Elements of Vasisthasana

The first step of achieving this pose is standing in tadasana, the mountain pose. You must stand with your feet hip width apart and. While standing in tadasana, you should relax your tailbone towards your heel and soften your front ribs by relaxing them and breathing into them. You should breathe into the uppermost part of your lungs, to help you fully open your chest. You should balance your weight evenly among your feet; you can achieve this by lifting and spreading your toes and laying them softly down on the floor.

Then, you should perform uttanasana, the intense forward stretch. In order to do so, you should inhale and stretch your hands above your head. When you exhale, you should roll your spine forward. With each exhalation in this position, you should release a little more fully into the forward bend. You should broaden your shoulder blades and soften the tops of your shoulders by shrugging them if you need to. Finally, you should spread your palms on the ground with your fingers spread out. You can microbend your legs if you need to.

The next step is to descend into adho mukha svanasana, downward facing dog. In order to get into adho mukha svanasana, you should step or hop both feet back. Exhale and lift your knees away from the floor while lengthening your tailbone away from the back of your pelvis. Then, push your top thighs back and stretch your heels onto or down toward the floor.

Then, you should inhale to the plank position. You should flatten your back when you are in plank position and should hold your core muscles tightly. Then, lift your hips slightly up to begin the transition to vasisthasana. Shift your weight onto your right arm as you roll onto the outside of your right foot, opening your whole body to the right side. You should shift to the outside edge of your right foot and stack your right foot on top of your left foot. Do not forget to flex your feet and press your heels towards the floor. Then you can rest your left arm on top of your torso. Make sure that your right hand isn’t directly below your right shoulder; position the hand slightly in front of your right shoulder. Your triceps should be firm and your fingers pressing firmly into the ground. Also, you should keep your hips as lifted as possible and your thighs as strengthened as possible. Your body should be aligned in a straight line from your heels to the crown of your head. Next, reach your left arm straight up towards the sky, forming a line from your right wrist through your left fingers. Keep the head forward or turn it to gaze up at the top hand.

 To achieve the full posture, your left leg must be raised perpendicular to the floor. In order to achieve this, you must exhale and bend the left knee, drawing the thigh into the torso. You then reach inside the bent leg and use the index and middle fingers of the top hand to grab the big toe. Then, you stretch the leg perpendicularly toward the ceiling.

 In order to get out of the position, you release the grip on the toe, and return the left foot to its original position. Then, you should shift to adho mukha svanasana. The final shift in this pose is the shift to balasana, or child's pose. In child's pose, you kneel on the floor, sit on your heels, separate your knees, and rest your head towards the floor.

You should repeat the posture on the other side.

As a variation of stacking your left leg on top of your right leg, you can also place your left leg towards the floor in front of your right leg in a squat-like form.