My Life with Tree Pose: Lessons on Aligning in Space and Connecting with Earth

Image: Author's own. Photographer: Rhonda Dorsett

Tree pose is the very first yoga pose I can remember trying. The memory from this first attempt is a blur of wobbliness. I see myself teetering in the pose and within a few seconds falling out of it. 

Since my early efforts nearly 20 years ago, I've received excellent instruction in doing Tree, and I've also learned from my own independent experience. I still find this pose to be challenging, especially when standing on my left foot, but I've come a long way since my early attempts. I wanted to share insights I've gained as I've tried to grow my tree over the years.

I decided to focus on Tree Pose for several reasons. One is to offer solidarity with any reader who has been introduced to Tree as a beginner's pose but who finds it difficult. I'd like to send the message that there's nothing wrong with you if you feel awkward and unsteady in your attempts to balance on one leg. Perhaps my Tree story will offer a clue or two about finding your own path to a flourishing pose.

A related reason for writing about Tree is that sometimes in a yoga class the complexities of balance, especially for older adults (like me), are not fully acknowledged. If you are an "elder," you may sense that balance is not to be taken for granted. Engaging with Tree Pose is a good way to enhance balance.

Having a special fondness for Tree also has motivated me to write about the pose. Perhaps I’m fond of it because I'm drawn to trees in nature. I love the way they both root into the earth and rise to the heavens. I love, too, that they are firmly anchored yet bend with the wind. When I can find my home in Tree Pose, I can feel the calm strength and steadiness of a tree and its gentle swaying in the breeze. 

Lastly, I write about Tree to offer a perspective from my personal experience that goes beyond standard instructions given in a yoga class. For example, typical cues might be to press the foot of your raised leg into your opposite thigh and your thigh back into your foot to help keep your hips squared. Another common cue is to focus your gaze on something that doesn't move to help you keep your balance. Such instructions certainly can be helpful in learning to move your body into the shape of the pose. But for me to really be in the pose, to find some stability and satisfaction in it, I've needed to think more broadly about what's going on in my body as I've attempted Tree and what I might do to reflect that awareness in action. I wanted to offer something more personal and more extensive than standard Tree instructions.

 I organize the lessons I've learned around the two themes announced in the title of the essay, aligning in space and connecting with Earth. 

Aligning in Space

Aligning in space is about lining up and centering my body in relation to the space I'm in, for example, within the four walls of a yoga studio, in the room I practice yoga in at home, or in favorite spots in nature, like among the trees by my neighborhood pond, where the photo above was taken. 

Needing to be up close. During my first year of yoga, I learned how dependent my balance was on being next to a wall or other set structure. It wasn't that I needed to hold onto the wall; it was that I needed to be in close visual contact with it. When I tried to do the pose in or near the middle of a room, I quickly lost my balance. This was true even when I did the basic form of the pose, in which I placed my raised foot just above the ankle of my standing leg (rather than trying to position my foot on my inner upper thigh).

My intuition told me that being near a wall and being able to see the firm support it offered represented a kind of safety and security in my surroundings that I needed, or felt I needed. I'm near-sighted, and this dependence on being close to a wall in Tree Pose reminded me of my need to be up close to things to see them clearly. Yet it struck me that while I couldn't alter my near-sightedness (short of a surgical procedure), I could do something about my wall dependence in this pose. I also wondered whether weaning myself from the wall in Tree might contribute, even if only slightly, toward a greater sense of inner balance in life's open, uncertain spaces. 

Standing on one foot in a checkout line. One of the simple things I've done to get better at balancing away from a wall is by standing on one foot while waiting in the checkout line in the grocery store. The store I'm referring to always has a pretty long line, even at the self-checkout. I regularly find myself practicing my balance in these lines. I don't try to do a full Tree Pose. I simply lift one foot a few inches off the ground.

The supermarket is a bustling place, and the checkout lines are continually in motion. It's helpful for me to try to balance in such places because they are a kind of microcosm of the busyness and ever-shifting landscape of day-to-day life. I want to balance not just on my yoga mat but in real life. 

I also sometimes practice my one-legged stand in my local coffee shop and in our living room, among other places, but I tend to associate all the places with my “checkout line” practice, because that’s where I first thought of making this public standing balance a regular practice.

I'm reasonably confident that the practice has helped me, even in just a small way, with my balance in Tree Pose and beyond.

Simulating a balance beam. I'm not a gymnast and have never been on a balance beam. But my physical therapist once suggested that I try doing an exercise in which, to start, I line up one foot right in front of the other as if I'm standing on a balance beam. Then I hold up with one hand a 3 x 5 note card with a big X in its center. The X is intended as the focal point for my gaze. While moving the card and my X-focused gaze to one side, I turn my head to the opposite side. As a variation, I move the card and my gaze up toward the ceiling while moving my head down toward the floor and then reverse this movement. The idea behind these exercises is to expand the capacity of my vestibular system, the sensory system that is centrally involved in balance. 

I can't say with any precision how much this exercise has improved my balance. But I believe it has played a role. I think this is because it has challenged my habitual way of finding balance when standing, which is to place my feet side by side rather than in tandem with each other and to keep my gaze moving in the same direction as my head. But it's been freeing and empowering to learn to balance from a different base. This learning has probably helped with Tree Pose. But I'd like to think that it has also subtly helped me to stand in the world with more agility.

Belonging to a family of trees. Standing in the checkout line and doing my simulated balance beam are constructive physical exercises. What I've also found helpful is to nurture my imagination while in Tree Pose. Specifically, when I can imagine myself as a tree hugged within a family of fellow trees rather than as an isolated tree, I feel a tad more secure and can maintain my balance a smidge better. 

