Below is a written manuscript to take you through each of your stances. This is meant to be comprehensive— meaning that you would not be expected to be as thorough when you teach. Nonetheless, for reading style learners, this will offer you the chance to see all of the possible considerations when teaching stances.

Tadasana, or mountain pose, gives us the opportunity to rewire our support system of basic standing. By approaching this common daily position with conscious awareness, we can adjust imbalance in the feet and ankles, harness buoyant support in the deep core, so that we can release tension and gripping in our superficial musculature. We practice this on the mat, so that our new patterning is there for us the next time we are standing in line at the grocery store! Below you will see a Bold/Italic statement that represents a single cue, followed by an explanation of that cue that forms its foundation. The cue is what is said to the class, the rest is what is known by the teacher. These are explorations of postures, so it is assumed that they are a little longer and more in-depth than what you would teach in a standard class setting.

Before entering the pose, simply walk around your space naturally, trying to walk naturally and release doership: Notice that it takes a conscious effort to ‘walk naturally’, it takes surrender, that is, the ability to move externally while releasing any internal gripping. Walking is a great way to feel surrender in motion, let yourself walk without hurry worry, without anatomical editing, with less and less external effort. Find lightness and support while letting the arms swing as is comfortable. Let yourself arrive at the mat in “Tadasana”.
Begin shifting the weight from foot to foot. Let the unweighted foot lift, playing with the width of your stance: Though we are commonly cued exactly how wide our feet should be, your body always knows best. But like we saw with walking, finding a ‘natural’ gait might be as hard as finding a ‘natural’ stance— meaning it takes conscious surrender. To help with this, imagine you are a cat getting ready to lie down on your mat. Paw the surface, lift and lower your feet repeatedly. If you’ve ever watched a cat do this you’ll know that they take a lot longer than you think before they lie down, be that cat. While you do this you are feeling for support— bringing the feet closer to together, then wider apart, and noticing where you feel the most support for your hips. Eventually, allow the feet to land in a stable, supportive place under the hips.
Use the ASIS boney landmark to guide your feet towards “Hips Width”: To further assist the width of your stance, it can also be helpful to use the anatomical landmark of the ASIS. When looking at a skeleton in an anatomy classroom, you can observe that the leg naturally hangs directly below the hip socket, optimizing weight distribution over the bones while standing. However, if you ask someone to point to their hip socket, they might point to their waist or the bony protrusion at the lateral edge of their hips. To truly find "hips width" stance, we need a different reference point—the ASIS, or anterior superior iliac spine. This bony landmark sits at the top front edge of the pelvis. To locate it, place your hands on the upper edges of your hips, just below your ribs, and slide your hands down the front edge of your pelvis until you feel the bone make a right-angle turn downward. This front corner of your pelvis is the ASIS, positioned directly above the hip socket. Although the ASIS itself isn't part of the socket, it serves as a practical cue for establishing a hips width stance. While hips width might be the general direction, your personal experience takes precedence—so explore your hips width stance with curiosity, allowing your feet to be wider or narrower than this landmark if it feels more supportive. Nonetheless, the ASIS, combined with mindful movement and feeling, provides a solid starting point on the journey to your optimal tadasana.
Turn the feet forward so that they are parallel to the top of the mat, as gauged by the second toe: Depending on the shape of your feet, the big toe may point in or out, which is fine. At first turning the feet parallel may not feel natural, as we often have imbalances in our arches, ankles, hips and the balance of tone in the leg muscles. You don’t want any pain, of course, so it’s fine if the feet point out slightly. However, over time we want to repattern the musculature in our legs so that parallel is comfortable and natural. Be patient, work from ‘where you’re at’, instead of where you think you should be.
From your ‘hip’s width’ and ‘parallel’ foot position, anchor the big toe and begin to shift and rock: This is essential for strengthening the arches of the feet, healthy walking and improved balance. Begin shifting the weight forward and back on the feet. Notice how the big toe has to work more to stay down as you lean back. Continue rocking forward and back, noticing the awakening of the feet and core that occurs during the rock back.

