Revealed July 5, 2026 05:22AM
Yoga Journal’s archives sequence is a curated assortment of articles initially printed in previous points starting in 1975. This text about Revolved Triangle Pose (Parivrtta Trikonasana) first appeared within the March-April 1990 challenge of Yoga Journal.
Revolved Triangle Pose (Parivrtta Trikonasana) gives us a automobile to discover many points of cosmic presence. We will: open ourselves to the spiraling nature of the gravitational power (ananta) (i.e., expertise communion with the cosmos); discover its impact on physiology and consciousness (penetrate into the subjectivity of cells and organ techniques of the physique); and articulate the pose in a means that displays our personal uniqueness and the distinctiveness of the current second (expertise differentiation). As our sensitivity to cosmic presence grows, the universe empowers us for the therapeutic course of.
Yoga asanas are designed to open the physique, liberating the respiratory and circulatory techniques and awakening and empowering the upper self by cosmic presence. However many trendy college students of hatha yoga strategy the artwork with the pathologies of the mechanistic mentality, imposing the mind and willpower onto the physique with no sensitivity to the deeper wants of the cells and organs. We can’t “management” the physique, simply as we can’t “management” Mom Nature. However neither can we area out and perpetuate our culturally induced postural pathologies. There should be clever reflection on the habits of the physique to learn the way they have an effect on the respiratory, circulation, and consciousness. Our cultural pathologies on all ranges need to be acknowledged, studied, and remodeled.
The way to Follow Revolved Triangle Pose
In Determine 1 we see a good yoga scholar making an attempt to entry Revolved Triangle Pose. Restrictions within the groins and toes bind up the backbone and compress the respiratory.
Because the cosmic legislation of differentiation demonstrates, every physique, every being, every second in time is exclusive. There isn’t any mould into which we should cram ourselves. The query for the practitioner of asanas is, How can this physique, this atman, categorical the essence of the pose, given the bodily actuality of the current second? How can we start to discover the shape and nonetheless permit the breath to stream freely, the blood to flow into totally, the thoughts to observe quietly? As B.Okay.S. Iyengar states in The Tree of Yoga:
“One mustn’t regulate the asana to suit one’s physique construction, however mould the physique to the requirement of the asana. Then the asana could have the fitting bodily, physiological, mental, and religious bearing.”*
Revolved Triangle Pose is to begin with a standing pose, which implies that the legs need to be firmly grounded on Mom Earth. In Mountain Pose (Tadasana), the primary of the standing poses, the legs study to work whereas straight underneath the spinal column and torso. In Revolved Triangle Pose, the legs are unfold three to 4 toes aside to create a triangular base for the torso and backbone (Determine 5). The heel of the entrance foot ought to be in step with the heel or arch of the again foot.
Second, Revolved Triangle is a forward-bending asana, because the pelvis flexes by the hip joints over the steady legs, bringing the backbone away from the upright place and towards a place parallel to the ground. Third, it’s a twisting pose, because the pelvis then rotates over the femur bones and your entire spinal column rotates round and up towards the ceiling.
In Determine 1, we see that on this physique, as we speak, the legs are unable to help the torso when the hand is taken to the ground. The hip joint restriction locks the pelvis into an ungainly place, and this in flip distorts the backbone and collapses the stomach. The respiration and circulation are each diminished.
In Determine 2, the scholar has adjusted for tight hamstrings within the ahead bend by elevating the hand, and for tight groins and outer hips within the twist by shifting the hand away from the interior groin. The primary motion frees the pelvis to reconnect the legs to the spinal column; the second adjustment releases the breath into the stomach and pelvis, opening circulation, softening the sense organs, and quieting the mind. As a result of the legs are feeding the backbone with raise, the scholar can keep within the pose, creating energy and stability.
As a result of the breath is flowing quietly, the scholar can really feel the subtleties of the pose and start to open the physique farther. That is communion, wherein all the assorted cells, nerves, organs, and muscle fibers start to work collectively consciously. Because the tightened muscle groups are launched into the bones, the bones develop stronger, the physique grows longer, and the vary of freedom will increase. The hand place can step by step (over a interval of years, for many people) be introduced into the finished place (to the ground and out of doors the leg; Determine 5).
In Determine 5, we are able to look extra intently on the spirals that underlie this twisting asana. The first twisting motion comes from the legs. (See “Yoga for Hips & Thighs” [May/June 1989] for a extra full description of the double spirals of the groin area.) The muscular motion of the legs includes a downward or grounding spiral and an upward or lifting spiral. Kinesiologically talking, the downward spiral includes inner rotation of the leg (femur and tibia) and pronation and dorsiflexion of the foot.
The upward spirals embrace their antagonists: exterior rotation of the leg and supination and plantar flexion of the foot. When each happen concurrently (really a really speedy oscillation between the 2, the bones of the toes and legs stabilize and carry each the grounding and lifting energies. (Really feel the contact of the toes on the ground and regulate and stability to keep up even contact by huge toe, little toe, and interior and outer heels.) The grounding of the legs creates a raise that’s obtained by the spinal column and remodeled into an prolonged spiral that flows in a wavelike movement from the coccyx bone by the highest of the cranium.
As in Mountain Pose and all different poses, the pores and skin strikes up the entrance of the physique (with the anterior backbone elongating in the identical path) and down towards the coccyx on the again of the physique. This motion is troublesome within the backside shoulder area, as the underside shoulder blade is commonly dragged towards the entrance of the physique. In Determine 4, we see the dynamic motion required within the shoulder blade because it strikes to the tailbone and presses firmly into the rib cage to assist open the chest.
In Determine 3 we see an attention-grabbing variation on the pose. On this place the again leg is now internally rotated, with the toes in and the heel out, precisely reverse of the usual means of executing the pose. This motion provides a really completely different feeling to the hips and backbone. Within the regular place, the anterior backbone (particularly on the back-leg aspect) receives extra of the twist, whereas in Determine 3, the posterior portion of the backbone receives extra of the twist.
Within the depths of a well-performed asana, we expertise an emergence of awe within the face of an infinitely highly effective and mysterious universe. This harmless, childlike state, which is filled with reverence for the wonderful actuality of pure being, needs to be rigorously nurtured and developed so it begins to permeate all points of our lives. On this method we turn into the universe, open to the inventive spontaneities of the current second and now not so filled with ourselves as remoted egos. Brian Swimme places it this manner:
“I condense our up to date cosmological scientific story of actuality by saying that the universe is a inexperienced dragon.”
Inexperienced as a result of the entire universe is alive, an embryogenesis starting with the cosmic egg of the primeval fireball and culminating within the current emergent actuality. And a dragon too, nothing much less. Dragons are mystical, highly effective, rising out of thriller, disappearing in thriller, fierce, benign, identified to show people the deepest reaches of knowledge. And dragons are full of hearth.
Although there are not any dragons, we’re dragon hearth. We’re the inventive, scintillating, searing, therapeutic flame of the superior and enchanting universe.