This feeling of belonging within a tree family was reinforced and deepened recently as I read a fascinating new book on self, identity, and belonging called IntraConnected. Early in the book, the author, Daniel Siegel, described a grove of aspen trees in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah. While these trees appeared to be distinct and separate from each other, a scientific investigation revealed that the trees sprouted from a common root ball, the foundation of a massive singular organism. DNA testing showed that the trunks were actually a single tree, commonly known as Pando, among the largest and oldest living beings on Earth. 

If I let my imagination go while in Tree Pose, I can imagine being made of the same stuff as trees in the forest, like the Pando, and thereby sharing in a common heritage and life force. This not only helps me to balance. It helps me to feel a warm oneness with the natural world.

Connecting with Earth

Connecting with Earth is about encouraging my feet to consciously communicate with the ground I'm standing on, so that I'm feeling well-planted in the soil and well supported as I rise up to the sky. 

It didn't take long in practicing yoga for me to realize that I faced two main challenges in creating an Earth connection.

Stuck-together toes. The first challenge was that my toes seemed hopelessly stuck together. After so many decades of wearing shoes that pressed my toes against each other, there was almost no space at all left between my toes. It was as if they formed an undifferentiated block that moved as a single unit. 

When my toes are squished together, I have a narrower base of support to hold up my Tree Pose. Also, I am less able to make micro-adjustments in my stance that are helpful to stay balanced as I adjust to the natural movement of my body in Tree, a movement not unlike the swaying of branches in a tree in the forest. My toes can root into the nurturing earth only if they are free to bend, wiggle, and open. 

A toe-separating foot massage. I've been doing an exercise on and off for years to help wake up the muscles that lift and open my toes. I learned the exercise, which feels like a muscle-strengthening massage, from the well-known yoga teacher and physical therapist Julie Gudmestad, with whom I've studied and who used to write the Yoga Anatomy column for Yoga Journal. Here's Julie's description of the exercise, which is to be done in bare feet:

"Sitting in any way you find comfortable, put the palm of your right hand onto the sole of your left foot. Insert your fingers between the toes. (The ends of the fingers are narrower and will give a gentler stretch than the bases of the fingers.) Bending your fingers onto the tops of your feet, gently squeeze your foot as if it were a sponge, then squeeze your fingers with your toes in the same way. Repeat for a minute or two, then remove your fingers and try spreading your toes again" Feet First.

A minor innovation I've made with this exercise is to apply moisturizing lotion between my toes before inserting my fingers. This makes the exercise smoother and less straining. 

With this toe separating massage as part of my personal repertoire of self-care, my toe muscles have become a bit stronger and more flexible. Further, I reinforce this modest increase in strength and flexibility by wiggling my toes and trying to separate them while sitting at my desk without shoes and while watching TV. 

My tipsy left foot chain reaction. Besides stuck-together toes, I've bumped into an issue with my left foot when I stand on it. When I raise my right foot and begin bringing it over to my right inner thigh, my left foot rolls up and over to the side in an extreme form of supination.  This leads to a kind of chain reaction in which my right knee swings out to the right, my left hip comes forward, and my left shoulder tilts down. I lose my center. 

I know that it's important to press down into all four corners of the feet when standing, walking, or doing balance poses like Tree. The four corners I'm referring to are the mound of my big toe, the edge of my inner heel, the mound of my pinky toe, and the edge of my outer heel. But even when I think I'm doing this, the mound of my left big toe often seems to rise up and initiate a roll-out of my foot, exposing a gap between what I know and what I do. 

What hasn't worked for me is simply to try harder to press into all four corners. There's a reason why this feels unnatural, and I think it's because my inner arch on my left foot is somewhat flat and my left big toe, compared with my right, seems stiff and restricted in its movement, including its capacity to root into the earth. (Admittedly, I sometimes forget to hug the muscles of my inner left thigh toward my midline, which invites my left hip to open outwardly, reinforcing the outer roll of my foot).  

A squash-ball practice. I've done a few things to try to remedy this issue with my left foot, but the one that I'll mention here is what I call my squash-ball practice. Leslie Ellis, my longtime yoga teacher whose program I've referred to in past articles (for example, Growing and Belonging in Community) introduced me to squash balls a few years ago as an interesting and playful resource in both lengthening and toning the muscles of my feet, including those involved in helping my big toe to root into the earth and my inner arch to become stronger and more alive. 

While standing or sitting at my desk, when I roll my feet onto, around, and back and forth on the squash balls, I sense an energetic lift that I feel up through my legs, into my hips, and even further up through my spine to the crown of my head. It seems to awaken not only the muscles of my feet but my prana, or life force. 

But, for sure, squash balls are not a miracle cure. My left foot still has its limitations, and my Tree Pose on that side is still challenging. But small wins matter. I think both my feet, but especially my left one, are happier. My Tree when standing on my left foot is a bit steadier and more reliable. 

Tree Pose has become for me an especially enjoyable and beneficial pose, even with, or maybe because of, the continuing challenge it offers. To explore the full potential of Tree, it's been helpful for me to step back from the pose itself and to experiment with different contexts for balancing, like a supermarket line or a simulated balance beam exercise. Imagining myself as a tree embraced by a family of trees has also been helpful. What has further added a measure of stability in the pose has been to take a close look at my feet and to try different ways of opening the space between my toes and of developing the muscles that help all four corners of the feet root into the earth. Growing my Tree has involved more mindful effort than I originally anticipated. But the effort has borne fruit. Standing on one leg no longer feels like a task to grit my teeth on. Tree pose has become a much friendlier pathway toward balance and enlivenment. 

Acknowledgment:  I want to thank my unfailingly constructive and supportive editor, Kasey Stewart, for helping me to refine my initial draft.