want this knee going towards the side best you can rather than allowing it to drift forward (tree is also a hip opener!).
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When you plant sole of your foot on your shin or upper thigh, try to avoid planting sole of foot on your knee. It just probably won’t like that very much over time!
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Above, left photo captures a shot mid-movement from the 16 class series Yoga for Strength & Stability which integrates hand weights into the yoga sequencing in every other class—tree pose is one yoga pose particularly conducive to adding weights! Shown in the photo is a still from Strength & Stability #8: Single Leg Deadlifts, Dumbbell Raises, and Hips” but you can find all 16 of these classes in this series HERE. Above, right photo demos a tree pose at the front of the mat. As a teacher, I often use tree to transition into other standing poses like Warrior I: you just step back from where you were at tree at the front of your mat! Note that both of these photos show a low-rooted tree with sole of foot just above ankle on the lower shin. Keep in mind that even after you are comfortable in a higher rooted tree, a low rooted tree is still a helpful, just slightly different pose from high tree—and thus offers just slightly different, worthwhile benefits!—and worth keeping as part of your practice!
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For more practice: try out “Flow #19: Tree Pose” or Flow #62: Twisted Tree Pose.
In general, you may have noticed a few themes above. One of these is reaching to the ends of your fingers (or through your back heel as in High Lunge) to make the whole pose more active: this is a difference between energized and strengthening yoga and, for lack of a better adjective, “lazy” yoga. You really can transform a pose and your practice by thinking all the way to ends of your limbs. (As with everything in yoga, you absolutely don’t need to overdo this: a little bit of reaching goes a long way, and a little bit of reaching is totally different and has a ripple strengthening effect through the rest of your body versus not reaching!) By the way, if you want a whole class themed around this “reaching” theme, here is Flow #71: Reaching for Flexible Strength which you will enjoy!
A second theme here is knee safety. In particular, for tree pose, and Warrior I and II, the positioning of your feet can really affect how happy your knees are. This is more the sort of thing where you will know when it feels wrong: that is something you should listen to, but the guidelines above will go a long way towards ensuring happy, healthy yoga every time you step on your mat.
Last but not least, you should always make any little adjustments within a pose for what feels right for that day. A lot of those have to do with the knee safety/comfort point above: for example, my right knee is sometimes just wonky so I don’t go for a super deep bend through that knee in Warrior I. This just feels a lot better to me! So by all means, listen to your body and make your yoga YOUR yoga.
Listening to your body and how it feels to the ends of your limbs really is a skill that you develop over time, and I believe is one of the many useful aspects of a yoga practice for athletes. Use the key cues above to help enhance your standing practice—they may even help you to be more in tune with how little adjustments can carry you a long way to a new experience of a yoga pose!
