Standing: Mountain Pose

It looks like standing still, which is why it gets skipped, and it is the reference position for every standing posture that follows.

Feet hip-width apart, not touching - hip-width means the width of your hip joints, roughly two fists, not the width of your outer hips. Weight spread evenly between the ball of the big toe, the ball of the little toe, and the heel. Most people discover they stand well back on their heels.

Legs active without locking. Engage the thigh muscles so the kneecaps lift slightly, but do not push the knees backwards into a hyperextended lock.

Pelvis neutral. Not tucked under, not tipped forward into an arched lower back. The lower back keeps its natural curve.

Shoulders roll back and down, arms hanging, palms forward. Crown of the head lifting, chin level.

Stand there for five breaths. The value is calibration: it is where you find out that you carry more weight on one leg, or that your ribs jut forward. Everything standing is built on this shape.

Downward-Facing Dog

The posture everyone recognises and almost everyone does badly at first, because it looks like a stretch for the back of the legs and it is largely a posture for the arms and spine.

From hands and knees, hands shoulder-width and slightly ahead of the shoulders, fingers spread wide, middle fingers pointing straight forward. Press firmly through the whole hand, especially the knuckle of the index finger. Tuck the toes and lift the hips up and back.

Bend your knees. Generously. This is the correction that makes the posture work for beginners. The goal is a long straight line from hands to hips, not straight legs. If the hamstrings are tight, straightening the legs rounds the lower back and the whole posture collapses. Bent knees and a long spine is the correct beginner version, and heels do not need to touch the floor - for many people they never will.

The weight should feel roughly even between hands and feet, not dumped into the wrists. If your wrists complain, check that you are pressing through the fingers rather than the heel of the hand, and take breaks on your forearms.

Plank

A straight line from head to heels, hands under shoulders, exactly the top of a press-up.

The whole posture is core work. Squeeze the thighs, tuck the tailbone slightly so the lower back does not sag, and press the floor away so the upper back is broad rather than sunk between the shoulder blades.

The knees-down version is not a lesser posture, it is the correct one until you can hold the full version for thirty seconds without the hips dropping. A sagging plank trains nothing and irritates the lower back.

The Lunges

Low lunge: one foot forward between the hands, back knee on the floor, hips sinking. This opens the front of the back leg’s hip, which in most adults who sit for a living is the tightest thing in the body. Put a folded blanket under the back knee.

High lunge and Warrior II work the same front leg with the back knee lifted. The universal beginner correction: the front knee tracks over the ankle, not past the toes, and does not collapse inward. Look down; if you cannot see your toes past your knee, shorten the stance.

In Warrior II the hips and shoulders face the long side of the mat while the front foot points forward - a genuinely awkward geometry that takes a while to feel normal.

Child’s Pose

Knees wide, big toes together, hips back towards the heels, forehead down, arms forward or alongside the body.

This is the rest posture, and the most useful instruction in any beginner practice is that you may take it at any time, in any sequence, without asking. Nothing is lost. If the forehead does not reach the floor, stack fists or a block under it. If sitting back onto the heels is uncomfortable, put a rolled blanket behind the knees.

Seated Forward Fold and the Twist

Seated forward fold: legs straight out, and then - almost certainly - sit on the front edge of a folded blanket, because if the pelvis cannot tip forward the fold happens entirely in the lower back. Bend the knees as much as needed. Lead with the chest, not the head. Where the hands land is irrelevant.

Seated twist: sit tall, lengthen upwards on the inhale, rotate on the exhale, starting the rotation from the base of the spine rather than yanking with the arm. The arm is a lever, not the engine.

Corpse Pose

Lying flat, arms slightly away from the body, palms up, legs relaxed and turned out, eyes closed. Five minutes.

Beginners cut this and it is a mistake. It is where the nervous system registers what just happened, and it is often where people first notice the difference between exercise and practice. If the lower back is uncomfortable, put a rolled blanket under the knees.

The Common Thread

In every one of these shapes, the same question applies: can you still breathe smoothly through the nose? If the breath has become ragged, held, or gasping, the posture has gone past useful and into strain. Back off until the breath returns. That is the most reliable feedback available to someone practising without a teacher.