Stand up nice and tall with your feet pointing straight ahead. Try bringing your feet together, with your big toes touching, and notice how that feels in your body. Do you feel strong and tall here? Now try bringing your feet as wide as your hips, and notice how that feels. Choose the foot position that feels most comfortable in your body. Our goal is to feel like strong mountains while we stand here, so that no gust of wind could blow us over.

Let’s begin to notice our toes. Lift your toes up and wiggle them around. It may feel a little funny, but notice what happens to your balance as you wiggle your toes. Try to keep your balance in the center of your feet like the base of a mountain. From here, spread your toes as wide as you can and oh so gently place them down, one by one on the ground- keeping them spread out. Do you feel more balanced here? We are building our mountains from the ground all the way up to our heads, so we should have really strong feet to hold us up! Once we have strong feet, we can make our legs strong too.

Next, we’ll move up to our arms. Let your arms hang by your side with your palms facing forward. Just notice how they feel here. Do your arms feel heavy? Do they feel light? Begin to imagine that you are moving energy all the way up from your feet, down through your arms, and into your fingertips. Wiggle your fingertips and see how that feels before moving on to make your arms strong just like your legs.

Now we will bring our attention all the way up to the very top of our heads. Notice the very top of your head lift up as you inhale and hold yourself up tall as you exhale. We have arrived in our mountain pose.

As you breathe in, feel air filling up your arms, all the way down to your fingertips, and your legs, all the way down to your toes. As you breathe out, feel yourself becoming more and more stable in your mountain pose. Each breath making you stronger.

Students: You can use mountain pose any time that you want to feel strong like a mountain.

Teachers: You can instruct this exercise to bring the energy of the class down, as it is grounding.