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

Yogasana — soles and palms up

Gheranda Samhita 2.44

उत्तानौ चरणौ कृत्वा संस्थाप्य जानुनोपरि। आसनोपरि संस्थाप्य उत्तानं करयुग्मकम् ॥

Meaning · English

Turn both feet so the soles face upward, and set them on top of the knees. Then place the pair of hands on the seat, held open with the palms facing up.

The heading calls this Yogasana, the yoga seat. The name is plain: yoga, the discipline of joining and steadying the mind, and asana, a seat. Unlike many names in this chapter, it borrows nothing from an animal or a tool. It names the seat itself. The instruction has three parts. First, both feet are turned so the soles face upward. Second, they are set above the knees. The wording is brief, and a reader cannot tell from the page alone how the legs are crossed or how high the feet rest, so this is what a teacher has to show. Third, the two hands are laid on the seat, which here means the sitting surface or the lap, and they stay open with the palms facing up. The verse gives no reason for any of this. It offers no claim and no benefit, and it says nothing of breath or gaze. Those come in the next verse, which Gheranda uses to finish the pose. What this one gives is the shape of the body: a seat made by crossed legs with upturned soles, and hands that rest open instead of gripping. The text asks a practitioner to arrange the body this way and no other. Like the other seats in this chapter, it comes from Gheranda's teaching to his student Chanda.

Picture a woman at the end of a long wedding week, finally sitting on the floor of a quiet room with her legs crossed and her hands open in her lap. Sitting like this is ordinary, and what happens in the body is well understood. Cross-legged sitting asks for mobility at the hips, and people who sit on the floor often find it easier over time. Resting the hands open, palm up, is a convention of seated practice. Nothing in physiology says palms up does anything different from palms down, though many people find it a relaxed, receptive-looking position. The care is in the legs. Lifting the feet high onto the knees or thighs makes the knee take a twist when the hips are stiff, and this is a common way people strain the knee. Today's teaching generally says to stay in a looser crossing rather than force the feet up. The text gives no claim about what the seat does, so there is nothing here to confirm or dispute.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Bhujangasana — the serpent · Gheranda Samhita 2.42
• All of Yoga in Practice · Ask Krishna about it

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