The following is an article I wrote for the DFW Yoga Teachers Association:
You begin your class by asking your students to “come to sitting.” I suspect that, more often than not many of us leave that calling at sukhasana (easy pose). If that sounds like you, I’d like to encourage you to spend a few minutes exploring “the art of sitting” in your next class.
Teaching a lot of Beginning Yoga classes gives me the opportunity to talk a lot about sitting and to explore the many classical seated postures with my students. If you teach a lot of Vinyasa or “flow”-style classes you may sense that your students just want to get on with their workout. But just those few minutes at the beginning of a practice are plenty to explore a few of the things that happen in the body while seated. The benefits are multiple.
Seated poses will teach students some of the basic anatomy of the hips and legs while in a more comfortable, receptive posture. Letting them sit will also alert you to differing abilities in your students. You can spot tight hips in an unsupported sukhasana: the knees lift up and the back rounds. Students are sitting on the backs of the sitting bones. Forearms might even be resting on the knees. Externally rotating the thighs in the hip sockets is going to be a challenge for this student. If this is as comfortable as your student can be in sukhasana and you don’t have the benefit of working with blankets, have your student try a modified virasana or hero’s pose, sitting on (or between) the heels and feet with the knees hips-width apart. In virasana the thighs want to rotate internally, so go with natural inclination of your student’s thighs to find a comfortable seated posture for him.
If you do have blankets, fold two or three and stack with smooth edges facing in and have students sit with the pelvis lifted up on to the blankets. This support should allow the thighs to more easily begin to rotate out, so the knees can descend toward the floor. Cross deeply at the shins and stretch out through the heels. Instruct the student to feel weight in and sit slightly forward on the sitting bones so the back doesn’t round, and feel the torso lift up on the inhale. The support should stabilize the student’s posture. The spine should feel neutral but lifted.
Allowing five minutes at the beginning of your class for your students to find their way to sitting comfortably and to engage the breath will also help to better direct their attention inward during the more dynamic segments of your class. Setting the foundation for a long, smooth, regulated breath cycle at the beginning of class, when students can focus exclusively on the breath without distraction develops that awareness, that single-pointed attention to the breath as they begin to move into their asana and more vigorous vinyasa work. The breath then becomes a tool that helps to regulate vinyasa and alerts the student to instances where they may be over-exerting, causing the breath to become labored. A deep, full breath is also important for the student’s ability to move deeper in asana, as they use the breath to find space in the body.
A comfortable seated posture also is fundamental for your students to begin exploring the more contemplative aspects of their practice, such as pranayama and meditation. When sitting comfortably in a seated posture, we can more easily focus on and deeply engage the breath. Our attention isn’t constantly pulled back to the tight hip or the compressed rib cage and lungs. If your students are seated comfortably, that comfort, that balance between grounding and releasing the lower body, and breathing through and extending the upper body should allow them to sit for at least five minutes and as their practice grows and deepens, for much longer periods.
Introduce these concepts by way of a truly comfortable seated posture for a few minutes at the beginning of your classes and begin to explore some of the other seated postures such as siddhasana (seer’s or sage’s pose) and padmasana (lotus pose) towards the end, after the hips have had a chance to open. Add an optional 10 or 15 minutes to your class (if time permits) to have your students discover what is required to begin sitting for longer periods of time in a short, guided meditation and then talk about what that felt like; what the challenges were in the body that may have prevented the student from just being with the breath.
Ironically, learning to sit, like learning to lie truly still in savasana, can be one of the most challenging aspects of asana practice. In yoga we strive to harness not only the physical body, but also the mind and the breath together with the body. In the short time so many of our students have for a yoga class, honoring the practice of sitting lets them remember to see and embrace the discipline necessary to bring all three into union.