The verse and its meaning · Yoga in Practice · Yoga in Practice — The Old Seats

Utkatasana — the raised seat

Gheranda Samhita 2.27

अङ्गुष्ठाभ्यावष्टभ्य धरां गुल्फौ च खे गतौ। तत्रौपरि गुदं न्यस्य विज्ञेयमुत्कटानम् ॥

Meaning · English

Press the ground with the toes. Let both heels lift into the air. Set the seat down upon them. This, it should be known, is utkatasana.

The name comes from utkata and asana. Asana is a seat, a way of sitting. Utkata carries the sense of raised or lifted, and here it points to the heels, which are raised off the floor. So the title reads as the raised seat. Gheranda tells Chanda the form in three movements. First, the toes press into the ground. They bear the weight, and they are the only part of the foot that touches down. Second, both heels, the ankle region, rise and hang in the air. Third, the seat is lowered and placed above the heels, so the body sits on its own lifted feet. Nothing else is said: no hands, no gaze, no breath, no length of stay. The text calls this utkatasana and moves on. Why does it teach it? Gheranda is building a ladder of seats in this chapter, and each seat gives the body a different way of being steady. This one asks for balance on a very small base. What it asks of the practitioner is a low, poised squat on the toes, with the weight carefully held, not dropped. The text makes no claim for the pose here.

The text's own form is a squat on the toes with the heels lifted and the seat resting above them. Today the name is usually given to the chair pose, with the heels down. The lesson shows the chair pose, and the steps below follow it. 1. Stand tall with your feet together and your arms by your sides. Look straight ahead and breathe normally. 2. Breathe in, and raise both arms overhead with the palms facing each other. Keep the shoulders soft, away from the ears. 3. Breathe out. Bend the knees and sit the hips back and down, as if onto a chair. 4. Stay here. Keep the heels down and the knees behind the toes. Breathe slowly through the nose, and keep your eyes on a point ahead. Modern teaching suggests about three to five slow breaths for a beginner. 5. Lift the chest, and let the arms keep reaching up. 6. Breathe in. Press through the feet, straighten the legs, and lower the arms to your sides. 7. Stand still, and feel the warmth in the legs. There is no other side, because the pose is the same on both. Fine points: send the hips back first, as when sitting down, so the weight stays over the heels. Let the spine stay long, with a slight forward lean from the hips and no rounding. Come down only as far as you can keep the heels down and the breath easy.

In the chair form, the big muscles at the front of the thigh and the buttocks hold the bend, and the calves and the muscles along the spine work to keep you upright. The knees and ankles bend and the hips fold, so the legs do steady, sustained work. The arms overhead ask the shoulders and upper back to keep lifting. The slow breath matters because holding a bend tempts you to tighten and hold the breath. A long out-breath into the bend and an easy in-breath for the lift keep the ribs moving and the effort even. The mind has a clear job: it must watch the heels, the knees and the breath at once, and that leaves little room for wandering. The text's own form, on the toes, adds a demand for balance, and the attention narrows to the small base under you. The tradition does not give a mechanism for this pose, so none is offered here.

The Gheranda Samhita names the pose and its form and gives no fruit for it in the verse. Nothing is promised, and no commentary is printed here to supply a reason. Schools that teach the chair pose today say it builds strength and steadiness in the legs and gives a feeling of warmth and alertness. That is modern teaching and not the text's claim.

A farmer's daughter crouches on her toes to weed a row of beans, and she does it without thinking. Deep squatting of that kind is an ordinary human posture, and many people lose the ease of it when they stop using it. Today's mainstream understanding agrees that holding a bent-knee stance works the large leg and hip muscles, and that regular strength work for the legs helps balance and everyday movement. It also agrees that slow breathing during effort keeps tension down. The old text makes no claim here to test. The toe squat with raised heels is a different matter. It loads the knees and the small joints of the feet more than the chair form does, and no evidence is offered for it. The chair pose is a modern standing posture, codified in the twentieth-century postural yoga line of Krishnamacharya and his students, and it is not described in the old manuals. The warmth in the legs afterwards is the ordinary result of muscles that have worked.

This page is general guidance and not medical advice. A teacher can correct what a page cannot, so learn the pose with one. Stop at pain, in the knees especially. Take care or leave it out if you have a knee or ankle injury, a hip problem, a recent surgery on the legs or back, or a disc problem. People with high blood pressure or dizziness should keep the arms lower and come up slowly. In pregnancy, ask a teacher first. The toe squat from the text is much harder on the knees and ankles. Do not attempt it without a teacher beside you. Never push the knees forward past the toes, and never force depth.

To make it gentler, bend only a little and keep the arms on the hips or in front of you. Stand with your back to a wall and slide down a short way, or sit a chair behind you and hover above it. A rolled blanket under the heels may help a stiff ankle. For more, sink lower, hold longer, or take the hands together at the chest. The fuller form is the text's own: a squat on the toes with the seat on the heels, learnt with a teacher. There is no mirrored side.

Heels lifting off the floor means the weight has gone forward, so send the hips back and press the heels down. Knees travelling past the toes strains the joint, so sit further back. A rounded back or a sunk chest drops the pose, so lift the chest and lengthen the spine. Shoulders hunched to the ears lose the reach, so draw the shoulders down as the arms rise. Holding the breath builds tension, so breathe slowly and steadily through the stay. Knees falling inward needs a nudge outward, so keep them in line with the toes.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

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• Before: Matsyasana — the fish · Gheranda Samhita 2.21
• Next: Vrikshasana — the tree · Gheranda Samhita 2.36
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