From Toe to Tongue: Why focus on the big toe? An excellent question! The big toe marks the beginning of our deep core musculature, a topic we'll explore in detail during our Buoyant Hip Postures. When you take a step, you're orchestrating a remarkable balancing act, as approximately 80% of walking is done on one leg. At the moment of push-off, your big toe plays a vital role—muscles like the flexor hallucis longus and brevis, which contribute to your foot's arch, engage. These muscles propel you forward and maintain your balance during this pivotal and vulnerable phase. These foot muscles, connected to your big toe, link to the innermost muscles of your calf, thigh, and torso, extending all the way up to your tongue! Try a simple experiment: walk around your room without pressing through your big toe, allowing your mouth to hang open and tongue to stay relaxed. Then walk around while applying gentle pressure through your big toe with each step, while also pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth—you'll notice a distinct difference. You'll feel taller, stronger, and lighter with these subtle engagements.
Keep big toe down as you point the center of the knee towards the fourth toe (next to the pinky), this can also be referred to as “isometrically spiraling open the thighs”: Notice how the head of the femur stabilizes in the hip socket and the gentle brightening of the glutes. Use this energetic spiral from the big toe to the outer thigh to help you neutralize the pelvis and find length through the spine. There should be no gripping in the glutes and no compression in the SI joint.

A Spiraling Stirrup: Despite our childhood depictions of legs as straight sticks, the reality is that the musculature of our lower limbs is far from a linear arrangement. Our legs and feet are actually embraced by a spiraling system of muscles, working collaboratively to maintain stability during various movements like walking, squatting, and lunging from any direction. Within our stances lies an incredible opportunity to engage with this captivating spiral line of support. We'll delve deeper into this intricate team of muscles during our twists and spirals section, but for now, let's trace the bottom half of this spiral line that directly relates to our feet and stances. As we unite these muscles with alignment and awareness, we set forth on a journey toward effortless effort, leading to a profound experience of the infinite.

Anatomy Field Trip! Mapping a Segment of the Spiral Line: Begin by placing your fingertips on the outer edge of your femur bone, the bony prominence of your hip. From here, follow the path of the iliotibial band (IT band) down the outer edge of your thigh. This robust band of muscle and connective tissue stabilizes your hip socket during walking and running. It originates at the hip and attaches to a prominent point (condyle) on the tibia, your shin bone. The connective tissue creates a functional link between the IT band and the tibialis anterior, a muscle that originates from the tibia as well. The tibialis anterior aids in dorsiflexing your foot and intriguingly crosses the shin to insert at the inner arch of your foot. Flex your foot to observe the tendon of the tibialis anterior crossing the ankle. This creates the pathway for the Toe-To-Glute Connection, triggering the activation of the spiraling support mechanism in the leg.

Activating the Spiral Line: The Spiraling Support mechanism can be initiated by gently pressing your big toe into the floor while softly spiraling open the thighs. Another approach is to ground the big toe and simultaneously turn the knees toward your third or fourth toe—both cues yield the same outcome. These cues involve minimal actual movement; instead, they offer an isometric experience, where engagement occurs without significant motion. By anchoring the big toe to the ground and spiraling the thighs open, you automatically engage the dynamic supportive musculature from all directions in your legs. The outcome is a holistic and innate activation of your legs that relieves pressure from the joints and imparts increased support and athletic capacity.
Relax and breathe into the qualities of ‘effortless effort’ and ‘perseverance without tension’: If you feel like you are working hard, try to release your grip and find a place that feels sustainable. Continuing to breathe, notice any sense of spaciousness through the ankle, knee, and spine. Notice the support and strength of the feet and muscles surrounding the hips. As you breathe here, imagine that your body is learning and memorizing this supportive way to stand so that it becomes more natural and easier each time you return to your Mountain pose. Walk around again, taking the experience of

The principles inherent in Tadasana can seamlessly transition us into the Straddle stance. It's common to hear a teacher instruct students to position their legs "one leg length apart" to establish a proper straddle. While this cue is anatomically sound, it can distract students by making them overly analytical about the 'correct' length, thus disconnecting them from a more embodied experience. It also overlooks the body's innate ability to intuitively find and adapt the stance— that is, the straddle you find comfortable today may differ from yesterday's. For these reasons, a more functional approach to discovering your straddle can be beneficial. This method also engages the deep core and the backline of the body, emphasizing support and connection as the legs extend outward.

