The Advice You NEED to Feel at hOMe in Warrior One

When I was first introduced to Vinyasa yoga, Warrior one seemed to be such an elegant and powerful pose. It’s an integral part of the Sun Bs and looked so simple when others were practicing it.  

Virabhadrasana 1 literally translates to hero-friend pose.  According to Hindu mythology, Virabhadra was an incarnation of Shiva, created from a strand of Shiva’s hair to avenge the death of his bride.  When Virabhadra first emerged, he thrust up from the ground with two swords raised – explaining the shape of the pose.

I gained a lot of respect for the pose mainly because I initially found it nearly impossible to access. My hips were tight from desk sitting and spinning and my calf muscles were shortened from wearing heels, so getting the back foot grounded while trying to square my hips to the front of my mat seemed ridiculously difficult. I mainly fumbled through the pose whenever it came up in class (and of course it seemed to come up constantly) and hoped no one was paying attention to my half-hearted attempts.

As it turns out, I’m not alone in being challenged by this pose, and many yoga teachers agree that it’s one of the more difficult standing poses.

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A post shared by April Puciata | Yoga Teacher (@aprilyoga_beyondom) on Jul 4, 2018 at 7:13am PDT

Why is this pose so anatomically difficult?  Because the legs are doing two very different things.  Apart from the front leg being bent and the back one being straight, the actions in the leg muscles that are needed to steer the pelvis so that it’s level and pointing forward are very different in each leg.  While this is going on with the legs, the upper body is in a mild backbend and the arms are straight overhead pushing upward.

Very few people can easily achieve the deepest expression of the pose.  (I like to refer to it as the deepest, rather than the fullest, expression, since “fullest” implies that the pose is incomplete until you can achieve this stage.).  In its deepest expression, the pelvis is squared and pointing straight forward, the front leg is bent at 90 degrees, the back leg is straight and lifted, back foot firmly planted, the feet are aligned front heel to back heel, torso and chest are lifted and arms extending skyward by the ears.

First, let’s tackle the alignment of the feet.  Many of us, especially women, have wider hips, so aligning the feet heel to heel doesn’t offer enough space for the hips to steer forward.  Or, if you sit at a desk all day, the hips may be tighter and the back hip may not be able to rotate that far forward.  In any case, it’s virtually anatomically impossible to completely square the hips to the front given the leg positions in this pose.  The tendency is for the front hip to move forward and the back hip to move back.

Bending the front knee at 90 degrees is also very challenging for most people, because it requires a lot of muscular action and balance.  Also, depending on the length of your legs, the distance between your front and back foot may need to be very long in order to allow for this bend, making it difficult to keep the back foot planted, especially if you have tight calves.

Finally, lifting the torso up and into a mild backbend while your hips are descending to get into the deep front knee bend is no easy task.

There are a lot of opposing actions that need to take place to find balance in this pose. Here are a few:

• To level and steer the hips toward the front of your mat,  press down firmly into the foot of the back straight leg, particularly the little toe side of the foot.  This foot action will tend to rotate the back leg outward, so to counteract that, push the back inner thigh up and back.
• Pull the muscles of the outer front butt cheek down and under to move the front hip back and to keep the knee from turning in, as it will tend to do in a deep bend.
• The pelvis tends to tilt forward in Warrior One, so in addition to keeping the shoulders positioned over the hips, lift the frontal hip points to help take the pelvis into a more neutral position.
• To stabilize your balance in the long and narrow stance of this pose, energetically pull the feet toward each other.
• Lift the front ribs away from the hips by lengthening the side body to help raise the torso as the hips continue to descend.
• Pull the bottom of the shoulder blades in toward the front body to open the chest area, while keeping the front ribs soft to prevent over-thrusting of the chest.
• Lift and straighten the arms overhead, but keep the muscles around the neck area soft.

So much to remember, while keeping your breath steady!  But finding your personal balance in this pose can be easier with some experimentation and modifications.

• Try keeping your feet inner hip-width apart rather than aligning heel to heel, to allow more space for the hips to steer forward.  I find this position gives me so much more ease in my hips even with my narrow hips.
• If your calves are tight, allow your back heel to lift very slightly, but still keep the outer edge of the foot firmly planted.
• Forget about trying to perfectly square your hips to the front of your mat.  Just work the furthest in that direction that your body will allow.  Jason Crandell teaches what he calls Warrior 1-1/2 instead of Warrior 1, a hybrid between Warrior 1 and 2 where the pelvis is pointed more toward the front corner of the mat rather than directly forward.
• Use the wall to help develop strength in the back leg.  Take the pose with the back heel against the wall to give you more leverage to play with the position of the back leg and hip.
• Keep your hands on your pelvis early in the pose to feel where they are in space.  Once you feel neutral and as squared as you personally feel appropriate, then lift your arms.

Finally, keep the image of the hero-warrior with two swords raised in your mind and remember to breathe!

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May Louie first took yoga in college to fulfill a Phys-Ed requirement and immediately fell in love. She, unfortunately, did not continue with her practice but reconnected with it when she retired from her corporate job in 2002 and has since become a serious yoga enthusiast. After her second retirement last year, she completed her 200-hour RYT certification, studying with Dina Crosta, Ellen Mosko, and Jamie Segal Hanley, with a focus on alignment based flow.