Progress in Yoga-Seated Forward Fold and In General
February 13-17, 2020, updated November 9, 2025
“I don’t have very much hope for progress in this pose this year,” said a student commenting on paschimottanasana, seated forward fold, the pose of the year, while I was helping her with it in class early last month. I had helped her back up to a non-hurtful place for her body.
The conversation that followed went something like this:
I asked her, “What do you mean by progress?”
She said, “Moving forward in the pose.”
I said, “What does moving forward in the pose mean?”
“Folding more forward.”
I replied, “I think I have a different view of progress in the pose than you do.”
After a little back and forth, she asked me what the purpose of the pose is, and I gave my usual response as to the purpose of the poses, “Total peace of mind.”
I think she was still a little dubious and asked what my idea of progress in the pose is. A woman asked a similar question the other day to the effect, “What learning and progress do [I] consider success for this year? What are my metrics for success?” These questions were asked by people like me whose bodies don’t look like the pictures we see of the pose.
My short answer to the first woman, off the top of my head, was, “Progress in the pose could be a totally healthy and functional root chakra. (Read more on the root chakra: Part 1 and Part 2 and second chakra.) Equal amounts of energy going down both legs, and thus more groundedness. Becoming more patient. Learning to listen to the body and hear the messages that had previously been missed. Developing a more friendly and compassionate relationship with one’s body. Peace of mind. Learning to be more comfortable in situations that aren’t as we think they should be.” All of those possibilities are more major and ultimately more important than touching one’s toes or being able to lie flat on my legs as I once could.
You could stop reading there because the above really is enough, but what follows is my attempt at giving a more full response than I could in class.
It may sound like I’m not being serious or not taking the question seriously, when I say that the purpose is “total peace of mind.” However, after the second questioner admitted that she was hoping to touch her toes by the end of the year, I pointed out, to her agreement, that if she successfully touches her toes by the end of the year and her mind is agitated at the time, and if currently she has an agitated mind but can’t touch her toes, then touching her toes hadn’t actually accomplished that much. AND since she can’t touch her toes now, right now she can potentially make bigger strides toward total peace of mind because that agitation—the lack of peace of mind—is right there for her to see and work with.
I think that it’s very important to keep the bigger picture—the Real—goal of our yoga in mind, otherwise, we may get side-tracked by what are, in the end, trivialities. I personally also keep in mind that just a few hours after the death of this body, it will be as stiff and inflexible as the next one, so it’s really that which leaves the body with the life-force that is most important to be working with while we are alive.
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With all this background in mind, as I mentioned above, there is very real and very important progress that one can realize in the pose—in any pose—regardless of what the physical body looks like while in it. In this specific pose, we can potentially effect some important healing around the root chakra. This pose starts from a sitting position with the root chakra very connected with the Earth, and the legs extended straight out in front. In this position and if we fold forward at all, we can more easily find aberrations or energetic/emotional issues with the energy center located at the pelvic floor.
For a few weeks, I’ve been suggesting the focus in the pose be to visualize a four-petaled, downward-facing lotus flower at the root chakra—the flower facing/“opening” into the floor, as I wrote extensively in Parts 1 & 2, linked above. With that flower we then attempt to first to close the front petal, so it moves toward the back of the body. If a person visualizes and feels that happening, then we add the petal in the back opening, so it also moves toward the back of the body. Both of those mental images can help get the energy at the pelvic floor move toward the back of the mat which will help tip the top of the pelvis forward, the direction this pose aims. If both those petals move in that way, then we open the right and left side petals out to the sides.
Many people have admitted having a hard time getting the front petal to close, some of whom are folded way forward and some of whom are not at all. This is good awareness on their part, and points to one area of possible work, which could take months or years to get that petal “functional.”
These differing people’s experiences also point to the fact that the physical body moving deeply into the pose does not indicate that things are working well in the inner body. Just because a physical body can fold completely forward onto the legs does not mean that the pose is “done!” A person may have the same exact inner work to do as a person who is still sitting with their spine completely vertical, not folded forward at all. I consider that work on the inner body to be the more important work of the physical practice.
If you are not sure about the idea of “energy moving”—maybe you don’t feel it or it seems too “woo woo” or fake—consider instead that if you put the mind in that region of space and can’t move it in the suggested way or direction, then at the very least you just discovered a stuck area of your mind. In my experience, limitation in that location in space—or in the mind—will have a limiting effect in some other area of your life and personality as well. Knowing that these personal limitations exist and can be worked with and potentially overcome, may inspire the mind to be more open and the awareness to be more sensitive to what is happening there now. Feeling the energy as a real thing can happen later.
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It’s very important to note, as I have many times in class, that of all the poses of the year over the years, this one has by far the widest array of how different bodies will look while in the safe practice of it. If you’ve been to class, you’ve seen people folded flat down, like in the pictures in books or on the internet. There are other bodies that are leaning forward somewhere in the direction of that “final” pose. There are a number that have the knees bent, or the legs wider or wide apart, some with blocks under the hamstrings, and some are sitting on the edge of a cushion. More than a few are sitting fairly upright, even looking like leaning backward a bit and definitely not forward bending, as the name indicates! That’s how my body looks for the first minute or more of my daily exploration of the pose.
If you do a quick internet search for pictures of the pose, you’ll see very little variation, mostly just two versions of putting the torso flat on the thighs, either with the spine fairly straight or somewhat rounded. The internet will not show as much variety as the bodies in classes do. I assume that “normally” mobile people don’t post their poses on the internet or the algorithm refuses to show them to me, a yoga teacher!
There are so many individual variations obviously because there is so much individual variation in bodies. More than most others, this pose reveals some of the variations quite strikingly. Some people bend forward and have sensation in the sacroiliac joint, or the hip crease, or behind the knees, and these are all places that I think it’s best not to feel it since they will generally result in injury at some point. For some people, it feels potentially harmful to fold forward like that. Some feel it in the calves more than the hamstrings. All of these are reasons—whether from injury, life use, or genetics—that a person may need a modification from the “right” way of doing the pose.
However, I believe that every body can make progress of some kind in the pose, even if one never looks like “folding forward” or ends up touching the toes. (And just remember that the simple movement from lying on the back to sitting upright itself IS a forward fold!) To complete the story above, the first woman who asked the question the other day can now fold significantly more forward than she was when she asked the original question, and now she can be there without pain, mere days later! If we work with the foundation, everything changes—sometimes surprisingly and radically, and occasionally quickly!
If we work with the energy in the body and remain lovingly present with what comes up for us—energetically, emotionally, and mentally—in that process, much deeper issues can come to light than would if we’re “just going for a stretch.” If we allow deeper parts of ourselves to come to the light, we have then created and allowed a “golden opportunity” for healing, though it may not look like we “think” it should. If it’s Real Yoga, the progress and what happens won’t be what we expected it to be, though it will, nonetheless, feel completely perfect, right and welcome.
Whatever the physical outcome of the practice of the body-centered yoga, in my experience, the biggest shifts happen in the mind and emotions as they quiet down and make the Inner Landscape more clear. This allows the Bigger Picture to be more easily perceived and integrated. May you be inspired to keep going and “digging the hole deeper” and thus, over months and years, realize what “progress” in Yoga—or even just in this pose—means for you!