From Tadasana, begin to rock your weight from one foot to the other. As you rock your weight, allow your stance to inch wider with each rock: Rocking from side to side has two purposes. One, it continually introduces sensation to your feet, keeping you grounded, present and neurologically supported as you move. And two, it ensures that you are accessing your deep core support while you widen your stance. This further ensures that each step you take wider is balanced in our body, and that you are cultivating more and more balance as you go.
Eventually you’ll get to a point where you are rocking can’t go any further while maintaining balance and support, this is probably a good width stance for you today: Though this may not be the final resting place of your straddle, this is a great litmus test for finding where you body can support itself in a straddle. From here we can revisit many of the same cues from Tadasana.

(The following cues are from the Tadasana section)
Turn the feet forward so that they are parallel to the top of the mat, as gauged by the second toe
From your ‘hip’s width’ and ‘parallel’ foot position, anchor the big toe and begin to shift and rock
Keep big toe down as you point the center of the knee towards the fourth toe (next to the pinky), this can also be referred to as “isometrically spiraling open the thighs”
Relax and breathe into the qualities of ‘effortless effort’ and ‘perseverance without tension’

Virabhadrasana Two Stance

Heel to Arch Stance, Vira 2 Stance

From Straddle stance we are just a couple of cues away from our ‘Virabhadrasana 2’ stance, also known as ‘heel-to-arch’ stance. Though it is possible to come into this stance from a variety of angles within a flowing sequence, we would like you to take time in the beginning of your teaching journey to teach this stance from the side mat, after instructing the straddle stance. This will establish not only good body mechanics, but also hip and knee health, as mixing and matching the stance cues can have negative repercussions for the ligaments of our knee, as we will see in the following instruction.

Finding Heel to Arch stance from Tadasana

Note: The instructions for Vira 2 stance are intended to follow the cues for a Straddle Stance, even though they aren't explicitly rewritten here.

From straddle, lift the right heel, pivoting on the ball mound of the foot, and turn the right leg out. Feel the turn comes from the thigh and hip socket: Pivoting on the ball mound of the foot requires the lifting of the heel, which provides more support for the knee as the calf and hamstring activate. The rotation must come from the femur in relation to the hip socket tonsure minimal rotation is coming from the knee joint.
Lift the back heel and drop it out 10-15 degrees, allow the hips to turn naturally with the rotation of the hip and leg: This cue is frequently overlooked by novice teachers and students alike. The foot angle should ideally be between 10-15 degrees, but it's not uncommon for beginners to rotate their foot as much as 75 degrees, in an attempt to fully turn their hips toward the short edge of the mat in Vira 1 stance. Clearly, this results in a different stance with a different setup. For this reason, we recommend initially teaching Vira 2 stance starting from the long edge of the mat, and Vira 1 from the short edge, especially as you begin your journey as a yoga teacher.
Check that your hips are not pointing towards the long edge or short edge of the mat, but resting naturally in a middle space between these two end ranges: This cue may be challenging because it demands both physical sensation and awareness of the hip position. Many students tend to square their hips to either edge of the mat, but doing so can risk ligament damage over time. For instance, if you square your hips towards the mat's long edge, the knee of your turned-out right leg will sag medially, putting stress on the medial collateral ligament and collapsing the arch of the foot. If you align your hips with the short edge of the mat—toward which your turned-out right foot points—you risk twisting the ACL in your left knee. The solution is to allow your hips to settle naturally between these two points. With mindful sensation and relaxation, finding this neutral position should come naturally.
Press gently through both big toes and allow the thighs to spiral open: This cue should not only activate your deep core with the big toe press, but also the supportive architecture of your spiral line. The legs should feel strong and stable, the core should feel toned and supportive. The goal here is not to open the hips, but to draw support up through the feet into the hips and spine. Notice the brightening from the inner arches all the way up to the glutes and make sure there is no gripping or clenching as the pelvis levels to neutral.
While maintaining this subtle activation of the legs and core, you can test your stance by bending the right knee— if the knee easily exceeds the ankle, trying ‘inching’ your toes forward, re-activating, and re-testing your stance: It should be noted that we could all have much ‘deeper’ and ‘longer’ stances if we release all muscular tension, but that this doesn’t serve us in our quest for support and stretch. That’s why it’s important to maintain a degree of activation and buoyancy in our stance even while we ‘test it’, otherwise we are setting ourselves up for strain.

