Fixed Firm Pose

Where is the Primary Focus? Knees

Where Does the Posture Provide Maximum Benefits?
• Creates compression to the knees, hips, and ankles
• Deep stretch for thigh muscles
• Shoulder opening
• Chest expansion
• Stretches the spine
• Re-aligns hips in relation to feet

When and Where Could I Feel the Stretch?
There will be pressure/tightness in your knees. Hopefully, you’ll feel a stretching in your thighs, possibly in your ankles, your lower back, and your shoulders. 

Why Should I Do This Posture?
It’s a great compression for your knee joints; full flexion, which we rarely do, and then you release that compression, it helps blood flow through your knee.

How Can I Improve?

Go Slowly:

·       Start by sitting on your heels to get your ankles as flat as they can be to the floor. 

·       Separate your heels just wide enough so that you can still sit your hips down between your heels, keep them always touching the sides of your hips.

·       Make sure that your knees are always down on the ground. This helps prevent you from going too far or too fast. 

·       You can always let your knees separate as long as you keep them down. 

·       Check in with how your knees feel. Pressure is okay; sharp pain is not. 

·       With your hangers on your feet facing forward, bend your elbows to the ground, eventually your head will touch the ground. 

·       When you’re all the way back and grabbing your elbows, try engaging more muscles by pulling your elbows into the floor and apart from each other without letting them move. This helps open up your shoulder joints as well.

Start with No Expectations:
Often, we have an idea of how far we can go, or have an expectation that we have to do all of the posture instead of being curious about what our capacity in the moment is. Be curious about how your knees feel in Fixed Firm and work with how they are instead of how you want them to be (Clearly, I’m writing this to make sure I hear this).

Final Thought:
When I first started yoga, Fixed Firm felt like the first posture I could do all the way; I loved the way it felt in my knees. I didn’t understand why everyone else didn’t love it. After knee surgery, when I was barely allowed to bend my knee for weeks, it was the posture I was most nervous about, yet I wanted to feel the full depth again. It took me 9 months to get all the way back, and every time, it still feels like a negotiation with myself if it’s going to work. I’m not sure how much of that is my fear holding me back or my knee telling me to slow down. A couple of weeks before I finally got into the posture I was practicing next to a friend who kindly reminded me to “knock it off” as I was trying to go back, but was not looking comfortable doing it. That was a helpful reminder to me. It was just as helpful when I was practicing in Los Angeles to have a teacher telling me to quit doing it with only one leg and simply let pain and tightness limit how far I would go. I love that push and pull – instead of doing less or deciding where I can go, being given the reminder to slow down and let my body show me what it can do is so helpful.

Fixed Firm really is a great posture for showing slow, steady change. You might not feel like things are changing, but if you create the pressure slowly but surely, they will.