**Virabhadrasana One Stance**

Heel to Heel Stance, Vira 1 Stance

This stance is often referred to as the 'heel-to-heel' stance, a term that can be somewhat misleading. As mentioned earlier, it's quite uncommon for anyone's heels to actually align in this stance, and attempting to do so can make it much harder for a student to balance as well as placing strain on the hip and knee. To mitigate this, we prefer to call this stance 'Virabhadrasana 1' or 'Vira 1' stance. This terminology helps to dispel the unconscious urge students may have to align their heels. Below are two dynamic methods for guiding students into a stance that is both healthy and engaging.

Stepping back to Vira 1 Stance:

Find Tadasana at the front of your mat: Because we are going to be moving our legs soon, this doesn’t need to be a an elaborate tadasana, but we should give our students enough cues to establish a natural width stance with feet roughly parallel.
Bend knees and reach hips back into chair pose, arms can swoop forward and up or remain on the hips, feel equal weight on ball mound and heel of the feet: This cue allows us to begin the search for Vira 1 stance from an integrated position. Our deep core is engaged, our legs are active, our spine is supported, making the next cue even more accessible.
Maintaining chair pose, shift the weight into the right foot. Without rotating or tilting the hips, weightlessly glide the left foot straight back: Notice how the glutes gently brighten to perform this action. If the glutes over-engage, the foot will start to externally rotate. Repeat a few times, gliding foot along the mat and watching your hips and core, as you gaze down at the foot to ensure that those toes stay pointed down.
Gently release the back heel down and slowly shift your weight back until there is equal weight in both feet. It’s fine for the back toes to turn out slightly, but no more than 15 degrees maximum, the front corner of the mat: The back foot often gets overlooked by students, usually being 'out of sight, out of mind.' Observing a typical classroom will reveal many feet pointing sideways rather than towards the front of the mat. This usually stems from restrictions in the posterior chain, including tightness in the sole of the foot, calf, hamstring, and lower back. This leads to two immediate issues: First, by rotating the foot outward due to a tight posterior chain, students miss the chance to actually stretch and relieve that tightness. Second, if they proceed to square their hips to the front, as is often cued next, they risk straining the ACL in their back leg. For these reasons, coupled with the difficulty of not being able to see the back foot, it's valuable to spend extra time focusing on the backward glide from the Chair pose (the previous cue). Maintaining alignment during this glide likely ensures the alignment will be kept as the heel sets down.
Experiment with widening your stance by ‘heel-toeing’ your front right foot towards the right— eventually finding a position that feels balanced and supported. Experiment with widening your stance: This can be a real ‘Aha!’ Moment for students, as the relief of a wider stance, especially for women with naturally wider hips, can feel extremely spacious and supportive.

In-depth Exploration of Buoyancy

Find Tadasana at the front of your mat: Because we are going to be moving our legs soon, this doesn’t need to be a an elaborate tadasana, but we should give our students enough cues to establish a natural width stance with feet roughly parallel.
Anchor the right foot and take a small step forward with the left foot, landing with a bent knee and weight in the heel to avoid pressure in the patella tendon. Let the right arm swing as the left foot steps: As we demonstrate this in class you’ll get a clearer picture.
Allow the front foot to step forward more, and to the left more, until you find the most supported place for you: A playful and practical method to investigate this is by springing back towards Tadasana and repeating the motion multiple times. If you find you're unable to spring back, it's a sign you've extended beyond your muscles' capacity to support you, perpetuating an imbalance and disengaging your legs from your core. Embrace humility; starting small is perfectly fine. This approach helps you gradually build the strength needed to safely extend your stance over time. Allow the back toes to turn out ever so slightly (no more than 15 degrees) if that’s more comfortable, and bring equal weight into both feet.
Anchor big toes and with minimal effort, allow knees to spiral gently towards fourth toe. (Or thighs can subtly spiral open with 1% effort.) Notice the sense of support and lightness this action facilitates. Notice how the legs integrate into the pelvis, creating a sense of unity. Use this strength to level the pelvis and soften the front knee any amount that allows for a sense of ease.
Now step forward with the right foot and repeat this same process on the second side.

Foot mapping

This is a grounding exercise to bring consciousness into the feet and base of the body.

From cross legged or seated in a chair, lift one foot gently to make the sole accessible.
Gently brush fingers across the sole of the foot, beginning to stimulate subtle sensations. Notice the feeling of the fingertips on the sole of the foot as well as the way the foot skin feels to the fingers. Vary pressure and notice how that changes the experience.
Bring the awareness to the toes and gently squeeze each knuckle of each toe. Notice the squishy padding and the transition point between the 3 phalanges, or the bone segments that make up each toe. (there are only 2 in the big toe)
Bring thumbs to the inner and outer ball of foot and gently begin to squeeze the transverse arch from big toe to pinky and everywhere in between. Try to map out each metatarsal.
Make your way up the inside and outside of the foot- the medial and lateral arches. Notice their shape. Are any areas tender? Try varying the amount of pressure.
Transition fingers to the calcaneous (heel bone). Notice the fat pad that cushions it from the bottom and how that compares to the back of the heel where the Achilles Tendon inserts.
Wrap the hands around the ankle and give a few squeezes, then begin to circle the foot, still gently holding the ankle. Notice the muscles that fire beneath the fingertips as the foot circles.
Finish by inserting the fingers between the toes, sliding as close to the knuckles as is comfortable. Explore pointing, flexing, and circling the feet.
Come to standing and notice the difference between sides. Try walking around your space or doing a few forward folds.
Repeat this exercise with the other foot

Flossing the retinaculum

The Retinaculum are sensitive bands of connective tissue that wrap around the extensors and the fibularis muscle. They help transfer information from the sole of the foot up to the rest of the body so that the knee, hip, and core can respond intelligently with each step. From lack of use, these bands begin to stick to the tendons beneath, preventing necessary glide and the transmission of valuable sensory feedback. This exercise “unsticks” the retinaculum from the tendons, awakening more sensitivity and better sense of balance. Try balancing before and after this exercise and see what changes!

From kneeling, step one foot forward into a 90/90 lunge. Option to cushion back knee.
Release hands down to the inside of the foot, onto blocks or the floor. Walk foot further from midline if you need more space.
Gently anchor big toe and heel. Send knee forward and back to take the ankle into dorsi and plantar flexion. Try making gentle circles in both directions. Make sure there is no pressure in the knee joint as you move.
Repeat on the other side

Talus rock

The talus sits atop the heel bone and is the peak of the foot’s medial arch. If the medial arch shifts laterally in the result is a flattened arch, a lateral shift out causes a high arch.

From kneeling, rock the talus laterally, in and out, and notice how the arch changes. Try to find the balance point where there is equal weight on inner and outer heel and talus. This healthy medial arch activation might be less visually dramatic than you expect. Can you feel how strong and supple your arch is?
After doing both feet, come to standing and play with balancing the talus in tadasana. Notice what changes in your feet as you do this. How does this transfer up to the rest of the body?

Stepping into Sensation: In-Depth Workshopping of the Four Primary Stances of Standing Asanas

Foot mapping

Flossing the retinaculum

Talus rock

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